Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor, who has died aged 61, was the former drummer of Motörhead, the unsavoury-looking heavy metal band which established a reputation for playing, and living, louder, faster and harder than anyone else.
The band was formed in 1975 by its lead singer and guitarist Lemmy (real name Ian Kilmister), after he had been kicked out of the LSD-addled psychedelic band Hawkwind owing to pharmaceutical differences (Lemmy preferred amphetamines).
The original line-up featured guitarist Larry Wallis and drummer Lucas Fox, but within a year Lemmy had replaced them with “Fast” Eddie Clarke and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor – “Philthy” for short.
Philthy and Lemmy had hit it off immediately when the drummer gave Lemmy a lift to the recording studios where the original Motörhead line-up were rehearsing their first album. They stayed up all night, and in the morning Taylor staggered outside, stark naked, declaring to anyone who might be watching: “It’s all right, I’m on drugs!” “What a horrible little ----,” observed Larry Wallis. “He’s perfect.”
Motorhead in Port Vale in 1981: (l-r) Lemmy Kilmister, 'Fast' Eddie Clarke and 'Philthy' Taylor
Originally christened “Bastard”, they changed their name to Motörhead (after an anthem in praise of amphetamines that Lemmy had written for Hawkwind), having being persuaded that the original name would prevent them ever appearing on Top of the Pops. The name also served as an impetus for the band’s characteristic brand of amped–up “aggro-music”.
Described as “the worst band in the world”, Motörhead recorded an album for United Artists, only for the label to deem it unreleasable (until they became successful, at which point it was rushed out as On Parole). They were set to split, and planned to record a live album at their farewell show, but Ted Carroll of the independent label Chiswick Records failed to turn up with the recording equipment.
In compensation, Carroll offered them a couple of days’ recording time, during which Motörhead completed their eponymous debut album – issued in 1977. The album did well enough to persuade the band to stay together, but it would be their next LP, Overkill (1979), that marked their real breakthrough – its title track was later described by one rock journalist as “one of the most important tracks in metal history, and arguably rock history.” By 1981, when their ferocious live album, No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, went straight to the top of the album charts, Motörhead were established as the most popular group in Britain.
Motorhead in 1982: (l-r), 'Philthy Taylor', 'Fast' Eddie Clarke and Lemmy
Motörhead came to be cited in the Guinness Book of Records as the loudest band ever, and the group were so proud of their ear-splitting reputation and rock’n’roll excess (they were said to have inspired the movie Spinal Tap) that Lemmy once claimed: “If we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die.”
Taylor provided the key element in the band’s head-banging, supercharged, distorted rhythmic sound, his frenetic double bass-drum barrage helping to define a new genre: “thrash” metal (although Taylor himself claimed that he only associated “thrash” with “what your dad did to you when he took his belt off”). His performance on the cymbals was described by one reviewer as “like a million ants with taps on their feet running across a metal picnic table”.
'Philthy' Taylor on stage in 1981
Taylor’s nickname aptly summed up the band’s ethos and he himself was notorious for never having a wash while on tour. He was also one of the few Motörhead alumni able to match Lemmy’s heroic intake of intoxicating substances.
In his autobiography, White Line Fever (2002), Lemmy recalled an occasion in 1980 when, after a gig in Belfast, Taylor had been drunkenly playing “Who can lift each other highest” with a large Irishman on a stone staircase.
“The Irishman lifted Phil up the highest and at the same time took a step back to admire his work – into thin air,” leaving Taylor with a broken neck. When the drummer emerged from hospital wearing a brace, Lemmy recalled, “I cut a bow tie out of black gaffer tape and stuck it on the front so that he looked like a Spanish waiter with a goitre.”
“Phil’s done a lot of stuff besides that,” Lemmy went on to observe, in a masterly piece of understatement. “We were going to do a book called Hospitals I have Known Across Europe by Phil Taylor – a guide to European emergency rooms.” One US tour was dubbed the “Motörhead casualty tour” after Taylor badly bruised his ribs falling over on the tour bus while drunk.
'Philthy' Taylor strikes a characteristic pose
Motörhead went through a number of changes in line-up over the years. The guitarist Eddie Clarke left the group in 1982 during a tour of the US in protest at Lemmy’s version of Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man, a collaboration with the punk-metal singer Wendy O Williams, which he felt had betrayed Motörhead’s core principles.
Taylor resigned in 1984 but, typically, could not remember why, recalling that “there weren’t any fights or problems like that”. (Lemmy later made a pointed comment about a heavy metal band Taylor was going to form “which was going to be, but wasn’t, much better than Motörhead”).
His place was taken by Pete Gill, but, as Lemmy later admitted, though at least as good a drummer as Taylor, Gill “didn’t fit in image-wise, from the personality point of view”. There was relief all round when Taylor returned to the band in 1987. “The Animal’s back in the zoo,” declared Lemmy.
Taylor remained with Motörhead for a further five years, but was fired in 1992 during the recording of the March or Die album after failing to learn the drum tracks on the song I Ain’t No Nice Guy, and after several warnings that he needed to “get his act together”.
Philip Taylor was born on September 21 1954, at Hasland near Chesterfield. After replacing Motörhead’s first drummer, Lucas Fox in 1975, it was he who introduced the band to “Fast” Eddie Clarke, having worked with him while painting a houseboat.
After leaving Motörhead for the first time in 1984, Taylor joined Brian Robertson (who had played guitar briefly with Motörhead in the early 1980s but was deemed “not dirty enough” by devotees), to form the band Operator. In 1986, he joined the Frankie Miller Band and toured Europe, Scandinavia and America, but as he recalled, “I didn’t get along too well with Frankie on the road, so I left.”
Altogether Taylor recorded 10 studio albums with Motörhead and after leaving the band for a second time, from 2005 to 2008 he played and recorded in a group called the Web of Spider with Iggy Pop on guitar. He played drums sporadically for other groups, including Mick Farren and The Deviants.
Phil Taylor made his last public appearance in November last year when he, Lemmy and Clarke, the classic Motörhead line-up, reunited for a gig at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. In the event Taylor came on stage, waved to the crowd and left.
Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor, born September 21 1954, died November 11 2015
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