Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Zenith Halle / Munich / Germany
Concert date: December 7, 2008
Attendance: 5
Ticket price: €40.00
Motorhead traditionally hit German stages in December. As a rule, every year they also swing by the Bavarian capital, which is usually the southernmost stop on that annual tour. It’s also the closest one to Slovenia, so it’s still “normally” reachable as a one-day road trip.
The weather was wildly colorful. The sunny side of the Alps lived up to its reputation this time, but a totally different picture greeted anyone driving the A10-A8-A99-A9 chain of highways that day, just before Flachau, where snowflakes were happily tumbling out of the sky. The precipitation, alternating between rain and snow, wouldn’t let up even once Munich was in plain sight! After a “slight” loss of direction, when I mistakenly headed for Nuremberg, a quick wake-up call had me swinging around, and I rolled into Munich’s industrial zone on the north side a little before 6:00 p.m. Hordes of rockers and metalheads were already happily storming toward Zenith Halle.
This Motorhead tour was anything but your everyday run. Along for the ride (besides the less important Canadian rock n’ roll pups Danko Jones) were the legendary N.W.O.B.H.M. veterans Saxon! Two big bands who, at the turn of the seventies into the eighties and through the first half of the eighties, shaped the popularization of the distorted heavy metal sound, with a few unforgettably crafted guitar riffs. Their genius and uniqueness are priceless even today, and the energy captured on studio records and live recordings pulls in every nostalgic like a magnet. And if a nostalgic can’t resist it, they can come down with concert syndrome, which I’ve been suffering from for almost three years now. Even if it’s winter, the weather’s utterly crap, and even if the party with the two bands is only 450 km away and no closer, a person can’t just lie around at home in an armchair! Rock N’ Roll and pedal to the metal!
DANKO JONES: 7:00-7:40 p.m.
Germans wouldn’t be Germans if they weren’t extremely punctual people. So at 7:00 p.m. sharp, just as the promo announced, the Canadian youngsters Danko Jones marched onstage. This is hot-rolling rock n’ roll, and they practically replaced last year’s support act, Skew Siskin, who opened Motorhead’s “Kiss Of Death” shows across Germany. The singer and guitarist, bandleader Danko, is greased up with every ointment going! His tongue literally runs like it’s oiled, and he knows how to hook into the crowd’s feelings fast. This time he needed at least 4 songs to finally fire up the initially very cold, reserved audience. Actually, I’m lying. Someone else helped him! Somewhere in the middle of the fourth song, paper rockets started flying onto the stage, which at first distracted the drummer. Lurking behind the stage was Saxon’s singer, in fact the one and only boss of Saxon, the legendary Biff Byford, who was evidently killing boredom by folding all sorts of origami. People, especially on the right side of the stage, recognized him and started making more noise. It was interesting to watch singer Danko’s surprise, since at first he had no idea why people had suddenly totally “lost it” in the middle of a song they’d been perfectly calm through only seconds earlier. Biff also dumped two heaping bowls of popcorn over the band, sprinkling it alternately on all three members. “Kernels” flew over the scenery from backstage, and Danko Jones visibly enjoyed the attention. The 40-minute gig blazed up well beyond expectations, and the guys reaped thunderous ovations at the end.
The Danko Jones story revolves around their singer and guitarist Danko. He’s the boss. He’s the charisma, he’s the energy, he’s the band’s engine. At first I thought I was seeing Fine Young Cannibals singer Roland Gift onstage, thanks to a passing resemblance. Danko Jones couldn’t stop running his mouth, which at moments felt distracting during the show, even forced or pushy. From litanies of tributes to every dead rocker (out of that whole horde of the departed he forgot precisely the most brilliant of them, Frank Zappa, a terrible blunder for a professional musician) to outright sexual excess. A whole pile of shtick he tried to buy the audience’s affection with. At one point I felt like yelling at him: “Shut your beak already and play, for crying out loud!”
