Remembering Lemmy Kilmister: Talking War for Remembrance Day (an old interview!)

I usually don't have much to say for Remembrance Day, but seeing Sonny Dean post about "1916" on Facebook made me remember talking to Lemmy Kilmister about that song, and about the whole issue of war, which came up several times during our first few interviews. I ended up regretting harping on the theme, in the end, actually, because in fact, I love Motörhead's war-themed songs, which sort of disappeared from their albums after this conversation (conversations, actually: more than one talk has been spliced together here). Some of this has appeared in different forms in different papers and magazines, and some of my questions have been tinkered with to help transitions from one quote to another. Oh, these conversations took place somewhere around the time of Motörizer and The World Is Yours.

RIP, Lemmy. We miss you.

Motörhead: In The Black

An interview with Lemmy Kilmister

By Allan MacInnis

Much as I love Motörhead, I was quite intimidated to discover I was going to interview Lemmy Kilmister. His image - somewhere between a biker and a pirate, often decorated with an Iron Cross, and usually dressed in black - exudes a certain stylish menace. There are, further, innumerable episodes in his autobiography,  White Line Fever, where he calls people (Sony execs, say) idiots or describes himself getting into confrontations on the road - like the one with the “boneheaded bitch” flight attendant who tries to oust him from a plane for having a pint of Jack Daniels (“Fuck her! And the horse she rode in on!” he concludes - which he then expands to include Sony, too). You get the sense that he doesn’t much tolerate fools or foolishness, which he’s encountered in abundance, no doubt, in dealing with the media. Add to that his living legend stature and the sheer aggressive energy of Motörhead’s music, with subject matter of songs like “Smiling Like a Killer,” “Serial Killer,” and his innumerable references in his lyrics to death, fighting and war, and there’s something quite daunting about the prospect of talking to Lemmy - particularly when you’re writing for a German magazine, and plan to ask him questions about his collection of Nazi memorabilia or that time he dressed like Hitler onstage with Slayer.

Rather to my surprise, Lemmy was warm and engaging and extremely tolerant of a few foolish questions of mine, as I probed about looking for the interesting stuff. Getting at his Nazi collection in particular was interesting - it actually took me two separate interviews to get around to what I really wanted to ask, since I was at first so horrified by the possibility Lemmy might say something truly unforgivable (and thus sour my love for Motörhead, a terrible thought to entertain) that I could only tread so close before scuttling away. By the end of our second talk, I was convinced not only that Lemmy is no Nazi, but that, contrary to appearances, he’s quite a media-savvy and generous guy - giving truth to Diamanda Galas’ old quip that Lemmy is a “closet genius.” We spoke on the phone shortly before, and shortly after, Motörhead’s October 1 Vancouver concert, earlier this year. Thanks to Joachim Hiller, Rhonda Saenz, Femke Van Delft, and Bev Davies for helping make this article possible. [And Dave Bowes and Tanya Van and the Skinny team, too!]

I want to ask about some of your darker songs. War seems to really be a theme that’s come into the fore in recent Motörhead albums.

There’s always been plenty of war.

True, but... I mean, in what gets called the classic Motörhead line up, there’s not that many songs about war. There’s “Bomber,” and whatnot... but it seems there are more and more lately...

Yeah, maybe. Well, there’s more war nowadays, isn’t there?

Yeah. I was hoping you could explain a couple of the songs, though. “Sword of Glory” (off 2006’s Kiss Of Death) is one that kind of confuses me. On the one hand, you advise young soldiers to “read the books, learn to save your life” - to learn from the history of all those who died in past wars and not be a “bloody fool” and make the “same mistakes” they made. On the other hand, you tell them to “grab the sword of glory,” an attitude that surely informed those very mistakes. This seems contradictory. Isn’t the desire for glory part of what drives young men on to their death in war?

 It’s like putting yourself in the past, the feeling they had then: got to grab the sword of glory, y’know - that was what people thought like.

Is it an attitude you’re advocating now?

Only if you’re invaded.

Okay... I know you’ve called the war in Iraq ridiculous, but - do you find that soldiers get strength out of songs like this? Do you ever hear from soldiers who say they like Motörhead?

Yeah, a lot of them. Europeans too, are over there - quite a few German soldiers have come up and said they loved our music.

And do you feel good about that?

