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Hawkwind

Further down this page you'll find:

Essential albums
Links
A link to my page on collaborations with Tubilah Dog and Smartpils plus the Steve Swindells album Fresh Blood (including some audio clips).

Hawkwind are the godfathers of space rock, drawing inspiration from the sci-fi/fantasy genre and incorporating the poetry and lyrics of both Bob Calvert and Mike Moorcock. Their style has varied enormously over the years due to new influences, an ever-changing cast of players and the versatility of the one constant in the whole universe that is Hawkwind, namely Dave Brock.

Hawkwind's musical journey has taken them through the states of hippy trippy (1970), solid rock mixed with synths and poems (1972-5), funky (1976), punky (1977-8), synth rock (1979-80), heavy metal (1981), chaotic (1982-83), reminiscent (1984), epic storytelling (1985), classic riffs (1987-1991), ambient (1992-4), Roswell in the style of the late great Bob Calvert (1995-6) and reggae mixed with thrash (1997-1999). The 30th anniversary (Hawkestra) in October 2000 provoked a reunion with many former members and set the trend for the milennium: Simon House has been a most welcome regular; Huw-Lloyd Langton has supported (solo), then guested, then rejoined; Tim Blake has graced us with his presence; and Mike Moorcock has appeared by telephone from his home in the USA.

There have been several classic lineups which are probably best exemplified by the list of essential albums which appears below. Since 1981 I have seen them live over 50 times and have enjoyed every occasion, with a good number of them being stunners .... my only regret is not having managed to get to any earlier gigs.

The current lineup is one of the finest of their history and has just finished a short UK tour that is ranked by many serious fans as being one of the best ever (Dec 2005).

• Dave Brock - guitar, keyboards, vocals
• Richard Chadwick - drums, sequencers, vocals
• Alan Davey - bass, keyboards, vocals
• Jason Stuart (ex Capt Rizz) - keyboards

with regular guest:

• Mr Dibs (bass/vocals for Spacehead/Krel and long-term/leading crew member) - poems, vocals and bass for the short HW set at the Take Me To Your Leader launch party.

Other recent guests have included:

• Matthew Wright - vocals on Spirit of the Age on at least 2 occasions live during 2003/4 and on the 2005 CD single
• Jez Huggett - sax, flute, clarinet Astoria 2005 and Exeter 2006
• Keith Barton (of Spacehead and also a member of the crew) - guitar Amsterdam 2003 and Astoria 2005
• Simon House - violin, keyboards 2003
• Tim Blake - keyboards 2002
• Arthur Brown - vocals 2003

There have been some distinctly alternative lineups (PinkWind, Hawkdog/Agents of Chaos, Pilwind) which are covered here on the page about collaborations.

I won't even try to duplicate here what is done far better elsewhere - there are two thorough books on Hawkwind (one by Ian Abrahams, the other by Carol Clerk), plus many excellent sites which deal with the music, history and trivia of Hawkwind (see the links section). Also, the band's own site features regular updates on live shows and new releases and is worth checking out on a regular basis.

Oh, and to prove what a sad, anally retentive git I am, here's a list of the HW gigs I've attended, even if I do have to confess that my memory of many of them is more than a little blurred:

1. Preston Guild Hall, Oct 1981
2. Stonehenge, Jun 1982
3. Liverpool Empire, Oct 1982
4. Hanley Victoria Hall, Nov 1982
5. St Helens Theatre Royal, Feb 83
6. Liverpool Empire, Feb 84
7. Stoke-on-Trent King's Hall, Nov 84
8. Liverpool Empire, Nov 85
9. Walthamstow Assembly Halls, Nov 85
10. Hammersmith Odeon, Dec 85
11. Reading Festival, Aug 86
12. St Albans City Hall, Nov 86
13. Hammersmith Odeon, Nov 86
14. Dunstable Queensway Hall, Dec 86
15. Liverpool Empire, Apr 88
16. Hammersmith Odeon, Dec 89
17. Reading University, Oct 90
18. Hammersmith Odeon, Nov 90
19. Hemel Hempstead Pavillion, Dec 91
20. Hammersmith Odeon, May 92
21. Reading University, May 92
22. Kilburn National Ballroom, Dec 92
23. Camberley Agincourt, Aug 93
24. Brixton Academy, Oct 95
25. Guildford Civic Hall, mid 96
26. Blackheath Concert Halls, Jun 97
27. Shepherds Bush Empire, late 98
28. Croydon Fairfield Halls, Nov 99
29. London Astoria, Dec 00
30. Croydon Fairfield Halls, Mar 01
31. Aldershot Princes Hall, Apr 01
32. London Royal Festival Hall, Oct 01
33. Kentish Town The Forum, Dec 01
34. Hastings Pier, Jul 02
35. Hawkfest, Jul 02
36. Wembley Arena Oct 02
37. Hanley Victoria Halls Dec 02
38. Manchester Academy II Dec 02
39. Liverpool Lomax Dec 02
40. Walthamstow Assembly Halls Dec 02
41. London Astoria May 03
42. Bristol Academy May 03
43. Amsterdam Melkweg Aug 03
44. City Hall Salisbury Apr 04
45. The Ritz Manchester Apr 04
46. Concorde 2 Brighton Apr 04
47. Town Hall Cheltenham Oct 04
48. The Oasis Swindon Dec 04
49. Phoenix Arts Centre Exeter Dec 04
50. Astoria London Dec 04
51. Pacific Road Arts Centre Birkenhead Dec 04
52. Wulfrun Hall Wolverhampton May 05
53. Fairfield Halls Croydon Jun 05
54. Manchester Academy Dec 05
55. JB's Dudley Dec 05 - best gig I have ever seen !!!!
56. Astoria London Dec 05
57. Phoenix Arts Centre Exeter Apr 06
58. Eastern Haze Jul 06

