Habemus Papem ['We Have a Pope']

Today my wife woke me up with a question – what happens when a Pope resigns?  Then she told me about Benedict XVI’s resignation.  This news immediately reminded me of a movie that I saw about six months ago.  While driving home from work one day, I was listening to NPR.  What I heard was fascinating.  They were talking about this Italian comedy called Habemus Papem.  For those who don’t watch such things, every time a Pope dies the words “Habemus Papem” is Latin for “We have a Pope.”  How could there be a comedy about the Pope without seeming too sacrilegious?  I’m not a practicing Catholic; I don’t get offended by people poking fun at religious institutions, so I felt the need to check out this movie if it ever came out one Pay per View.  The concept sounded so off-the-wall it appealed to my sense of the absurd.  About two months after I heard about the movie on NPR, I got my wish.

The movie starts with footage from Pope John Paul’s funeral.  The College of Cardinals gather in Rome and file into the Sistine Chapel to begin the process of electing a new Pope.  I’ve never been in the Sistine Chapel, but the people who made the set built it like I would imagine how it would look.  As the Cardinals cast their ballots, you can read the thoughts of each one of them, and the thoughts are exactly the same - "Not me, Lord, please!"  It’s almost like any kid’s nightmare – the one where he/she doesn’t want to be the one called upon by the teacher because he/she doesn’t know the answer to the question.  And like those schoolchildren, they try to look on each other’s ballots to see what they’ve written.  But unlike Jeremy Irons’ portrayal as the power hungry Pope Alexander in The Borgias, there is no overly ambitious Cardinal who wants to be Pope.  It seems that nobody really wants the job.  I read the following in The Economist:

“Imagine a job in which you manage an organization that employs 1.4 million workers, one that has representative offices in every country on earth. Further suppose that you are expected routinely to meet heads of state and government without ever putting a diplomatic foot wrong, and then write bestsellers in your spare time. Now imagine you are chosen, not just for your abilities, but for your goodness. Such is the daunting reality of being the pope in the 21st century…”

Apparently, this was on the minds of the Cardinals as they were casting their ballots.  They’d seen what their late Pontiff did [presumably John Paul II – a hard act to follow], and they don’t think they can measure up to the job.  Predictably, the Cardinals cast one ballot after another, but they can’t elect a Pope.  Eventually they settle on a compromise candidate, Cardinal Melville.  Melville is a mild-mannered, sensitive Cardinal, but from where we don’t know [the movie never says where he’s from – France maybe?].  Once Cardinal Melville is elected Pope, the first question he is asked [as are all Popes-elect] is “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?" Melville is uncertain, but reluctantly he says yes.  What we don’t get is what the new Pope wished to be called.  Poor Melville is full of self-doubt.  He doesn’t have a crisis in faith, more like he has a crisis in confidence.  He knows God has called him – he just doesn’t know if he’s ready to answer the call.  He doesn’t know if he’s up to the task entrusted to him by God.  As the Cardinal Protodeacon announces Habemus Papem to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, one suddenly hears lots of screaming.  Who’s doing the screaming?  The new Pope is screaming.  He’s having a full-blown panic attack. He is so gripped with fear that he can’t get out of his chair to show himself to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.  So before the Cardinal Protodeacon could announce the new identify who was elected and what the new Pope’s name is, he withdraws from the balcony, leaving the gathered faithful very confused. 

Nobody outside the walls of the Sistine Chapel knows the identity of the new Pope.  Since the new Pope hasn’t been identified to the public, the Conclave was officially still in session.  None of the Cardinals could leave the Sistine Chapel.  They couldn’t communicate with the world outside the walls of the Sistine Chapel – no cell phones, no newspapers, no faxes – nothing.  The press spokesman has to bob and weave with reporters to keep the truth from getting out.  Eventually the Curia calls in a shrink [who confesses to be an atheist], who is instructed to “cure” the new Pope.  There’s a catch – the shrink can’t ask the Pope questions about sex, his mother, dreams, or fantasies, and his session has to take place while all the Cardinals are watching and listening.  The shrink doesn’t think he can do his job properly, so he recommends his ex-wife, also a shrink.