Yeah, I do. I mean, they’re just kids, you know - they’re children, they send over there, basically, compared to me. I’m 63. You should see 18 year olds over there - I think it’s fuckin’ disgraceful. Same thing with Viet Nam, you know? They’re wars you can’t win, Iraq and Afghanistan. You can’t win a war where the enemy doesn’t wear the uniform to be identified by, y’see. If everybody looks the same, then anybody can be the enemy. Therefore, you think that everybody is the enemy - that’s when you get atrocities, y’know?

Some people have said that that was Osama Bin Laden’s purpose, in attacking America on September 11th - that he wanted to draw America into a war they couldn’t win.

I don’t know - it’s possible, you know, but the thing is that Osama Bin Laden, there’s actually no evidence to link him to 9/11 - no hard evidence. There’s only word of mouth. It would never stand up in a court. I’m not saying he wasn’t behind it, but I don’t know that he was, either; I haven’t seen all the so-called evidence - but it seems to me that what they’ve trotted out isn’t true.

So you think we’re being lied to about 9/11?

I think it’s very possible. I think in order to get a grip on the American people, George Bush engaged in several false flags. One was 9/11, one was Osama Bin Laden, and another was certainly Saddam Hussein.

Yeah, there were certainly lies coming from the Bush administration.

Sure. Lots of them. Almost everything they said, basically.

Mm. So do you consider your songs to be antiwar or anti-military?

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, we got stuck with this label of being warlike and pro-war, after writing all these anti-war songs. So I thought I’d write a pro-war one, after we’ve written all these anti-war songs. So I wrote a pro-war one, and everybody said, ‘what a good song - it was anti-war!’” (laughs).

Which song was it?

It was “Kill The World,” you know that one (off 2002’s Hammered).

I wonder, though, about metal and fascism... There are people like Mike Watt who have compared rock concerts as Nuremberg rallies... Or take, for example, punk bands like the Subhumans - Canada or UK, take your pick - who are identifying with the victims of the Holocaust, while metal bands tend to identify with the oppressors. Would you say, that there’s something overall about heavy metal that’s kind of friendly to fascism, compared to punk?

Well, not really. Because there’s no message, except the music. There’s not anybody saying, fight and die, you know?

“Death Or Glory” (off Motörhead’s 1993 CD, the German-distributed Bastards) seems a little pro-war, too, though. You identify with various soldiers, marching “with Hitler down the bloody road to war,” being “a Sturmbannfuhrer fighting in Berlin” and so forth. The music is really fast and exciting, there’s that cool “marching” sequence in the middle - you seem to draw power and strength from this, no?

It’s like, you feel powerful going in. You march into battle, the flags flying and the trumpets tooting, and you’re part of a large human machine. It must be a marvellous feeling, to be united that way and march into battle that way and defend your country. But it’s not like that when you’re sitting there trying to hold in your guts in some corner of a muddy field, y’know?

Yeah. I still think ‘1916’ (about the Battle of the Somme) is one of the best anti-war songs ever written.

Thank you. They actually used it in Britain in a school class thing about the First World War.

What was the school?

Several schools - it was as a general thing. And also there was this guy who came to a concert once, and he said he played it to his grandfather, who was there, and his grandfather broke down. He said it was true, it was exactly like that, so I really got it right, y’know?

What about a song like “Heroes” (off 2008’s Motorizer)? On the one hand, you’re looking at the power and the passion of it, but then there’s all this death and hopelessness...

Well yeah, that’s it - there are two sides to it.

It seems very Nietzschean to me.

You think so?

A sort of affirmation in life in the face of death - the amor fati, kinda thing...

It’s possible, I suppose. But I’m very cynical, too. I’m more cynical than Nietzsche was, especially later in his life (laughs). I don’t believe in any of the things they use to bring the kids in.

Such as religion.

Oh, fuckin’ - that’s the worst of the lot. Don’t get me started on religion.

Well, if you don’t mind, just a little... I’m curious - is there anything you admire about the character of Christ?

It’s funny, Christ y’see - because he could be an allegory, completely, couldn’t he? I think possibly the guy existed, but I don’t think he was anything like he is in the New Testament. I don’t think the Bible is particularly accurate. I think it was more of a parable, really.

So you think we can’t get a sense of him?

I mean, the Bible wasn’t written until 200 years after his death - you know how a story in the local bar gets amplified after a month? 200 years is a good distortion, I would say. It’s difficult to see that far back and see if it’s true or not - there’s no way to tell, really.

