Lemmy Airbourne career advice doesn’t get much more cinematic than this: a stretch limo pulls up, a cigarette glows in the dark, a lighter briefly illuminates a legend’s face, and four young musicians from Australia pile in to receive a masterclass they’d carry for the rest of their careers.
Airbourne have been sharing the story of how Airbourne came to film the 2007 single ‘Runnin’ Wild’ with the Motörhead frontman, and how that shoot turned into something far more valuable than footage. The account appears in a new interview in the current issue of Classic Rock magazine.
The limo, the Jack Daniel’s and Lemmy Airbourne career advice nobody could buy
It started with a rider. Lemmy’s only condition for appearing in the video, frontman Joel O’Keeffe recalls, was straightforward: ‘I need two big bottles of Jack Daniel’s, two big bottles of Coca-Cola, some onion rings and a limousine.’ The band were thrilled enough just to have him involved. What came next was something else entirely.
O’Keeffe sets the scene. The crew were messing around with cameras when the limo arrived. ‘We couldn’t see anything, just the glow of a cigarette,’ he says. ‘Then the flash of a lighter lit up his eyes and face, and he goes: “Okay boys, jump up.”‘ The four of them (O’Keeffe’s words) went over ‘like four little squirrels’ and peered in through the half-open window to explain there’d been a technical problem. Lemmy’s response was immediate: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of drinks and music.’
The band at the time comprised Joel O’Keeffe, David Roads (later replaced on rhythm guitar by Brett Tyrrell), bassist Justin Street and drummer Ryan O’Keeffe. They climbed in. What followed, Joel describes as being like ‘the master and his apprentices’.
‘It was this really useful list of things to do,’ he recalls. ‘”Have you got a manager? Have you got a lawyer, a real one, not a fake one. Your label, that’s gonna change. Don’t get girlfriends, that you give a fuck about, anyway. You’re gonna be attacked from every side, people are gonna try and change your sound, your look, every single detail.”‘
Ryan O’Keeffe cuts in: ‘And they did. They tried to change the shit out of us.’ Joel follows up: ‘We were too this, too that: too hard, too blunt, too rock’n’roll. They wanted to get me all dressed up, take different photos.’
The prophecy, delivered in the back of a limo with Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola, turned out to be entirely accurate. ‘Having Lemmy look at you eyeball-to-eyeball and tell you how it is,’ Joel says, ‘this little nothing band from Australia, it was a real gift.’
The ‘Runnin’ Wild’ shoot itself was no ordinary video day
The video that brought Lemmy and Airbourne together was no standard performance clip. According to IMDb, the ‘Runnin’ Wild’ shoot had the band performing in the back of a truck driving through Downtown Los Angeles, chased by police, with a surprising outcome. It is the kind of chaotic, committed approach to a music video that fits squarely with the band’s reputation, and presumably matched Lemmy’s expectations for how a proper rock’n’roll outfit ought to carry themselves.
The limo conversation, in that context, reads less like an unlikely encounter and more like a natural meeting of minds: a band who’d drive a truck through LA for a video clip meeting a man who had lived exactly the version of the job he was now describing.
Airbourne’s sixth album lands in August
The interview lands at a moment when the band are back with new material. Airbourne’s self-titled sixth album is out on 28 August via Spinefarm. The Classic Rock issue carrying the full Airbourne feature also includes pieces on Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Blackie Lawless, Faster Pussycat, Pat Travers, Accept and Evanescence, among others.
Joel O’Keeffe sums it up plainly: ‘It was the greatest chat we’ve ever had.’ Hard to argue with that as a return on two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and a bag of onion rings.