The new Pope sees his new shrink, and while he does he gives his security detail the slip.  Since nobody knows his identity as the new Pope, he can wander about the streets of Rome in complete anonymity.  While the Pope roams about Rome, the Cardinals [still captive in their Conclave] play an intramural volleyball tournament at the suggestion [or was it instigation?] of the first shrink.  It was quite a hoot to watch all these old guys summon their inner competitive selves to try and win the tournament.  When they aren’t playing volleyball, the Cardinals play card games.  While the Pope is out and about, he attends a weekday Mass – he’s the only one there to hear it.  He rides the busses amongst Rome’s great unwashed.  He enjoys simple everyday pleasures he hadn’t experienced for a long time.  He meets an acting troupe while they are rehearsing Chekov’s The Seagull.  We learn the Pope once had ambitions to become an actor himself.

At the end of the movie, the Pope comes to the conclusion that being Pope is just not for him.  We don’t know what happens afterward, but we assume the Cardinals go back to the task of choosing a new Pope.    And so it goes…

I did some reading about Benedict XVI’s election as Pope.  Apparently while John Paul II was still alive, Cardinal Ratzinger had tried many times to retire as the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [what used to be known as The Inquisition – cue the Monty Python quotes here].  John Paul refused his resignation each time.  I stumbled across something he told some German pilgrims soon after he became Pope.  He told the people assembled that since he was 78 years old, he hoped he would live out the rest of his years in peace and quiet.  He said "at a certain point, I prayed to God, 'Please don't do this to me,'" he recalled. "Evidently, this time he didn't listen to me."  That was exactly as how the Cardinals were depicted in the movie.  So with Benedict XVI’s resignation [the first by a Pope since the fifteen century], the once and future Cardinal Ratzinger will get his wish, just like the fictional Cardinal Melville.  Life imitates art, indeed.

The Doors - Morrison Hotel

1969 was not a good year for The Doors.  They were all set to tour the States as a headliner, and then they played a show in Miami.  This was THE Miami show where Jim Morrison allegedly “whipped it out.”   As a result, tour dates got canceled.  To compound things, they recorded and released The Soft Parade.   The Soft Parade has a multitude of sins – brass, strings, and for the most part, bad songs for which the added brass and strings cannot compensate.  It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but producer Paul Rothchild didn’t do the band any favors by adding these extra instruments to Doors songs.  Brass, strings, and Doors songs just don’t mix.  It worked on one song – Touch Me.  Otherwise it sounds like cocktail music.  To compound these matters, Runnin’ Blue is a hoedown, complete with fiddles and mandolins.  A hoedown on a Doors record - are you kidding me?  Paul Rothchild had them do so many takes on The Soft Parade to achieve perfection that any life that might have been in the songs was sucked right out of them.  There are two good songs on The Soft Parade – Touch Me and Wild Child.  The latter is just the Doors playing, and this was the first hint at Robbie Krieger playing a raunchy guitar tone.  The only problem with Wild Child is that it’s too short [2:38].  The Soft Parade committed an unforgivable sin – it bores me.  If the Doors wanted to terminate their career even earlier than they did, they could have kept making records just like The Soft Parade.

Morrison Hotel was the album the band needed to make after The Soft Parade.  Gone was the Lizard King from 1967-68.  Gone was the psychedelic trippy stuff from the first two albums.  Gone were the brass and the strings, and most importantly, gone were the bad songs.  Morrison Hotel is a back-to-basics album with a bluish tinge.  With this album the Doors transformed themselves into a bar band.  The first side is labeled Hard Rock Café.  Side Two is Morrison Hotel.  Side One has the hard, blues-rock songs, and Side Two has the quieter ballads.  Engineer Bruce Botnick wrote that the songwriting well had run dry for the band, so they had to create material from scratch in the studio.  The purveyors of the Hard Rock Café restaurant chain got their name from this album.  The original Hard Rock Café was a bar located in the skid row section of downtown LA.  The band popped into the place for a beer after they did the photo shoot for the cover at the original Morrison Hotel.