But the guys are scorching. The party worked for them. On this tour the band also presented material from their current studio album “Never To Loud” (2008). You can tell they’re recycling what’s been invented, borrowing. That’s the fate of today’s generation, which practically can’t invent anything anymore. But it can be very convincing at recycling inventions, and that’s what counts. Reworked enough, yet genuine rock n’ roll energy, with a ferociously noisy guitar, a slightly bald-faced smeared sound, and a penetrating rhythm line. Exemplary tightness. The guitar sound was a bit weaker, but it wasn’t even distracting, since the guys made up for the shortfall with party firepower. Everything would have been great if Danko had run his mouth a bit less and the band had played a song or two more instead. The guys provocatively closed their last European show of the year with an exit based on the intro of the Rush classic instrumental YYZ (the opening part that sticks to a single note). They played as much of it as their skills allowed them to learn, but it was enough to remind maybe three older guys lingering with beers in some corner at the back of the hall of their Canadian roots, through their great countrymen. Let’s hope at least inspirational in that respect.
SAXON: 8:00 – 9:00 p.m.
An hour with Saxon! The veterans are a guarantee of an excellent gig. Even after almost a round 30 years, which they’ll hit next year! It was clear from the first moment that Germany has been their new homeland since the early nineties, because the fans in the front rows were already eagerly calling them onstage: “Saxon! Saxon!…”
For Saxon, too, the Munich night was their last show with Motorhead! Motorhead will then turn north to visit Scandinavia, while Saxon will most likely head home to the UK, where they’ll be diligently rehearsing material, since they’ve already announced a new headlining tour for February 2009 (this time they’re even coming to Slovenia!). The well-oiled machine didn’t hesitate. It struck straight away, right in the face, with Motorcycle Man. Fast and clear. Biff and company. Hmmm. How do they not get tired of it yet!!?? And in January, already with the new record “Into The Labyrinth”. Saxon mixed old material with new. So between the classics they slipped in songs from “The Inner Sanctum” (2007), which they haven’t forgotten to play live yet (this summer’s festival shows aren’t that far back, after all), and successfully took care of promoting the new album with the freshly baked Live To Rock (a title that is anything but a vivid reflection of the band’s imagination), which the guys just released as a single, and with the perhaps even more brazen and onstage even better-working Hellcat! That was also the band’s goal. Not to overstretch, but to show up at a few more gigs before the new year, secure some publicity and earn a bit. All in all, a superbly used warm-up before the February tour! An interesting gem on the setlist was Witchfinder General (“LionHeart”, 2004), with crushing double bass pedal and the standout riff eruption of the band’s gig! The winning moments, of course, came from the classics, as always. Above all, the gig peaked with Denim And Leather, where the band met with an intense response from the crowd’s participation, as well as in the closer, Princess Of The Night.
Otherwise, you can’t find words that could be understood any other way than this: Saxon are simply a guarantee of stage excellence. They blast out their repertoire with undiminished grandeur. With routine and great experience. The whole sound has big balls and majestic rock energy. By the end of the gig Biff looked pretty flushed. There are several options for the right answer. Option one is, of course, a cold, option two “a close flirtation with glasses of elevated alcohol content,” since it was the last day of the tour and the band, as a quintet, was in great spirits for all sorts of pranks. Saxon staged a very nice surprise for Motorhead during Wheels Of Steel. When the band drops into the main riff, a guy in a wheelchair suddenly appears onstage holding a sheet of paper with the words “Wheels Of Steel” on it, accompanied by Mikkey Dee and the iron Motorhead chancellor himself, Lemmy Kilmister. The hall goes up in the air, and even the members of Saxon didn’t hide their astonishment.
