Metallica frontman James Hetfield gets tattoo made with late Motorhead star Lemmy’s ashes
The memory remains.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield has revealed a new tattoo in memory of late rocker Lemmy — using some of the Motörhead star’s ashes.
Hetfield, 60, showed off the tattoo — featuring Motörhead famous “Ace of Spades” logo — made with “black ink mixed with a pinch of his cremation ashes that were so graciously given to me.”
Fittingly, it was on the middle finger of his right hand, making it visible while pulling his idol’s favored pose of flipping the bird.
“So now, he is still able to fly the bird at the world,” wrote the Metallica star of his “salute to my friend and inspiration Mr. Lemmy Kilmister.”
“Without him, there would be NO Metallica,” he said of the rock pioneer, who was 70 when he died of cancer in 2016.
It was done by prominent tattoo artist Corey Miller, the owner of Six Feet Under in Upland, Calif. Who was featured in the reality show “LA Ink,” Hetflied said.
Motörhead became pioneers of heavy metal in the UK, releasing 22 albums, including “Ace of Spades” in 1980.
“There’s no doubt that without him, there wouldn’t be a Metallica,” Hetfield previously told Kerrang, The Times of London reports.
He said he had viewed Kilmister “as a statue of a man that was immortal” and after he died “it scared me… like ‘Where’s our captain now?’”
Hetfield went on to describe Kilmister as a “godfather” to Metallica.
“When he was around, it just felt like things were going to be OK,” he said.
“It made us really want to live and enjoy everything we have and soak up every scream from a fan, every sweat bead that flies off of us.
“All the stuff we get to do… it makes us feel super-blessed to still be doing it,” he said at the time.