Motorhead - 1979 (2019)

“I’m not interested.” That was A&R man Howard Thompson’s response when asked to attend a 1978 Motörhead show in order to consider signing the band to Bronze Records, his employer at the time. Intent as he was on declining the invitation, apparently history had other plans.

Motörhead’s then-manager, Douglas Smith, had run out of options, and Thompson was his last hope. “You don’t understand,” Smith had pleaded with him. “I’ve been everywhere. If you don’t sign them, they’ll probably break up.”

Thompson begrudgingly agreed, squeezing himself into a club in London’s Camden district that was stuffed beyond capacity where he was summarily “blown away” by Motörhead’s performance.

Thompson recounts this story in engrossing detail in the liner notes to the Motörhead 1979 box set (arriving today on Sanctuary), which contains half-speed remasters of the band’s classic ’79 albums Overkill and Bomber, alongside two newly unearthed live shows from that year and an LP of outtakes from both titles. The package features seven LPs in total, as well as a 7-inch “No Class” single, a Bomber tour program, Overkill sheet music, and a 40-page book of liners crammed with insights that’s actually a pleasure to sit down and read.

If it weren’t for Thompson’s change of heart, the face of modern music would look drastically different. Motörhead is now widely hailed as a progenitor of heavy metal as it’s known today. It’s universally acknowledged, for example, that without the band’s penchant for playing fast, Metallica never would have developed the speed-metal sound that was so crucial in spawning countless metal subgenres.

“Motörhead,” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told VH1’s Behind the Music in 2013, “was one of the main reasons that I wanted to start a band myself.” (Through fortuitous circumstances, Ulrich was invited into a Motörhead rehearsal when he was 16. He also met future Metallica frontman James Hetfield the following week.)

Radical as Metallica’s infusion of punk energy into the muscular riffing of metal sounded in the early ’80s, Motörhead’s growling, ear-shattering thrum is the original link between metal and punk. Iconic frontman Lemmy Kilmister, a fixture on the London punk scene, was present, for example, at touchstone moments like the Ramones’ historic 1976 show at The Roundhouse. Motörhead was certainly faster, louder, and grittier than just about anything else on the ’70s musical landscape, and Overkill perfectly captures those elements, opening with then-drummer Phil “The Animal” Taylor’s iconic double kick-drum figure that set the template for a generation of metal percussionists who followed. Helicopter-like bass-drum volleys would become the new standard by 1984 or so, but in 1979, Taylor’s footwork must have sounded like the very edge of the envelope.

However, Overkill and Bomber remind us that Kilmister was telling the truth when he would open the band’s shows with the words, “We play rock’n’roll.” He was certainly aware of Motörhead's pivotal place in the musical timeline it’s not for nothing that the band established credibility with both punks and rockers but he also clearly envisioned the group as an extension of the same lineage that produced Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

Because the reissues don’t include all the bonus cuts from the 2005 deluxe editions of these albums, the 1979 packages don’t offer studio versions of “Leaving Here” and Motörhead's cover of “Louie Louie,” the songs where the band wore its rock’n’roll influence on its sleeve the most. Still, those roots are clearly apparent on deep cuts like “(I Won’t) Pay Your Price” and “Stone Dead Forever.” And for all of Taylor’s pedal-to-the-medal energy he was probably closer in spirit to The Muppet Show’s Animal than any of the real-life drummers who inspired the character he was in fact heavily influenced by Tamla-Motown R&B. Largely as a direct result of that influence, Motörhead's classic material bears traces of shuffle and boogie that directly tie to the past, but it also should be said that the band’s seminal lineup, which was rounded out by guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, had an unmistakable chemistry that transcended its influences.

As for the bonus live material, the sound quality isn’t horrendous, but it isn’t ideal either or even close to the ambience that made the highly influential 1981 live album No Sleep ’til Hammersmith land at No. 1 on the British charts. So listeners should expect to let their ears adjust before they can imagine the monumental roar that Motörhead was reputed to bring to the stage.