It is strange that a Jewish leader from 2000 years ago still has any influence at all in the modern world.

I know! It’s the power of the ministries, y’know - and the theme parks! (laughs).  

Are there any religions you respect?

Probably if I were going to go for one at all, I’d go for Buddhism. It makes the most sense. But who says it has to make sense, on the other hand... It’s tricky. I don’t believe in a grand design, but I do believe in a power of some sort. I would believe in reincarnation, if I was going to believe in anything.

So you believe in karma as a way of getting people to live morally?

I think we should live morally anyway, even if there isn’t any reincarnation. We’re not just hedging our bets, here.

So do you feel fairly cynical about humanity? Some people I know seem to think we’re living in the last days of the human race...

I don’t think it’s the last days, but I think we’re going to wipe ourselves out. I don’t think there’s any alternative, really. When you get a culture that’s advanced like ours has, in the last 200 years - in leaps and bounds - the psyche hasn’t kept up with the technical advances. Therefore you’ve got people who still think in caveman terms, of like, ‘club a person over the head and drag him back to the cave and disembowel him.’ The trouble is, they’re now doing it with atomic bombs. So I don’t see any way around it, really.

If I could ask you a bit about the Iron Cross you often wear - does that ever get you in trouble in Germany?

More in France (laughs). Yeah, we don’t get much trouble about that in Germany. Germany likes its Iron Cross. It’s a symbol that goes way back before Hitler. The swastika really worries people. I would never wear a swastika in Germany - well, I’d never wear one anywhere. But the Iron Cross is a great symbol - it’s a symbol of courage, and a great artistic symbol, too - it’s a very strong image.

Actually, on that topic... I was reading in your autobiography, White Line Fever, about you dressing up with Hitler onstage with Slayer in the 1980’s...

It was a rubber face mask, you know? And a brown jacket like he wore during the war.

No swastikas on you anywhere, then?

No, no, nothing like that.

And what was the purpose of dressing up like Hitler, exactly? Perhaps you intended it as a provocation?

I think it’s funny. You’ve gotta see the thing with a sense of humour, at this distance. I mean, the Second World War happened, and it was fucking awful, and the Jewish thing was double awful. But you can’t go on wringing your hands and sobbing forever, y’know? I mean - the Second World War had some funny figures. Big fat Goering, little Hitler with his stumpy little moustache, and Goebbels with his club foot, talking about the master race. Talking about blond gods! It’s fuckin’ extreme, you know - it is funny, I don’t give a fuck what anybody says. It is funny. Monty Python did that famous sketch, did you ever see it, about Hitler and Ribbentrop and Himmler living in a guest house in Devon? It’s marvellous. They’re ‘Mr. Hilter,’ and ‘Mr. Bimmler’...” (laughs).

Haven’t seen it, but fair enough. I was reading online, though, that you were facing criminal investigation in Germany for wearing an SS cap.

No, that was a press invention - that was a complete invention by the press. Because I travelled through Germany the day that article was in the papers, on my way from somewhere to somewhere else. I mean - I never wore an SS hat for an interview in Germany, anyway, because I’m not that crass, and if I had done, I would have been ready for anything - because it’s against the law, the swastika, you know. I would never do that in Germany. I’m not dumb - deaf, not stupid, you know! (Laughs).

There was a photo of you in an SS cap that I saw...

Actually, if you look closely at that photo, it’s a Motorhead logo on the top of it. Looks like an eagle, from a compilation we did a couple of albums back, and there’s the skull on the headband, right?

Oh, okay. So it’s not even an SS cap.

No.

You own Nazi uniforms, though.

Oh yeah, I do.

I was going to ask a bit about that. I don’t actually know the size of your collection. How much stuff do you have?

Oh, I got a lot of stuff. I collect daggers and swords, too, y’know - and stuff like that. And bits of uniforms, badges, medals, decorations from that area... I’ve got a set of Hitler’s cutlery (laughs).

You have a set of Hitler’s cutlery?

Yeah.

Oh my God, how did you find that?

It was in the catalogue - one of the guys from the US 1st Wing Division that liberated the Berghof [one of Hitler’s most famous residences, in the Bavarian Alps. Actually, Lemmy appears to be in error, since according to my research the Berghof was liberated by the US 3rd Infantry Division, followed by the 1st Battalion; though then again, between trusting the internet and trusting Lemmy...]. He got a set of cutlery, like a hundred pieces, and he’d been selling them off over the years. Got a knife, fork and spoon with the eagle. And they ate on ‘em.

