Ricky Warwick was jet-lagged, three in the afternoon, and about to hear the new Motörhead album before almost anyone else. What he remembers most clearly is the carpet.
The Almighty frontman, now also of Black Star Riders and Thin Lizzy, has told Classic Rock about the afternoon he tried to keep up with Lemmy Kilmister in a Los Angeles hotel room, and did not manage it.
The Almighty emerged from Glasgow at the end of the 1980s with Motörhead among their stated influences. The admiration turned out to run both ways.
“When we started coming to London we’d bump into Lemmy in places where he hung out, like the St. Moritz club [in Soho],” Warwick recalled. “He was brilliant with me straight off the bat, very friendly, very funny, and he always offered loads of advice.”
That friendship led to a support slot on the “1916” tour, which Warwick describes as huge for his band. Before it, both bands were booked for the Foundations Forum industry convention in Los Angeles, and Lemmy told him to look him up.
“So we arrived at the hotel and Lemmy had left a note for me, saying: ‘I’m in room blah blah blah, come up.’ It’s, like, three in the afternoon, and I’m jet-lagged to f**k, but I knock on this door, and there’s a full-on party going on,” Warwick said.
“Through the smoke I see Lemmy in his denim cut-off, his tight denim shorts and a cowboy hat,” he continued. “They’d just finished mixing 1916, so he sat me down, racked me out the biggest f**king tramline of whatever the f**k it was, poured me a pint of Jack Daniel’s and Coke, put headphones on me, and goes: ‘Listen to this.'”
He added: “I’m buzzing, I’ve got the new Motörhead blasting, and Lemmy keeps topping up my glass. I’m trying to be cool, but as it’s coming to the end of the album, the room is spinning, and I’m thinking, F**k, I’m in a bad way here, this isn’t good.”
“So I get up to tell Lemmy what I think of the album and my legs just go, I fall flat on my face on the floor, the pint glass shatters and cuts my f**king eyebrow when I land on it, and I throw up at the same time.”
“So I’m f**king lying there in a pool of blood, and vomit, and glass, and snot, and then I feel this acrid breath close to my face, and it’s Lemmy going, ‘Warwick, you’re a f**king lightweight, you’ll never make it’.”
The verdict did no lasting damage to the relationship. “We did the 1916 tour, and we couldn’t have been treated better. Lemmy and all the guys in Motörhead were just fantastic, and I miss them a lot.”
Warwick has spoken before about the gap between Lemmy‘s intake and its apparent effect.
“It’s always an amazing experience to tour with your peers,” he said in 2021. “We were very blessed in The Almighty that we got to tour with so many of ours. Touring with Motörhead was a personal high for me. Lemmy and the boys treated us so well and I got to hang out with Lemmy a lot on that tour. I tried to keep up with his alcohol intake and failed miserably… Lemmy could really knock back the JD and coke… but I never once saw the man drunk.”
1916 was recorded in 1990 and released on January 21, 1991 through WTG, produced by Peter Solley and Ed Stasium. It was the last Motörhead album to feature Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor on drums throughout, and came after Lemmy relocated to Los Angeles in 1990. The record earned the band a Grammy nomination.
The Almighty supported them on the UK leg in February and March 1991, between the album’s release and their own second record, Soul Destruction, which arrived that March.
Warwick formed The Almighty in 1988 with Tantrum, Stump Monroe and Floyd London, having previously played rhythm guitar in New Model Army. He has fronted Thin Lizzy since 2010 and co-founded Black Star Riders, alongside a solo career.
Lemmy died on December 28, 2015, at 70. Taylor had died the previous month.
