Back At The Funny Farm & Other Concert Memories

Motör-Head Blown Away

The very first gig I ever went to on June 4th 1983 at the Hammersmith Odeon at the tender age of 15, it blew my head off! I couldn't hear a thing for about a week, but it was well worth it, they were fantastic!

Another Perfect Tour and also....

...Another Perfect Day.

The album was released in 1983 on the independent Bronze Record label set up by Gerry Bron who also also ran London's 'Roundhouse Studios'. The label also had other artists such as Uriah Heep, Girlschool and Manfred Mann's Earth Band on it's books.

I Got Mine

I was quite a fan of the band (and still am), the first album I brought was the 1980 album 'Ace Of Spades', but even before that I had borrowed several of their other albums from a school friend (who I suspect in turn had borrowed them from his older brother), notably 'Overkill' 'No Sleep Till Hammersmith' and 'Motörhead', their material was also heavily played on both the Radio 1 and also Local Radio Rock Shows, so I guess by the time I got to see them I felt like I was something of a 'veteran' fan.

The 'Ace Of Spades' album was also awesome and also very popular, even those that weren't Metal fans seemed to know it and if pushed also liked it. The title track was also featured in the hit comedy series of my youth several years later called 'The Young Ones' alongside other music acts such as The Damned that appeared randomly each week in strange situations. You can catch some of the acts that appeared on my other post on this site called 'Nasty'.

Goes Up Like Prices At Christmas

I recall quite vividly tripping up to London that Saturday with a mate, armed only with a pack of Special Brew we had managed to somehow get hold of from a local Off Licence (shame on us😇 ....and the owner of the Off Licence!😈).  Would have loved to have rolled up with a bottle of Jack Daniels à la Lemmy style, but sadly pocket money and even iffy Off Licence proprietors wouldn't stretch that far. However, my mate, bless him, pulled a blinder and had managed to blag half a bottle of scotch from his Dad's drinks cabinet (bet there was hell to pay when he got home!).

Have a look at the RetroWow website for the cost of things like alcohol and cigarettes back in the day compared to now, for just a snippet:

Gives you some idea of the prices from 1983, bear in mind a pint of beer in London nowadays is roughly £4.84, a packet of John Player cigarettes is approximately £12 and a 4 pack of Special Brew approximately £7. Mind you it is all relative, when you are young and don't have a lot of money buying some of the things in this list would have been beyond budget even at the time!

I also found tucked away at home the original concert ticket which I kept safe for all these years, catch a load of the price on this as well!

Bear in mind the average kind of cost for a concert ticket nowadays is nearly £50. Catch the detail of the hike in gig prices over the years at the BBC Website.

We Come Half-Cut

Anyway, back to the story. So, we eventually made it... in a half sober state to West London earlier than scheduled and just in time to hear the 'tuning up' from hanging around outside The Odeon (just the tuning up itself was quite loud enough!🎵). There were quite a few of us going to the gig so we caught up with the others in the venue who were half stoned instead of half cut thanks to another of my mate's older brothers leading them astray.

Motörhead, were, without a doubt awesome live, despite the unfortunate departure of 'Fast Eddie' and a slight change in sound due to 'Robbo' being on board they were still the noisiest thing I have ever experienced! The sound just literally went through you from the thudding drums, pounding bass line to the squeal of the guitar, you felt like your whole body was taken over in sound! Meanwhile all the real die-hards with their heads in the bass-bins at the front were shouting for the band to 'turn it up' whenever they stopped for the next song!

We're The Support Band

The support were Canadian Heavy Metal band Anvil. Evidently Lemmy had asked Anvil's guitarist Steve Kudlow to join Motörhead following Fast Eddie's departure, but he turned down the offer. You can read about them in the book 'The Story Of Anvil' written by Steve Kudlow and Robb Reiner. As a band they are still going, they kind of faded out during the 90's but in 2021 released their 18th studio album!

Have a listen to them at the same time I saw them with their song 'Motormount' taken from the 1983 album 'Forged In Fire'.

Have to say that sadly they were probably a little overlooked by us at the time as our 'eyes were on the prize' of the main act, however listening to them again in later years I kind of appreciate that they were really pretty good and we probably should have listened harder at the time (hindsight, what a wonderful thing!).

Motor-Memorabilia

I even found the old concert programme tucked away at home in all it's battered up glory...

As it says on the back page of the programme:

'We come to you again this year,

We come prepared, so do not fear,

We come by car, we come on foot,

We come with booze, we come half cut,

We hope you'll come to see us play....

So we can blow your heads away!'

And so they did! We just provided some of the other bits (half cut and half stoned!) 😉

Change In Sound

I really liked the change in sound, I think at the time it was received with mixed reviews, one journalist suggesting they had turned into 'a growling ZZ Top'. It did give the band a more bluesy edge I guess and it was a bit of a shock at the time as you probably wouldn't have put ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist in with Motörhead, I mean it just wouldn't work would it? Well gladly it did (at least for one album).

Evidently Lemmy wasn't over-enamoured with the new line-up either and went on record to say that it was a low point for the band at the time, but he also said that he thought the album was very good and stood the test of time.

The album itself is ranked a #5 in the all time best albums by the band at LouderSound.com. The track listing for the album:

• Back At The Funny Farm
• Shine
• Dancing On Your Grave 
• Rock It
• One Track Mind
• Another Perfect Day
• Marching Off To War
• I Got Mine
• Tales Of Glory
• Die You Bastard

Have a listen to a couple of the tracks on the links above and see if you agree?

The CD included as a bonus track the wonderful Willie Dixon blues number 'Hoochie Coochie Man' which is delivered brilliantly, other 'extras' were (Don't Need) Religion and Turn You Around Again.

I guess you could say as an album it's a bit like 'Marmite' you either kind of love it or hate it. I think as an album it is certainly quite a change from their earlier stuff in many ways, maybe in hindsight it was what the band needed after Eddie quit, a change and a brief reform. Perhaps Robbo's reluctance to play the more classic Motörhead songs and his musical style being at odds to what the band were about meant he didn't stay as long as he could🤔. Whatever you think I believe this album has grown enormously over time, I loved it then...and I still do!

*******

So sad that Lemmy, Phil and Eddie aren't here anymore, I don't think there will be another band like them again, for a band of just three people they made a hell of a racket, may they all rest in peace and be creating mayhem wherever they may be. I miss 'em . I also miss two of my mates I went with sadly both no longer here, I am sure they are happily enjoying the great gig in the sky also.🙁 

*******

Video Thanks To

MotörheadBander@youtube

clivestrickland@youtube

marco rusticcini@youtube

Info Sources

LouderSound.com, Wikipedia, My Memories😉 & RetroWow and BBC for making me feel really old and realize the cost of inflation!