Lemmy Kilmister: His Craziest Adventures

"I can't say I was really surprised when the doctor told me I needed a defibrillator in my chest," Lemmy Kilmister told Revolver in 2013. "When you live the life I've lived, you always have to expect something. I wasn't a good boy. I had a hell of a lot of fun."

Games of chance are for fools, but that's the way he liked it: the former Motörhead frontman was always ready to face the consequences of an extreme lifestyle. Even if that just meant living. That's what he did until he got seriously ill, and even then he kept making music and playing shows almost until the very end. Here are 15 of Lemmy's wildest, weirdest and most exciting experiences. Most of which he lived through between the '60s and the '90s – the era when the Motörhead frontman seemed unstoppable and invincible.

Close Encounter with Aliens

While playing in one of his early bands in the early '60s, The Rocking Vicars, Lemmy Kilmister hadn't yet discovered the thrills of self-medication. That didn't stop him from having some out-of-this-world experiences. "In 1966 we were back on the Yorkshire Moors," he told Inked. "This thing came over the horizon and stopped dead in the middle of the sky. Then it went from standstill to top speed, instantly. We don't even have aircraft that can do that now, let alone back then. That really opened my eyes."

Lessons from Hendrix

In the days before Hawkwind, Lemmy got his baptism by fire as part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience crew. "Jimi taught me how to find drugs in the most unlikely places. That was, after all, part of my job for him," Lemmy Kilmister told Revolver. "That's how I learned to function on five hits of acid. But I also learned about stagecraft and performance. Jimi was so effortlessly cool and would move like an elegant spider. He always cared about the crowd. He made a lot of bad jokes because he was so absent-minded. People couldn't figure out what he was talking about until he'd finished. But he was definitely the best guitarist of all time."

A Teaspoonful of Sugar

In 1969, before Lemmy joined Hawkwind, a friend talked his nurse girlfriend into slipping them some amphetamine sulphate. She accidentally brought a jar of atropine sulphate instead. Lemmy scooped out a heaping teaspoon, which he said was "200 times the overdose", and popped it in his mouth. In his memoir, White Line Fever, he recalled talking to a television and then dying and waking up in hospital. "If we'd been any later, you'd have been dead," the doctor told him. Even after treatment, he had sporadic hallucinations for two weeks and recalled, "I'd be sitting there reading a book and I'd go to turn to page 42 – but there was no book."

Make Noises in E

Lemmy Kilmister auditioned for the space rock band Hawkwind in August 1971, hoping to land the spot of their second guitarist. During an outdoor gig at Powis Square in Notting Hill Gate, their bassist didn't show up, so keyboardist Dik Mik, who liked scoring drugs with Lemmy, suggested Lemmy play bass instead. "I'd never played bass in my life!" Lemmy said in his memoir. After joining Hawkwind onstage for the show, singer and saxophonist Nik Turner told him: "Just make noises in E." Lemmy passed the audition and spent the next four years playing bass with the band.

The Greasy Truckers Live Party

After three days spent popping Dexedrine with Dik Mik, Lemmy Kilmister and his bandmate took Mandrax, a downer, to take the edge off the high. But Lemmy got bored, so he dropped acid and mescaline and then took more Mandrax. Dik Mik drove to the venue, where they took cocaine and eight Black Beauties. "Man! Mik, I can't move," Lemmy said. "Can you?" As he explained in his book, the band's roadies helped carry them onstage for the show, which was recorded for the live album Greasy Truckers Party. "That was one of the best gigs we ever played," Lemmy raved. "The rapport between me and [leader Dave] Brock was incredible. We got 'Silver Machine,' our only hit – and number two – off that gig!"

A Pill from Death Himself

Lemmy Kilmister and a friend were sitting in a car splitting up 100 blue pills – a mix of speed and downers – when a police car pulled up alongside them. The two of them stuffed the pills in their mouths to get rid of the evidence, and the cops couldn't find any. That night, when Lemmy went to sleep, his heart rate and breathing slowed drastically. "It seemed like I'd stopped breathing, though I hadn't," he said in White Line Fever. "I was lying there with both eyes open [and] I had trouble speaking." At least two people with him thought he'd died until they realized he was still breathing.

