The rock wild man who made Keith Richards look like a choir boy: As Lemmy dies two days after being told he had aggressive cancer, it is only surprising that the hard-drinking Motorhead frontman managed to make it to 70

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Lemmy passed away on Monday, less than a week after celebrating his 70th birthday

Four months ago, the rock star Lemmy revealed that declining health was forcing him to make some drastic lifestyle changes.

A 40-a-day Marlboro Red habit, essential for honing his gravelly singing voice, had been quietly cut back to a mere packet a week, following a major 2013 heart operation.

What's more, his staple tipple of Jack Daniel's and Coca-Cola - consumed almost non-stop, from breakfast-time onwards, since the late Seventies - was now completely off-limits because it played havoc with his diabetes.

It sounded like a dramatic move for a man who boasted of needing between a bottle and a gallon of bourbon per day to function normally, and who once said he never got hangovers because 'to get hangovers you need to stop drinking'.

In practice, however, the Motorhead frontman's new regime wasn't as healthy as it initially appeared.

'Lemmy has swapped from Jack and Coke to vodka and orange,' his interviewer reported, adding helpfully that 'his assistant wonders if swapping from one 40pc spirit topped with sugar to another 40pc spirit topped with sugar is really going to help.'

In the event, the changes did little to prolong his life, although cancer (rather than the diabetes) is what eventually did for him.

Lemmy passed away on Monday, less than a week after celebrating his 70th birthday, and only two days after being diagnosed with an 'extremely aggressive' form of the disease that purportedly affected his head and neck.

His death was announced in a statement uploaded to his band's Facebook page in the early hours of the morning. 

Lemmy's celebrity status revolved squarely around an ability to embody the rock-and-roll lifestyle — something he pursued with perhaps more dedication than any other musician, alive or dead

Written partly in block capitals, and perhaps the most touching of the many tributes paid yesterday, it urged fans to 'play music LOUD' and 'have a drink or two' in memory of 'our mighty, noble friend'.

Drinking heavily, and being extremely loud, are certainly the two things most associated with Lemmy, who once summed up Motorhead as 'the dirtiest rock and roll band in the world', adding 'if we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die'.

Indeed, some might argue that his personal habits even eclipsed his music. For the truth was that, though Lemmy's career in hard rock spanned half a century, it produced surprisingly few commercial hits.

Even his best-known song, 1980's Ace Of Spades, which was being played almost non-stop in tribute yesterday, is a case in point: it peaked in the charts at a relatively modest number 15.

Critics were also snotty about his contribution to the musical canon, often carping about the technical limitations of his voice, and his sometimes less-than-perfect command of the bass guitar.

Perhaps that's why it wasn't until 2005 that he won a Grammy. Motorhead's only other major award, at the time, was a place in the Guinness Book of Records, as the 'world's noisiest rock band'. 

To the delight of fans, and peers, he turned his entire adult life into a raucous, non-stop party which continued unchecked for 50 years

Lemmy as lead singer with Hawkwind 1972 (left), and playing London's Brixton Academy with Motorhead in 2000 (right)

Motorhead's ever-changing line-up in the early 1980s - Brian Robertson (left), Lemmy and Phil Taylor (right)

Limmy defied physical limitations — facial warts were as much a part of his trademark look as his cowboy hat and handlebar moustache — to seduce upwards of a thousand women, becoming an enthusiastic devotee of Viagra in his later years

In a way, however, this is all rather beside the point. For the real legacy of this very distinctive rock star — whose real name was Ian Fraser Kilmister — has very little to do with the merits (or otherwise) of his music.

Lemmy's celebrity status revolved, instead, squarely around an ability to embody the rock-and-roll lifestyle — something he pursued with perhaps more dedication than any other musician, alive or dead.

To the delight of fans, and peers, he turned his entire adult life into a raucous, non-stop party which continued unchecked for 50 years.

Lemmy also proudly claimed to have spent three decades high on drink and drugs without once sobering up, supplementing that daily bottle of Jack Daniel's with an hourly fix of amphetamines, as well as regular doses of LSD

In that period, he defied physical limitations — facial warts were as much a part of his trademark look as his cowboy hat and handlebar moustache — to seduce upwards of a thousand women, becoming an enthusiastic devotee of Viagra in his later years.

'There was a magazine in England who said I screwed 2,000 women,' he said in 2011. 'I didn't. I said 1,000. When you think about it, it isn't that unreasonable. I'm not even married, and I've been doing this since I was 16. And I'm now 66, so that's like 50 years. I could've done more if I'd tried.'

His reputation as a lothario was jealously guarded, however. In the Nineties, a Playboy model called Julie Watson told The People newspaper: 'Lemmy once tied me to the bed for three days ... it was an incredible session.'

He responded by paying lawyers to write to the newspaper. 'Our client wishes to protest furiously,' their letter read. 'It wasn't three days. It was two weeks, and she was hanging from the ceiling.'

Lemmy also proudly claimed to have spent three decades high on drink and drugs without once sobering up, supplementing that daily bottle of Jack Daniel's with an hourly fix of amphetamines, as well as regular doses of LSD.

'Everybody was doing acid; I was just doing speed with it, too,' he recalled, in an interview to promote his aptly named 2003 autobiography White Line Fever. 'Even in the drug culture, there was this snobbery: "Oh, you're taking that awful speed?" Well, **** off, then. I can't be bothered with people's class awareness.'

