If you want to know how important Phil \u201cPhilthy Animal\u201d Taylor was to the development of metal, go on to YouTube. There you\u2019ll find a clip from 2011 of \u201cthe big four\u201d \u2013 the four founders of thrash metal, Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth \u2013 jamming together, playing the song without which they would never have had the idea to play metal at extreme velocity: Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019s Overkill.<\/p>\n
James Hetfield of Metallica dedicates the song to Lemmy, but it wasn\u2019t Lemmy who made this song what those bands aspired to, it was Phil Taylor, who has died aged 61. Specifically, it was Taylor\u2019s double time kick-drum pattern. When the song was released in 1979 \u2013 it came out as a single on 10 March 1979, a fortnight before the album of the same name \u2013 it was a lightbulb moment for a score of young metalheads and musicians. Hey! We thought Communication Breakdown was fast \u2013 but that\u2019s nothing. This is playing fast.<\/p>\n
The double kick drum was what gave thrash its intensity, its relentlessness: it was what makes thrash sound like the end of the world, rather than merely a riot.<\/p>\n
\u201cMot\u00f6rhead was the first time I heard double bass done at that pattern,\u201d Slayer\u2019s drummer, Dave Lombardo, said in the Metal Evolution documentary on thrash. \u201cI had heard of other double bass drummers, but I don\u2019t think they did anything like that, at that tempo and that beat.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same programme, Metallica\u2019s Lars Ulrich said: \u201cThe drummer that introduced me to that double bass type of thing was Phil Taylor from Mot\u00f6rhead. When I first heard Overkill in early 1979, that was what blew my head off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemmy has always said he was just playing rock\u2019n\u2019roll. It was Taylor who took it over the top and made it thrash.<\/p>\n
The idea, like so many great musical inventions, came about by accident. Taylor had just got himself a new kit and was messing around on it. He had two bass drums, and started playing them together. His bandmates, Lemmy and \u201cFast Eddie\u201d Clarke, overheard him and realised here was something that could turn M\u00f6torhead from a fast, aggressive band into a group utterly unlike any that had come before. They wrote Overkill on the spot, according to Lemmy.<\/p>\n
Taylor himself seemed slightly baffled by what he had created. \u201cI only associate thrash with what your dad did to you when he took his belt off,\u201d he said. When Metallica supported Mot\u00f6rhead in 1982, Taylor recalled, he could barely recognise what kind of music they were playing, because it was so fast.<\/p>\n
Of course, the double-time drumming wasn\u2019t all there was to Taylor: he was an inventive and clever drummer, not just there to pummel things along while the two men in front of him did the fun stuff. On Ace of Spades, for example, Taylor lifts the song after the second chorus with a series of almost jazzy rimshots: you might think that song is all blood and thunder, but it\u2019s really not.<\/p>\n
He was also, by all accounts \u2013 including his own \u2013 what might euphemistically be called a \u201ccolourful character\u201d, from which one can infer that he knew no restraint. The story of how he joined Mot\u00f6rhead perhaps sums him up. He had met Lemmy, and told him he was a drummer. Lemmy, though, was more interested in getting a lift back to Rockfield Studios, where Mot\u00f6rhead had been rehearsing. Taylor had a car and obliged. The pair stayed up all night, and in the morning \u2013 stark naked \u2013 Taylor went outside. \u201cIt\u2019s all right,\u201d he bellowed to any curtain twitchers who might have been looking. \u201cI\u2019m on drugs!\u201d Back inside, Lemmy suggested that he\u2019d been having problems with the group\u2019s then-drummer, Lucas Fox, and suggested Taylor have a quick rattle round the kit to test his suitability.<\/p>\n
Hearing what Taylor did, the group\u2019s then guitarist, Larry Wallis, turned to Lemmy and uttered what might serve as Taylor\u2019s epitaph: \u201cWhat a horrible little cunt. He\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you want to know how important Phil \u201cPhilthy Animal\u201d Taylor was to the development of metal, go on to YouTube. There you\u2019ll find a clip from 2011 of \u201cthe big four\u201d \u2013 the four founders of thrash metal, Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth \u2013 jamming together, playing the song without which they would never …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[219,9,216],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unrecognized","tag-drumer","tag-lifestyle","tag-music"],"yoast_head":"\n