Racer put the call out to the happy crew at Ripple – we need
more articles!! The Waveriders need more music to digest!
Write about what you love, he always said, well – I love
Motörhead and Bomber is definitely one of my all-time favorite Motörhead albums.
While Lemmy has said he doesn't regret anything, he has gone
on record saying Bomber was a less than perfect album. He
spoke about it in his autobiography White
Line Fever, where he considers it "a transitional record" but adds,
"there are a couple of really naff tracks on it, like Talking Head”.
Likewise, guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke has said in so many
words in a 1980 interview with Sounds, comparing
the album to that year's Ace of
Spades, "Bomber felt wrong.
It wasn't all there".
While yes, compared to Ace of Spades, Bomber is like
the little engine that could. There are
some “skippable” tracks, but there are some gold nuggets too.
In 1979, Motörhead put out 2 albums, Overkill and Bomber. Critics have said that the pressure of coming
up with enough high quality tracks for two albums was too great for the band,
and that of the two, Bomber was
the weaker.
To me – I love both albums equally. Those early years with the three piece line
up of Lemmy (bass), Fast Eddie Clarke (lead guitar) and “Philthy” Animal Taylor
(drums) - was the band at their
peak. No disrespect to anyone who's been
in the band since, in my opinion this was the best lineup the band ever
hand.
There was a certain undefinable sound, a for lack of a
better term “vibe” the band had back then.
This was when the “Motörhead sound” was developed.
Not every track is a thousand miles an hour – there's more
than one side to Motörhead. From slower, bluesy songs like “Sweet Revenge”, ”Step Down”
(featuring lead vocals by Fast Eddie Clarke), and mid-tempo tracks like “Lawman”.
Of course, there are the “neck breakers” - “Poison” (with deeply
personal lyrics where Lemmy address his absentee father), “Stone Dead Forever”
(which features a nice albeit short bass solo – and one of my favorite Fast
Eddie Clarke solos at the end of the song.
“All the Aces” sums up Lemmy's life philosophy in the first
lines of the song, “The only thing I know is playing rock 'n' roll, I'm not a
business man, I'm just in a good time band” while the song is about them being
screwed over by their record label.
The albums final, title track “Bomber” is still in the
band's set-list today. When the band
toured to support this album, they had a stage show which featured an aircraft
bomber-shaped lighting rig.
As I listened back to this album
in it's entirety for this article, I realized it's actually a damn good
record!!! Not the perfect album that is Ace of Spades, but a solid record in
it's own right!!
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