This piece appeared in the June 1985 issue of Record Collector (Hawkwind's first appearance therein) and while providing a decent overview of the band, including a few little-known facts, was very much aimed at the record collectors of the day. It's severely dated now, of course, but I've included the discography they printed as the text refers to it, and while the prices are out of date they do show the relative value of different albums and singles.
It is sixteen years since Hawkwind first emerged from the seething hippy community of London's Ladbroke Grove, a community which also numbered the Pink Fairies, the Deviants and many other, lesser lights amongst its population. We shall be looking at some of these other bands in a later Record Collector piece; Hawkwind, however, by virtue of their sheer longevity, merit a piece to themselves. We will also be looking at some of the spin-offs from the parent band; occasional vocalist/poet Bob Calvert, for instance, who has put his name to some of the most collectable albums of the last decade, and Nik Turner, Hawkwind's sax player, whose Sphinx and Inner City Unit outfits are rapidly appreciating in value. Motorhead, the other truly important band to have been spawned by Hawkwind, are absent from this article, but they will be appearing in the follow-up article.
The first Hawkwind line-up grew out of a chance meeting, in Holland, between Dave Brock and Mick Slattery of Famous Cure, and Nik Turner, then touring with the Mobile Freakout. Of the two bands, Famous Cure were the most renowned, having notched up a mini-hit in the Netherlands with a single, details of which have long been forgotten. Perhaps one of our readers can fill in any information about this, or any other Famous Cure singles? There is certainly a market for them; a year or so back, an advertisement appeared in the classified section of one of the music papers, offering £30 for Famous Cure records.
Famous Cure broke up around the end of 1968 and Brock was reduced to busking for a living. He and Slattery were planning a new band, however, and linked up with Turner, electronics wizard Dik Mik (then about to embark on a pilgrimage to India), bassist John Harrison and drummer Terry Ollis, to form Group X.
The band debuted with a ten-minute performance at the All Saints Hall in London's Notting Hill. They were immediately offered a management contract and, by October, were signed to the Liberty label. They had changed their name to Hawkwind Zoo by this time, and in 1982 the Flicknife label released a single, "Hurry On Sundown", rumoured to have been culled from the band's original demo tape for the company. If so, this single represents Mick Slattery's sole recording with the band. He quit shortly after signing to Liberty and was last heard of living as a tinker in Ireland. He was replaced by Huw Lloyd Langton, and in this form the band -who had now abbreviated their name to plain Hawkwind- went into the studio to record their eponymous debut album.
Produced by one-time Pretty Thing Dick Taylor, the album was preceded by a single, "Hurry On Sundown". A different version to the one released by Flicknife, "Sundown" sold very poorly and could now cost anything up to £30 in Mint condition. The album is not much easier to locate in its original pressing, but has been reissued on several occasions since, most recently as a picture disc which is, by all accounts, rapidly becoming almost as scarce as the 1970 pressing. The 1975 reissue, on the budget-priced Sunset label, is perhaps the easiest to find; certainly it is this release which makes the most appearances in my local second-hand stores. One track from "Hawkwind" appeared on the 1970 "Good Clean Fun" sampler; this itself is fairly collectable today. The band's next recording session was not to take place for another year. During this interval, Langton and John Harrison both quit; so did Harrison's replacement, Thom Crimble. Despite the turbulence, Hawkwind were rapidly establishing themselves as a major live attraction, chiefly through their penchant for playing free festivals, community benefits and similar events. When the Isle of Wight staged a massive festival in 1970, Hawkwind played at the equally legendary Canvas City free show, set up just on the boundaries of the festival.
Engineer
In May 1971, Dik Mik quit. He was to return within a few months, but in the meantime was replaced by the band's sound engineer, Del Dettmar. Former Amon Duul bassist Dave Anderson was also recruited, and the band's second album, "In Search of Space", was recorded by this line-up. Intricately packaged, the album was released in October 1971. It included a twenty-four page booklet, "Hawklog", overflowing with the sort of hippy mysticism for which the band were becoming renowned; this inclusion is, apparently, still fairly common although it would seem unlikely that copies are still being printed to accompany the album. Many Hawkwind aficionados regard "In Search of Space" as the band's first true album. It was also their first chart success, reaching No. 18.
In June, Hawkwind performed at the Glastonbury Fayre festival - organised by their former bassist, Thom Crimble. He actually played with the band on this occasion; Dave Brock was ill at the time. The band also introduced three characters whose names were to become synonymous with Hawkwind's; South African-born poet Bob Calvert, science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, and dancer Stacia. All three appeared on stage with the band.
The festival was commemorated with a triple album, released the following year and selling for just £3.99. Today it is worth more than ten times that amount in Mint condition. The package included a poster sleeve, a specially printed plastic sleeve, a cardboard pyramid and a free booklet (pyramids, of course, are quite popular giveaways with albums; Utopia's debut also featured one, with instructions to keep a razor blade inside it. The blade, it was said, would never go blunt.)
In addition to all these "gifts", the Glastonbury album also featured some of the decade's most collectable bands spread over its six sides of vinyl. David Bowie contributed a version of "The Supermen", recorded at the "Ziggy Stardust" sessions, Marc Bolan gave over his acoustic demo for "Sunken Rags", Pete Townshend did the same with "Classifieds", Crimble's own band, Skin Alley, offered one track and so did the Pink Fairies ("Uncle Harry's Last Freak Out") and Gong their "Glad Stoned Buried Fielding Flash & Fresh Fest Footprints In My Memory" remains one of the group's very best recorded efforts. It was a quite magical album and anybody with any interest in this period of music should disregard the current £40 selling price and invest in a copy now.
Hawkwind's contribution to the album was a lengthy improvisation called "Silver Machine", which segued into the shorter "Welcome To The Future". Both songs had been recorded at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, in February 1972. Two other songs from that performance, "Master Of The Universe" and "Born To Go", appeared on another sampler, UA's "Greasy Trucker's Party". This set is now worth around £15.
Terry Ollis had quit shortly before the Roundhouse gig; his replacement was Simon King, an old friend of the band's latest bassist, Lemmy. The new Hawkwind line-up, then, read King, Lemmy, Brock, Stacia, Dik Mik, Del Dettmar, Nik Turner and Bob Calvert, with Michael Moorcock frequently making guest appearances in concert.
Favourite
"Silver Machine" had been written by Calvert and Brock and rapidly became a live favourite - so much so that, in the early spring of 1972, the band decided to release it as a single. Rather than re-record the song they simply remixed the Roundhouse version, shortening it by about five minutes in the process. Calvert's original vocal was also replaced, by Lemmy. The single was backed by "Seven By Seven" and went on to become the band's biggest hit to date, reaching No. 3 in the summer.
"Seven By Seven" exists in two different versions; both appear on the flip of "Silver Machine". The first, and by far the most common, is on copies bearing the matrix numbers 1U or 3U. The scarcer second version is matrix 2U (these numbers, by the way, can be found etched into the vinyl on the single's run-off groove). There is also a very rare picture sleeve for the single; copies of this can boost the record's value up to around £6.
The band had yet to release their third album, but interest from the hit carried over to "In Search Of Space", especially on the continent. In Spain, the album was re-pressed to feature the song. UA resisted the temptation to follow suit in the U.K., and it was to be another four years before "Silver Machine" found its way onto album, on the Dave Brock compiled/remixed "Roadhawks" set.
In November, "Doremi-Fasol-Latido", Hawkwind's next album, was released. It rocketed to No. 14 in the chart, despite the absence of "Silver Machine", and is still reasonably easy to find today. Original pressings, by the way, featured a free poster, designed by the late Barney Bubbles.
Planning
Bubbles, an immensely talented artist/designer, supplied much of Hawkwind's early artwork; he was also integral in the planning of their next venture, the massive "Space Ritual" tour.
This took in thirty dates and saw the band augmented by three dancers, four lighting engineers and a team of set designers. Bubbles was responsible for an outline story for the entire concept, and the "Space Ritual" has often been described as one of the most coherent, and successful, ventures of its kind ever undertaken. Two of the dates were recorded and, early in 1973, a double live album, "Space Ritual", was released. It featured most of the show; absent were "You Shouldn't Do That", a version of which later appeared on the "Roadhawks" set, and sections of "Time We Left" and the awesome "Brainstorm", cut to enable the songs to fit onto the record without any loss of sound quality.
"Space Ritual" was one of the first double live albums ever released, and today, fourteen years and countless similar releases later, it still stands as one of the best. The recording quality might not be up to present-day standards, but the rawness and occasionally muffled sound only add to the atmosphere. The album also spawned one of the rarest singles of the entire decade. A one-sided promo, featuring Michael Moorcock's "Sonic Attack" poem, was pressed in a very limited edition. Copies were bagged in a cloth sleeve, and today fetch up to £90 in Mint condition. But beware of imitations! With such a high valuation it was obvious that "Sonic Attack" would come to the attention of less scrupulous bootleggers, although the very scarcity of the record has thus far ensured that very few counterfeiters can have actually seen the record which they are duplicating. The copy I saw (in France) had a label design identical to the standard UA logo and was pressed on conventional, thin vinyl. The genuine article was pressed on thick, acetate-type plastic, with the song title printed in large lettering.
