It is indeed always spectacular, what sound documents the record companies are able to dig out after decades. We don’t talk about our modern time, where everyone can record whatever neccesary in either a home studio or even with a mobile phone. Fourty years ago recordings were a long term planned thing. Depending on how successful you were, a record company booked a certain space of time and that was the deal. What one made out of the recordings was what remained, whether it was good or shit. “Iron Fist”, Lemmy always adressed as one of the weakest albums, MOTÖRHEAD did in their entire career and if you asked him why, you’d probably hear an: “Well, after “Ace Of Spades” and the live album, which went directly to number one, I guess “Iron Fist” contained some songs which weren’t that good in the end! Maybe one needs to consider, we should have had more time for songwriting and recordings.“ Or he pointed it out less diplomatically reporting about the differences he had with producer William Reid-Dick and Fast Eddie, who not only was the guitar player with a strong own opinion, but also co-producer. The album indeed is a bit better than Lem wanted to see it. The title track needs to be counted amongst the overyear classics of MOTÖRHEAD, with ‘Heart Of Stone’, ‘I’m The The Doctor’, ‘Sex And Outrage’ and ‘(Don’t Need) Religion’ it’s a handful of really strong tunes on the album, but Kilmister was right when he mentioned that many songs did not turn out what they could have maybe been. Still it is a must-have for all Motörheadbangers and other friends of the band (simply like all other albums they did). Besides the digitally remastered version of the original album, there are a lot of intresting findings, sound-archeologs have acribically been digging out. Starting with the original B-side of the 7“ single ‘Remember Me I’m Gone’ there are at least five demo recordings out of the Jackson Studios, which are presenting songs like ‘The Doctor’, ‘Loser’, ‘Go To Hell’ or ‘Iron Fist’ in different variants, partly with obviously still unfitting or incomplete lyrics, other people in the studio talking and played way more rough and in a partly punkish, partly even bluesy style than they later appeared on the album. Not enough to have all those features packed together in a very well designed surrounding with lots of liner-notes and unreleased photo material from 1982, someone was falling over a live radio broadcast right in time, featuring a whole show at the Glasgow Apollo Theatre, back in March 1982. A good snapshot on a moment of the tour which should become the very last of that, what people call the classic line-up with Lem, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Animal Taylor. Featuring lots of songs from the “Iron Fist” album and being maybe a tiny bit stingy with old classics like ‘White Line Fever’, ‘Shoot You In The Back’, ‘Bomber’ or ‘Capricorn’. It’s a scratchy, itching but authentic live document showing the untamed and electrifying energy MOTÖRHEAD had, while they were rolling over their audiences back in those days. Get it, folks. www.facebook.com/officialmotorhead, www.bmg.com

It’s time for another 40th anniversary of a historic MOTÖRHEAD album. “Iron Fist” was released in 1982 and always was one of Lemmy’s least favourite albums of his band. Due to the circumstances in the recording process that forced guitar player “Fast” Eddie Clarke to take over the duties of the producer, Lem always labelled the album as a kind of an unfinished album. He claimed that a lot of songs could have turned out better, a problem that lead to the quarrels which brought the history of the “classic” MOTÖRHEAD line-up to an end with Clarke’s departure during the 1982 US tour. So “Iron Fist” marked the beginning of some tough years for MOTÖRHEAD. Looking back at the album with my own point of view and my own history, I always thought that “Iron Fist” never met the standards of the classic albums “Overkill”, “Bomber” and especially “Ace Of Spades”. Only the title track and especially ‘(Don’t Need) Religion’ (with some of Lemmy’s best lyrics ever) were among my all time MOTÖRHEAD favourites. So this album always was a step child when I picked up an album of the classic MOTÖRHEAD line-up to listen to. To be honest, I merely haven’t listened to “Iron Fist” in its entirety for at least a decade. So this was a much needed chance for me to rediscover this album. And I was quite surprised to find that this album is better than I remembered. Of course it still is not my favourite album of the band, nor even the “classic” line-up. But I found some songs I always underrated, it seems. ‘I’m The Doctor’ has, for example, a great simple groove and thus is nearly as fine as ‘(Don’t Need) Religion’. ‘Loser’ has a great lead guitar theme and somehow heralds the greater emphasis on guitar melodies of the next years. Another song I forgot about is ‘Speedfreak’, a simple, yet rocking fast song that always flew under my radar. And of course ‘Iron Fist’ itself still is great as it ever was. The old saying that MOTÖRHEAD never made a bad album is more valid than ever, cast in stone. And the fact that a 40 year old album still knows to convince me after a long break says all about MOTÖRHEAD. For its milestone anniversary, “Iron Fist” has, of course, been remastered in a careful way and spiced up with a lot of extra material, packaged as a double CD in a 24 pages media book. The extra material is partly not that unknown to old MOTÖRHEAD freaks like me. The first disc doesn’t only feature the original album, but also no less than 13 more studio recordings. It is no wonder that the flipside of the ‘Iron Fist’ 7” is up first. ‘Remember Me, I’m Gone’ would have fitted the album very well. Next we have a bunch of songs from the album in early and alternative versions that were recorded as demos, mainly in October 1981 at Jacksons Studio. These are often rudimentarily arranged with not much overdubs and some different lyrics as well, ‘Sex And Outrage’ was ‘Young & Crazy’ here, for example. And the basic versions are pretty interesting the way they sound, ‘Loser’ and ‘Go To Hell’ sound very charming here. The alternative version of ‘(Don’t Let ‘Em) Grind Ya Down’ is even better than the album version in my opinion. In the end, we have three instrumental demos. ‘Sponge Cake’ sounds pretty familiar, as some parts of it were re-used later, while ‘Ripsaw Teardown’ probably was not used. Finally we have ‘Peter Gunn’ which is not a cover of the famous theme by Peter Mancini but the basic track of ‘(Don’t Need) Religion’. Pretty interesting for MOTÖRHEAD freaks, no doubt. The second disc features a radio broadcast recorded live at the Apollo in Glasgow on March 18, 1982. This means 65 minutes of MOTÖRHEAD live on the “Iron Fist” tour, overall 19 tracks in a rather rough quality. But nevertheless this live album is very interesting for MOTÖRHEAD fans, as it features no less than seven songs from “Iron Fist”. The opening title track was frequently played live in later years, but ‘Heart Of Stone’, ‘Loser’, ‘America’, ‘(Don’t Need) Religion’, ‘Go To Hell’ and ‘(Don’t Let ‘Em) Grind Ya Down’ are real live rarities. Spiced with twelve old fan favourites like ‘Capricorn’, ‘(We Are the) Road Crew’ or ‘The Chase Is Better Than The Catch’, this radio show is worth one or more listens. Mainly because you’ll get a real live experience of MOTÖRHEAD, as their shows often suffered from a raw and rude sound due to the inhuman volume. In sum, this 40th anniversary edition is a fine catch for MOTÖRHEAD lunatics and normal fans as well. For more info go to www.facebook.com/officialmotorhead or www.bmg.com