Biff is a sly old fox. At the end he stoked the crowd by asking which song they wanted. He escalated the questions like this. “What should we play for you? Strong Arm Of The Law? Isn’t that a good song?” The crowd wakes up and roars back. Then the question: “Princess Of The Night?” Even more decibels of feedback get unleashed. And finally the question that was actually the expected provocation: “Crusader?” In the front rows people are already getting mixed up. Diplomat Biff, of course, immediately replies defensively that there’s no time for all three, and Saxon launch into Strong Arm Of The Law. In line with the earlier provocations, the crowd’s interaction with the band played out too. Princess Of The Night blew everybody away, it’s “fired off” that thoroughly effectively. An explosion to end the gig, with a superb interplay of solos between Mr. Paul Quinn and Doug Scarratt.
Saxon don’t age one bit onstage. They remain victorious and razor-sharp! They play their songs all-out, with a decent dose of stage kinetics (for their age), with rock icon Biff Byford still successfully leading his crusaders onstage! Saxon will sharpen their swords again at the start of the new year, when they set off on a new European crusade. This time with a two-hour set. Make sure all of you show up for me at their gig in Ljubljana on February 20, 2009!
MOTORHEAD: 9:30 – 11:15 p.m.
No way! This story just refuses to end. The figure who today most aptly personifies the one true image of a rock icon. Lemmy Kilmister. We’d all like to be Lemmys, but we don’t have the style. How awful. Will we ever get over this ego malfunction? Lemmy is a carved-out rocker, he lives the mission of rock, he sells it! Triumphantly. And the story’s not over. No way!
A year turns, two turn, and in that time Motorhead write a new record. Tours follow, and new material takes shape in between. Life on the road. Without a break! So 2008 brought us the new album “Motorizer”. In line with the cover design, the stage was “motorized” too.
Can it get more direct than Iron Fist? Hardly, if at all! And that’s exactly what the old geezers do when they unleash it. The “mosh pit” has become a pretty much mandatory part of the band’s live repertoire, and the typical scenes are drawn right before your eyes. Like Asterix and Obelix had just rearranged a platoon of Romans. The crowd lost piece after piece of its clothing. Legs flew in the air, reason was sold. Full-on energy. The first 10 meters under the stage. War and total chaos. It got even worse between the erogenous Stay Clean and when the band presents the fresh “Motorizer” treat Rock Out, followed by Lemmy’s classic question: “Is it loud enough?!?!” At this point of the gig (during the break) Motorhead crank the sound system up to an even higher output! Lemmy goes on: “This one’s for the older part of tonight’s audience!” He and Phil spin into an intro waltz, and Motorhead fire off a coquettish Metropolis.
For someone who has calmed down a bit but regularly follows what’s happening on the rock scene, it’s not hard to realize that Motorhead are becoming dangerously repetitive on their tours. All that’s changing rapidly is the ticket prices, which are shooting up steeply. That’s not exactly comforting, is it? Luckily, this time the price only rose by €2.50 compared to last year, so apparently the trend of rising ticket prices for rock/metal gigs in Europe is easing off. For a new tour, Motorhead just swap the songs from the previous album with songs from the current one, which they’re presenting on the new tour. That’s why the older songs have stayed practically unchanged in the repertoire. They tossed out the Thin Lizzy tribute Rosalie, cut Born To Raise Hell (Civil War came back to the setlist in its place), and moved Iron Fist from the tail end to the start of the gig. The only newcomer worth mentioning or interesting on the “Motorizer” setlist is the inclusion of Another Perfect Day (from the album “Another Perfect Day”, 1983). In that respect, we can conclude that Lemmy finally came to love this unjustly underrated, legendary Motorhead album too. Among the new material, The Thousand Names Of God works great, opened by Campbell’s solo, which morphs into a venomous metalized riff that keeps sending everything alive under the stage tumbling out of control for the rest of the gig. The adequate Sacrifice on the setlist remains In The Name Of Tragedy, with Dee’s implemented solo. The song works phenomenally, and it also caught on wonderfully with the crowd, who had it down perfectly! It’s incredible how attached the audience is to Motorhead. The “Kiss Of Death” songs all proved in turn how faithfully the German audience follows the band’s fresh releases too.