Quality
Dik Mik quit in August, 1973, the same month as Hawkwind released the long-awaited follow-up to "Silver Machine". "Urban Guerilla" was another very high quality song and would, no doubt, have proved as big a hit as its predecessor had its release not coincided with an outbreak of terrorism in London. UA hastily withdrew all copies of the single from sale, cutting short its rise up the chart at No. 39 and, once again, it wasn't until "Roadhawks" was released that the song made another appearance. Its B-side, "Brainbox Pollution", remains unavailable and the original single is today valued at about £8.
In November, while Hawkwind embarked on their first American tour, Bob Calvert recorded his first solo album, "Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters". This was a song cycle dealing with the ill-fated American Starfighter jets which, in the hands of the German air force, crashed so many times that they became known as The Widowmaker - a name, coincidentally, also selected by former Hawkwind guitarist Huw Lloyd Langton for his own latest band which was then just getting off the ground (before crash-landing again, just two years later).
Royalties
Calvert intended for the royalties from both album and a coinciding tour to go to relatives of the dead pilots. Unfortunately, the tour fell through at the last minute and the album sold in only the tiniest quantities - with the result that it is today very hard to find. A Mint copy, complete with the lyric sheet stapled inside the gatefold cover, would cost around £12. A single, coupling alternate takes of two of the album tracks, "Catch A Falling Starfighter" and "Ejection", is worth almost as much. Collectors might also be interested to know that the album was released with two different label designs: a standard UA print and, later, a blue label with a Starfighter logo.
In February, Hawkwind set off on their second US tour. Simon House had, by now, replaced Del Dettmar on keyboards, although the latter did continue working with the band for the duration of the tour; he retired behind the mixing desk and played synthesizer from there. He finally quit the band at the end of the tour, emigrating to Canada.
House's first recording with Hawkwind was the "Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)", an edited version of a track from their forthcoming fifth album. It was not a hit, despite the incentive of another non-album B-side, the live "It's So Easy", recorded on the band's January 1974 British tour.
"The Hall Of The Mountain Grill", titled after a working man's cafe in the Portobello Road, was released the following month, just before the band made their third trip to America. True to form, they suffered another personnel change on the eve of the trip; Simon King broke some ribs playing football. Alan Powell, formerly of Stackridge, Vinegar Joe and Chicken Shack, stepped into the breach as a purely temporary measure. He ended up staying in the band for 21/2 years, eighteen months of which had him playing alongside the now recuperated Simon King.
March, 1975, saw the release of another Hawkwind single, "Kings Of Speed", a taster for their next" album. It was backed by "Motorhead", a song written by Lemmy - his last composition for the band. During the May 1975 American tour, customs officials discovered a small amount of speed in his luggage. They mistook it for cocaine, thus elevating Lemmy's offence from a misdemeanour to a felony. The bassist spent five days in a cell and, on getting released, found Hawkwind had sacked him, rather than jeopardise further American trips - this one had already collapsed after Louisiana [sic - actually Indiana] police impounded all the band's equipment for nonpayment of debts.
One-time Pink Fairy, Paul Rudolph, who had been flown out to replace Lemmy, was accepted as the band's next full-time bassist; he was not to record as a member of the band for another year, however. In the meantime, "Warrior On The Edge Of Time", recorded with Lemmy, became the band's sixth album.
1975 also saw the release of Bob Calvert's second album, "Lucky Lief And The Longships", an Eno-produced set which is today worth around £10. Around the same time, Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix (in reality, members of Hawkwind past and present) released "New World's Fair", an album of rock and poetry which did nothing in the commercial marketplace at the time, but is now valued at around £15.
Stacia left to get married in August, 1975; at the same time, Bob Calvert rejoined. This line-up of the band recorded "Astounding Sounds Amazing Music", Hawkwind's first album for their new label, Charisma. With it came a single, "Kerb Crawler" (backed by the non-album instrumental, "Honky Dorky"). The single came in a great picture sleeve and is now worth around £4. A second single, featuring two out-takes from the LP sessions ("Back On The Streets" and "The Dream Of Isis") followed in the new year, its release coinciding with the latest upheavals in the band's line-up. Paul Rudolph and Alan Powell, having instigated the sacking of founder member Nik Turner, were themselves fired (they later resurfaced in the quite abysmal Kicks). In their place came bassist Adrian Shaw and, down to what seemed a fairly stable five-piece, Hawkwind released what is one of their finest albums to date; "Quark, Strangeness And Charm". It was followed by a single, an edited version of the title track which is now worth around £4. Fans of Marc Bolan may recall seeing the band perform this song on the "Marc" TV show.
Hawkwind toured Britain in the autumn, with Paul Hayles replacing the errant Simon House (he had run off to join David Bowie's world touring party). They followed this with an American tour, came home and promptly broke up. Brock returned to his home in Barnstaple, where he began piecing together another band, using members of the Sonic Assassins - a local group he had been playing with while Hawkwind were off the road - and ex-members of Hawkwind. In the event, only Bob Calvert followed him into this new venture, joining Brock, drummer Martin Griffin, bassist Harvey Bainbridge and former Pilot/String Driven Thing guitarist [keyboardist] Steve Swindells in The Hawklords.
