“I turned down Motörhead at first. I hadn’t earned my stripes yet”: The Life Less Ordinary of Mikkey Dee

In his post-Motörhead career, Mikkey Dee has been a far from idle man. Not content with having played drums with one great band, since 2016, the man born Micael Kiriakos Delaoglou in Gothenburg, Sweden, has kept the beat for German metal legends the Scorpions. As a man in demand, in order to free up the time in his diary for this commitment, he first had to step back from an arrangement with his friend Scott Gorham to join Thin Lizzy.

The band with which he bears closest association also takes up his time. In the interests of tending to the legacy of Motörhead, Mikkey helps curate studio and live albums - of which a forthcoming expanded version of the 2005 LP Kiss Of Death is the latest instalment – as well as keeping the group’s iconic image in the public eye in that most 21st Century of currencies, merchandise.

As well as this, this summer, the now 62-year-old has even managed to come full circle. Released last month, the eponymous debut album from the newly minted side-group Lex Legion sees the drummer reuniting with Andy La Rocque, Pete Blakk, and Hal Patino, with whom he played four decades ago with the Danish metal legend King Diamond. A persuasive slab of classic European metal, the LP is already garnering a constituency of keen admirers.

To find out about this, and more, Kerrang! spoke to Mikkey Dee during a day off from his summer tour of European arenas and stadiums with the Scorpions.

Without further ado, then, on the count of “one, two, three four…”, the great man talks us through his life...

“I’m from a drum family. I started when I was really young. My uncle started The Drifters in Sweden, who were doing really well from the ’50s, into the ’60s, then my older cousin played in rock bands, so I went with him to rehearsals. That’s when I was introduced to rock music, you know: The Stones, The Beatles, Zeppelin, Cream, and Johnny Winter. That’s what it was. But it was always drums for me.”

“I thought music would be a hobby for me because sports is what I was aiming at. As a [ice] hockey player, I was good enough to turn pro. But I’m short. When I grew up, the size of a person wasn’t as important as it is today… but as well as [the NHL] in North America, there’s also leagues in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. They’re all good leagues. I pursued sports when I was young, but then music took over. But it’s great to have the hockey on the side, as I do now. I still play old men’s hockey!”

“It was in the King Diamond days – 1984 and forward – that I started to get a decent salary for what we were doing. We had a blast. We were a great band, with great camaraderie, and we all pulled in the same direction. King was a really nice man, but by ’88 I thought that things were changing for the worst, which is why I left the band. It seemed to me that King took his own horse and rode away and left us a little bit. We were no longer like a fist, like a bunch of mates, and that pissed me off because it was not a great feeling. I started to feel like a background drummer, if you will. So I said, ‘Look, I’m not having that much fun, and I feel very narrow as a drummer, technically, so I’m going to depart’. So I did.”

“We were touring together, I believe it was ’86, and I actually got offered to join the band. [Drummer] Phil Taylor was in the band, and he did okay, but I don’t know what the deal was because Lemmy loved Taylor but I think he had a little bit of a problem with his drumming. They actually called me up after that tour and I respectfully turned them down. I didn’t think I was ready for a band like Motörhead. I hadn’t earned my stripes on my shoulders yet. I didn’t have enough fucking spunk, really.”

“After I respectfully turned Motörhead down, we maintained contact. In fact, Lemmy would send me postcards from all over the world, which were pretty funny. The postcards were just little notes that said things like, ‘Hey Mickey, we’re in Toronto’, and nothing else. Okay... Three weeks later, ‘Mickey, we just landed in Sydney’. Then, ‘I hope you’re doing great, we’re in Budapest’. So we just kept contact over the years. The tie between us was never severed.”

“Lemmy, really did want three front persons in the band. He walked out of interviews so many times where [the journalist didn’t] include the full band. He really stood up for all of us. We all know that Lemmy is Motörhead, there’s no doubt about that, but he wanted a band and he was really fair and so true to that. We all clicked. We all brought so much to the table. We were like a machine. When I walked offstage with Motörhead, and I stood in the shower, I thought, ‘Nobody in the world can do what we just did’. The best musicians in the world couldn’t even come close to what we did.”

“They were in a big fucking mess when I joined. I said, ‘We have to get tighter, we have to get better’. When Lemmy told me that they’d been playing Ace Of Spades forever, I said, ‘Yeah, but that song is supposed to sound good shitty. You’re playing it shitty shitty’. I just didn’t think they sounded good. They didn’t rehearse, they were lacking, they were lazy, it was a mess. And I take credit for [fixing] that.”

“Yes, I am the last surviving active member of that band. That is so sad that my brother in arms [guitarist] Phil Campbell passed away [this year] because we did a lot of good stuff for Motörhead since Lemmy passed. We were trying to promote Motörhead’s legacy, the branding, which is exactly what Lemmy wanted [us] to do. We released these Lost Tapes [live albums], and a lot of idiots out there think that’s a fucking money-grabbing thing. But it costs us fucking more than we make! We just want to continue the legend of the band. But I had Phil there with me doing this, and I now I don’t. I have to pull this big old fucking train on my own.”

“Lemmy used to say [about Scorpions], ‘Oh those fucking guys have been playing longer than me!’ But he had great respect for Scorpions because of the fact that they stuck to their guns and they’ve been around for ever and they’re really nice guys. I originally joined the band as a stand-in for James Kottak, because they were having problems with him and his health, and his attitude, I suppose. That was in March of 2016, but I realised pretty quick that this was going to be something more than a temporary position. And I’ve been there ever since. I told them that I was going to motorise their fucking band, and I’ve been doing my damnedest to do just that ever since.”

“The album is already a success story, I must say. There are so many charts that we’re exploding on. The four original King Diamond members from the ’87 into ’88 era, the four of us have stayed together as friends for the 40 years we haven’t played together. We’ve retained contact, we’ve hung out. It’s not like we called each other up after 39 years to make an album. But Pete [Blakk] come up with riffs that were so good that I said, ‘Let’s call Andy La Rocque and Hal Patino and do this’. And it’s so great that we are. You know, I just want to play music that is good and that makes me happy. I’m not really interested in material success or big houses or anything like that, I just want to do good work. And being able to make a great album with friends I played with decades ago is a great feeling.”

Motörhead's Kiss Of Death is released on July 3 via BMG. Lex Legion's self-titled album is out now via MNRK.

Read this next:

• King Diamond: “If there’s a hell and I go there, who cares? I’ve already faced it”
  
• Rock and metal stars tell their favourite stories about Lemmy
• 10 lesser known Motörhead songs that everyone needs to know