![]() I did think that he wouldn’t make the gigs because he was so frail. “He looked so frail at the Classic Rock Awards,” says Clarke. Motörhead were due to play UK dates the following January, including two dates at Hammersmith Apollo, and the two of them talked about the guitarist joining them on both nights. The last time Clarke saw Lemmy was at the Classic Rock Awards in October 2015, two months before the singer’s death. It swiftly became a highlight of their live set. But if he said he wrote it in a Transit van, then you’ve got to believe him.”Īce Of Spades reached No.15 in the UK when it was released in November 1980. We’d say: ‘Man, we need some fucking lyrics for this.’ So he used to go for a shit and write the lyrics. “He might have written it in the fucking shitter for all I know,” Clarke says with a laugh. In typical myth-making fashion, he claimed to have written the lyrics in the back of a Transit van while speeding down the motorway at 90mph. The final piece in the jigsaw was Lemmy’s lyrics – an attempt, he said, to cram as many gambling references in as possible: the high one, snake eyes, dead man’s hand (and don’t forget the joker…). With its turbo-charged new riff and memorable breakdown, the track was beginning to sound special. Of course, at first we’re all doing it at different fucking times: ‘Come on, Phil, for fuck’s sake!’ ‘No, man, it’s you!’ But when we heard it, we thought: ‘Oh, it’s not bad.’” ‘Well, we’ll do it cos it’s you, Vic, but we ain’t gonna fucking use it.’ He set up a nice Neumann mic, and the three of us stood there with the blocks. “We were pissed or speeding and we were totally against it. “He said: ‘This is what we’ll do’,” explains Clarke. Amid the maracas and rattlesnake tails was a set of woodblocks which would provide the clacking sound during the breakdown. Maile also had what Clarke called “his box of tricks” – a cardboard box full of items used to provide sound effects. It was one of the only times we’d written in the studio.” “He made us look at that riff, so Lemmy and I started fucking around with it a bit. “Vic kind of questioned what we were doing with the song,” says Clarke. There's no debating that.Producer Vic Maile, who had previously worked with Lemmy’s former band Hawkwind and who Clarke affectionately describes as “a nice bloke, very soft, big hooter, short hair”, played a big part in fixing both. Either way, Ace of Spades rightly deserves its legacy as a classic. It's highly debatable whether Ace of Spades is tops over the breakthrough Overkill, as the latter is more landmark because of its earlier release, and is somewhat rougher around the edges, too. This singular sound (still loud and in your face, rest assured), along with the exceptionally strong songwriting and the legendary stature of the title track, makes Ace of Spades the ideal Motörhead album if one were to choose one and only one studio album. The result of his work isn't all that different from that of Jimmy Miller, the longtime Rolling Stones producer who had worked on Overkill and Bomber, but it's enough to give Ace of Spades a feeling distinct from its two very similar-sounding predecessors. ![]() Actually, besides the especially high number of standouts on Ace of Spades - at least relative to Bomber, which wasn't quite as strong overall as Overkill had been - the only key difference between this 1980 album and its two 1979 predecessors is the producer, in this case Vic Maile. ![]() The album is still rock-solid, boasting several superlative standouts. ![]() The classic lineup - Lemmy (bass and vocals), "Fast" Eddie Clarke (guitar), and "Philthy Animal" Taylor (drums) - is still in place and sounding as alive and crazed as ever. Those two albums have a lot in common with Ace of Spaces. Ace of Spades was Motörhead's third great album in a row, following the 1979 releases of Overkill and Bomber, respectively. And the album of the same name is legendary as well, among Motörhead's all-time best, often considered their single best, in fact, along with Overkill. It's a legendary song, for sure, all two minutes and 49 bracing seconds of it. With the 1980 release of Ace of Spades, Motörhead had their anthem of anthems - that is, the title track - the one trademark song that would summarize everything that made this early incarnation of the band so legendary, a song that would be blasted by legions of metalheads for generations on end. ![]()
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