Motörhead performed a searing rendition of their punky metal onslaught “Bomber” at a gig in Le Mans, France in November 1979 that is just now coming out as part of a new box set that focuses on everything the band did that year.
The unearthed clip shows Lemmy Kilmister snarling at the audience and whipping his bass’ neck over the audience while guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clark and drummer “Philthy Animal” Taylor kept the propulsion going. At the end, Kilmister points his instrument’s headstock over the audience like a gun spraying bullets.
The performance will appear on the forthcoming box set 1979, which collects the band’s Overkill and Bomber LPs, pressed on 180-gram vinyl, along with two double-live albums from their tours in 1979. It also includes a 40-page “music magazine” called Melödy Breaker with previously unreleased photos and new interviews about the era, as well as an LP of odds & sods from the period, a “No Class” seven-inch, a Bomber tour program, an Overkill sheet music book, and a collection of badges. It all comes in a “black biker jacket box.” The collection, whose full track list is available on Motörhead’s website, will come out October 25th.
The band is also issuing new, individual deluxe editions of Overkill and Bomber on two-CD and triple-LP formats. These contain the material from the 1979 box set, but lacks material that came out on the 1996 and 2005 reissues of these albums. The Overkill set contains a live album they’ve dubbed Good N’Loud, recorded on March 31st, 1979 at Aylesbury Friars at Aylesbury in the U.K. Bomber features the live album Sharpshooter, recorded at La Rotonde in Le Mans on November 3rd, 1979.
The material on these reissues come from the archives of the band’s friends, crew, and “accomplices” from 1979, as well as “super fans.”
Lemmy Kilmister and Motörhead’s influence on rock in the late Seventies can’t be understated. Kilmister was instrumental in inspiring bands like the Sex Pistols (he tried to teach Sid Vicious bass) and the band proved to be a pivotal influence on the Big Four of thrash metal — Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — who all jammed together on “Overkill” at a New York City gig in 2011.
“Lemmy was like a godfather, a parental figure,” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone after Kilmister’s death. “He was someone you felt completely safe with. You were never judged. You were never intellectualized. You were never questioned. You were always just welcomed in to whatever level that they were capable of. … It made you feel like you were a part of something that was so much bigger than you, and it was such a safe and invigorating place for kids like myself, because it gave us a purpose.”