The primary aim for any metal band should be attracting audiences and building a fanbase. After all, you need people to come to your shows and buy your records. However, it’s also wise to have one eye on the future and think about ways to cement your legacy for years to come.
Motorhead offer an excellent model for others to follow in this regard. Even though they disbanded in 2015 after the passing of Lemmy Kilminster, the band’s legacy lives on in the mainstream. It’s likely that future generations will also be able to discover Motorhead thanks to this.
Iconic Songs That Live Long Into the Future
One of the best ways for any band to generate a legacy that lives on for decades is to come up with music that stands the test of time. It tends to be the hard-hitting anthems that connect fans across different generations, with Ace of Spades easily the most memorable in Motorhead’s catalog. That song lent itself perfectly to movie and television soundtracks, giving people plenty of ways to discover it. It also turned out to be prescient of Motorhead to release a song about gambling, as the industry was nowhere near what it is today when the track was released in 1980.
The online casino market is booming now, and that offering has become a cult sensation for people who enjoy these gambling sites. Today’s metal bands could potentially learn from that and think about writing songs about things that could one day be huge crazes in the mainstream. For example, tracks about robots or AI may be appreciated even more in a few decades from now when these things have a greater influence on the world.
Leveraging Different Methods to Reach a Wider Audience
A few decades ago, bands only had a few ways to reach fans and widen their audiences. When Motorhead were first starting out, their main approach was to tour as many places as possible to get their music in front of people. The internet led to countless new ways to connect with fans, though, and Motorhead were successful because they began to leverage many of the different options available to them. This continued to happen after Lemmy’s death as well.
Indeed, the Motorhead slot game at Betway was developed by NetEnt in 2016, a year after the singer’s death. The slot was made to commemorate the late frontman, who was known to enjoy slot machines above all other gambling games. Almost ten years later, the title is still one of the most-played music slots at online casinos, highlighting how it’s continuing to help Motorhead reach a wider audience.
Motorhead have been involved with various other crossovers over the years as well, giving more people the chance to hear their songs. The band created three entrance songs for the WWE wrestler Triple H, which he used over the course of his career. This allowed Motorhead to tap into the booming wrestling market and get their songs in front of people there. They also had some clever branding, such as the Snaggletooth logo. This highly recognizable image has appeared on clothing lines, and it helped create a strong brand identity for Motorhead.
One of the best ways to live on for many years and have people discover you generations into the future is by having a statue. There are a few Lemmy statues in different places around the world, giving people in different locations a way to discover them. For instance, there’s the statue at Hellfest in France, which hosts one of Europe’s biggest metal festivals every year. Then there’s the bronze statue at one of Lemmy’s favorite hangouts, the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. According to a piece in the BBC, a new Lemmy statue is set to be unveiled in Stoke-on-Trent – Lemmy’s birthplace – this year.
For any metal bands that want to enjoy the same success and build a legacy like Motorhead did, it would make sense to cover as many of the same bases as possible. On top of branching out into a myriad of different ventures to develop a distinctive brand, the band toured relentlessly during their playing days. They made it almost impossible for people to not discover them.