Just as Motorhead pranked Saxon during their set, Saxon pulled one on Motorhead during theirs, after Byford, Scarratt and Glocker, accompanied by the bassist and the singer/guitarist of Danko Jones, did a stage walk-by at the start of the gig with the slogan “We Are Motorhead, And We Play Golf”
When Motorhead strike up their rhapsody in blue called Killed By Death and Lemmy starts roaring “Eat your heart out!”, you know the revelry with the legendary band is slowly nearing its end. For the grand finale, Bomber attacks the hall too, driving the crowd nuts one more time, and then the guys vanish backstage.
You can somehow tolerate the fact that these guys rarely freshen up their live repertoire (in the end, all that matters is the one-of-a-kind energy you come to the gig for), but when Whorehouse Blues shows up on the bill, the whole thing starts bordering on the limits of good taste. In the end, there’s nothing wrong with the song itself. The problem is that it shows up at a Motorhead gig. You know, Phil and Mikkey on folk guitars, Lemmy as a chansonnier blowing on a harmonica. The only thing that remains tied to Motorhead is, once again, the “shock value”, sadly in a negative sense. They’d have been better off tackling an “unplugged” version of Orgasmatron. Motorhead just aren’t a “blues” band. And at the start of the performance, there was also a minor mishap on top of everything. A tech forgot to “close” one of the amps, so while Phil and Mikkey were innocently strumming, it shamelessly erupted out of it. Lemmy, all on his own, in the role of tech, turned the right knob to “off”. It’s incredible how he figured out in an instant where the problem lay! Incredible experience! After the song he cracked a joke at the tech’s expense. But there was half a truth in that joke. Motorhead used the pause to crank the monitors up to maximum output one last time!
Crushing power and debauchery return in full force to the stage with the unforgettable Ace Of Spades, where Lemmy amuses himself with “clowning around,” like he’s re-gripping the bass notes across the neck with his left hand. It’s rough when something gets boring over the years. But that’s the price of fame! For the finale, Overkill, with a threefold repeat of the classic “fade out” ending, where Motorhead squeeze the last atoms of strength out of the crowd as it starts slamming into one another again and everything under the stage turns into a wild swarm of enraged hornets.
There you go! Lemmy sang great again. Last year Killed By Death bent him a little, this year he was indestructible again. During this song Danko Jones joined him onstage (what a stupid name, if the guy knew Slovenian he’d probably change it right away), singing backing vocals in the chorus. When he left the stage, Lemmy introduced him as: “You probably recognize this man yourselves?” Vivid, no doubt about it.
Motorhead kill. Still. Motorhead remain Motorhead. Not left, not right. Rock N’ Roll dirtily arrogant and damn loud. The best part is watching Motorhead at festivals, where absolutely every band falls to its knees before them. This is a band that delivers the most stubborn and authentic rock n’ roll variety. It developed its loudest form. It works in everything. Treat yourself to it at least once in your life! Be part of this one-of-a-kind energy! So the story is far from over.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
SAXON: 1. Motorcycle Man 2. Let Me Feel Your Power 3. Wheels Of Steel 4. Live to Rock 5. Heavy Metal Thunder 6. Witchfinder General 7. Denim and Leather 8. Ashes to Ashes 9. Hellcat 10. Strong Arm Of The Law 11. Princess of the Night MOTORHEAD: 1. Iron Fist 2. Stay Clean 3. Be My Baby 4. Rock Out 5. Metropolis 6. Over The Top 7. One Night Stand 8. I Got Mine 9. The Thousand Names Of God (Guitar Solo) 10. Civil War 11. Another Perfect Day 12. In The Name Of Tragedy (Drum Solo) 13. Just ‘Cause You Got The Power 14. Going To Brazil 15. Killed By Death 16. Bomber —encore— 17. Whorehouse Blues 18. Ace Of Spades 19. Overkill
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