On January 9, the service chapel of Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Los Angeles, California accommodated a stand with Lemmy’s ashes and his famous hat and boots surrounded by band’s photos, wonderful flower arrangements and lots of love. The memorial service was hosted by the manager Todd Singerman and broadcasted live worldwide via the Motörhead’s youtube channel.
A lot has been said over more than two hours of service but the bottom line was that each and every speaker remembered Lemmy as a friend.
Family was represented by Lemmy’s son Paul Inder and Lemmy’s girlfriend Sharon. Phil Campbell was the great absent but Motörhead drummer’s Mikkey Dee and Matt Sorum (Guns’n Roses, Velvet Revolver) who filled in for Mikkey Dee as drummer on Motörhead’s US tour in 2009 were there. Lemmy’s buddy Scottie, his bootmaker Pascal, Lemmy’s assistants and promoters and his stage manager also paid their respects.
An impressive list of musicians with whom he worked over the decades, in different periods of his career from the band’s German era to closer times, shared their thoughts and feelings, funny stories and memorable jokes: Nina C. Alice and Jim Voxx from Skew Siskin who repeatedly played with Motörhead since the 90s, Slim Jim Phantom with whom he did The Stray Cats, Slash, Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, Whitfield Crane, Rob Halford from Judas Priest, Scott Ian from Anthrax, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich from Metallica and Dave Grohl.
As tribute of what he meant to them, they have portrayed Lemmy as a man defined by honesty, compassion, kindness behind the hard exterior, modesty, integrity, loyalty, a rock’n’roll icon with a unique style and sardonic sense of humor and, not in the least, a perfect gentleman.
Nevertheless, the best description came from Triple H:
‘He was an inspiration of how you do you live your life. Live your life for you, do what you want to do. He did it his way, he did it his way right until the last day. And if there’s a better way to go on then I don’t know what it is. That is what is about in life and he was an inspiration as you heard today to a lot of people in this room. He was the inspiration for you to go on and be an inspiration to millions of kids who would go on to be that inspiration. That is his gift to the world. And I can’t think of a better gift. I can’t think of a better man.’
For those who couldn’t watch the memorial online live, the recording is uploaded on Motörhead’s youtube channel. UPDATE: link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTlf9YZ_fI
Memorial Service and Celebration of Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister
In Brussels Belgium, the celebration of the great man was transmitted live on the day of the funerals in Rock Classic Bar.
