IT IS three o'clock in the afternoon. Lemmy
has just got out of bed and he's having his breakfast - a hearty
measure of vodka and orange juice. In a pint glass!
In spite of the brilliant sunshine outside. the Motorhome
is filled with an impenetrable gloom, due to the curtains
which remain drawn across all the windows.
"I don't like the daylight,” Lemmy explains. "it
makes me shrivel up. That's why I spend most of my life inside
a coffin in the pit downstairs."
The 'pit’ turns out to be Lemmy's bedroom, a darkened
sanctuary bestrewn with rubbish, souvenirs, smutty magazines
and socks.
"This room still smells of my dirty socks from three
months ago," he tells me. (though to my sensitive nostrils
it smells more like six months'). "It's a terrible
thing to be thirty-six. lazy and not care about it. However.
I'm, coming to terms with that now. By the time I'm thirty-eight
I shouldn’t care a sod!
“I never do any tidying up about the place. Phil
does some from time to time. Phil's a Virgo, you see, so
he's a compulsive cleaner. I'm a Capricorn, so I'm compulsively
lazy.
“The only times I normally bump into Phil and Eddie
are at breakfast (about three o'clock in the afternoon) and
then again at supper (about six o'clock in the morning).
That's because I don't spend very much time at home. I'm
out so often chasing girls. Which seems a much more sensible
way for a man to spend his time.
"When I go out I usually travel down to one of my regular
pubs. In Notting Hill. Otherwise, I take a taxi and go to
The Venue. I meet up with people that I know but even if
I don't know anybody, that's no problem. You can usually
find somebody who' s willing to be your friend if you buy
them a drink.
“When I’m out for an evening I spend a lot of
time and money playing the one-armed bandit. I’ve never
been able to work out a system to win on it, though. If there
is such a thing it’s passed me by. You come across
a lot of Japanese people with little note books, writing
down everything they do, every move they make on a machine,
calculating exactly how many nudges you need and so on. But
I wouldn't be able to follow all that. Which is probably
why they are rich and I m not.
“When I come home after a night out all I want to
do is lie down. Sometimes I lie on the settee and watch a
film on the video. But the most boring thing about me is
that I read a lot. I go through six books a week. I'll read
anything. Kellogg’s box tops. anything!
"People might think that we must be always having
parties and things at home. Well, that's one thing we never
do - we have enough parties when we're on the road. We just
a bit of peace and quiet at home.
"Mind you, things can get a bit wild every so often.
I mean, sometimes you come in here and you just can't move
for sex. People sprawled all over the kitchen floor, hanging
from the lights or lying in the sink. Only the other day
there were six dwarves doing very peculiar things to one
another in the hallway. I fell over them as I came in. What
with all this sort of thing going on and the constant hurly-burly
of glamorous starlets running amok in fur rugs, I can honestly
say that my life is really boring.” |
