Everyone assumed the nickname came from playing at breakneck speed, but Eddie Clarke earned 'Fast' for something smaller: the ability to fire off a single note in a solo using a rapid tremolo technique. The guitarist, born Edward Allan Clarke in Twickenham, London on 5 October 1950, would take that one sharp trick and turn it into the engine of one of the loudest bands Britain ever produced.
From houseboat to Motörhead
Clarke was not a teenage prodigy chasing fame. He drifted through local groups and only became a professional musician in his early twenties, joining the blues-prog outfit Zeus. That path led nowhere fast, and by the mid-1970s he had temporarily walked away from music altogether, making a living refitting a houseboat on the Thames.
The houseboat is where the story turns. While working on it, Clarke met a drummer named Phil Taylor, and soon after he was introduced to Lemmy, the bassist and singer who had just been fired from the space-rock band Hawkwind. Lemmy was building a new group from scratch, and he needed a guitarist who could match his raw, no-frills attack.
The classic line-up and albums
What followed became the classic Motörhead line-up: Lemmy on bass and vocals, Clarke on guitar, and Taylor on drums. Together they recorded a run of albums—Motörhead, Overkill, Bomber, Ace of Spades, No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, and Iron Fist—that defined a new kind of heavy music, faster and dirtier than most metal of the era, with Clarke's bluesy leads cutting through the roar.
Clarke also sang lead on a few Motörhead tracks, trading verses with Lemmy on 'Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers' and taking 'Step Down' on his own. But by 1982 the cracks were showing. He disliked the sound of Iron Fist, and a planned collaboration with the punk band Plasmatics pushed him over the edge. On 14 May that year, at the Palladium in New York, he played his final show with the group that had made his name.
Fastway and a solo return
The departure hit him hard. Clarke later said he had imagined dying on stage with Motörhead, and leaving felt like a wound rather than a choice. But he did not stay down for long. He teamed up with UFO bassist Pete Way to form a new band, Fastway, and when a young singer named Dave King sent in a demo cassette, Clarke paid for King's train ticket to London and handed him the microphone.
Fastway signed to CBS Records and toured America as support for AC/DC, but the band splintered and reformed more than once. Years later, after health problems forced Clarke to slow down, he returned to his blues roots and made a solo album called It Ain't Over Till It's Over. Lemmy appeared on the record, writing and singing 'Laugh at the Devil' with his old guitarist.
The two friends shared a stage one last time in 2014, when Clarke joined Lemmy at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham to play 'Ace of Spades' together. Four years after that, on 10 January 2018, Eddie Clarke died in hospital while being treated for pneumonia. He was 67.
In 2004, Guitar World magazine had placed Clarke at number 43 on its list of the 100 greatest heavy metal guitarists of all time. The ranking is a small thing next to the riffs he left behind, but it points to something real: the man they called Fast was never about showing off. He was about making one note count.
The ranking is a small thing next to the riffs he left behind, but it points to something real: the man they called Fast was never about showing off.