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Listen to Big Mouth from Phil Campbell and The B*****d Sons' debut EP

Tucked away on a side street in Swansea city centre, sandwiched between a casino and a pub, The Scene Club appears a perfectly fitting venue to speak to a musician who was the erstwhile wingman of a rock hellraiser who both enjoyed a gamble and loved a drink.

Phil Campbell spent 32 years with the deafening juggernaut that was rock’s loudest and proudest, Motörhead, until the death aged 70, last December, of the band’s totemic frontman, the one-off rock colossus that was Lemmy Kilmister.

Inside the recently refurbished haven for Swansea’s music fans, a venue which with its elaborate drapes hanging from a curved glass ceiling and ornate lamps gives it the nostalgic air of a bohemian, late ‘60s nightclub, Campbell has just finished soundchecking with his new band Phil Campbell and the B*****d Sons.

This family venture is something of a unique concept in the gilded halls of rock ‘n’ roll consisting, as it does, of his three sons Tyla, Dane and Todd, alongside “adopted brother” vocalist Neil Starr, formerly of renowned Welsh rocks acts Dopamine and Attack! Attack!

For a man used to walking out on stage in front of thousands, playing a 300 capacity club as part of a whistlestop UK tour to promote the band’s self-titled debut EP, represents something of a return to his roots for the guitarist – and it’s clear he’s relishing the opportunity to play live once more.

“I was planning on semi-retiring after Motörhead finished but I can’t see that happening now,” he smiles. “We’re going to have some fun with this. Getting back on stage has been good for me.”

Formed out of the ashes of Phil Campbell’s All Starr Band, an occasional rock covers group that would perform in down time between Motörhead tours, the outfit has been rebranded and relaunched ready to write a new chapter in the eventful life story of the Welsh guitarist.

“The band was just fun for me and the boys,” he says. “Then Lem sadly passed away and they suggested we change the name as we were writing our own songs and I agreed.”

However, getting the approval of his wife of 35 years – the woman he refers to fondly as “the long-suffering Gaynor”- was another matter altogether.

“The boys said ‘dad we want to call the band Phil Campbell and The B*stard Sons. I said are you sure about this? I told my wife and she didn’t speak to me for three days. She wasn’t very happy at all.

“Just for the record, we are married, We’ve always been married and she is the mum of all the boys” he reassures me, with a grin etched wide on his face.

Sensing there would be huge interest in what the remaining members of Motörhead did next, the band announced their arrival in stunning fashion in Europe this summer,

“We dropped the bomb at Wacken Festival, the biggest rock festival on the planet,” says Campbell. “We were billed to play as The All Starr Band and we dropped the backdrop to reveal Phil Campbell and the B*****d Sons.”

Sat backstage, Campbell strikes a familiar figure in regulation cap and leather jacket. He confides that he has recently given up drinking and now “gets a buzz” from not doing it.

The 55-year-old looks in great shape, but he will readily admit he wears the emotional scars of what has been a traumatic 12 months.

After Lemmy’s passing in December last year the Treforest-born Welshman, who still lives in the area, says he felt bereft and in complete shock. He tells me he is still reeling from the blow.

“I knew Lem wasn’t very well,” says Campbell, who at the age of 12, got Lemmy’s autograph after he had played with his previous band Hawkwind in Cardiff. “I knew the day would come at some point, but it was a big shock it happened so quickly.

“He was playing better in the winter a few weeks before he passed away than he was in the summer. (when the band had to cancel several shows due to Lemmy’s ill health).

“I think then I started to romanticise about things, thinking was he really indestructable? You have to remember he was 37 when I joined the band and passed away when he was 70.”

When Lemmy’s health deteriorated over Christmas, the guitarist said he received a call at home in Wales from the band’s manager imploring him and Motörhead drummer Mikkey Dee to fly out to see the frontman at his home in LA.

“I had the call saying Lem was not very well at all and telling us to fly over. But then our manager called a day later saying that he had gone peacefully in his sleep. It was all pretty sudden.”

