Anthrax guitarist and bandleader Scott Ian has shared his memories – or rather his partial memories – of the night he first met Motörhead legend Lemmy.
Ian tells the story in conversation with Billy Corgan, during an interview for the Smashing Pumpkins frontman’s podcast The Magnificent Others.
The year was 1985, and Anthrax’s guitarist was in London with bandmate Joey Belladonna to do pre-release press interviews with English music magazines to promote his band’s second album Spreading The Disease. As Ian recalls, the pair’s final interview of the day was conducted with a writer from Kerrang! magazine, after which he and Belladonna were invited to go for a drink with the journalist and Kerrang!‘s photographer at the St.Moritz club in Soho.
“So we walk in and Lemmy’s at the bar playing the slot machine.” the guitarist tells Corgan. “I couldn’t believe it. This is 1985, and I’ve never met anybody. I’m like, Is this how London is? If we go to another pub Steve Harris is going to be there, and we’re going to meet Rob Halford? Like, literally, at that point in time, the guy that I thought was the coolest person on the planet is standing in the bar.
“Of course, I’m not going up to him.” Ian continues. “I couldn’t, no way. But after three beers, I think it might have been Xavier Russell from Kerrang! gave me the, ‘Go ahead, go say Hi.’ And I think he’s setting me up, because Lemmys just going to destroy me, but I finally got up the nerve to walk over. I’m like, Oh, hey Lemmy, how’s it going, man? My name’s Scott, I’m over here with my band Anthrax and we’re doing promo for a record. Can I buy you a drink? And then he looks at me and he goes, ‘You’re in my town. I’ll buy you a drink. What are you having?’”
At this point in the interview, Ian informs Corgan that, at the time, he hadn’t really drank for five or six years after getting alcohol poisoning in his mid-teens – “I could nurse a beer, which is what I was doing with the Kerrang! guys” – and so, somewhat flustered, he replied, “Whatever you’re having.”
“And then of course two Jack and cokes arrive, and now I I need to have this with him, and not puke on his white boots, and get fired by the mayor of heavy metal.”
As the bar staff at the St. Moritz knew Lemmy as a favourite regular, each time was glass emptied, another drink would appear, which meant that his new drinking companion was also being delivered one Jack Daniels after another.
“And after about six or seven Jack and cokes, there’s that little voice [in my head] going, You’re in big trouble dude, you’re in big fucking trouble, you’re really fucking drunk.”
Ian’s last memory of the night is running out of the St. Moritiz club at speed. But, of course, that wasn’t the actual end of the night… as the guitarist would learn the following day.
“I wake up in the morning,” he tells Corgan, “with Johnny Zazula, our manager, shaking me. ‘Get up! Get up!’ Because we were flying to Munich for the next stop on the promo tour. And I can’t move, every inch of my body is in pain, and I’m covered in puke, there’s puke everywhere.”
Zazula informed the young guitarist that he’d been throwing up in his sleep, and that he’d had to keep rolling Ian over so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit during the night.
He goes, ‘I saw you when you ran out of the bar, so I figured maybe you were in trouble because I know you don’t drink. And I followed you out and you were running up and down the street, and you were diving into piles of garbage on on the concrete just screaming at the top of your lungs. And eventually, after about the fourth or fifth garbage pile, you didn’t come out of the pile of garbage. So, I I fished you out, and I put you over my back, and we got a taxi, and here we are now. Let’s go!’”
Ian recalls that he was in such a state that he actually shit his pants on the way to his hotel in Munich, and that he had alcohol poisoning for days afterwards.
About six months later, Anthrax returned to London to headline Hammersmith Palais, and Lemmy walked into their dressing room, much to the band’s excitement.
“And he looks at me and goes, ‘How are you feeling?’” Ian recalls. “And I said, You remember? And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I’m here.’ I said, Look, I’m not much of a drinker, and he said, ‘Yeah, I could tell.’ And I said, I hope I didn’t do anything stupid, or say anything stupid to you. I apologise if I did. He goes, ‘No, no, no, you were just fine, until you stopped speaking English…’”
Watch the interview in full below.
(LouderSound)
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