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 "Formulas always go wrong. We gave up on formulas years ago!" he laughs down the phone.
I'm speaking to guitarist Phil 'Zoom' Campbell about the creative process which spawned latest album, 'Hammered'. This typically casual statement fits neatly with the famed Motörhead thought process... after all, it was Lemmy who, when stuck for an album title several aeons back, famously said "Fuck it... let's just call it 'Rock 'N' Roll'"
The new album for me was an extremely pleasant surprise, given the relative disappointment of its predecessor 'We Are Motörhead'. I put it to Phil that it sits well up there with likes of 'Sacrifice', amongst the best of recent releases.
"Thanks, yeah. We enjoyed it, it's a load of heavy shit. We don't have any plans when we do albums, to make them all really fast or slow or any particular style, we just pull all the songs together and when they're good enough and we've got enough for an album, we put it out, simple as that."
Lest you fear that this interview is in danger of running into total fanbody territory, yes, I should admit at this point that it's common fact that I'm a drooling fan of this act... after all, they've always been my favourite band... but let's try and catch the man with a tricky question here... What do you make of the current status of Motörhead as 'hip'?
"Motörhead, 'hip'?"
Yeah, Motörhead the patronised act, the token hairy-arsed Metal act adopted by the shallow condescending beautiful people... the sort of self-reverential wankers who wear complicated glasses and sip lattes whilst turning music into nuggets of kitsch... the folk who love 'Ace of Spades' but for all the wrong reasons...
"It's always been 'hip' to wear a Motörhead t-shirt for the last twenty-odd years I guess. We don't care much about the fashions, it's great to see people wearing our t-shirts and everything. I think it's always been 'hip'. I'm biased though, coz I'm in Motörhead!" [laughs]
Hmm, he's obviously not rising to the bait, but then again, this is apparently his ninth consecutive day of media interviews. Let's move on.
There's a constant media-lauding of a 'Holy Trinity' of Motörhead albums, namely 'Overkill' - 'Ace of Spades' - 'No Sleep till Hammersmith' in the British music press at large... a feckless piece of journalism that further dictates that nothing produced since that time has ever captured those 'glory days'. Bollocks to that. Clearly, anyone with the least bit of knowledge of the band will know that's patently untrue. I mean, check out Nineties... some of most consistent, powerful, exciting release, a plethora of bona fide klassiks... '1916', 'Sacrifice', 'Overnight Sensation', 'Bastards' and the like...
"Bastards is the best album, we think..." opines Phil, a statement which may sound surprising if you haven't kept abreast of the band in recent years.
Aye, it's an apt name for an album! I got mine nicked a few years back, and it took me ages to track down another bastard copy... you just can't get it...
"Ah, it's out again now. It's out with 'Jumping Jack Flash' as an extra track. Yeah, that's probably the best one, but we get better every year. We're not the sort of band who go back and just play their 'greatest hits', coz we'd stop if we had to do that..."
Phil's made a vital point here... for whilst the band has an unmistakable sound, Motörhead have consistently managed to avoid aping themselves. A not insignificant achievement given that the band's been around for longer than a quarter of a century now. In a time when former idols stagnate or become shambling parodies of their former selves, Motörhead still deliver, in spades. It's as if the legend that is The Head deliberately goes out of its way to court hassle and inconvenience, avoiding the easy route preferred by many of today's self-satisfied stadium-bound fat cats.
 Motörhead's been a three-piece since Sacrifice was recorded... from that, I assume that there's no plans after all this time to bring in a second guitarist? Replies Phil "No. No... when Wurzel left, I said to Mickey and Lem 'Listen, I think I can make it work as a three piece. We'll give it a try...' I said '...and believe me, if it's not going to work, I'll be the first one to say.' We did a couple of rehearsals and it was obvious that it was working fine. We've done three or four albums now with just the three of us and we're all really happy with it."
I've seen you live three times now as a trio, and the full-on noise is still there. But how do you carry it off live? I'm assuming that recordings are multi-layered, well rhythm and lead at the very least, so what do you drop?
"Well Lemmy makes such a hell of a noise on his bass anyway live!" laughs Phil. "He plays chords on lots of stuff... that's part of his style. I have to be choosy in what I take for each song, whether to discard this or that, be selective. I do it individually for each song. I don't think we miss anything... I think it's just awesome power, even though there's only three things hitting you in the face rather than four. An awesome wall of beautiful loud noise, I think. That's what we try to do"
'Awesome wall of beautiful loud noise'... now, there's a sound-bite to kill for! There's a question I've always wanted to ask you... whilst the early Nineties such a great rallying cry for the band, I get the impression that the late Eighties were something of a singularly difficult time... perhaps a time when band came closest to calling it a day. Would this be a fair observation?
"Nah... not that any of us really can remember back that far to the late Eighties" (laughs) "We just kept going, we don't think back... all those people who document everything about Motörhead, they tell us stuff which we can't be expected to remember. We have so much going on, it's unbelievable. I guess maybe, we've always done good. The late Eighties, why would you say it was going down a bit, in what respect?"
