Staffordshire

Plans to erect a statue of Motörhead frontman Lemmy in the town where he was born have been approved by Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

The 2.2 metre statue will be erected in the market place of Burslem, the town where Lemmy – real name Ian Fraser Kilmister – was born before his family moved to Newcastle-under-Lyme. The majority of the singer’s childhood was spent in Wales before founding Motörhead in 1975.

The statue is estimated to cost about £50,000 and a fundraising campaign has been launched to raise the necessary funds. Once the project has obtained funding, the statue will be made from Staffordshire clay by local sculptor Andy Edwards, the same artist who created the world-famous Beatles statue on Liverpool’s waterfront.

There had been concern from police that the statue would attract “good-natured but potentially incident generating attention”, but Edwards agreed to increase the height of the plinth from 2.5m to 3m to get around this.

This won’t be the only statue of Lemmy to exist. In 2016, a year after the singer and bassist passed away from prostate cancer aged 70, a statue of him was erected at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles.