He Went Up To Eleven

There are a few less people coming along with us on this ride  for 2016. Legends like Lemmy Kilmister won't be hanging around backstage this year. Lemmy passed away last week from an "extremely aggressive" form of cancer. I'm guessing it would have to be the nastiest form of the nastiest possible disease to bring down hard-living head-banging Lemmy. He was seventy when he passed, but the rock and roll world still couldn't believe it. The members of Metallica and Alice Cooper paid tribute to his legacy. Dave Grohl got a tattoo in memorial. Queen's guitarist, Brian May, wrote this: “Words don’t come easy, especially when you know Lemmy would have laughed at us all trying to say dignified things about him being a hero. Any time I attempted to say anything complimentary to Lemmy to his face, he would fix me with a kind of amused, contemptuous stare. But a kind of hero he certainly was. Unique in just about every way imaginable.”
So who is this semi-major demi-god of heavy metal? If I told you he was the bassist and lead singer for Motorhead - a band that put an umlaut on that second o just to keep us all guessing. And if you're still not sure who this guy was, well, you are not alone. I consider myself a fan, but if someone put a gun to my head and demanded that I tell them the titles of two of that band's songs, I would probably survive. "Overkill" and "Ace of Spades" would spare me from some worse fate, but I would be in need of a connection to Al Gore's Internet to come up with any more.
But that doesn't mean I don't have love in my heart for Lemmy. He is the kind of guy who would have watched "Spinal Tap" and wondered where the joke was. Not because he didn't have a sense of humor, but because it probably seemed a little tame compared to some of his war stories. Of course, Keith Richards probably looks on with a mild bit of chagrin, as much as Ozzy Osbourne or even Sir Paul McCartney. Being a survivor in the world of rock and roll is not an easy thing, and when you consider the average age that the grim reaper tends to reach down and pluck some of those bright lights. Mostly what I can thank Lemmy for is the memory of my younger brother, full of Coca Cola and microphone tilted back over his head, screaming into the night, "Ace of Spades" on Guitar Hero. Not the definitive version, but I know when I get sad and lonely, looking for that gritty rock and roll inspiration, I'll be listening for him, channeling Lemmy. Aloha, Lemmy. You stomped, rocked, rolled, threw up on and fell down on the Terra. Then you got back up and did it again.