It was with great excitement that I faced a telephone interview with the legendary Ian "Lemmy" Kilminster, frontman for the great Motorhëad.

Since making its debut in 1975, the British heavy metal kings have been through every possible peril the rock 'n' roll life can offer - and survived. The band plays Monday in Cowboys. I wanted to ask Lemmy what his secret is, how he stays so mellow, how he keeps his wry sense of humour. He was too wry and mellow to really get into it, but he was a pretty good interview anyway.

"Can you call back in 10 minutes?" he says in a thick accent right off the boat from Manchester (though he's lived in California for nearly 10 years). "I'm just eating me Corn Flakes."

I call back in 10 minutes.

SUN: It's great to have you back to Edmonton. The last time you were here was 1988, I think. You opened for Alice Cooper. You remember?

LEMMY: "Sure. I remember most of my life, actually."

SUN: I hear you're writing a book.

LEMMY: "It's still in the works. It should be out this year."

SUN: Given all you've been through, was it hard to put all your experiences down on paper?

LEMMY: "No. I'm doing interviews with a girl. She writes them down and edits it to a readable form. I wouldn't do it myself. I get writer's cramp and I'm too lazy anyway."

SUN: Was there anything that surprised you as you were telling your stories?

LEMMY: "It's a shock to realize how long ago some of it was - and how many people you knew that are dead now."

SUN: What's your secret to survival on the road?

LEMMY: "Don't do heroin. That'll stop you going on the road all right. That'll stop you going everywhere. And read the fine print (laughs)."

SUN: I wanted to ask you about the heavy metal revival.

LEMMY: "Oh, is there one?"

SUN: There seems to have been at least three or four heavy metal revivals by now.

LEMMY: "It seems to me it's never really been away, because I've never stopped working. The audience doesn't know it's gone away. The media wanted something to write about - so they write about the death of heavy metal and then they can write about the revival of heavy metal."

SUN: Since you're a student of the Second World War, do you have an opinion about the war in the Balkans?

LEMMY: "It's not a war. It's a massacre, isn't it? I think it's just a waste of money and lives and good feeling. I've got a lot of friends who are being bombed now, people that we played to in Yugoslavia. They write us letters about it and it's f---ing disgusting. I think they should replace all that s--- with music. It seems to work better, because we were all friends before. And Slobodan Milosevic is a bastard, but I'm sure that given time it would work out. It's none of our business. It's not our country. We should f---ing get out of there."

SUN: But shouldn't Milosevic be stopped? Isn't he just like Hitler?

LEMMY: "He's nothing to do with Hitler. Hitler was dangerous. Slobodan Milosevic is never going to go outside of Serbia. He's only dangerous there ... Those people have been fighting over Kosovo for a thousand years. You're not going to stop them doing it by bombing them. It just accelerates the pace of killing Albanians as much as the Serbs are. We're bombing their country to save them (laughs). That's really, good, isn't it?"

SUN: On your collection of Nazi memorabilia - are you afraid people might get the wrong idea?

LEMMY: "I can't help it if people are f---ing stupid (laughs). If I collected train tickets, do they think I'm on trains all day? You just collect a thing because it's an interesting part of history and because they made the most stuff. The British didn't have ceremonial daggers. Neither did the Americans."

SUN: Um, well, getting back to music, what's your opinion of the music being made today?

LEMMY: "The pop is actually a lot better quality than it used to be. The problem is rap music, I think. It's all over the place and it seems to be low-quality stuff, mostly. I think there's two records out of 10 that are any good."

SUN: Two out of 10? That's not bad, is it?

LEMMY: "That's true, I suppose. It used to be that pop was always crap. It's improved a lot. Except for ABBA. They're internationally reviled for being good quality."

SUN: What do you think about this talk that artists like Marilyn Manson are a bad influence on kids, especially in light of the Colorado school massacre?

LEMMY: "Well, they can blame music for that if they want, but it wasn't the music. It's just background to them kids."

SUN: Do you still maintain that Motorhëad is the loudest and ugliest band in the world?

LEMMY: "Not any more. There's a lot of uglier people, now. And I like it loud, but I don't particularly care if we're the loudest or not."

SUN: Despite the "incident" in 1974 (being busted for dope at the Canadian border, which got him fired from the band Hawkwind), do you still enjoy playing in Canada?

LEMMY: "We've always had a good time until we go over the border. Just getting the visa is hard enough. I've been there about 93 times and they've suddenly decided that I'm not desirable. Why I suddenly became undesirable when I was desirable before I don't know. But it just got passed through. I'm coming."

With - if not the loudest or ugliest - what has to be the longest surviving heavy metal band of all time.