Finally, Hawkwind's latest. Take Me To Your Leader (Hawkwind ***) is a 10-strong slice of the space-rockers on familiar ground. Rampant beats, cascading keyboards and cosmic, half-chanted vocals abound, not least on the opening Spirit Of The Age, while the Celtic / world / jazz tones of Out Here We Are give way to more direct rocking on To Love A Machine. The dancey Take Me To Your Leader and Angela Android kick off big style, while Greenback Massacre wedges open the cupboard marked "Trippy", and Sunray is as luminescent as you'd think. Barkingly endearing.
Review of Robert Calvert: "Lucky Leif & The Longships" (BGO BGOLP2) (Record Collector, probably April 1987):
It's always good news when a genuinely rare and desirable album gets reissued, particularly when it comes in more or less its original packaging. "Lucky Leif And The Longships" has been spotted at around Ł30 on the collector's market for some time now, but thanks to BGO Records, thousands of Hawkwind fans too young to buy this 1975 release first time round can now obtain the record at a reasonable price.
This, his second solo excursion, was recorded in April 1975 and is one of Brian Eno's earliest productions. In fact, the ex-Roxy Music member has his style stamped throughout the album - not that that was such a bad thing. He was going through one of his most creative periods and fans of "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)" and "Another Green World" would do well to give this a listen.
In fact, the record has more in common with these Eno recordings than Calvert's work with Hawkwind, which, up to this point, was most notable on the double live LP, "Space Ritual". Many familiar names appear: Nik Turner, Michael Moorcock and Simon House from the mother band, and Pink Fairy, Paul Rudolph.
Collectors will be interested to know that BGO are also planning to reissue Calvert's debut solo album "Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters" in due course.
Coincidentally, this album has just been reissued again, in CD format, almost exactly 20 years later...on Eclectic Discs, this time...but I hear it still includes the wrong version of The Making Of Midgard, with the vocals lost in a welter of echo!
Yes, another. Dave Brock leads his ever-morphing band of followers into its 32nd year with this excellent collection of recently re-recorded classics and new material. "Brainstorm", cunningly wrapped about the raga "In Your Area", forms a unique and exceptional intro.
"The Nazca" is a haunting and strangely comforting song, rich in lyric and time, running into the calming instrumental "Prairie". "Luxotica" and "Diana Park" are also worth a mention, revealing the band's rich range of influences, and the music alternates between mellow wanderings and hardened rock, with the last half-dozen songs (mostly new and mellow), creating a reflective air.
-Robert Hogben
Dave Brock "Strange Trips And Pipe Dreams" (Griffin GCD-515-2, 1995, CD)
Dave Brock has been the one steady member of Hawkwind for nearly 30 years (the band's first album was released in 1971). In a band that has witnessed over 30 personnel changes over that time, Brock stands as a model of consistency and perseverance. Although Nik Turner has toured recently under the Hawkwind name, most associate the band's legacy with Brock's guitar, writing, and leadership. That said, it is hard to segregate Hawkwind's material with Brock's solo material: his material inevitably sounds like Hawkwind, for that's what Hawkwind essentially is.
Brock takes a couple of detours, however. The music is primarily instrumental and a tad more experimental than the metal-minded Hawkwind has been lately. Synthesizers and guitars play an equal role, and though the CD contains no lineup information, it is safe to say the Brock likely handles most if not all of the instrumental duties himself. The drum patterns sound mechanical and programmed (which is not a vice in the Hawkwind kind of sound), and Brock has proven himself able on all other instruments I can think of. This album is a nice addition to the Hawkwind legacy; it continues in the current sound of the band while highlighting the more atmospheric aspect (Read: Space Rock) of Hawkwind. A nice companion piece to Alan Davey (a more recent member of Hawkwind) and his newest album.
Last Sunday, Allentown's Sterling Hotel was transformed into an alternate universe populated by a variety of sonic species and their fans, all converging to hear the venerable English space-rock heroes Hawkwind.