On one occasion, chronicled by the publisher of the same book, he consumed a bag containing several days' supply of amphetamines, to prevent the police discovering it during a search of his tour bus.

Unfortunately, the bag also contained a supply of tranquilisers, which he used to take to counter the effects of the stimulant drug and allow him to sleep. 'He ended up in a sort of coma, and they gave him up for dead,' the publisher recalled.

It's perhaps a measure of this fondness for self-destruction that on December 16, just days before his death, Lemmy was photographed partying with female fans at The Rainbow Bar and Grill, a favourite watering hole in West Hollywood. 

On one occasion, chronicled by the publisher of the same book, he consumed a bag containing several days' supply of amphetamines, to prevent the police discovering it during a search of his tour bus. Pictured here with singer Alice Cooper

In an era of stage managed, manufactured pop acts there was a certain refreshing honesty about Lemmy's amoral revelations

Though looking pale and gaunt, he nonetheless spent a portion of the evening propping up the noisy bar with Sebastian Bach, of the heavy metal band Skid Row, before retiring to his nearby apartment where he kept a vast collection of Nazi weapons and other memorabilia ('I don't collect the ideas, just the stuff,' he somewhat oddly claimed).

His life had, it must be said, begun in a far less colourful location. He was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1945. Lemmy's father, an RAF pastor who he described as 'a creep with a bald head and glasses', walked out on the family when he was just three months old, and played no further part in his childhood. His mother, a librarian, remarried, and he was raised in rural North Wales.

It was here that he gained both his nickname — thanks to a childhood habit of pestering people to 'lemme a fiver' — and his fondness for the opposite sex, spending teenage summer holidays attempting to seduce visitors to nearby campsites.

It's perhaps a measure of this fondness for self-destruction that on December 16, just days before his death, Lemmy was photographed partying with female fans at The Rainbow Bar and Grill, a favourite watering hole in West Hollywood

Every year, 'these families would arrive from places like Manchester for their summer holidays,' he once said. 'They'd come for a week, and their daughters were always up for a good time. They kept me very busy.'

To his dismay, however, one such conquest fell pregnant, and was forced to put the child up for adoption. Years later, his son was tracked down.

'He lives in Bradford, is 35, 5ft 2in, and completely straight and boring. A computer programmer or something. He'd been brought up by an elderly couple,' Lemmy somewhat cruelly revealed, adding that he refused to meet the boy: 'He'd probably have a heart attack. I'm not going to **** up his life just to make me happy.'

As for his own childhood, after being bullied at school, as the only English boy among several hundred Welsh peers, Lemmy was expelled aged 15 for hitting a teacher

In an era of stage managed, manufactured pop acts there is a certain refreshing honesty about such amoral revelations. But they do, of course, shed light on one of the darker elements of his rock 'n' roll existence.

A lifelong bachelor, Lemmy disliked monogamy and once said of fatherhood: 'I went out with a couple of girls with young babies. I can give a baby a bottle with one hand and roll a joint with the other, but I never wanted any of that. Changing nappies is horrible. Kids are generally rotten until the age of about six, when they become people. No, it's not my scene.'

When children resulted from his romantic entanglements, he therefore ignored them.

Lemmy claimed to have a second son called Paul, who now lives in Los Angeles, and who he saw 'two or three times a year'.

He also spoke of a third child in France, whom he dubbed a 'maybe' on the grounds that a bandmate (who also slept with the child's mother) could also be the biological father. Quite what these poor children make of their father's ambivalence is anyone's guess.

As for his own childhood, after being bullied at school, as the only English boy among several hundred Welsh peers, Lemmy was expelled aged 15 for hitting a teacher.

He briefly worked in a washing machine factory before moving to Stockport in Cheshire, where he became involved in a band called The Rockin' Vickers.

In 1965, as part of a cultural exchange programme with Yugoslavia, they became the first Western band to play behind the Iron Curtain.

'Kids were setting their shirts on fire and whirling them around their heads,' he later said. 'Then the secret police came and clubbed them all to the ground. We had dinner with President Tito. When you passed him the peas, he didn't pass them back. I suppose he didn't have to — because his face was on all the money.' 

After a stint as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, Lemmy joined a psychedelic band called Hawkwind in the early Seventies, only to be kicked out in 1975 after being arrested at the Canadian border on suspicion of possessing cocaine, causing the band to cancel some U.S. tour dates. 

Ever the survivor, Lemmy in recent years refused to retire, even as his health began to desert him

In June, Motorhead performed at Glastonbury for the first time. And in January, they were set to tour the UK in support of their 23rd album Bad Magic, which was released last August

He formed Motorhead, said to be named after a slang term for an amphetamine addict, soon afterwards, and remained its frontman for 40 years, with a revolving cast of bandmates.

Ever the survivor, Lemmy in recent years refused to retire, even as his health began to desert him.

In June, the band performed at Glastonbury for the first time. And in January, they were set to tour the UK in support of their 23rd album Bad Magic, which was released last August.

Asked if he would ever slow down, he laughed: 'Can't see that happening, can you? This is how my life was always meant to take place: in the back of a tour bus somewhere, a girl I've never met before in my lap, who will be gone by morning. It's how I live. It suits me.'