Six songs for a film soundtrack, a drummer who walked out three years earlier suddenly back behind the kit, and a bandleader moonlighting as a character called Spider. The eighth Motörhead studio album arrived in the summer of 1987 — some sources pin it to August, others to September 5 — wrapped in more offstage drama than most groups pack into a decade. Titled simply Rock 'n' Roll, it landed on GWR Records and promptly became the final thing the band ever delivered to that label.
Legal disputes had been simmering for a while, and by the time the record hit shelves the relationship was already terminal. GWR would not see a ninth album from Lemmy Kilmister and company. The split was ugly enough that it effectively bookended an era: the last Motörhead LP on the imprint that had tried to give them a commercial reboot. Thirty-nine years later, the whole affair reads less like a standard label falling-out and more like a band shedding skin.
Twin guitars and a returning drummer
The sessions took shape at Master Rock Studios Redwood in London, but the mixing sprawled across three separate rooms — Britannia Row, Eden Studios, and The Roundhouse. That kind of logistical scatter usually signals either perfectionism or chaos, and with Motörhead in 1987 it was probably both. The lineup had swollen to four members for only the second time in the group's history, trading the classic power-trio format for twin-guitar firepower.
Phil Campbell and Würzel were both on six-string duty, thickening the attack considerably. But the real headline sat behind them: Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor was back. He'd quit in 1984, spent three years away, and returned just in time for the cameras to start rolling on a Peter Richardson comedy called Eat the Rich. The film, featuring actors from the Comic Strip troupe, gave Lemmy a small role as a character named Spider — and gave Motörhead a reason to write half a dozen new tracks.
Pete Gill's exit and the film cameo
Before Taylor could reclaim his stool, someone had to go. Pete Gill, who'd held the drum seat during Taylor's absence, was fired. Lemmy later wrote that the decision had been building for a long time. Gill questioned his authority, created tension, and — in Lemmy's phrasing — never stopped moaning. Campbell and Würzel shared the frustration. The moment Taylor became available, Gill's exit was a formality. The band filmed their Eat the Rich cameo right after the switch.
The title track to that film became a single in 1987, pressed on both 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl. The smaller disc carried 'Cradle to the Grave' on the flip side; the larger one added 'Just 'cos You Got the Power' to the package. All three songs later resurfaced as bonus material, but at the time they functioned as a rowdy calling card for a movie that satirised Thatcher-era excess with a cast of British comedy regulars.
Lemmy's buried hits and chart reality
On the full-length album, 'Eat the Rich' sits in the second slot, right after the opening title track. Lemmy considered 'Rock 'n' Roll' one of the strongest cuts on the record, alongside 'Dogs', 'Boogeyman', and 'Traitor'. He maintained there were other buried hits in the tracklist — songs the band played live for years — but conceded that audiences never quite latched onto them the way he'd hoped.
Chart performance backed up that lukewarm reception. Rock 'n' Roll stalled at number 34 in the UK, the lowest showing any Motörhead album had managed while still cracking the top 40. For a band that had spent a decade defining the sound of traditional heavy metal, it was a sobering number. The four-piece experiment, the film tie-in, the returning drummer — none of it translated into the kind of momentum that might have papered over the legal mess with GWR.
Rock 'n' Roll stalled at number 34 in the UK, the lowest showing any Motörhead album had managed while still cracking the top 40.
Taylor's second stint in the band didn't last. Within a few years he was out again, dismissed for reasons that echoed the very tensions his return was supposed to resolve. The quartet format stuck around longer than he did, but Rock 'n' Roll remains frozen in time as the moment Motörhead tried to expand their attack while their business foundations crumbled beneath them.
The 12-inch single of 'Eat the Rich' still circulates with those two extra tracks intact — a three-song artefact from the exact intersection where a film comedy, a lineup overhaul, and a dying label contract all collided in one London summer.