History of the song "Ace of Spades"- Motorhead (1980).

Among the most popular Motorhead compositions is the legendary "Ace of Spades", placed in the album with the same title of the 80th year. The thirty-year career of the band that followed brought the music world a lot of good hits, but this one - what is called, for centuries. It is often considered the anthem of the band.

And today we turn to the history of the track's creation.

The essence of the song and an excursion into the history of its creation

Lemmy Kilmister said that the birth of the song began with a mundane cargo van: he was shaking in it and banging against the sides, because they were rushing at some unthinkable speed. In his biography, the musician recalled:

"I applied the metaphor of gambling. Mostly from card games and craps. I prefer machines with games, but it's strange to write about spinning pictures and suddenly generous reels. To be fair, almost the entire song is about poker: "I know you're definitely watching me. Watch and weep. Dead man's hand again," referring to the cards dealt to Bill Hickok at the time of his murder".

Indeed, there are quite a few associations and allusions in the song that refer to card games. "Dead Man's Hand" - a pair of black aces with eights of the same colour. According to the story passed down by word of mouth, the famous Bill Hickok, a Wild West character, was shot dead while playing poker after receiving these cards.

In addition, in English-speaking culture, the Ace of Spades has a rather dark symbolism. It embodies death, and it is associated with American servicemen. When there was a war in Vietnam, they used to place the ace of spades on the bodies of dead enemies to sow panic in the enemy troops. Bicycle, a giant in the production of playing cards, organised mass deliveries to the battlefield of special decks, which included only the Ace of Spades. Something similar then happened during the Iraq war. This is a kind of "black mark of death".

Release and successes

However, we are talking about Motorhead and their hit "Ace of Spades", which was released as a single at the end of October 1980 before the release of the album. This was despite the fact that the song had already been played in public before that. In the early autumn of the same year, Lemmy performed it on BBC radio and then on BBC television.

The track was well received by the band's fans, and music critics also gave it some favourable reviews. The track "Chart Ace of Spades" reached the 15th position in UK Singles.

https://youtu.be/eBIa0o36pPo

"To be honest, we recognise that 'Ace of Spades' is a very high quality composition, but I'm weary of it. For more than twenty years, when people talk and think about our band, they mean 'Ace of Spades'. You know, we didn't become fossils when we made that record. We've had some good releases over the years. But the fans love it, and that's what they want to hear, that's why we play it every time we play it in public - so as not to disappoint anyone. But if it were up to me, I would have finished with her a long time ago.

According to "Q" magazine, this composition is worthy of the 27th position among the hundred greatest guitar songs. The VH1 TV channel placed it at the 10th position in the ranking of the best hard rock songs in the history of music.

That's interesting!

• Lemmy once had a tattoo on his left arm in the shape of an ace of spades.
• The song includes a reference to the "eye of the snake" (referring to a pair of units in craps), and uses the terminology of video slots, blackjack and poker. With the authors' affinity for gambling, this is not surprising.
• There are some renditions where the text has been reworked and the lines regarding the joker have been removed.