Throughout the eight-hour, Rich Gensiak-emceed marathon, listeners came and went, hearing such acts as Philadelphia droners the Volcanologists and straight-ahead metalists Audiophyle. But when Hawkwind took the stage the room was filled to capacity, with older fans dressed in their Hawkwind, Motorhead, and Budgie tees as space sounds bounced around the room to the confusion of at least one younger, uninitiated listener.
Starting off energetically with 1978's ''Quark, Strangeness and Charm,'' Hawkwind had the audience singing along and moving. Guitarist-songwriter (and original member) Dave Brock looked aged but ebullient in his brightly colored shirt emblazoned with suns and amoebae as he played with evident pleasure. Hawkwind's stamina was formidable, jamming for two hours while dipping into an extensive catalog that included ''Orgone Accumulator'' and ''Right Stuff.'' Brock led a sing-along on the quirky music hall-like ''Cabinet Key.'' Hawkwind finished with ''Brainstorm,'' where each member of the band had his solo spot. After much clapping and hollering, Hawkwind encored with ''Welcome to the Future.'' Brock thanked the audience graciously, looking every bit like a grizzled captain who had just won a great battle.
-Rosemary Pratka
From 1973, Space Rock's finest hour, now with a DVD with 'visualiser' setting.
Bassist Lemmy described Hawkwind as a "black nightmare"; sax player Nik Turner called them a "peace and love band". To be honest, the supercharged, recorded-live Space Ritual points to the former. Indeed, if ever a record has sounded like it's gunning its engines to blast you into the eye of a black hole. it's this. Hard and speedy but long and repetitive, it's all tranced-out blues-Kraut riffing, roaring synths and sci-fi lyrics -resident poet Robert Calvert said the songs portrayed the dreams of sleeping spacemen- meaning the only rational course of action is to listen to it with strobes on and prepare for lift-off. Eight-odd minutes of Master Of The Universe cries out for a panic button and to this day could out-punk all-comers with its sheer mass and the relentless velocity of the Lemmy / Simon King rhythm section. A remastering job has ironed out some rough edges and bonus tracks like the 10-minute You Shouldn't Do That are always welcome. But the essence is unaltered. Something of a masterpiece? Without question.
-Ian Harrison
Excerpt from "Anarchists, Fire and Rock'n'Roll - Isle Of Wight Festival, August 1970" - Classic Rock, August 2007:
It was around this time that a van full of young hopefuls pulled up to the festival site. It was space rockers Hawkwind, who asked if they could play an impromptu set. The organisers said they could but outside the festival perimeter. Hawkwind leader Dave Brock remembers the day well: "What you've got to remember is the Isle of Wight has some lovely chalk cliffs. But the actual festival itself had all of these big corrugated sheets, like a prison camp. Outside the festival there was this big canvas city, at the centre of which was this gigantic inflatable tent. It had a generator running it, and the whole thing gradually inflated up. But then the generator ran out, and the tent started sinking down!
"Jimi Hendrix came in to see what was going on. Our saxophonist [Nik Turner] had his face half painted silver. I think in Hendrix's set Jimi dedicated one of the numbers to 'the guy down in the front with a silver face', which was Nik. Nik got around to talking to him and asked him if he'd have a jam with us. But by the time he got there the tent was deflating and people were all standing with their hands up trying to support it, it was about eight foot high."
Brock also recalls drugs being passed around freely: "We all took loads of LSD. Our lead guitarist, Huey [Huw Lloyd Langton], freaked out badly. He'd been spiked up on some orange juice. Unfortunately I had some as well. Suddenly I had this great rush come over me -1 was all tingly and peculiar. I had this lady with me, who took me away up to the cliff tops for a walk to try and calm me down."
And then there was the bedlam going on outside the gates. "There were a lot of anarchists," Brock says. "They were all saying that when the festival has made enough money, then the fences should be destroyed. They started ripping the fences down. People threatening each other and all that. There were about 10,000 people outside."