Campbell said that Lemmy’s death hit him hard but the support from Motörhead fans was incredible.

“The first three months personally I was in shock,” he says. “The outpouring of grief from everyone and the kind words and support. It was really something else.

“I knew Motörhead had great support all these years, but to the extent that it was just blew my mind.”

(Image: Publicity picture)

The musician, who had to miss Lemmy’s funeral due to his own ill health – something he says that he was “gutted” about – confides that when the shock wore off the grief kicked in.

“After the first three months I cried more. That was when Lem’s death started to sink in and I really began to miss him. The reality kicked in and it was hard to take.

“It wasn’t all about playing on stage with him,” he adds. “I’ll miss not being able to call him up. He was such a knowledgeable and funny guy.

“I spent more time with him than I did my wife and my family.”

I wondered if the subject of Lemmy’s health had ever been broached between the two of them and did Campbell ever contemplate life after Motörhead as the singer’s condition worsened?

“No. Never,” he says. “We just talked about the next gig, next song, next album. I wasn’t thinking of life after Lem. I never have done. I just cared about Lem’s health.

“Lem wanted to carry on and wanted to play. Although he was playing great on the last European tour he wasn’t looking great and he was getting thin, but he performed brilliantly. It was all he wanted. He wanted to play.

“He didn’t want to sit around the house waiting to die. He wanted to go out on a high.”

Campbell remembers one particular conversation from three or four years ago that seemingly came out of the blue and has stuck with him ever since. It seems pertinent to repeat it now and perhaps perfectly sums up the respect the two musicians had for each other.

“I remember one time he called me in my hotel room and said, ‘Phil come to my room now.’ I thought, what have I done wrong now? I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He replied, ‘Sit down, have a drink’. I was expecting him to say, ‘I listened back to last night’s tape and you played like s***, but he said, ‘I just wanted you to know never once in all this time have I regretted having you in the band. You’re a good man, Phil’.”

It’s at this point that Campbell’s voice wavers and you can see he is understandably finding it difficult to talk about a man with whom he shared several lifetimes of experiences with.

Campbell says that it was a particularly British sense of humour that bound he and Lemmy together and was the key to his longevity with the band. When I suggest that 32 years in a rock group is some achievement, but to serve 32 years in Motörhead is quite an astonishing feat, Campbell interjects with, “it’s like 64 years for anyone else”.

He says: “I dealt with it by using humour – you wouldn’t believe the pranks we got up to just to see us through the day. All we had to do was appear to be sober for an hour and a half on stage – the rest of the day was ours.

“After 10 years you’ve had every conversation you’re ever going to have with anyone – ‘do you like golf’? ‘Yes, I told you that last week and the week before and the week before that!’

“Because of that you fly into the stratosphere of surreal behaviour and occasionally things get a bit ugly. I’ve only been in jail a few times,” he laughs. “I was never charged – just being stupid.

“Drunk and disorderly were you?” I ask. “I can’t remember,” he grins.

Life on the road with Phil Campbell and the B*****d Sons appears to be a more sedate affair for the guitarist, who on a couple of occasion asks me to repeat questions, pointing out that he “is a quarter deaf”, unsurprising given his more than three decades service in the rock outfit who once held the record for the world’s loudest band.

“I can’t crack the whip too much because they’re my kids, but they all know their place and I know my place, I’ve got to behave with them. I can’t get up to any Motortomfoolery anymore. I’m too old,” he laughs. “I’ve done it all over the years.”

A Phil Campbell and the B*****d Sons Beer Pong table set up backstage suggests that a certain modicum of rock ‘n’ roll mischief has been passed down from father to sons, although the musician is quick to point out that this band is not him passing on the rock ‘n’ roll flame to his offspring.

“It’s not me passing the mantle or anything like that it’s a new creation – and it feels like a new birth for everyone.”

Campbell says that he feels lucky that all three boys gravitated to music at a young age.