Roadhouse Blues – The direction of the Doors music hinted at on Wild Child shows up here.  Robbie Krieger owns Roadhouse Blues.  This is the first indication that the Doors morphed into a pretty good bar band.  When I was college puke I thought the Doors was just a drug band until a friend said “no, they’re a beer band!”  With words like “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer…” who could argue the point?  That being said, the poet in Jim Morrison was still there – “the future’s uncertain and the end is always near…”  Given his lifestyle as a raging alcoholic, perhaps he knew his time on Earth wasn’t going to be long.  That’s John Sebastian on the harmonica under the pseudonym G. Puglese.  Lonnie Mack plays the bass here.  On the deluxe version of Morrison Hotel, you’re treated to 30 minutes of takes before the band nailed it.  For the first few takes, Ray Manzerek plays an electric piano.  It was only later that he switched to acoustic piano.  You can hear Paul Rothchild chew Robbie Krieger’s ass, so that may account why his tone and attack sound especially angry on the released version.

Waiting for the Sun – What was wrong with this song that it couldn’t go on the album of the same name two years earlier?  The answer – nothing.  Waiting for the Sun maintains the energy level from Roadhouse Blues, but when you listen to Morrison’s singing, you can tell it was an earlier recording.  His voice is not ragged here as it was after The Soft Parade.  This song has one of Jim Morrison’s best lines anywhere – “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known…”  For Jim Morrison this could have applied to when he first experienced stardom in 1967, or the aftermath of the Miami incident in 1969.  The inclusion of this older song on Morrison Hotel is proof enough the band was out of new material

You Make Me Real – This one is another stomper like Roadhouse Blues.  Unlike Waiting for the Sun, it was a new song.  Instead of playing the organ, Ray Manzerek plays a cool tack piano.  It gives the song a bar room feel.  Robbie Krieger makes his presence known – he isn’t overshadowed by Manzarek’s keyboards. 

Peace Frog/Blue Sunday – Peace Frog is Robbie Krieger at his funkiest, even more funky that on Soul Kitchen.  He gives the wah-wah pedal quite a workout.  The imagery from this song is fairly vivid – “Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding, ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile egg-shell mind…” was something Jim Morrison remembered from a car trip through a desert when he was a kid.  And there’s blood everywhere – the town of New Haven [where Morrison was arrested on-stage in 1967], Venice, the streets of Chicago, etc.  Blue Sunday is a very calm ode to Morrison’s girlfriend/common-law wife, Pamela Courson.  It’s a nice counterpoint to the craziness of Peace Frog.  One segues into the other.  If you hear them separately, it feels a bit strange.

Ship of Fools – Nothing to see here - move along…so I usually do.

Land Ho! – As much as I detest the hoedown [Runnin’ Blue] from The Soft Parade, this sea shanty rocks hard enough to be interesting.  I figured “what the hell - Morrison was a Navy brat, let him have fun with it.”  Robbie Krieger still plays with the nasty tones from Side One, but Ray Manzerek switches from acoustic piano to a cheesy organ [a Vox Continental, I think].

The Spy – Long before Sting wrote about stalking in Every Breath You Take, the Doors had this quiet piano tune.  Manzerek’s piano is the instrumental focus.  Morrison is sufficiently sinister about knowing “your deepest, secret fear…” The song has only one verse [sung twice], but that doesn’t prevent it from being a good song.

Queen of the Highway – This is a song for Pamela Courson.  She was his Queen of the Highway, and he was the “monster, black dressed in leather…”  At least he was self-aware of his own boorish behavior.  The deluxe version of Morrison Hotel features a jazz version of this song.  They were correct in discarding that version for what was eventually released.

Indian Summer – Need any more proof the songwriting well was dry?  This is an outtake from their first album from 1967.  It too is about Pamela Courson.  It’s not a bad song, but it isn’t the Doors’ best one either.  Indian Summer is just…there.

Maggie M’Gill – The opener Roadhouse Blues, Lonnie Mack plays the bass on this one.  For Morrison Hotel, this is as bluesy as the Doors would get.  The previous three songs were a bit of a slumber, but here the band snaps awake with this jewel.  For the most part Maggie M’Gill is a single-chord A Minor song [I like minor-chord blues]; Robby Krieger plays a particularly nasty slide.  Ray Manzerek's organ [a Hammond B-3 this time, I think] provides great atmosphere.  The line “Now if you’re sad and you’re feeling blue, go out and buy a brand new pair of shoes…” cracks me up every time I hear it.  This song is a preview of things to come on LA Woman.  It sounds great when played back-to-back with The Changeling [the opening track from LA Woman]. 