Kicked Out of the 'Most Cosmic' Band in the World

In May 1975, Lemmy got busted at the Toronto border with a gram of amphetamine sulphate in his pants. He spent a night in jail and then got a mix of good and bad news. "The police charged me for cocaine, and I actually had amphetamines," Lemmy said. "It was an unlawful charge, so they had to let me go." Still, even though he made it back to Hawkwind the next day, the band kicked him out after their next show. "If I'd been on acid, everything would've been fine," he said. "But they were all about the psychedelic experience. The most cosmic band in the world fired me for taking the wrong kind of drugs!"

Welcome, 'Philthy Animal'

When Lemmy first met Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor in the summer of 1975, he never imagined the stoner would end up in his new band Motörhead. "I was hanging out with the Hell's Angels back then, and he used to come by and score drugs at our place," Lemmy told Revolver. "Then he'd light up and pass out and we'd wake him up in the morning and send him home. He always told us he was a drummer, but we never took him seriously." When the drummer originally hired didn't fit with the band, Lemmy turned to Taylor. "Phil said, 'Sure, I'll step up and do it for you.' We overdubbed him on our first album except for one track. Turned out he was exactly the maniac we needed."

Spit on Me!

There was a period in the late seventies when audiences at British punk rock shows showed their appreciation by spitting on bands onstage. So-called "gobbing." Motörhead, a favorite band of punkers, were sometimes on the receiving end of a lot of phlegm. "I never liked it, but we accepted we couldn't stop it," Lemmy told Inked. "Once I saw a guy about to spit a huge green thing right on my hand, and I borrowed a line from Winston Churchill. I pulled it off my hand and rubbed it into my hair and said, 'See that? Tomorrow I'll be clean, but you'll still be an asshole.'"

Public Display of Affection

"A crazy thing happened in the seventies when a chick just climbed up onstage and gave me a blowjob," Lemmy told Inked. "I was singing – well, I couldn't stop, could I?"

Head to Head

Just before rehearsals started for Motörhead's landmark 1980 album, Ace of Spades, Lemmy collapsed backstage. This happened after a show at Stafford Bingley Hall, right when he was supposed to sing the encore. In his memoir, he told the press he'd worn himself out taking three pipes earlier that afternoon. "That was actually true," he said. "There were chicks everywhere, and there was this really cute girl – she gave me two."

Bad Blood

Figuring that 15 years of steady drinking and drug-taking had taken a toll on his system, Lemmy decided to get a full blood transfusion in 1980. He figured it would be like an oil change – out with the old, in with the new. But Lemmy backed off after his doctor ran some tests and determined his body would react badly to healthy blood. "He told me I no longer had human blood in my system," he told Inked. "Apparently, I'd become so toxic, mostly from all the speed and alcohol, that fresh blood would've killed me."

This Is Spinal Tap

For Motörhead's 1982 Iron Fist tour, a crew built a stage set shaped like a giant fist with spotlights on the fingertips. The band would start the show by descending from the ceiling, and by the time they reached the bottom, the fist would open and they'd start playing. "Of course, it didn't work right the first night," Lemmy wrote in White Line Fever. "We also got stuck coming back up. The stage rose about halfway and stopped moving, and the curtains reached the stage. Philthy nearly jumped out of his kit into oblivion."

German Obsession

Much has been written about Lemmy's love for Nazi Germany and his collection of German war memorabilia. "The Germans had the best uniforms," he said. "The bad guys always have the best stuff – the Confederates, Napoleon." In interviews for Al Jourgensen's biography, the Ministry frontman talked about catching Lemmy in a rather particular position. After a show in Austin in 1995, wearing a full Gestapo uniform, he was spanking a naked chick dressed in riding gear. "She liked it. That's how it was. I apologized and closed the door."

Kind of Blue!

When Lemmy was diagnosed with a dangerous arrhythmia in 2011, he underwent surgery. The purpose of the procedure was to implant a defibrillator in his chest. The device would deliver a jolt of electricity whenever it detected an irregular heartbeat. After the surgery, Lemmy quit smoking and cut back on alcohol. But there were complications during his recovery. He started retaining fluids and sleeping for two weeks straight. Doctors couldn't figure out why he'd gained so much weight until they looked at his diet and found out he'd been eating blueberries as a substitute for booze. "I guess too much of anything isn't good for you, even things that are supposed to be healthy," he told Revolver.