Editorial: When is it Time to Quit?
In 2013, Lemmy began suffering noticeable health problems, forcing Motörhead to cancel shows and cut their Wacken set short. Immediately, the question arose as to whether or not Lemmy should continue playing with the band if doing so was a hazard to his health (we even made it our Question Of The Week). On the one hand, we want Lemmy to live a full and happy life… but maybe Lemmy doesn’t give a fuck about that. Maybe spending his final days surrounded by friends and family with a porch and a vegetable garden sounds like Hell on earth to Lemmy. Maybe he’d rather die with his boots on.
Metal is tough to play. It’s something that metalheads take pride in, something that separated us from punk rock — metalheads could play their fucking instruments, and took the time to learn how to play them in ways no one else could. But that shit wears you down, and might not always be as possible as one might want it to be. Hands stiffen, backs ache, voices grow husky and hoarse.
The idea of dying in battle is romantic, because it means you went down fighting, like a real tough motherfucker, but when you’re the guy with a bullet in his side, waiting to bleed out, it’s probably not as fun. So at what point do you put down your weapon? At what point should you wave to the crowd, thank them for all the years, and head home?
What about when the music starts to suck? It’s such a cliché — the chubby rock star who comes out and forces the fans to listen to a handful of boring new tracks before giving them the classics they want. But at what point do you listen to your new album and decide that the well’s run dry, that you’re plagiarizing your previous material? Do you even notice that? Can you? When do you look at your own work and say, ‘Nah, this blows, we’re done?’ When do you realize that anything you make now will never live up to what you made before? Is it when record sales drop? Is it when you see yourself on a Where Are They Now special?
Judging one’s career by sales and trends has never been helped anyone. Whenever musicians lament the death of the music industry, I want to remind them that it’s that industry that wouldn’t deign to spit on Dio in the mid-to-late ’90s. Listening to the madness of the crowds surely isn’t the way to go, because people, especially fans of whatever music is popular, are inherently fickle and stupid. Metal knows about those rises and falls as much as any other genre — selling out the Garden in ‘87, barely able to fill Toad’s Place in ’97, and bringing down the house at Yankee Stadium in ’07. And it’s easy to say, Stick it out! Stay true! It’ll all come around! But those years in between are un-fucking-comfortable. No one’s going to eat your lunch if you don’t want to suffer through a decade. But then what? Open a dealership? Become a songwriter?
The older I get, the more comfort matters to me. These days, I buy the combat boots that look less militant but don’t eat away at my heels. The idea of playing thirty shows while crammed in a van with a bunch of other dudes makes me shudder; a bong rip, a scotch, and a horror movie on the couch are all I really want in this world. I still write, every day, because it’s my passion, but writing is a comfortable job done from a chair. If your passion is melting faces onstage and writing vicious riffs, you’ve got to find yourself at war with that desire for comfort. There must be a moment when headbanging your ass off onstage hurts — it fucking hurts — and you wonder if maybe this is it. But then again, the real metal musicians are probably made of sterner stuff than I am.
It’s different for every person, I’m sure. Some guys were born to go down swinging. But we’re all only human, and part of being human is the wear and tear of life. Maybe it is surrender to admit that you don’t want to work anymore, or that you can’t do it well and therefore shouldn’t. But if that’s the case, then we’re all guilty of weakness. Sometimes, you just need to walk away. Knowing when, well, that’s the hard part.
What do you think? When is it time to quit? Let us know in the comments section.
