The band has been around for 13 years in various forms and has stayed true to the "underground" audiences it sprang from. On Thursday Hawkwind opened their 1982 tour at the Regal in Hitchin with a two night stint. In the middle of the tour Hawkwind come to St Albans City Hall (Saturday October 30).
If the show at the Regal was anything to go by it will be a mind blowing experience. The band, which plays heavy metal or acid rock music, creates a wall of sound with its insistent beat and myriad electronically produced sound effects. The audience becomes part of the space machine which forms the backdrop for the group's stage performance. The throbbing, pulsating beat so evident behind the electronic sound has the audience in ecstacy jumping up and down and flinging their heads from side to side.
Hawkwind came to prominence in 1972 with their million selling single Silver Machine, but had attracted a small fanatical audience in 1970 when their first album had been released. Another hit single has never been released but that was a conscious decision not to go down the popularity road, said founder member and driving force Dave Brock.
"We could have done it all after Silver Machine. It is a very tempting situation to become rich, make a load of money but become entirely corrupted by the music business," said Dave. He liked not being under a big record company's thumb because "It is very hard to find someone responsible - they don't say what you should be doing but when you try to insist on ideas it is very hard to get through the barrier, it's like an obstacle course."
"We are not obscured in a crowd of pound notes," he exclaimed. But surely Silver Machine must have made them all quite rich? "All the money we get we put back into our live show." After the hit single Hawkwind toured the country with a space science fiction fantasy called Space Ritual, which they recorded live. "We are not particularly rich. We are against ripping people off to make money. It is quite an insult to people's intelligence when these things go on."
For a band that's freely admitted to being "into" drugs their business ethics seem extraordinarily high. Indeed Hawkwind will still perform free of charge for certain ideals - the legislation of cannabis and and nuclear bomb demonstrations. But then they always have been a bit out of the ordinary as far as their behaviour goes. At the Bob Dylan topped Isle of Wight festival in 1970 Hawkwind, uninvited, played outside the gates as a protest at the high prices being asked of the audience. And Nik Turner gained some notoriety in the national media when he painted his face silver gaining an accolade from Jimi Hendrix who dedicated a song on his album to "the cat with the silver face."
1978 saw the beginning of the end and a new beginning for Hawkwind. Not long after Simon House left to join David Bowie on tour, the band split with Dave Brock forming Hawklords, which had little impact. A year later it too, was disbanded when Bob Calvert, Hawkwind's sci-fi mentor left having decided "he wanted to be a writer, not a rock star."
A new Hawkwind was formed in 1979. Since then more albums have been recorded with the changes in the band's membership being as often as ever. Although the band has a high turnover of musicians the style remains distinctly Hawkwind. Dave Brock insists the old sound has returned. "Now it sounds a lot more like it did a few years ago. For a few years it wavered and we lost it but now we're getting it back."
He recently turned down a ŁĽm deal because: "It is such a lot of arguments and bad scenes. It is very difficult to explain unless you have experienced it. It makes people very arrogant" he said. "It is very easy to get involved in booze and drugs along with the ego problem. You get hit by hangers-on who eat your grub. We could have loads of people in here now eating and drinking - it's like a course in over-indulgence."
All Hawkwind's "hangers-on" have long since been given the order of the boot. The band's line up now is Dave Brock (guitar, vocals, synthesizer), Bill Griffiths (drums), Harvey Bainbridge (keyboards, bass guitar), Huw Lloyd Langton (lead guitar), and Nik Turner (saxophone and vocals).
Their records have been dismissed with remarks like "even technical competence is at question or which are remarkably ill-conceived" by the Rolling Stones Record Guide. The guide also says of them: "concept overshadows music pretty drastically throughout the Hawkwind opus and whatever social importance the band might have been credited with has dissipated over the years." The band's dialogue with the music press is understandably a little strained. Ignored by the media, now the slagging has stopped, Hawkwind quite like the silence. "They don't bother to come to us. We got slagged off and then we discovered people were writing about our concerts who weren't there!" But they don't care any more. The band can regularly fill gigs around the country with its faithful following without the music press scribes. Even so, it is noticeable the new album Choose Your Masques has a relic of the past on it -yes, Silver Machine- although it wasn't included in the Regal set.
-Harry Roberts
He wasn't quite as happy with his surroundings when I spoke to him at his hotel in the Potteries earlier this week, but at least he was pleased with the way the band's five-week tour was shaping up. Hawkwind always lay on an extravagant show and that can cause problems in the early stages. "Often it is not until the third week of a tour that it all comes together," Dave admitted. "We've just got this one right but that's the trouble with touring - just when you've got it going it's over."
This year's offering -to promote the Choose Your Masques album- promises to be a rea1 spectacular. The stage set features banks of television screens all linked to a central computer and arranged into a V-shape. By using a huge painted screen as a backdrop they've created a stunning tunnel vision effect fronted by two girl dancers doing what the band describes as a "twenties-style mime show."
"It's a very unusual show," said Dave. "No-one has done anything quite like this before and we're pretty pleased with the result."
Hawkwind are rock's eternal tourists. Since 1970 when the band were formed they've been on the road almost non-stop. "We really enjoy it," said Dave. "We wouldn't do it if we didn't. We are one of the few bands that can sell out a big tour and the constant challenge keeps us on our toes. The travelling is the worst bit, but once we arrive and start soundchecks in the theatre it makes it all seem worthwhile. When we step out on stage for the show it's the peak of the day."
Dave is currently midway through recording a solo album, but he insisted that there are no plans for the band to go their separate ways. "We're off to America in April, and we're already thinking about ideas for our next tour" he said. "We're still enjoying it and as long as we do, we'll just keep on rocking."
-Bob Hains
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