On Wednesday, August 2, surviving Motörhead members Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee brought the ashes of late frontman Lemmy Kilmister to Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival to be enshrined on the grounds.
“Lemmy loved playing Wacken; there was a long relationship as we played for the first time in 1997 and returned many, many times,” Dee said. “It is quite natural that he is returning now and has another place forever.”
“It’s great that Lemmy will be at Wacken forever among such good friends,” Campbell added. “And I’m glad there’s another home where people can raise a toast to him.”
You can watch a video recap of the ceremony streaming now on YouTube.
Dee and Campbell also stuck around to join headliner Doro‘s set for renditions of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and “Love Me Forever.”
Meanwhile, the Motörhead camp has taken issue with some articles on the Wacken ceremony reporting that Lemmy’s ashes were “scattered in the mud.”
A post to the Motörhead Instagram reads, “While amusing to us, we have to formally declare, in Lemmy’s language, that this is, indeed, a load of bollocks!”
Some of Lemmy’s ashes were previously enshrined in a giant statue built at France’s Hellfest.
Lemmy died in 2015 at age 70. While Motörhead effectively ended upon Lemmy’s passing, a number of archival pieces have been released over the past few years, the most recent being Live at Montreux Jazz Festival ’07, which dropped in June.
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