Hawkwind’s Dave Brock says hard-living Lemmy was ‘aghast’ at being kicked out of the band

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Hawkwind frontman Dave Brock has opened up about how his former bandmate, the late guitarist Lemmy, handled being fired after the band grew fed up with his drug-fuelled antics.

Lemmy, born Ian Fraser Kilmister, was a member of the British space-rock band from 1971 until 1975. He was notorious for his “hard-livin’” lifestyle, which included chain-smoking and excessive drugs and alcohol consumption, which caused tension between him and his Hawkwind bandmates.

Tensions came to a head in the spring of 1975, when Hawkwind were touring North America and Lemmy was caught in posession of amphetamines while the band were crossing the US border into Canada.

The border police mistook the powder for cocaine and threw him in jail for two days, forcing the band to cancel a number of shows.

“Our manager warned us to make sure we didn’t have anything on us when we went over the Canadian border,” Brock recalled in an interview with The Telegraph, ahead of Hawkwind’s UK tour this April.

“I was driving and Lemmy was sitting next to us. He’d fallen asleep... he was dribbling a bit. The guards must have said, there’s a load of long-haired hippies in there, we’ll have them. And they opened the car door and Lemmy fell out!”

After this incident, Lemmy was replaced by the band’s longtime friend, guitarist Paul Rudolph (formerly of the Pink Fairies), while Lemmy went on to team up with Larry Wallis, also of the Pink Fairies, to form Motörhead. He named the band after the last song he wrote for Hawkwind, after his manager advised him against calling his new group “Bastard”.

He was “aghast” at being kicked out of the group, Brock said.

“He was flown back to England,” he continued. “But a year later Motörhead [Lemmy’s subsequent, highly successful band] were supporting Hawkwind! Then he did better than us! And then Hawkwind were supporting Motörhead! But me and Lemmy were on good terms right up until he died. We were always all right.”

In a 2011 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lemmy, who died aged 70 in 2015 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, said he believed he would have stayed with the band had he not been kicked out.

“I did like being in Hawkwind, and I believe I’d still be playing with them today if I hadn’t been kicked out,” he said. “It was fun onstage, not so much offstage. They didn’t want to mesh with me. Musically, I loved the drummer, the guitar player. It was a great band.”