Morrison Hotel was the first Doors purchase I ever made.  First impressions being what they are, I was most impressed with Morrison Hotel.  I picked a good one to buy first [I got LA Woman at the same time]. Unlike The Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel does not bore me – far from it.  This album marked a creative re-birth of the band as well as a return to greatness.

Lemmy

Lemmy Kilmister is God.  But don’t take my word for it. 

Fan #1:  The man’s the modern Jesus!

Fan #2:  Without Lemmy there’d be no Metallica, no Megadeath, no Slayer, nothing.  There wouldn’t be any of the heavy metal we have today.

Fan #3:  Rock and Roll is Lemmy!  Lemmy is Rock and Roll!

Fan #4:  Lemmy is God!  If they drop a nuclear bomb on this planet, Lemmy and cockroaches is all that’s gonna survive.

Filmmakers Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski followed Lemmy Kilmister around for three years.  The followed him to Motörhead gigs in Germany, Finland, and Russia. They found his side gig the Head Cat [a rockabilly trio with Stray Cat Slim Jim Phantom and guitarist Danny B. Harvey] at a show in Green Bay, Wisconsin casino. They caught him playing bass with punkers The Damned.   They captured many anecdotes from the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Slash, Alice Cooper, wrestler Triple H, Joan Jett, Jason Newstead, Mick Jones and Tony James.  Oddly enough, they didn’t talk much with fellow bandmembers Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee. But they do have featurettes on both band members of the bonus disc.

Influences:  Little Richard, The Beatles, Elvis.  He saw the Beatles at the Cavern in Liverpool, before they ever had a record out.  He always thought the Beatles were the best band in the world.  He lived on a farm in North Wales, not too far from Liverpool.  He said that every summer the girls would come out to see a guy named Billy Fury, but when the Beatles came around that all changed.  Buddy Holly is in there somewhere too.  He said Little Richard had the most outrageous voice in rock and roll – “the best vocal ever in rock and roll.”

How does a Rock and Roll God live?  He lives alone in a two-room, rent-controlled apartment just off the Sunset Strip.  His apartment is literally stuffed with World War II memorabilia, Motörhead stuff, all kinds of rock and roll stuff, and knives…lots and lots of knives.  Knives are all over the walls.  Swords – lots of swords and daggers.  And lots of Nazi stuff…everywhere!  As Lemmy would put it, “it’s a fucking museum.”  Where could one usually find Lemmy?  When he’s not on the road, you’ll find him at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset, at end of the bar, chain smoking Marlboros, drinking Jack and Cokes and playing the trivia games.  Nikki Sixx from Motley Crüe described Lemmy’s fixation on trivia games as a weird sort of “heavy metal meditation.”  Lemmy is a Rainbow fixture.  The dude loves his video games.

Dave Navarro [Jane’s Addiction]: “The Sunset Strip has seen a whole lot of different movements and genres and musical versions of the same thing basically.  We had a bunch of different musical movements, and first of all Motörhead is one of those bands that transcends movements.  It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the community, in the rock culture, Motörhead is still hailed as being like…king.  When he moved to LA and became part of the scene, he was already embraced.  It was basically his throne was waiting for him.”

Cool Part #1:  Lemmy shops for the Beatles Mono Box at Amoeba Music on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood.  It’s one of my favorite places to buy music.  He goes to the front counter and asks about the Mono Box.  The poor guy behind the counter said “no,” but as Lemmy’s browsing through Pat Benatar CDs [?!?], the guy from behind the counter appears behind him and tells him the owner is going to sell him her copy, “in the name of rock and roll.”  That’s one way to get a customer to keep coming back…

Lemmy has a weakness for country music.  He tells Billy Bob Thornton the best harmonies in the world are by “country girls.”  “The chorus will come in – the stuff will make you fucking cry.”

Lemmy’s look:  It’s a cross-between a biker and a German World War II field marshal.  He loves that German WW II-era aesthetic.  Why the Nazi/German look?  Because the aesthetic is cool to him.  He says that if the Israelis had cooler looking gear he’d wear that, but they don’t.  When asked if he’s a Nazi, he responds by saying he’s had six black girlfriends.  He designs his own boots.  Again, he goes for the military look.  His bootmaker calls it a “western jackboot” with a squared-off nose, kind of like a cavalry boot.

Reverend Horton Heat:  “He’s Black Bart meets Mad Max.”

