The first single of Lynda Kay’s new double album, Black & Gold, was just released, and it’s a never-before duet with non-other than the man and the legend, Lemmy of Motörhead.
“Big news!” Twitted Kay, “The first single on my new double album Black & Gold is […] the long-lost duet I wrote and recorded with my dear friend Lemmy of Motörhead called ‘The Mask’. I’m so proud of this song, hope you enjoy it too.”
The story of how “The Mask” came to be released more than three years after Lemmy’s death is quite amazing. Lemmy had started work on the song 30 years ago, back in 1979, but it was only finished in 2009, two decades later. It took another 10 years for it to be released, and was in fact thought to have been lost for most of that period.
Kay explained how all of this happened in an interview she gave to Gretsh, a guitar company, last year: “The way the duet came together was one night I stopped by The Rainbow on Sunset Blvd. to say hi to Lemmy after I’d just been recording at Billy Bob Thornton’s recording studio. When he asked ‘Where you been Lyn?’ and I told him I was at Billy Bob’s recording a duet, he said, ‘Well, when are we going to do a duet together?’ I said, ‘Tonight?’ then we laughed and talked about recording a song he’d started in the ’70s called ‘The Mask’. We finished writing the song, went into the studio, and recorded it together.”
While the song, a country duet, is very different from the metal music Lemmy is most famous for, it carries his signature, unmistakable charm. Give it a listen below:
