In August 1976, the unholy trinity of Motörhead—Lemmy, Fast Eddie Clarke, and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor—holed up inside Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Manticore Studio in Fulham. This was no slick album session.
Three wild-eyed outlaws were smashing out their first raw recordings as a unit, loud, loose, and lethal. They didn’t know it, but they were forging the molten DNA of what would become one of rock’s most untouchable legacies.
Nearly fifty years later, that rough-hewn rehearsal tape—long presumed lost in the fog of time and cigarette ash—has reappeared. Finally exhumed and lovingly restored, The Manticore Tapes land on June 27th to mark Motörhead’s 50th anniversary.
The songs captured here, scorched onto tape by Ronnie Lane’s mobile studio and his engineer Ron Faucus, would haunt their live sets through ’79. Now they rise again, crusty with age but no less ferocious.
The backstory includes a curious footnote: Frank Kennington, a WHO roadie-turned-manager, wrangled this infamous session, booking the band into Manticore’s cavernous former cinema. Half-myth, half-dump, it was the perfect lair for a band that didn’t yet know its future.
With restoration by longtime ally Cameron Webb and mastering by Andrew Alekel, the album pulses with the grime and glory of a band on the brink. Lemmy may be gone, but his gravel-raked growl echoes from these tracks like a ghost cracking open a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Available as a deluxe double LP set (plus 7-inch), single LP, CD, and digital, The Manticore Tapes is Motörhead’s time capsule, dug up and reloaded.
Ready to raise hell again.
Pre-order The Manticore Tapes here.
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