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How long is your set time on the Gigantour?
50 minutes.
Do you foresee any Motörhead headlining dates in the U.S. to promote The Wörld Is Ours – Vol. 1?
Well, we've got festivals in Europe in the summer and then we do the Mayhem Tour in July with Slipknot. But that'll be a short set, too, then I guess.
When I saw you the first couple of times around when you were headlining the Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland during the mid-1980s, you were still breaking out the air raid siren at the end of the show that was just punishingly loud. I can remember friends on their knees with hands over their ears, begging for mercy.
Funny enough, the last time we played the Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium, we fired Megadeth off that tour.
I remember hearing tales of that [Author's note: More accurately, I read it in Lemmy's autobiography White Line Fever, which details the band's firing due to the actions of their douchebag manager at the time]. They played that show, but I guess it didn't last?
No, I guess not [laughs].
You've always had a knack for bringing great support acts bands out on tour. Besides Megadeth, I saw Exodus and the Cro-Mags with you back in the '80s, and since then there have been shows with Zeke, Corrosion of Conformity, the Reverend Horton Heat, and Nashville Pussy. Last year you had Clutch and Valient Thorr...
Valient Thorr are brilliant, aren't they? Complete chaos...
How much input do you have on the bands being selected?
Well, we just find out who's available and we just pick them and see if they'll come along. It's as simple as that. It's just a matter of who's not touring already.
Actually, I did want to ask about one of the European festivals that I first saw advertised a few weeks ago. It was for the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium this June. It's pretty much a metal fan's wet dream, with Black Sabbath at the top of the bill, followed by Motörhead and Slayer as next bands listed. I showed my son and he said, 'So, we're going to Belgium, right?' If that was the Sabbath tour in the States, I'd go see it even if they were playing without Bill Ward. Is that something that's playing elsewhere in Europe, or is it only there?
No, it's just that one. I don't know what's happening with Bill at the moment. It looks like it's the Ozzy camp, isn't it, that put the kibosh on it?
That seems to be the rumblings, despite denials from Sharon Osbourne. She says, 'I have nothing to do with Black Sabbath.' It seems really wrong to not go out with him.
Well, you can't do a reunion without the originals, can you? How's the reunion [laughs]?
You've stripped things down as Motörhead in the past with "Whorehouse Blues" from Inferno in 2004 and the slower acoustic blues version of "Ace of Spades" you did for the Kronenbourg commercial a couple of years ago. Have you thought about doing an acoustic blues album?
No, not so far. We've thought about doing a covers album, and we've thought about doing an acoustic album of our songs, but not a blues album. I do that rock 'n' roll thing with The Head Cat [his rockabilly group with Stray Cat Slim Jim Phantom] in my spare time, when I get any spare time.
