RIP Lemmy

[Shaker]

Shocked to see that Motorhead leg end Lemmy has died aged 70, just two days after being diagnosed with cancer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35192060

[Hope]

I was surprised when BBC Breakfast initially reported him as being 80, but they quickly corrected that.  We don't yet know what type of cancer it was, or how advanced it was when it was diagnosed - but having lost 3 or 4 friends to pancreatic cancer recently, all within weeks of diagnosis, that might be an explanation of the speed.

[Jack Knave]

I wasn't shocked, knowing his lifestyle and age, but a great loss to the heavy rock world.

[Shaker]

I wasn't shocked, knowing his lifestyle and age, but a great loss to the heavy rock world.

Funnily enough, given that he smoked when he was awake and only stopped when he was asleep and drank most of a bottle of Jack Daniels a day (I used to be like that once -  ahhh, happy days), I was. Apart from the indestructible Keith Richards, I can't think of anybody else amongst the wan, lily-livered, mineral-water and green salad lot who pass for musicians these days who really live the rock 'n' roll lifestyle 24/7 as Lemmy did. People say that that's not a recipe for longevity, but once heroin-snorting alcoholic Eric Clapton is living very nicely thank you in the Surrey countryside at 70, quondam cocaine hoover Elton John likewise the same, and one-man chemical factory David Bowie is a picture of cool and lean good health at 68.

As for Keith ... well, Keith is sui generis. They say that after a nuclear holocaust all that would be left would be notoriously radiation-resistant cockroaches and Keith, and that's about right.

[Gordon]

If you have Netflix, they have one of their 'own brand' documentaries about Keith which is worth a watch. I'm beginning to wonder, having watched it recently, if perhaps Keith isn't actually human after all.

[torridon]

RIP Lemmy

Long Live Rock n' Roll.

[Jack Knave]

Funnily enough, given that he smoked when he was awake and only stopped when he was asleep and drank most of a bottle of Jack Daniels a day (I used to be like that once -  ahhh, happy days), I was. Apart from the indestructible Keith Richards, I can't think of anybody else amongst the wan, lily-livered, mineral-water and green salad lot who pass for musicians these days who really live the rock 'n' roll lifestyle 24/7 as Lemmy did. People say that that's not a recipe for longevity, but once heroin-snorting alcoholic Eric Clapton is living very nicely thank you in the Surrey countryside at 70, quondam cocaine hoover Elton John likewise the same, and one-man chemical factory David Bowie is a picture of cool and lean good health at 68.

As for Keith ... well, Keith is sui generis. They say that after a nuclear holocaust all that would be left would be notoriously radiation-resistant cockroaches and Keith, and that's about right.

I heard today that the way the body breaks down alcohol is a process that involves turning it into a poison, which circulates around the body, before being turned into something else which it can excrete.....nice?

[Shaker]

I heard today that the way the body breaks down alcohol is a process that involves turning it into a poison, which circulates around the body, before being turned into something else which it can excrete.....nice?

Very nice indeed when it's being ingested. That's what drugs are for.

Aldous Huxley made the point a long time ago, reiterated in very slightly more recent times by people such as Timothy Leary and especially Terrence McKenna, that over the course of human history most people in most places in most ways most of the time have lived such nasty, poor, brutish and short lives full of misery and grinding toil and poverty and hunger and hardship that the urge for self-transcendence through chemical means - mood-altering substances of all kinds, what McKenna called entheogens - is built into our biology. It's been around a long, long time and isn't going to go away.