That’s fascinating.

It’s a great investment. They double in price every year!

I think I read somewhere that it was your retirement, this stuff.

Yeah. It’s my pension scheme - rock’n’roll doesn’t have a pension scheme, y’know? (Chuckles).

Do you show this stuff to people who visit?

Yeah, I mean - you can’t help it. It’s all over my house. You’ve gotta put it on the wall - there’s nowhere else to put it. I think it looks great - it’s a pity it’s for the wrong reasons, but the design of the medals and uniforms is great design. I can’t help tellin’ it - it’s true.

I actually agree about the aesthetic, and it kinds of suits you. I was wondering about the photo that Bev Davies took of you in Vancouver the other night, though. You weren’t wearing your Iron Cross, you were wearing stars... what are they?

Oh - the thing with the gold star in the middle, that’s just a necktie. I got it in Vegas - it’s an American like necktie-thing, a bootlace tie.

Are people often scared of your Nazi collection? You must get weird reactions from people.

No, not really - I mean, I’ve also got photos of a couple of my old girlfriends on there, one of which is black. So I don’t get a lot of trouble - I mean, I’m the worst Nazi you ever met - I like black girls! I got a lot of black buddies, and a lot of Jewish friends. My manager is Jewish. We got a lot of Jewish pals - I’m not a Nazi, man. A lot of people collect that shit, it’s not just people like me. I mean, Hermann Goering’s brother-in-law had two daggers made, one for Hermann, one for him? And they were selling the brother-in-law’s dagger in one of the catalogues I get, and the starting price was a hundred grand - before you started bidding, right? So this is not your average skinhead buying it, this is lawyers and doctors.

Right. Actually, I heard a funny story the other day about a Jewish psychoanalyst with an SS costume that he got someone to try on...

Right, right. The biggest dealer in New York was this old Jewish guy, and he used to have a bundle of stuff, and all his relatives give him shit about it. And he says, “Hey, it’s business! You don’t like it - buy it! Burn it!”

Right, just pay for it. The only thing that would worry me would be that Neo-Nazis might think, “Oh, Lemmy is cool, he thinks this stuff is okay...”

Oh, a couple of them have tried that, yeah. One guy wrote and said, “Obviously you understand about the Fuhrer” - I wrote back and said “fuck off,” y’know? I got no time for that.

Okay.

I mean, you shouldn’t worry about the Nazis - the Nazis are all dead. You should worry about the fucking government here (ie, the USA, where Lemmy now lives) and in Britain. That’s what you should worry about - that’s the next step.

I can understand why Germans are worried about Nazism, though - that there’s a law against wearing that sort of stuff in Germany. Do you agree with that law?

I don’t think it makes much difference - if people are Nazis, they don’t have to wear a badge. There are a lot of Nazis in this country that aren’t wearing any kind of badge, but you can hear them in bars every night - “nigger this” and “nigger that,” right? I mean, there are a lot of people in the States that are really prejudiced. Look at the trouble Obama’s got into - he got elected all right, but now he’s getting killed, he’s getting slaughtered - he’s getting obstructed in everything he tries to do. They’re even paying people to demonstrate against him.

Yeah. When you tour through Germany, do you go to any important historical sites - former concentration camps, or any of the old Reich buildings?  

Yeah, I’ve been to... well, there’s not much to see anymore, everything’s been flattened. There’s a couple of buildings in Berlin that are left - only a couple, though. In East Germany, occasionally you get an old village that’s like a time capsule as far as architecture is concerned. That’s interesting. There’s a place called Bad Blankenburg, that’s just over where the wall used to be. There’s a section of wall, still, in a field just to the west of it. We played in this place where the houses are nearly meeting across you in the street, leaning-forward houses - the old beam houses? It was really picturesque, the old Germany - the old Gothic sort of German buildings.

You like that sort of thing.

Yeah, I do - I like the old English buildings, too. I like the old English villages, too - I figure it’s a much nicer setting than sheets of glass, tinted (laughs).

Have you gone to former concentration camps?

Well, see - they’ve taken the bodies out, so it doesn’t affect you like it should. It just looks like a row of huts - they can have all the photographs they want, but it doesn’t bring the horror home to you.

That’s true.

