Inside the Song: Motörhead - “Ace of Spades”

so on october the 27th 1980 40 years ago a motorhead released the first single from their fourth album ace of spades this song would go on to be number 15 in the uk charts the album would get as high as number four they played the song on top of the pops this was about as mainstream as you can get this wasn't indie call underground this was full-blown mainstream every kid at school that i knew heard this song loved this song this was a huge hit and i'm gonna have a little chat with cameron webb who of course produced the last six motorhead records and was very close with lemmy and he actually has some of lemmy's amps there with him at the studio [Music] so cameron this is this is gonna be a lot of fun i'm excited you're gonna play some tracks for me out here you have done six albums with motorhead so i thought who better to get on this conversation while listening to the motorhead's ace of spades tracks i love it and i appreciate it and i wish i would recorded ace of spades but i didn't because i was only eight years old but um i loved the song and i loved to talk to lemmy about it and he would tell stories and talk about the producing and studios and it was we always had a good time doing it i remember being a little kid and going to the record box on fleet high street for anybody who knows remembers that old store and picking up this as a picture cover because i bought it i think the day it came out i was really really excited to get it what a great song well let's listen to lemmy's bass in solo [Music] so i mean you you don't need a rhythm guitar player do you most people think that is the guitar but it's not they do the guitar starts the song that's the bass that's what we that's one of these heads that's like this it could have been this it i don't know what which head it was but it was a super bass 100 probably is that the the super bass 100 do you use with lemmy yes these are these actually belong to lemmy i'm borrowing these right now for a project but that's what his bass sounds like when you turn that thing up and you dial in his settings he's even until uh his last days that's what his base always sounded like absolutely amazing and then i was reading online that the guitar that uh fast eddie used was probably his strat that he had stuck at di marzio pickup in the bridge positions let's have a listen to that [Music] [Music] oh oh so good it it's just so good it it's uh again i read that it's probably a marshall a jmp it could have been a you know a jc m800 they had just come out about that time but i don't know about you i personally think it's highly unlikely they went rushing to the store to buy a brand new amp they weren't exactly weren't exactly rich in those days either this was like still hard working rock and roll band type no two together i'm sure i'm sure it was an old amp that they'd had i think you're totally right there and you know what's funny is like you heard that there's two takes there there's actually an overdub which is the riff and i have the i have the multi-tracks as well and uh there's actually there's three there's actually five guitar tracks on there then and you're you're only hearing one you're only hearing the one but except for that overdub but there's a couple other ones in there as well that's absolutely amazing i want to hear the bass and the guitar together [Applause] what i love about fast daddy's playing and frankly lemmy's kind of whole sentiment is it steeped in rock and roll like classic 50s rock and roll it is but that's what he loved and that's what he grew up on that's as his childhood was old rock and roll that's what he loved from america totally i remember um being a kid and he was on like oh a show anybody from uk remembers this called desert island discs and they asked him to list like the his top five or ten songs and if my memory serves me right i believe his number one song was buddy holly i think it was peggy sue i believe it i totally believe it so isn't that crazy you've got like you know pretty much the the godfather of you know all extreme metal the most evil evil bass tone in the world and his favorite artist was buddy i know and he also loved like uh little richard and all those other things so it's like his what he played was seemed so far away from what he listened to but it's sort of you hear it there in fast eddie i mean that's like classic rock and roll guitar riffs but just like with that tone yep here's some filthy animal he holds it down as solid as can be absolutely insane it's just i i absolutely love it now we throw in obviously just a base with that [Music] [Music] i love the fact that he's doing this kind of marching groove but he's also catching all the pushes with lemmy oh yeah it's absolutely insane i'm excited to hear those elements individually so here's just a kick on its own back in those days in like late 70s early 80s kick drums weren't what we have now either they didn't have that huge low low end no not at all never did it's just like it's just all energy that's great it's great you know it's fun too when you listen to that and you you obviously hear the snares because everything bleeds through and the guitars too uh you you actually notice that you hear drums in the guitars so you could tell that they were recording it live like the core bass guitars and drums and then later on i think they overdub like the second guitars and stuff like that but the core of that song was all done live great let's see this snare amazing all right i want to listen to the symbols so this is just the assemble track i love it absolutely crazy just full on i remember reading when i was a kid that um record stores in america didn't know how to classify them didn't know where to put them in the punk rock area or the rock area or the metal area they didn't know what they were no totally confused now i don't know i don't know much about the stems that you have but the what i have for a multi-track actually the toms are actually in the overhead uh channels or i can't believe that your toms aren't separate are they no they're not separate but that would make sense with the overheads because they probably had limited amount of mics on the kit yeah they're they were either not mic or they were just cat they're close enough where they captured the the toms that's what we would do a lot in the uk um we wouldn't have a hi-hat mic um rarely i ever recorded um drums with the hi-hat mic and the overheads were usually you know measured in phase with the snare and then whatever happened with the toms bleeding in that those were your tom mics yeah that's that's wild well i think