Still tripping, Hawkwind's Dave Brock recalls making it into the main area in hope of catching The Moody Blues' set: "After the fences came down, we actually went inside there to see some of the bands. I'd been given a Mandrax, a sleeping tablet to calm me down. I fell asleep, which was a bit of a shame, because I was quite looking forward to seeing them."
"Hawkwind - sci-fi banality" - Ohio Scene, March28-April 4, 1974:
Hawkwind is space psychedelia gone berserk.
Projected onto a full-stage screen back-drop are continually flowing images - alien landscapes, cosmic-type scenes, gloaming globs of color and space-o light plays. Day-glow painted and eldritch-shaped amps ring the stage, connected by tubes of white light and topped by sirens. A female dancer emerges from the wings to interpret the group's music with strobe-fluxed pantomimes. The music itself is right out of the golden days of psychedelia. Wheezing mellotron, synthesizer, and electrified sax space-o riffs overlay a thundering, monotonous rhythm.
It's great stuff, I suppose, for doped-up hippies. Hawkwind, just to prove it, twice made a show of passing among themselves what was undoubtedly a fake joint.
I thought the thing should have been on TV. Oh, Hawkwind's stage show is the most enveloping I've ever seen. The thoroughness of it is numbing. But, it's also the silliest thing I've ever had to watch on a stage. Behind all the folderol is mediocrity extended to its inane limits. It's worse than "Leave It To Beaver."
Hawkwind's genre, like that of fellow countrymen, Genesis, is comic-book science fiction. It's a genre that thrives on pseudo-dramatic banality. "I'm a soldier at the edge of time," intones some dork in an ape mask. Oh, boy. The stuff is just unbearably pretentious and stupid. Avoid it like you would Milton Berle. The concert, by the way, was dedicated to dead poet/local cult item D.A. Levy.
-Crocus Behemoth (who later became better known under his real name of David Thomas as the frontman of the initially very splendid Pere Ubu)
The Saga of Hawkwind. By Carol Clerk. Omnibus Press, 2006. 578 pp. paperback ISBN 1-84449-832-8
doi:10.1017/S0261143007003480
It has been said no-one in their right mind would listen to Hawkwind, and that most of those that do aren’t, this being attributable to the herbal, chemical and fungal adjuncts that seem particularly complementary to this most doughty of British rock acts. The fey country and blue-grass influences on the West Coast USA ‘psychedelic’ bands such as The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane made their supposedly cosmic mystique seem very misplaced to those growing up in the UK in the 1970s, with IRA terrorism, three-day weeks and the Oil Crisis. Hawkwind could never be called fey or wet; their thrashy, noisy, primitively synthesized and swashbuckling sound is best described as ‘bikerdelic’ – the listener being a pillion passenger holding onto a clutch-bar of an old Vincent motorbike driven by a Hell’s Angel reeking of patchouli and black hash accelerating into the Crab Nebula.
The science fiction and sword-and-sorcery fantasy elements of their imagery and lyrics are probably particularly responsible for Hawkwind being sneered at by the more fashionable cognoscenti who eschewed all things geek. This is a shame, for Hawkwind have been an enduring influence on non-mainstream popular music; the Can-like power of repetition and rhythm core to their music feeds into industrial and modern dance scenes; their use of synthesizer sweeps and sequences is prescient in comparison to the conventional virtuosity of the ‘keyboard wizards’ of the early 1970s; and their intense hard rock music appealed as much to harder-edged hippies in the early 1970s who became the most forward-thinking punks (e.g. John Lyndon, Steve Diggle, Mark E. Smith), as to suburban teenagers who attended concerts in school lab coats. Travelers, convoys, free festivals, raves and reverence for earth mysteries al grow out of Hawkwind’s diverse fans and ideologies. Hawkwind is heard in much Californian ‘stoner rock’, and their creatively lit performances show just what wonders can be created on a budget if you have a decent imagination and some enthusiasm – a principle that lives on in many live concerts and dance events today.
