Saturday 4 April 2020

The Lemmy Effect



Lemmy died on 28th December 2015.  For the uneducated, Lemmy was a musician who played bass for Hawkwind in the early seventies (and actually voiced their best known song “Silver Machine”) before forming Motorhead in 1975.  Motorhead played hard, loud, heavy metal and forged a successful career for forty years.  They may not be everyone’s cup of tea but were certainly a taste I acquired in small measures.  Lemmy (born Ian Fraser Kilmister in 1945) was renowned for his hedonistic lifestyle; he abused drugs and alcohol for over fifty years, he reportedly drank a bottle of Jack Daniels every day for over thirty years he also had a taste for Speed and LSD.  Because Lemmy had lived this way for so long it seemed he was invincible, nothing would ever kill him.  When he died it shouldn’t have been a shock but it was.

The death of Lemmy opened the pearly flood gates as in the year that followed celebrities started dropping like flies.  It was as if the death of Lemmy made their own mortality real and 2016 saw the deaths of; Glen Frey, David Bowie FFS!, Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Harper Lee, Jimmy Greaves, George Martin, Peter Vaughan, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Ronnie Corbett, Howard Marks (another indestructible), Carla Lane, Frank Kelly, Victoria Wood,  Caroline Ahearn, Prince FFS!, Leonard Cohen, Gene Wilder, Prince Buster, Andrew Sachs, Rick Parfitt, Liz Smith, George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds and the one and only G.O.A.T. Muhammad Ali.

But the Lemmy effect went further than giving famous people permission to die.  Something changed, as if the earth’s axis slipped fractionally and we’ve been spinning out of control ever since.  In 2016 the British people voted to leave the EU, which was the first step on BoJo the clown’s long plotted path to 10 Downing Street and yes that’s where he is now, after a couple of minor detours.  In the US that bag of bullshit Trump somehow found himself elected and we now live in a world where two of the biggest alleged democracies are governed by racist, sexist, homophobic bastards with an air of bullying violence and a background of almost royal privilege.  Has the world become a better, safer, healthier place since the death of Lemmy?  No, absolutely not.  Facts and intelligence have been replaced by soundbites, stupidity and outright lies.  Society is crumbling.

In just over three months 2020 has seen floods in the UK and wild fires in Australia, the environment is dying but the rich convince the stupid it’s all okay. The US clenched it’s muscles and threatened war with Iran.  Now a quarter of the world’s population can’t leave their homes, imprisoned by a disease that in itself is a symptom of a dying planet that has been allowed to spread by capitalist philosophy.

It’s all down to Lemmy, if he can die then anyone or anything can die too.  My theory continues; there is one more linchpin holding the earth on its axis and all my evidence suggests that this is Keith Richards.  If this is so even the most optimistic person will give the human race less than a decade.

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