it all came from that kind of zeppelin way of recording you know yep all right let's get to the moment of truth so here is the lead vocals if you like to gamble until you have your man when some do you think he's in the control room no i don't think he's in the control room i think he's he's he's overdubbed and he's uh he's probably has headphones on that are super loud in like a live room do you think maybe you took one one side off i don't know but when i recorded him his headphones were so freaking loud that you they were bla you could hear him always you could always hear them on his microphone amazing i'm sure that's the way it was i i think there's a section here where there's tons of bleed let's give it a listen the pleasure is to play make so difference what you're saying i don't say you agreed the only god i need the ace of spades the ace of spades headphones for sure yeah that's amazing you were talking about these extra guitar parts because it sounds like we've got stereo left and right guitars playing the whole time well here is an overdub here underneath the lead part [Music] throw it in with the with the main [Music] guitar [Music] i mean that's the essence of what rock and roll is all about there isn't it yeah that's great absolutely amazing it's going to throw in lemmy's base so cool yeah so what what kind of stories do you remember uh let me tell you about the making of this you know this this is a self-promotion story right here for me but there was a time when uh i was sitting with lemmy one day and i and he had asked me to do another record we just finished one he said hey i want to hire you for the next record in two years i'll see you in two years and i said you know what lamb i i feel like you don't really like me like you're always yelling at me we're fighting he goes no no no i love that in you and i go well i mean when you talk about producers you've worked with all tons of producers big big and small all through your career who are your favorite producers and he looked at me and he goes well there are two of them and i go come on give it to me guys because it was vic mail and you he goes you were my two favorite producers and he goes vic mail did ace of spades and you and you're working with me now and you get the next job and for me i felt i was like i felt a lot of pride in that because you think about how unique whatever vic did was so special in so many ways amazing that he captured something that everyone loves and everyone is so into and like we can only wish to be a part of a song like that in our lives even once and and vic was he was involved with the who and zeppelin and and other like just huge artists so it's like i have the most respect for vic and you listen to those tones and we solo them up and they're they're unique and they have style and uh lemmy had said to he'd commented one time that vic had a sense for uh for music and not for the technical engineering side where vic was willing to push the faders to 10 if it sounded right and didn't care uh if if it was distorting and that was that came from a time in the 80s and 70s where you weren't allowed to push things loud it just it was against the rules so i i i mean the product's there everyone listen everyone still listens to this song it's a great recording uh and it's a great song absolutely amazing yeah huge fan these toms almost sound overdubbed i mean they sound great yeah can we still stealing these for tom samples i think they were my my assumption is they were mic'd and they were just blended in they were bust to the same as the overheads that's my instinct you're probably right [Music] those snares are great yeah [Music] it's so fantastic to be able to listen to these elements like this yeah this is such an important record for me i didn't know what to make of it when i heard this i was just like this is amazing and then they played top of the pops so they were on top of the pops playing this like a regular thursday night tv show in the uk and this was i think one of the things that is is important to know is this was a mainstream huge single and the album was massive i think it came in at number four i mean at a time when people bought a lot of records i mean this was mainstream yeah a band like this now it was for hard rock it was very unique to have something like that on the charts jimmy miller had done overkill on bomber which is quite crazy because of course jimmy miller you think of for more like classic 70s rock the stones for instance i would never have put them down something quite as loud and obnoxious as the amazing motorhead well here's the thing i think back in those days especially early on you actually hired a studio and there was basically just engineers that worked at that studio so if you went to ramport or you went to one of these where the who recorder zeppelin you just got that guy who was in the room and you went to that studio because of the sound of that studio and that was gotten by that guy and some of those uh older engineers moved around to a couple studios but most of them locked down for a while and they became just i mean that was the infrastructure it wasn't like records now where you have producers that go to multiple studios and their homes and places like that it was like it was it was a different world and there was less of those people doing these recordings as well very few people cameron thanks ever so much for sharing this little musical uh journey with us warren uh you gotta look at a record like that and it is uh it's lasted for a long time and it that means it's gonna keep lasting and uh it's unique to be in involved with the people that created that and i know i'm not the guy that created it but i got to sit and hear stories and and and complaints and on everything and hear about the tones and and all sorts of chaos and the making of those records it's it's there was always a bit of chaos involved with motorhead and when you hear stories of making that record it wasn't an easy achievement and for it to sound as good as it does uh vic male did an amazing job as well as the band the band did a great job just doing their thing which is is very unique well thanks ever so much cameron for joining us i really appreciate it thank you warren please everybody leave any comments and questions below have a marvelous time recording and mixing we'll see you all again very soon [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 41,682

Rating: 4.9609122 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, Motorhead, Ace of Spades, Inside the Song, Mix Breakdown

Id: wfcHB9vkFMc

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020