Lars Frederikson [Rancid]: “Lemmy’s like a fucking radioactive cowboy.”

Duff McKagan:  “A hard rock Johnny Cash.”

Mike Inez [Alice in Chains]:  “World War II chic.”

Alice Cooper:  He’s Captain Hook. 

Ozzy Osbourne:  “He’s just Lemmy.  You just take him or you fuckin’ don’t, and he don’t give a flying shit whether you do or not.”

Cool Part #2:  The filmmakers visited Lemmy’s school in Wales.  The students know who Lemmy is.  They knew he got expelled from there.  In the music room, one student starts banging out Ace of Spades on the piano.  The room was full of kids singing along.

When asked about the most prized possession in the apartment, Lemmy said it was his son, Paul.  Then they started telling some weird stories – how they met [during a drug deal – Paul was six], how Paul’s mom lost her virginity to John Lennon, how Paul and Lemmy traded girlfriends…very strange.  He has another son whom he’s never met – he doesn’t want to ruin the guy’s life by letting him know who his real father is.

There’s a five-minute blurb about Hawkwind, the progressive space rock band Lemmy played in prior to Motörhead.  Jarvis Cocker described Hawkwind as a prog-rock group that punkswere allowed to like.  Their musical themes were mostly in science fiction.  Hawkwind leading light Dave Brock described Lemmy and another bandmate [Dik Mik] as being grumpy as they were the band’s speed freaks.  Flute/sax player Nik Turner described Hawkwind as trance-like, and every gig was like a drug dealer’s convention.  Hawkwind was touring in the States when Lemmy was busted for possession of amphetamines [at first they thought it was cocaine] after he entered Canada, and spent two days in jail.  They’d gotten him out of jail, flew him to Toronto, did a gig and then fired him for being unreliable.  Lemmy thinks the only reason they posted his bail was because his replacement hadn’t arrived yet.  Nik Turner said Lemmy was hard to work with because everybody in the band did different drugs.  He did psychedelics, Lemmy was a speedfreak. 

As for his family life, Lemmy’s father was a vicar.  He didn’t stick around after Lemmy was born.  When asked about the important people in his life, he mentioned his mother and his grandmother.  They were the ones who raised him.  About his father, he said “I never missed my father because I never had one.  He was just a miserable little dickhead with glasses, and all he ever did for me was walk out on me.”  I wonder if that is the source of his antipathy toward religion.

His partying ways:  Reverend Horton Heat tells of how he tried to keep up with Lemmy in drinking alcohol.  He ended up going to the hospital the next day.  He says [with a smile on his face] that Lemmy gave him alcohol poisoning.  Mike Inez told a story of how Lemmy would crack open a bottle of Jack Daniels and hand it to him.  He’d take a sip from the bottle and pass it to Zakk Wylde.   After he passed the bottle to Zakk, Lemmy would crack open another bottle of Jack and hand it to Mike Inez.  Lemmy treats drinking Jack Daniels the same way others would treat drinking beer.  He thinks speed is much better for you than cocaine.  He also related that dropping acid would have the same effect on you two days in a row only if you double the dose.  As a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, he’d score acid for Jimi.  If he got ten hits of acid, Jimi would take seven and let Lemmy keep the rest.  He hates heroin.  He’s never done it, but several people he knew did, and they’re not around to talk about it.

He’s quite the World War II historian.  His manager recalls a story of him and Lemmy watching a World War II documentary, and Lemmy points out a detail the documentarians got wrong.  The manager was skeptical, so Lemmy pulled out three books to show the aircraft being discussed wasn’t even built during the time the documentary was talking about. The film goes on to show him visiting these guys in Corona, California who restore WWII-era vehicles.  They show him a German tank they restored that was a Czech design.  He identified it as being a Skoda design with a 75 mm gun.  Not a “tank” per se, it was a tank destroyer. 

