“Most bass players are boring, standing at the back. I’m not like that because I was a guitarist first”: Lemmy, the godfather of heavy rock, on why he switched from guitar to bass

From his beginnings as a guitarist and roadie, through his initial experience playing bass guitar in Hawkwind, to the leading figure in British heavy rock outfit Motörhead, the much-missed Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister had done it all.

His famously filthy bass sound – not, as he revealed to us a couple of years back, the result of any effects, just wide-open mids and volume – isn’t for everyone, but for millions of Motörhead acolytes the world over, it’s nothing less than the sweetest sound ever committed to vinyl.

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