Jack Blades recently talked about how Lemmy Kilmister reacted to Motörhead fans’ rudeness to his performance while speaking to the Jeremy White Show.
The story came about when Blades was talking about his early career with his former band, Rubicon, who once got scheduled to open for Motörhead. However, there seemed to be a problem with this ‘match,’ as Rubicon was funk rock and Motörhead was… Well, Motörhead.
So, when Blades and Co. started playing before Motörhead fans, the crowd’s first reaction to them wasn’t positive at all, and it became clear that fans didn’t enjoy funk rock as much as Rubicon did. Jack stated:
“Here we are [on stage], a funk rock band, [with] a seven-piece horn section. Everybody’s jamming and all this kind of stuff in front of freakin’ Motorhead.”
He then recalled how the fans in the front row seemed not impressed with their show as they watched Blades and his bandmates with blank eyes while giving him the middle finger. He recalled:
“Guys were standing right in front of us and just not getting it. Not getting it. Just looking at us.
[They were] Just holding the bird. It was hilarious.”
What Kilmister Said About The ‘Disrespect’
Blades then started to talk about how he’d told Kilmister all about the ‘problematic’ show, and it seemed that the Motörhead bassist had a ‘peculiar’ reaction to his fans raising middle fingers. Jack stated:
“I talked to Lemmy about it. We’d run into him at the Rainbow, up in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. And we’d laugh about it in between his pinball games.”
While Lemmy didn’t provide a direct ‘clapback’ to the fans’ reactions, his ability to laugh it off with Blades in the face of such criticism speaks volumes about his confidence and character. Many artists might have been offended or upset, but Kilmister’s laid-back attitude was, in its own way, a powerful response to the fans’ rudeness.