If they showed you all the bodies as well as the buildings - that would have an effect, like it really should have an effect. Like when they paraded - they took all the Germans from the cities near the concentration camps at the end of the war and made them walk through, you know that?

Yeah - I’ve seen footage of that in the film Billy Wilder did for the US government for distribution in Germany, Death Mills.

Right. That’s what you should see.

You were born in 1945, right?

Yeah, I was born the year it all stopped. But it didn’t stop there, it went on for a few years... I remember a lot of the wartime stuff in my younger life. There was still rationing until I was seven, in Britain - and the Germans didn’t have rationing at all, they were straight on American provisions! (Laughs). You know, winning the war nearly killed England!

Do you see echoes of that - tension between Germany and England?

Well, the football crowds still shout “Okay, who won the war then?” occasionally, when the Germans are winning. We’re the only country that does that - the Americans don’t shout it.

Though there still is some British-American stuff that I’ve seen come up.

Yeah. There’s all kinds of lingering hatred in the world, whether it’s for real or imagined insults.

My father has some lingering issues with the Japanese, actually - he knew people who got tortured in prisoner of war camps. Do you have any lingering stuff...?

Well, our generation - although we were born close to it, we weren’t actually involved in it, and I think you have to be involved in it to feel that hatred. And I think that’s justified; if he was in a place where he saw all that stuff with his own eyes, y’know - that would be very different from theorizing about it, which is all we can do. I mean, we can tell ourselves that it was the way they were brought up, but it doesn’t make any difference to him, seeing his friends get tortured.

No, though he didn’t actually see them get tortured - he just saw them after they got back. But speaking of Japan, then... do you have any war relics from the Pacific?

No, I have a couple of swords - I have a couple of samurai swords, but they’re touristy stuff that I got in Japan. I don’t have any of the decorations, no. Maybe I should, because they’re beautiful.

Have you been to the Hiroshima museum?

No, but it was a really fucking terrible thing that we did to them. That was - I don’t think that was necessary. They were already trying to surrender.

You think the west was just trying to test out the bomb?

Yes, I do, exactly. And then the more disgusting aspect of that is, they saw what happened with the radiation poisoning, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then they did it again in Nevada, and marched American GI’s into Ground Zero, as the bomb went off. I thought that was fuckin’ disgraceful. Because they’d seen what happened.

Yeah. There’s a lot of bullshit authority in the world, a lot of abuse of power. Let me ask - are there authority figures you do have respect for? Have you met cops, teachers, government officials that you actually admired?

I don’t make a habit of meeting government officials, really. It’s not necessary to find out what they’re about. I think there’s a lot of people who have tried to do their best, until they found out the temptations. And then they succumb, always, it seems to me. I don’t know about Obama. I think the jury’s just about still out on him - but I think he’s surrounded by the wrong people.

Yeah, it seems that way... I’m curious: what do you read?

Ah, the great lost art of reading, yes. I just read a really good book by a guy called C.J. Sansom called Sovereign, about Henry VIII’s progress around Britain.

So a lot of British history?

All kinds, but mostly British, because I’m British.

Do you take books on the road?

Yeah, always - I buy them on the road, more or less. I always take an emergency stock in case I can’t find any good ones.

I think I’ve seen in a documentary about you that you’re a PG Wodehouse fan.

Yeah, he was hilarious. He’s very English, as well - I think you have to be English to appreciate a lot of his stuff. Having said that, he was very big in America. He was writing about the wastrel upper class - the people who were born into lots of money and never did anything to justify it. The Lost Generation, they used to call them in the 1930s.

And there’s a butler who knows more than they do, that does everything.

Yeah - Jeeves, who sorts out all his master’s problems.

The other night, you dedicated “In The Name Of Tragedy” to William Shakespeare. What’s your favourite Shakespeare play?

Richard III.

(Laughs). Aha!

The Lawrence Olivier version. Did you ever see that one?

Yes - but I kinda like the Ian McKellen film, with the Nazi stuff in it. 

I like both of them actually, yeah, that’s very good. It’s hard to make a bad version of that - it’s a strong play, strong monologues from the characters. It’s very good indeed, one of his best.

Speaking of movies - there’s that movie being made about you (Lemmy: The Movie). Are you enjoying that experience?

Yeah, it’s fun. They’ve popped up around a lot of corners - they’ve been around on three tours, filming stuff. They should have enough by now. I think they’re editing right now.