Dave Grohl:  “Fuck Keith Richards.  “Fuck all those dudes that fuckin’ survived the Sixties that are fuckin’ flyin’ around on Lear Jets, you know, livin’ up their gunslinger reputation as they fuck supermodels in the most expensive hotel in Paris.  You know what Lemmy’s doin’?  Lemmy’s probably drinkin’ Jack and Cokes and writing another record…”

Guitarist Phil Campbell, who has been with Motörhead forever, confessed he got Lemmy’s autograph when he was twelve years old.  Lemmy was with Hawkwind at the time.  He was the only one in the band who signed autographs after a show.  Who knew Phil Campbell would be playing in a band with Lemmy for over 25 years…

Live bits:  Lemmy on-stage with Metallica in Nashville, playing Damage Case.  The band performs a sound check plying the acoustic Whorehouse Blues.  Then of course, there’s Ace of Spades.  The band play a little bit of Ted Nugent’s Cat Scratch Fever during a sound check before Lemmy brings everything to a halt because he can’t hear his vocals. There’s a bit where Lemmy and Dave Grohl are in a Van Nuys studio recording a version of Chuck Berry’s Run Run Rudolph.  That’s it for the movie, but there’s plenty of live footage in the DVD extras.  There’s a full set played in Berlin.

The Motörhead Sound: “Everything Louder than Everything Else…”

Lemmy is not a proper bass player.  He doesn’t play single notes; he plays chords, and very loudly.  He’s more like a rhythm guitarist, only his axe of choice is a Rickenbacker bass.  An enduring image of how loud the band plays comes from drummer Mikkey Dee.  They’re doing a sound check, and he’s plugging his ears.  He plays with these guys every night, so if he’s plugging his ears, you know it’s loud.

Slash:  “Everything about Lemmy’s playing sets him apart from other bass players, for that matter any other musicians now that I think about it.  I think the biggest thing is the Rickenbacker and the Marshalls.  That’s the sound that I don’t think anybody I’ve ever heard create on bass, and he plays it a lot like some heavy metal guitar players play.  He doesn’t play guitar on bass but it almost sounds like guitar.”

Jarvis Cocker of Pulp:  “It’s the aural equivalent of being in a sandstorm.”  I rather like that description… :-)

When asked by a Finnish TV interviewer about his most proud accomplishment, Lemmy gives a short answer:  “Survival, I think.”  Not so much physical survival, but that Motorhead has been around for so long it confounds those critics in the mid-1970s that said the band was crap and wouldn’t survive very long.  It’s as if every year the band is around, they’re giving the music press the finger.

What’s refreshing about the documentary is that Lemmy is very candid about what he does and how he lives.  He makes no apologies for anything.  He just does what he does, but he’s not on any kind of star trip while doing it.  He loves his fans and his fans love him.   He takes the time to sign autographs or take pictures with fans.  When he’s taking a picture with a fan, he tells him “don’t smile, it isn’t cool.”  Normally I wouldn’t want to meet any rock star, but with Lemmy I think I’d make an exception.  I wouldn’t want to party with him though…

Any regrets?  “None.  Life’s too short.”

Motörhead’s appeal:  They do what they want, when they want, and they don’t care what you think of them.  If you like what they do – great!  If you don’t?  Fuck off!

This package doesn’t end with just the documentary.  There are lots of extras on the second disc.  There’s a nine-minute blurb about the making of the movie.  You get to watch the band record Motörizer.  You get to see Metallica throw a 50^th birthday party bash in 1995, with Metallica [who renamed themselves The Lemmies for the occasion] playing Motörhead songs.  Marshall built a custom amp modeled after Lemmy’s “Murder One” amp.  There’s a clip of him test-driving the new setup.

Cool Part #3:  There is a short about Motörhead’s road crew.  As Lemmy was once a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, he has a soft spot for them.  [We Are] The Road Crew is his homage to them.  Motörhead’s road crew is Lemmy’s extended family, as seen in an extended feature about them.  Many of these guys have been with Motörhead forever.  At the end of the feature, the road crew gets together and THEY play [We Are] The Road Crew.  And these guys were smokin’.  Lemmy’s bass tech plays just like Lemmy.

The final Cool Part:  The story of the beginning of Motörhead, as told by Fast Eddie Clark.  The whole segment is priceless, especially Fast Eddie’s dissertation on why speed is the best drug to take to play live music.  He was very matter-of-fact that what he was saying wasn’t an advertisement for speed, but he ran down the pitfalls of various drugs [pot, cocaine, alcohol] for playing live music, and why speed was the best.

Lemmy is very entertaining.  Even if you aren’t a fan, I think you’d like it.  Here's a taste of the movie - enjoy!