The Saga of Hawkwind is a near 600-page book that takes you through their ups and downs; the beginnings in a London squat scene at odds with the bourgoisification of the counter-culture back in 1970; the almost-stardom of the early 1970s; the polymorphous perversity (I did not realise that homosexuality and transvestism were also part of their history), the mental illness, rip-offs, bad drug reactions, deaths, collaboration and treachery, writs, band members almost succumbing in near-lethal festival toilets, and even that most ‘Spinal Tap’ of band difficulties – the front-man’s girlfriend becoming manager. Like all extended families and relationships between groups of people forced together longer than anticipated, there are ongoing resentments that are almost (but not quite) resolved, and friendships that rekindle, then flop over money and pique. The music truism that when ‘a band becomes a brand’, egos, practicalities and ideals are impossible to reconcile and something has to go, is also reiterated. The conflicts, waspish comments, and even occasional warmth and acceptance between Nik Turner, Dave Brock, Lemmy and Huw Lloyd-Langton saturate the later part of the book, but help one to understand how they ended up in the current position.
The dysfunctional dynamic is very much between the idealist (Nik Turner) and the realist (Dave Brock), with tricksters (Robert Calvert, later the very Hawkwind-named Ron Tree) being entertaining front men (as was Turner) but having too many personal difficulties to overcome (or die trying, in the case of Calvert) to generally do more than go along with the general direction of the band. Turner wanted to keep performances free where possible, and for Hawkwind to play benefits, even when it meant their losing money. Turner also caused dissent within the band with his tendency to inchoate anarchism, whether it be being stripped by fans in a homage to early middle-of-the-road entertainers PJ Proby and Johnny Ray (not performers one immediately considers in relation to Hawkwind), ill-focused saxophone playing, or self-righteousness regarding the radical roots of the band. For some, these qualities were the basis from which Hawkwind should operate, hippie-weirdness being an increasingly unique selling-point in increasingly corporate times. Others recognised the world changing, even if change is unwanted by some; Brock saw the free festival movement destroyed by heavy-handed Police action leading to ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ near Stonehenge in1985, ‘traveller’ rioting at an open-air concert in Brighton in 1990, and further anti-festival legislation and unpleasantness thereafter. A new strategy was required.
Brock’s solution has been to put on private ‘Hawkfests’ where several thousand people can have a peaceful and pleasant weekend with something like a free festival atmosphere, albeit costing money for the ticket to the event (but then drinkable water, tolerable sanitation, and power supplies also cost more than a collection is likely to provide). Brock, calumnied with the unfair criticism of his being ‘a breadhead’ when anyone running a viable band with negligible record sales has to have a firm eye on the costs and the books, is right to be cynical and indignant. Perhaps it is salient to note that the main protagonists in this argument are in their sixties, that the cashflow is modest, and that it is unlikely that either consulted financial planners regarding retirement costs. Depressing and hurtful financial rows and writs followed the Hawkestra concert. At this event, thirty-five ex-band members reunited to commemorate thirty years of the band, and some discovered the only thing they now had in common with the other group members was the band they were once in. This does not bode well for a fortieth anniversary reunion.
Perhaps the most important thing about this book for readers of this journal is the documenting of a time that has been masked by a simulacrum of the 1960s and 1970s that is already misrepresenting and selectively reporting events within living memory. In the UK, colour-supplement and style-magazine reports of those times now seem to avoid the ambiguities of the times for lazy reportage. This is because these articles are written from newspaper cuttings by twenty-something journalists who were not around to know how things really were; if they were to ask their parents, they may find not everyone in the late 1960s took LSD, wore a cloak and engaged in free love. The Disneyfication of the 1960s and early 1970s is pernicious, and such misrepresentation should be slain; hippies weren’t so into peace and love as is thought; punk and post-punk was by no means as original as assumed; and radical lifestyles making the personal political are not just a joke by Metropolitan media about rural dropouts. The Saga of Hawkwind is essential reading for any historian of alternative social movements and their link to music from the late 1960s.
-Vincent Egan, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
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