Eight months before Motörhead’s classic lineup recorded their self-titled debut, the trio found its sea legs in the studio at an August 1976 session, where they recorded early versions of half of Motörhead’s track list. Now, a year shy of the recordings’ 50th anniversary, the session will come out as The Manticore Tapes on June 27.
The release’s first single is a ragged rendition of the band’s eponymous song, recorded, of course, at a U.K. studio called Manticore. You can hear vocalist-bassist Lemmy Kilmister play boogie-woogie low end, which sounds more like Fifties R&B than heavy metal, while guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clark plays out a Hendrix-y blues-rock solo. You can practically hear Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor sweat all over his snare, and of course Kilmister’s sandpapery wheeze still sounds like he needs a sip of water. It’s all a bit more punk rock than the manic, hyperspeed, metal-tinged rendition on the Motörhead album, where Kilmister sounds even hoarser.
The sessions document Motörhead coming into their own after the departures of guitarist Larry Wallis and drummer Lucas Fox in March 1976; that lineup, with Taylor drumming variously, recorded an LP, On Parole, that was shelved until 1976. Many of the songs from The Manticore Sessions are on both On Parole (which sounds more like a glam-rock band like Sweet than Motörhead) and the self-titled album, proving these to show a pivotal moment in the band’s career. The band was rehearsing at Manticore — Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s headquarters — at the time; they recorded their live set using the Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane’s mobile studio with engineer Ron Faucus. The lineup of that trio would last through 1982 and record the band’s most beloved albums, including Overkill and Ace of Spades.
The release will come out on CD and vinyl. A special edition will come out as a double-vinyl set, with one disc containing The Manticore Tapes and the other a live album called, Live: Blitzkrieg on Birmingham ’77; that version will also contain a seven-inch, Live at Barbarella’s Birmingham ’77. The live records add two more renditions of “Motörhead.”
“I wrote [‘Motörhead’] when I was in Hawkwind,” Kilmister told Rolling Stone in 2015. “We were in the studio doing the last album that I was on, Warrior on the Edge of Time. We started playing and it caught on and we put it on the B side of ‘Kings of Speed.’ The song was about speed and it was an issue to Hawkwind, and that’s why I got fired. I never asked them what they thought of Motörhead after that. I didn’t care what they thought of it. I don’t think of ‘Motörhead’ as a defining song, though. That song’s long gone for me now.”
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The Manticore Tapes track list:
1. “Intro” (Instrumental)
2. “Leavin’ Here”
3. “Vibrator”
4. “Help Keep Us on the Road”
5. “The Watcher”
6. “Motörhead”
7. “Witch Doctor” (Instrumental)
8. “Iron Horse/Born to Lose” (Instrumental)
9. “Leavin’ Here” (Alternate Take)
10. “Vibrator” (Alternate Take)
11. “The Watcher” (Alternate Take)