Bob Dylan is revered as one of the greatest songwriters and lyricists of all time. But according to Motörhead leader Lemmy Kilmister, some of Dylan’s material is utterly meaningless.
In 2013, just two years before his death, Lemmy was interviewed by Classic Rock for the release of Motörhead’s album Aftershock.
And when he discussed the art of lyric writing, he came up with some surprising and rather controversial observations.
“The Eagles wrote good lyrics,” Lemmy said. “Some of their songs are fantastic, like Take It To The Limit and New Kid In Town. They're all very evocative of the west – as it never was, but it's a nice vision.”
He continued: “I did like Bob Dylan. I thought he was great. But he was a great con man! He strung a lot of nonsense together and made it seem like it was really important."
He compared two of Dylan’s songs from the ’60s.
“Masters Of War was my favourite because that was straight down the line – right in the bollocks. But stuff like Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream about going to America with Columbus is just nonsense!”
Lemmy recalled a conversation he’d had with Slayer frontman Tom Araya about lyrics – and specifically the words to Slayer’s classic track Raining Blood.
“We became good friends on tour, us and Slayer,” he said. “But I always thought Slayer made a mistake with Raining Blood. I remember saying to Tom, ‘You realise there's people in the audience who think you mean what you’re singing in Raining Blood? They think you wanna see blood.’
“Then the next night when Slayer were playing, half a chair came past Tom’s head and he lost it. He was like, ‘How dare you?’
“But you should be careful what you say in songs because people ain’t there when you write it and they don't know what you meant. And I don't wanna pass on bad messages, you know?”
Lemmy said of his own lyrics: “I'm proud of quite a lot of them now. But they used to be pretty duff, beginner’s stuff.
“The first really good one I did was Orgasmatron, which had really big words like ‘obsequious’!”
He also talked about the lyrics he wrote for his friend Ozzy Osbourne – most notably for one of Ozzy’s best-loved songs, Mama, I'm Coming Home.
“He sent me a tape of the song with where he wanted the lyrics, and I think he gave me the title, but that was it," Lemmy said. “I'm good at that because that's how I write our songs. I come up with a title and then write the song around it.
“Ozzy and me were doing interviews in the same tent at a festival and this guy says, ‘Mama I'm Coming Home is the most personal thing you have written. Was it a big wrench?’ And Ozzy just points to me and goes, ‘He wrote it!’
“I really had a good time writing songs for Ozzy because when I moved to America I was broke. I had nothing in the bank.
“Then Sharon Osbourne said, ‘Do you want to write four songs for Ozzy?’ And they gave me this lump sum that was more money than I'd ever seen in my life! More money than I'd ever earned with Motörhead, even when we were number one.”
He said of the deal with the Osbournes: “I never got royalties, but that was all right with me.
“After Mama, I'm Coming Home I wrote a few more for him. I wrote Desire and I Don't Wanna Change The World, and on Ozzmosis [Osbourne’s 1995 album] I wrote My Little Man, which is very personal.”
Lemmy also revealed that he had also written a song for Osbourne about the latter’s guitarist Randy Rhoads, who died in 1982. But Osbourne declined to sing it.
“I did write one about Randy Rhoads,” he said, “but it bothered Ozzy because he got too deep into it.”
He concluded: “I’m good at putting myself in other people's head, y’know?”
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