“When they were little – they would just go for it naturally. I’ve got pictures of Todd (the eldest) when he was two and a half with a cheap plastic guitar. He would parade around the house shouting (famous Motörhead song) Killed By Death!

“With families it’s not a given that your offpsring will pick it up. I know many fantastic musicians like Brian May who is good friend of mine. Brian said to me ‘you are a lucky guy Phil because my children never got the musical bug’.

“It was never forced on them, but they appreciated it. When I would play pubs for fun they’d come along and I’d put them on the drums for one song. Everyone would clap at a four year old playing the drums.”

Unsurprisingly, the proud dad is his sons’ biggest fan.

“Since they were young they’ve always been incredible musicians and in many ways their talent has far surpassed mine. People say ‘you’re only saying that Phil because you’re their dad’, but if you’ve seen what I’ve seen it’s the truth. They blow me away. They play stuff I could never ever play. They’re all in fantastic bands themselves Straight Lines, The People The Poet and The Mojo Sinners.

“For years they’ve been my favourite bands, not because they’re my kids but because of the great music they’ve created.

“They travel half way to Europe, a few days in the van and sometimes there would be 40 people there. It must be tough for them but they’ve stuck at it. So it’s really nice for them that we can show their talent off and play to 10,000 at these festival. They deserve it

“It‘s good for me as well. I never thought when I was a kid that I would be playing to 1000 people. I’ve got a Grammy on my mantelpeice. If somebody had told me that years ago I would have told them to f*** off.”

Campbell admits he’s never wanted to move away from his Pontypridd home - the place that is his anchor, while also readily agreeing that he’s lived concurrent lives - one on the road with the world’s most notorious rock band, the other a live removed from rock ‘n’ roll wrapped in the comfort blanket of his valleys’ base.

Although when I ask him how the old his boys are, his answer reveals the lengths by which rock ‘n’ roll has dictated his life.

“I was 22 when I had Todd, they’re all four years apart and they were all born in October,” he says.

Was that an accident or scheduling, I ask. He breaks into a broad grin before answering, “scheduling of course!”

“I’ve been lucky to have a great family,” he adds. “My wife deserves a medal the size of a frying pan.

“Although she used to prefer it when I was on the road because I used to drive her crazy when I was at home. She enjoyed coming to some shows now and then but she wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll chick. She’s a mother and a wife. She’s fantastic.”

Throughout our conversation Campbell is understandably as effusive about the man who was his other constant - his brother-in-arms and his best friend, the man known simply to him as Lem.

On tour Phil Campbell and the B*stard Sons will play a selection of Motörhead songs - some well-known, some not so, but he’s determined that every song will serve as a fitting memory to his friend.

When asked to sum up the appeal of a musician who was instantly recognisable to anyone on the planet, the venue’s air-conditioning appears to kick in of its own volition – and Campbell quips, “That’s probably Lem now.”

“He was unique,” the guitarist continues. “He cared about his music and his fans. He made sure they weren’t ripped off. He was an all-round fantastic good guy.

“When he got up on stage he rocked like an 18-year-old, even though it must have been paining him inside, he still did it. It was unbelievable.”

Before we wrap up, Campbell offers up a story that he says defines Lemmy – as cast iron rock legend and arch comedian.

“In the last few years of the band we had our own dressing rooms. So if anyone wanted a sleep or to read or whatever, they had their own space,” he says.

“I remember one time coming out of my dressing room, walking down the corridor towards Lem’s dressing room and hearing a commotion. I looked up and Lem is stood there throwing apples and oranges down the corridor shouting ‘less f****** vitamin C in my f****** room’. That summed him up perfectly.

“I’ve been blessed for the life I had with him. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Phil Campbell and the B*stard Sons release their self-titled debut five-track EP on November 18 via Motörhead Music. They play a special New Year’s Eve show at The Muni in Pontypridd on December 31. Tickets from www.seetickets.com

Find out more at: www.facebook.com/PhilCampbellATBS