The first time I saw Motorhead perform live was supporting Hawkwind at the Fulcrum, Slough on 15th June 1977. It was the height of Punk Rock in the UK and me and my mates were very much the uncool ones, whilst everyone else was getting Mohican haircuts wearing safety pins and spitting on each other, we had long hair, leather jackets and bullet belts.
We quickly became super fans going to see them several times, buying all their vinyl & merchandise and even spending Saturday afternoons hanging around Portobello Market which is where we knew they would be drinking in local pubs when not on tour. Although nearly 50 years on Motorhead T Shirts are still fashionable so maybe we weren’t that uncool after all.
The first album Motorhead had a profound effect on me with the energy of Punk but much more controlled and was constantly on the turn table when it cam out in August of that year, although I did have their earlier singles with Larry Wallis from the Pink Fairies on guitar. The song Motorhead was originally recorded by Hawkwind and was the B Side of their Kings of Speed single.
I then went to see them at Langley College where they headlined on 7th October 1977 with support from The Speedometers, admission was £1.00 and on 13th January 1978 at Brunel University, Uxbridge with Winder as support, tickets were £1.20 as well as on 10th November 1979 at Bracknell Sports Centre with support from Saxon and Hammersmith Odeon on 28th November 1980 with support from Weapon tickets were £1.50.
On 1st December 1977 I travelled up to the Music Machine in Camden to see them with my mate Mike, it was a weekday and I was working as an apprentice sheet metal worker at the time in factory stating at 8.00am in the mornings, when we got to the venue we discovered that Motorhead weren’t going onstage until 10.00pm which meant we would miss the last train back. We decided to stay and walked the majority of the way home, hitch hiking we managed to get a couple of lifts that took us a few miles, we ended up getting back to Mike’s place in Slough at 6.30am!! Support band on that night was Warsaw Pakt and admission was £1.80.
It was 1978 that I started being a roadie for heavy metal band Sledgehammer (who I will discuss in further detail in a future blog) and we supported Motorhead alongside the Lightning Raiders at Slough College on 21st October 1978. I do remember the Students Entertainment officer telling Lemmy that they had to keep the volume down as they had a noise detector in the building, after a heated to discussion he went away and came back to say he had turned it off.
On the Friday of Reading Festival 1979 Motorhead performed before The Tourists (featuring Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart) and after Wilko Johnson’s Solid Senders with the Police head lining , which was a fantastic night.
On the 30th September 1979 Sledgehammer supported Motorhead at the Music Machine in Camden, this was a secret fundraising gig where they went under the name of Iron Fist and the Hoards from Hell, we were told that there were two support acts and we heard a rumour that EMI were interested in signing one of them, it turned out the other support band was Iron Maiden !!
By the time we got the early 80’s I found that Motorhead were getting a lot more commercial with appearances on Top of the Pops etc and with all the gigs I was doing with Sledgehammer I started to lose interest, although I still remain a fan to this day especially with their early albums.