Newsbites: Hall of Fame lost Lemmy’s jacket

Pissed off: Lemmy

Motorhead icon Lemmy insists the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame owe him a jacket before he’ll even talk about visiting the Cleveland, Ohio, museum again. He says: “I lent them my jacket and a pair of boots as an exhibit and I didn’t get the jacket back. It was original Ace of Spades tour jacket from 1980. I’m pretty pissed off about that – somebody’s wearing it. I know that.” He wasn’t impressed the first time he took a look round the venue: “It was one of the biggest wastes of space I’ve ever seen. The biggest room there is a gift shop, isn’t it?” [Rolling Stone]

Cheap Trick drummer Bun E Carlos – who insists he’s still in the band even though he doesn’t tour with or talk to them – has set the record straight about how the band got its name. A long-standing rumour suggests Rick Neilsen saw Slade playing live and said: “They used every cheap trick in the book.” But Carlos reveals: “We were sitting around in the garage where we rehearsed and we agreed we needed a name. We didn’t want to be like Yes and all the bands with big capes and lasers and all that crap, so we came up with the word ‘cheap.’ Cheap this, cheap that. I think Rick said, ‘Cheap Trick,’ and everyone just went with it. For the next two to three years all we heard from record companies was, ‘You guys have got to change your name – it’s the worst name in the world!’” [Legendary Rock Interviews]

Ian Hunter will tour the UK in March next year:
13/03: Shoreham Ropetackle Arts Centre
15/03: Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
16/03: Dartford Mick Jagger Centre
17/03: Stamford Corn Exchange
19/03: Sale Waterside Arts Centre
20/03: Sheffield Memorial Hall
22/03: Kinross Backstage at the Green Hotel
23/03: Kinross Backstage at the Green Hotel
26/06: Teeshan ARC
27/03: Leeds City Varieties Music Hall
29/03: Stony Stratford Stables

Joey Tempest says Europe have considered dropping classic track The Final Countdown from festival sets. He reports: “It’s still explosive and an important part of our set. We have toyed with leaving it out, to make a statement and see how it feels, but it’s yet to happen. We perform it acoustically, very differently, and that could be a way forward.” [Rock Zone]

Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante will sit out the band’s entire current European tour. He’s replaced by former Testament and Slayer sticksman Jon Dette. Guitarist Scott Ian says Benante is “home taking care of personal stuff.” Earlier this year he and his wife were arrested following a violent incident which sent him to hospital with a head injury.

Adam Bomb will tour the UK in December:
01/12: Nottingham Rescue Rooms
02/12: Grimsby Yardbirds
03/12: Oxford Jericho
04/12: Pickering Rose
05/12: Ackworth Boot & Shoe
06/12: Leeds Wharf Chambers

Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger has revealed his band think it’s funny to pay their crew to injure themselves. He laughs: “We’ve had a lot of fun getting them to do silly, stupid things that could possibly cause them to hurt themselves in some way. In Germany years ago there was an old fan with a metal blade and we paid the drum tech about 600 deutschmarks [£200] to stick his johnson in the fan. I can still hear the blade slowly sputtering to a stop and this blood-curdling scream. It was fantastic.” [Men's Health]