10 January 2016, Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery, Los Angeles, USA
The funeral streaming had technical difficulties during the amazing Dave Grohl eulogy. It's worth persevering, and the beautiful, tears-inducing Little Richard finale is in full sound from 7.00.
Hi guys
There’s not enough time for me to tell you how much Lemmy meant to me, and all the amazing experiences I had with him.
The first time I met Lemmy was at fucken Crazy Girls about twenty years ago, and I was walking back from the mens’ room, and on the way back, I looked to my left and I saw Lemmy by himself in the corner on a video game. And it blew my mind. I knew that I couldn’t just go say something because he was on his own in the corner. On the way out I thought, ‘I have to say something. He’s my hero. He’s the one true rock ’n ’roller that bridged my love of ACDC and Sabbath and Zeppelin with my love of GBH and the Ramones and Black Flag. So I walked up and said, ‘Excuse me Lemmy, I don’t want to bother you, but you’ve influenced me so much, you’re my musical hero. I’m a musician. I play in the Foo Fighters, and I was in Nirvana. And he looked up from the video game, and the first thing he ever said to me, he said, “sorry about your friend Kurt [Cobain]”.
And in that moment he revealed this gun-slinging, whiskey-drinking badass, motherfucking rock star to be this gun slinging whiskey drinking badass mother fucking rockstar with a heart, and I walked away thinking if I never see him again, that’s enough, for the rest of my life.
But then we becamse friends. And its one thing when you have a hero, but it’s another when your hero becomes your friend.
And over the years I have a lot of great stories of going to his apartment, and walking through the aisles of pornos ... or going to the Rainbow and ordering two Jack and cokes and the waitress brings two Jack and cokes and he’s fucking male
Or the one time I text him and say, ‘hey man, my band’s playing at the Pantaras Theatre tonight you should come down check it out’,
I said, it’s an acoustic show, it's not like a big rock gig
[mimes texting] Ok
An hour later, I’m downstairs backstage, and I hear fucking Motorhead blaring out of the dressing room, and I get so excited, “finally someone else in the band’s listening to fucking Motorhead!’ and I open up the door and there’s [mimes catatonic fagging] Lemmy, by himself listening to Motorhead.
My mom was there, so I say to Lemmy, I want you to come and meet my mom, so we walk across the hall way, and in that room was my mother, and my wife, and my daughter who was a baby I think she was six months old at the time. So Lemmy walks in with his drink, and his cigarette, [mimes pointing] ‘that Lemmy, from Motorhead’.
[Throat growling 'Lemmy']
And then he looks and he sees that there’s a baby in a crib, and he puts out his cigarette in his drink, and he puts the drink down. Now to most people that would seem like nothing. But to me, that was my hero putting out his cigarette in his drink and putting it aside because my daughter was there in the room.
So I think what everybody has always known, at least where I am today, is that Lemmy was not only that gun slinging whiskey drinking badass mother fucking rock n roll star, but he had the biggest heart and he set such a great example because he was so kind to everyone, people he didn’t know, people he known for years, he was so kind.
He and I shared a love of Little Richard.
I always said that if there was one person I could meet it would be Little Richard. Because whose more badass than Little Richard? One day I was in the airport, at LAX and I was standing on a curb and a guy came up and said, ‘Hey I heard from Lemmy Kilmister that you wanted to meet Little Richard?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well that’s my dad.’
‘What?’
And it’s true. We walk over to this limousine, and he taps on the window, and the window comes down a little bit, and it’s fucken Little Richard sitting there!
Oh my god.
And this guy [whispers]
Windows comes all the way down.
Little Richard says , “I got blessings for you ... ‘ And he signs this bible pamphlet for me and hands it to me, and [Dave pulls out pamphlet to much applause] I kept it.
[Long pause fighting back tears]
And I wanted to give it to him on his birthday.
So last night [audio video glitch]
So this is a song Little Richard sang, and I thought I’d read it. It’s called ‘Precious Lord Take My Hand’
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, and help me stand
Lord I'm tired, I’m so weak,
Lord you know I’m worn,
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
When my way it gets kinda dreary precious Lord’s somewhere near
When my life is almost gone
Hear my cry, lord
Hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
Cheers Lemmy