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The most acclaimed Motörhead lineup might have been the Ace Of Spades [1980] and No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith [1981] power-trio comprising berserker/bassist Lemmy, guitarist ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor.
But in February 1984 (by which point Thin Lizzy’s Brian Robertson had also come and gone), the then-unknown Phil Campbell announced himself as the perfect fit for this most dissolute of hard-rock bands by arriving at auditions bearing three different types of amphetamine (“Orange, white and pink!”).
The Welshman – who was hired that day alongside fellow guitarist Michael ‘Würzel’ Burston – debuted on 1986’s Orgasmatron album and went on to play and write for a further 15 studio releases by the band. Campbell was still holding the position in December 2015, upon Lemmy’s unthinkable demise from prostate cancer (“We knew he wasn’t well, but never thought it’d escalate how it did”). Now, the guitarist has himself died aged 64 after complications from surgery, and rock ’n’ roll has lost one of its dryest characters and most powerful players.
Born in Pontypridd on 7 May 1961, Campbell once gave a damning assessment of his prospects beyond music.
“Without the guitar,” he told this writer, “I’d probably be a professional dog-walker or in jail.
“It all started with playing in a school folk group. You could either play violin, trumpet or guitar. I was just strumming away on some early Simon & Garfunkel stuff, but when I heard Hendrix In The West [1972] – that turned me on. A load of feedback through Marshall stacks, you know? When I got an electric guitar in my hands, I could make any sound with it that I chose. Most of them bad, in them days.”
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Campbell himself started on a £12 Woolworths Strat copy and amp, but progressed fast, graduating from a chord book to riffs of the day such as David Bowie’s The Jean Genie and buying his first Les Paul in 1978.
Lemmy said: ‘Just play what you want – I trust your musicianship and your playing. Just don’t wear shorts onstage’
He’d already met Lemmy once before – in the foyer after a Cardiff show by Hawkwind, aged just 12 – when the frontman welcomed him into the Motörhead fold with the loosest of briefs.
“Lemmy said: ‘Just play what you want – I trust your musicianship and your playing. Just don’t wear shorts onstage’. I think Brian Robertson had scared him away with that, wearing leg-warmers one night.”
Standing before the obligatory wall of Marshalls with his signature LAG Explorer, Campbell drove the late-period band hard, not only putting his own spin on standards like Overkill, Bomber and Killed By Death, but submitting his own standout riffs like God Was Never On Your Side and The Game.
Just don’t call him a heavy-metal guitarist, he once reminded an interviewer. “People think I might be, but they’re wrong. Motörhead was a rock ’n’ roll band that played loud. Lemmy thought the same.”
Just as important as his pummelling guitar work was the sense that Campbell, Lemmy and Swedish drummer Mikkey Dee were a ramshackle brotherhood, not a slick, session-populated enterprise built around the star frontman.
“I remember going to the Hyatt House – that’s the Riot House – in LA one night with a petrol scooter. I took it up the lift to our rooms on the seventh floor or whatever, and ended up riding it up and down the corridors naked, in drag make-up, with just a tie on, with all these fumes creating this smog.”
When Lemmy died, Campbell immediately recognised that Motörhead was over too. “But I didn’t know what to do for a while,” he reflected. “I didn’t know whether to just stop and retire. For three or four months, I was feeling very weird. And then I just got together with the boys, started playing, and I started to enjoy it again then.”
His final project – helming Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons, a family affair – had built a sizable following and released three warmly reviewed studio albums by the time of his death in March.
But Campbell will be best remembered as the man who kept the train on the tracks for the loudest, wildest, most chaotic rock ’n’ roll band of them all. “Phil was a wonderful guitarist, writer, performer and musician,” posted the band’s official site. “He had Motörhead in his veins…”
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
