I can't say that Motörhead changed my life per se, aside from being one of maybe 3 bands that made me want to play bass, but I have vivid memories of rocking very hard to Motörhead. I found lots of aspects of the band appealing, in that they were a "metal" band that in fact didn't sound silly, in fact they sounded very frightening without appearing to take themselves seriously. That's pretty difficult for a band if you think about it. They had the hands-down coolest logo, ready-made for bad tattoos and t-shirts. Plus as mentioned the prominence of the bass, played by a really unattractive guy named "Lemmy" who had brilliant, basic Hell's Angels' kind of style that looked really cool then and still looks really fucking cool. Plus he had the whole mic-pointed-straight-down from some point far above his head, which made for a rad rock posture. And he played the bass through a wall of Marshalls, which is normally guitar terrain, so it didn't come off so much as a bass as a very detuned guitar.

Is there a hotter riff than "Ace Of Spades"? And it's a bass riff mind you. I put Motörhead in the category of bands (like perhaps the Ramones or one could argue AC/DC) who actually only had one genius song that they just kept rewriting, churning out record after record, never getting "modern" and adding fucking loops or making an "acoustic" record or calling in some fucking African vocal group and getting World or what have you. There seemed to be no interest in experimentation, but a sound "if it's not broke don't fix it" attitude that is so rare, and if not observed can make for some really ill-advised records based on a "concept" (I know, I've made more than a few such records. People hate it when you do that). The kids want what they paid for in the first place.

I remember being at I think the old Ritz in New York in the early '90s, and it was some hipster show with like a bunch of "cool" bands and all these cool kids in the attendance… Motörhead was on the bill as well, which seemed weird but everybody was still psyched. As well everybody was trying hard not to appear psyched. Anyway Motörhead came on, and Lemmy busted right into the intro for "Ace of Spades" , and this ALONE was loud enough to cause people to shit their pants… I remember Rupaul's panicked dash (in heels mind you) for the exit. I recall seeing one of the Adams of the Beastie Boys dive desperately across the nasty club floor , grabbing cigarette butts and scraps to shove in his ears. Thurston Moore tried to make a go of it but was slowly backing up, lifting his hands closer and closer to either side of his head. This is all within perhaps 10 seconds, just the intro, and I remember thinking, oh my god, what's going to happen to us when THE WHOLE BAND COMES IN: we're all going to die. People were just stampeding for the back of the club, terrified. I was up in the lighting booth, behind a Plexiglas wall, and even there my teeth hurt, and I couldn't look directly at the stage, as the bass frequencies kept knocking my skull to one side. It wasn't funny, it was actually too loud to bear. It was absolute genius and I've never seen nor heard anything like that since.

Nathan Larson