And then there were none. With the death of “Fast” Eddie Clarke, from pneumonia, at the age of 67, all three of the members of Motörhead’s greatest lineup have gone. And to be in the greatest lineup of Motörhead was to be part of one of hard rock’s most uncompromising and important bands.

Though Lemmy came to personify Motörhead, without the presence of Clarke on guitar and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor on drums they wouldn’t have had half the impact. We know that, because the band that existed before they joined, with Lucas Fox on drums and Larry Wallis on guitar, sounded like a bubblegum group compared to the trio that lasted from 1976 until 1982.

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It was evident from their first single that Motörhead were not a conventional metal band. Though the sleeve depicted Taylor, Lemmy and Clarke looking like a biker gang on a day trip, and the A-side began with a snarl of a riff, it soon became apparent that the song was something different entirely. In fact, it was a Motown cover, of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Leaving Here, a song Lemmy had picked up from his time on the 60s beat scene, when it had been covered by the Birds, Ronnie Wood’s pre-fame band.

This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. Motörhead's 'Fast' Eddie Clarke dies aged 67 – video obituary

Lemmy always maintained that Motörhead were a rock’n’roll band, not a metal, punk or thrash band. That was probably a pointless protest, given metal’s embracing of Motörhead, but it was truest of that classic trio. Clarke wasn’t a widdly-woo guitarist: he could and did play absurdly fast, but rarely did he spew out dense clusters of single notes to prove his dexterity. Far more often his solos were compendiums of licks from the first age of rock’n’roll, distorted and bent to his own purposes, like some obscene transmogrification of James Burton, as if he had been given access to monstrous volume and told to do his worst.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anti-widdly-woo: Lemmy, Phil Taylor and Eddie Clarke. Photograph: Ilpo Musto/Rex/Shutterstock

Nor was his lead playing confined to his solos: those rock’n’roll licks popped up all over the place – in the verses of Ace of Spades, the riffs of Bomber, Stone Dead Forever and so many more. You could hear debts to other guitarists, too – the riff from the 1978 single No Class is a straight steal from ZZ Top’s Tush, and Motörhead also covered that band’s Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers. Nevertheless, Clarke wasn’t a thief: he was someone who knew how to synthesise styles to create something new, because Motörhead were like nothing that had come before. Rarely has any band contained four such distinct sounds, all of which combined into a whole that sounded utterly unforced: Lemmy’s polluted growl and bass-as-guitar, Taylor’s double-time kick drumming, and Clarke’s revision of the 50s.

You would never have guessed what was coming from Clarke’s prior musical endeavours. Before Motörhead, he had played for Curtis Knight in the progressive blues band Zeus, writing the music for the track The Confession, which offered no hint as to what Clarke might do if allowed to cut loose.

It took several years for him to find the right vehicle for his talents, and it proved to be the only suitable one. After he left Motörhead in May 1982 – for the marvellously dogmatic reason that he disapproved of them covering Stand By Your Man with Wendy O Williams of the Plasmatics – he formed his own band, Fastway. That was meant to be a collaboration with Pete Way of UFO, but Way left before a note had been recorded, which was perhaps for the best, given the pair’s enthusiastic approach to intoxication. Fastway proved to be a much less rambunctious affair than Clarke’s previous band. Whereas Motörhead had the advantage of finding themselves in the emergent punk and metal scene, Fastway were just another hard rock band seeking a foothold as that genre became commercially successful in the early 80s.

The result is that “Fast” Eddie Clarke will always be associated with just six years of his life. But it was in those years that he helped redefine the parameters of rock music. That’s not so bad, is it?