In October 1978, "Twenty Five Years On", the Hawklords' debut album, was released. With it came a single; "Psi Power"/ "Death Trap"; the latter a track once intended for the next Hawkwind LP and recorded by the final line-up of that band. Another track from those aborted sessions, "PXR 5" (the album's projected title) was released as the flip of Hawklords' next single, "25 Years". This was released in 7" and 12" form, the latter featuring a bonus cut in "Only The Dead Dreams Of The Cold War Kid", taken from "25 Years On". The NME review for the single, incidentally, read "25 Years? Have they really been going that long?"
Neither Charisma single charted, but in October, UA notched up a minor hit with their third reissue of "Silver Machine", released, as were its predecessors, in a picture sleeve.
Abandoned
In May 1979, the abandoned "PXR 5" project was finally released, and immediately ran into problems. The sleeve design showed a domestic plug, wired up incorrectly, and after much protest from various watchdog committees, Charisma were forced to obscure the offending wires with a sticker. There is, at present, very little difference in value between these two sleeves, although obviously the Hawkwind collector would want the original, unsullied design. And a word of warning; the sticker is not removable.
Calvert left the band, seemingly irrevocably, in January 1979. He was followed by Martin Griffin; in his place came Simon King, returning to the fold after his latest project, Quasar, had collapsed. Another Quasar member, the ubiquitous Huw Lloyd Langton, followed him into the band (who had now reverted to Hawkwind) a short while later. In the meantime, the band signed to Bronze and released a new single; "Shot Down In The Night". This was a Steve Swindells song, taken from his own solo album, "Fresh Blood". This album is very hard to find, as is an earlier (1974) Swindells effort, "Messages".
Patchy
"Live 1979", Hawkwind's next album, was a patchy affair, notable chiefly for the bastardisation of some of the band's best loved numbers. However, "Levitation", their next studio set, was a genuine return to form. It saw the band augmented by former Gong keyboard player Tim Blake (replacing Simon King). A definite highlight of the Hawkwind live show at this time was Blake's solo spot, where he played highlights from his own solo albums, "New Jerusalem" and "Crystal Machine".
A second Bronze single, "Who's Gonna Win The War" failed to eclipse its predecessor's number 59 chart placing, and the band quit the label late in 1980, now pledging their troth to RCA. Around the same time, the independent Flicknife label began the admirable policy of reissuing some of the band's legendary back-catalogue, usually in previously unavailable form. The aforementioned Hawkwind Zoo single opened the account, followed by an alternate take of Lemmy's "Motorhead" swansong backed by the unheard "Valium 10". Other out-takes and live recordings have followed, most notably "Friends And Relations" featuring one side of Hawkwind recorded live in 1977/78, and a side of sundry related tracks by the likes of Nik Turner on the flip. "Text Of Festival", released in 1983, dates from live shows around the beginning of the Seventies, while "Independent Days" brings together many of the Flicknife singles onto one very handy compilation.
Most of the Flicknife material is still fairly easy to locate; the RCA releases, too, remain common. The only real problem would seem to lie in finding the booklet which came free with the abysmal "Church Of Hawkwind" set, from 1982. Of more interest to the collector, at present anyway, is Bob Calvert's third solo set. "Hype" was a concept set, dealing with the rise of an imaginary rock star and was accompanied by a brilliant novel of the same name (but not in the same package, unfortunately). The disc completed a triumvirate of sorely under-rated, but eminently collectable, albums by Calvert. A Flicknife single, "Lord Of The Hornets", is similarly worth looking out for, while both the "Hype" novel and an earlier tome, "Centigrade 232" (a collection of poetry) are essential purchases for the collector, despite the £8 price tag which both volumes attract. Also worth finding is "The Time Of The Hawklords", a science fiction story by Michael Butterworth, which portrays Hawkwind as fantasy heroes.
Another tangent worth investigating is that followed by Hawkwind founder member, Nik Turner. He has now returned to the fold, but during his seven years apart from the group, he released a handful of albums, mostly on various independent labels. His first post-Hawkwind venture, Sphynx, was particularly interesting: dressed up as Egyptian mummies and playing from within their own pyramid-shaped stage, the band included the likes of ex-Nice guitarist Davey O'List and Gong's Mike Howlett. The later Inner City Unit headlined a 'love-in' at the Roundhouse and issued one single, the hilarious "Bones Of Elvis".
The discography included here [see top of page] cannot cover every offshoot release; these will be included in the Motorhead feature, mentioned earlier. But it does give the collector some idea of the vast amount of vinyl he would need to collect before he could boast a complete collection of Hawkwind's releases.
-Dave Thomas
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