Do you know when the release is slated for?

They always keep telling me, “next year,” so they’ll tell me that again - 2010.

It’s a great time to document the band - especially during the last few years. I think Inferno, Kiss Of Death and Motorizer are among the strongest albums you’ve done - you guys seem to be getting better with age.

We’re doing the same things, y’know; it’s just like - I think we just sort of hit our stride with Inferno. And the producer helped - Cameron Webb, he’s on all three of them. I think he’s a great help.

Is he lined up for the next album? (Motörhead plans to return to the studio shortly after their German tour).

Yeah, he is.

Terrific. Coming back to Germany - what happened with the album Bastards? That’s still only available here?

What happened was, it was on a German dance label (laughs). They offered us the most money, y’know? So we took the money and made the album - because they said at the beginning that we could hire whoever we wanted to distribute it in America. And then they turned around and they said, “No, we’re going to distribute it ourselves.” And since they knew nothing about American distribution, it fell flat on its ass.

It’s too bad. It’s a fantastic fucking album - there’s some great songs on that.

Thank you very much. 

I wanted to ask you about “Lost In The Ozone.” It seems like an unusual song for you - you’re almost wearing your heart on your sleeve, a bit, showing your vulnerable side a bit. It seems to be about loneliness and isolation.

I imagine when you’re shipwrecked, alone, it’s fairly isolating.

But is that you in that song - or is it just a character?

It was an exercise in imagination. I was imagining how it must feel.

Was there a specific inspiration?

Well, shipwrecked mariners have told all sorts of terrible stories - you know, being shipwrecked in a boat and they have to eat each other and shit. It must be fucking awful. And you’re surrounded by water, and there isn’t any. It must be incredibly tragic. They find boats with nobody in them, but I’m sure there was somebody in them when they started out. You don’t get too much of it these days, because there’s radar and everything; you can find people easier now - but in the old days, people were just lost.

Going back even earlier, what about the Sam Gopal album that you’re on? [The Sam Gopal album is a pre-Hawkwind psych-rock album founded by tabla player Gopal, with Lemmy, under the name Ian (Lemmy) Willis - his stepfather’s name - playing guitar, singing, and doing most of the songwriting]. Do you feel proud of that?

Yeah, it’s all right. I wrote all the songs in one night, except for the Donovan cover and “Angry Faces” - Leo Davidson wrote that one. It was the first album I ever did.

The Rockin’ Vickers (for whom Lemmy played guitar, 1965-67) didn’t put out a whole album?

No. We only did singles with the Vickers.

Okay. Well, it holds up - it’s a really interesting album. I love that your sense of dark humour is so visible on the album - with lyrics about how if “you like me when I’m living/ you’re gonna love me when I’m dead.”

That’s because people get better when they’re dead! I mean, Buddy Holly and Randy Rhoads - they acquired much more dexterity on the guitar when they were dead. Nobody seemed to notice it before...

Is death something you think about?

Well, as you get older, you think about it more, as a pressing thing. But it doesn’t really bother me. Being a live is the same thing as being dead - only more still! (Laughs).

(Laughs). Anything else you want to say to German readers?

Just say guten tag and (Lemmy says in German) “break your leg and your neck.” It’s a good luck thing, y’know.

Any special plans for the tour?

No, just we’re going to go over there and be Motörhead at them.

A final question - if you don’t mind, I have a question about substance abuse...

(Wearily) Do you really?

Do you get tired of being asked about drug and alcohol intake? Is it a boring subject?

Yeah, it is, really. I don’t recommend it, anyway, for anybody else. It’s not going to be particularly good for anybody. I’m not trying to espouse it.

There’s something kind of funny about it, though - it seems like some people try to make you into the ubermensch of substance abuse - people want to see you as this heroic figure who can take anything, drink anything...

I know, there is that about it, isn’t there. I don’t know where that came from - I certainly didn’t do it!

I heard a story from Vom, of Die Toten Hosen, The Boys and Doctor And The Medics, where he was talking to you and doctors said that the lack of substances in your blood might kill you - that you were told not to quit?

No, they didn’t say that! They told me not to give any blood transfusions (chuckles). 

Is there any other mythology around you in the media that you want to dispel?

Ah, I don’t really care. They’re going to come up with stuff anyway. I’ve been dead twice, you know? A French magazine printed my obituary. So when you get to that stage, anything else is just pastry, innit?