Hmm... after 'Orgasmatron', it seemed like band hit a hiatus. 'Rock and Roll' seemed, well, tired. I remember clearly the ads and total media frenzy surrounding the release of '1916', it was finally as if Lazurus himself had arisen from grave...
"Yeah, that's when we recorded in Los Angeles for the first time. I mean, that's probably very true, yeah. We just carry on, some years are better than others, but we're very proud and privileged to be doing what we do, and we're quite happy to carry on as long as we can write good music and people still come to the shows and that's about it really."
Phil, you've been with the band for over seventeen years now...
"Eighteen years. Longer than anyone" (beyond Lemmy of course - stating-the-bleeding-obvious, Ed)
What do you make of people who think that Motörhead is solely Lemmy, and that you and Mikkey are just the backroom monkey boys... it seems more than a tad unfair...
"They used to think that, but people who're into the band, they know what goes on. It doesn't bother us... we all enjoy ourselves, I mean, it's not a problem for us"
Readers will doubtless be aware that you joined the band from Welsh act 'Persian Risk', and at same time as Michael 'Wurzel' Burtson, but that's about it. Can you tell us a bit more 'Phil' history?
"Well, I started playing guitar when I was ten, when I heard Jimi Hendrix playing on the 'Hendrix in the west' album, that's when I got really interested in the sound of the guitar and everything. Then I got a drum-kit, started playing drums. When I was thirteen, I was playing drums in a cabaret band, it was a lot of semi-pro stuff. 'Persian Risk' was like the first band I played with that was a really mega-serious band doing all their own material and everything. We did support Motörhead on one of their shows, about a year before I joined, we played with them in the Cornwall Colliseum. I'd asked Lemmy for his autograph when I was twelve, with Hawkwind, I've still got it at home on the Hawkwind programme, his old autograph and everything. I just read it in the press that Brian Robertson had left Motörhead, there was no audition number or anything, it just made people think. I knew they were on Bronze Records, so I phoned Bronze and then they gave me the manager's number, all that stuff, and I just hoped for the best."
The majority of bands have a constrictively regimented sound, but with Motörhead, a change in guitarist really does bring about a noticeably different change in sound and delivery... there's no standard blueprint from which the player must never deviate from. It gives the impression that Lemmy's fine to give a lot of leeway when it comes to pulling ideas together, as opposed to being an arch-overlord (unlike a few well known frontmen on the go)...
"Yeah. With Brian, on that particular album ('Another Perfect Day' - Ed), I think he used a lot of effects. I mean, he's a brilliant guitarist, Brian Robertson, one of the best players you'll ever hear. We just do what we fell like one the day, I mean, what's best for Motörhead. Lemmy doesn't tell me what to do, what to play, I don't tell him what to play, we just try to make it feel like an experience, like what you listen to is something moving, hopefully, something you remember."
Motörhead's had a bewildering variety of tags over the years.... biker rock, bastard rock, grebo-rock, granddaddies of thrash and so on. Lemmy himself, of course, is given to proclaiming at the start of gigs that 'We are Motörhead. And we are rock'n'roll'. Do you have any preferred tag yourself?
"Well, it's Motörhead music. I think there's too many tags put on music these days. I mean, if you go into HMV or something like that to buy a record, you could have to walk a quarter of a mile until you get to the right thing. R'n'B, the old type of R'n'B, Nu Metal, black death new speed junk Metal or whatever. I think it'd be far better, and easier, if they put every artist in the store under A-Z. Without all these categories, cos categories will put people into camps, and we all know what happens when we put people into camps. There's no need for it anyway, y'know what I mean?"
Well, Metal especially is notoriously tribal... and, let's face it, given to worst forms of snobbery and oneupmanship. You get the complete obsessives in this genre more than anywhere else. "Yeah, you can, but you don't want to give it any seed to start with. There's no point, coz that's not what it's there for."
So, do you keep abreast of Metal yourself, Phil?
"Yeah, I do. With my three children at home (the eldest of which fronts 'Psychosquad' - Ed), all the latest CDs come in and I hear a lot of stuff and a lot of it is really good to hear actually. Some of the new bands, Linkin Park, they sound a little bit heavy, Offspring and everything. There's so much stuff around now, I think it's getting a little bit better. I mean, good music will never die, but sometimes it gets swamped in other stuff which is not worthy."
Care to mention any names you'd rate?
"I like listening to Tool myself." Good band "Tool are a great band, uh, I can't really think now, but there's a lot of good stuff out there..."
Aye, it's not a fair question... it's the one where someone's mind is guaranteed to go blank... "Yeah, oh I know. Always!" (laughs)
What if wake up tomorrow and no Motörhead to go to? "Join another band!" (laughs) "Form another group. I'd have to play music, form my own band."
Well, I'll let you get on Phil, I'm sure you're up to your eyes. Many thanks, big man. Cheers!
"Give my love to everyone over there!"
I will do... MY DIRTY LOVE
Interview and words by Spandex Oo-er. Many thanks to Nik at WorkHardPR for the help in arranging this interview.
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