Lars Ulrich of Metallica has seen Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead as metal music idol. Lemmy passed away from aggressive cancer at the age of 70. The diagnosis came two days before his death, but Lemmy was also dealing with diabetes at the same time as the aggressive cancer.

Following the death announcement of Lemmy, Ulrich sent a eulogy to Rolling Stone that was a span of more than twenty thousand words. It shows the way in which Ulrich was inspired to be like Lemmy and Motörhead, he wanted to rock out and do it with style and he wanted to be apart of a band that would do a lot for their fans. It shows how as a sixteen year old kid, he became obsessed with the idea of playing a heavy metal band as a career move that would happen when Metallica took him in under the wing and he has been drumming with them since. He talks about his first Motörhead concert, which then they opened for Ozzy Osbourne, the former member of Black Sabbath after he went solo and left the band. Lemmy made everything possible for the young drummer. Both him and his friend Richard Burch often hung out with the band and the close pairing between Ulrich and Lemmy emerged. “He was like a godfather, a parental figure,” said Ulrich.

“When I say that Lemmy is the primary reason that I’m in a band to this day, and that Metallica exists because of him, it’s not some cheap exaggeration. It really was,” said Urlich in a small captured paragraph of his eulogy to Rolling Stone, “I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday who knows Motörhead’s manager very well and he told me that things were not well and maybe I should consider going down to L.A. to see him and pay my respects. The cancer was very aggressive, and it was end stage and there probably wasn’t a lot of time left.”

Lemmy will be missed by many musicians other than Ulrich. There are bands who besides Metallica, often found Lemmy Kilmister and Motörhead as inspirations to why they were created. For some people like Alice Cooper and other musicians, Lemmy was often seen as the grandfather of heavy metal. But the only thing that everyone can agree on, is that Motörhead won’t be the same without him.