Essential Albums

There have been so many Hawkwind albums, some outstanding and all worth having. If you are building your collection of HW material, I would strongly recommend the following:

• Space Ritual (1973) - already the third lineup of the band in as many years this was the all-time classic and included Lemmy, Bob Calvert and Nik Turner, live on the 1972 Space Ritual tour . If you only buy one Hawkwind album, buy this one for a double helping of pure space rock.
• Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) - a great album which features Michael Moorcock performing a couple of poems to spacey music.
• Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (1976) - something of a musical digression for Hawkwind which resulted in the sacking of Paul Rudolph (ex Pink Fairies) for getting too funky. Still a superb album from start to finish with seriously standout tracks like Reefer Madness, Kerb Crawler and Steppenwolf.
• Weird Tapes No1, Sonic Assassins (1977) - Bob Calvert at his most manic, plus a load of Dave Brock solo stuff (translate as excellent demos for songs which came out much later, including Who's Gonna Win the War).
• Wierd Tapes No4, Plymouth 1978 - Calvert at his most poetic ... This is probably my favourite live set so I won't describe it, just suggest strongly that you buy it.
• Live Seventy Nine - with Tim Blake (ex Gong) doing a superb job on keyboards and Huw Lloyd-Langton (back from an 8 year break from the band) on blistering lead guitar. Outstanding tracklist too. I wish I'd had the dosh to buy a ticket for this tour because I missed out big time.
• Chronicle of The Black Sword (1985) - based on the Elric series by Michael Moorcock and first studio album to feature Alan Davey on bass. In my opinion Alan's arrival in 1984 marked the start of Hawkwind's rise from a low period during the early 80s since it allowed Harvey Bainbridge to move over and become the band's first full-time keyboard player since 1980.
• Space Bandits (1990) - The two standout tracks (the first one on each side) of this album alone are worth the buying price. It features Bridet Wishart and, apart from the live studio album Palace Springs, is the only one with a female vocalist. The only other time I am aware of Hawkwind employing a female vocalist was at the Hawkestra gig when Samantha Fox (former topless model who supported the ultra conservative capitalist Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping strikes back in the late 80s) peformed Master of the Universe.
• Electric Tepee (1992) - With a couple of blinding rockers thrown in, this album marked the start of their move towards ambient music.
• It is the Business of the Future to be Dangerous (1993) - totally ambient and totally good.
• Love in Space (1996) - The tour that accompanied the release of Alien 4 saw Hawkwind looking back to the Bob Calvert era, with Ron Tree doing a great job on vocals.
• Canterbury Fayre (2001) - Astounding set, sound and peformance. Features Arthur Brown's vocals for Silver Machine and blinding work from Huw Lloyd-Langton and Simon House.
• Take Me To Your Future (2006) - a double sided disk with 5 great audio tracks on the "normal" CD side and a load of rare video footage on the DVD side. Includes a blinding revamp of Silver Machine, sounding a lot like the original one but this upgrade includes a nitrox injected turbocharger.

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Former members (lots of .....)

Probably the best place to find info about musicians who have played with Hawkwind is Jon Jarrett's list which you can find here.

If you want to hear clips of some of the stuff that Hawkwind have done in collaboration with Tubilah Dog and Smartpils and also some from Steve Swindell's album Fresh Blood, follow this link.

Links

All worth checking out. I'll only mention below sites that are not covered by the official HW site plus one or two that have linked to this site. The best place on the net for Hawkwind links is Steve Youles' starfarer site - there are hundreds of them.

• The best sites

  www.hawkwind.org.uk - also known as Mission Control, this site and its links are the best sources of data on HW, including discographies, lyrics, history, pictures, etc.

  http://www.starfarer.net - is "an irreverent fan site" run by my old mate Steve and is now one of the best places to find song tablature, index of songs and their various versions, instructions on how to make your own Hawkwind T-shirts, etc. etc.

http://www.hawkwindmuseum.co.uk/ is as indescribable as it is essential - an incredible archive of pics of the band, pics of t-shirts, reviews and press cuttings, interview transcripts, video clips and some surreal humour (eg. the recent spoof article telling us that Stonhenge wasn't a free festival it was all about second hand car sales, with Dave Brock being the Arfur Daley of his time).

http://www.hawklord.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/lyrics.html for a pretty comprehensive index of lyrics.

Fan sites

www.mountaingrill.co.uk - is Kevin Perry's site with MP3s of his cover versions of HW tracks. Kevin is a member of the Assassins of Silence, a HW tribute band.

http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/hawkwind/ - is a site dedicated to Simon King and the band to which he once belonged (you guessed it, Hawkwind) and run by a really decent chap called Steve Litchfield. Well worth spending some time exploring this one.

www.doremi.co.uk - is put together by Steve Pond, formerly of Inner City Unit/The Maximum Effect with Nik Turner and Krankshaft with Bob Calvert. His "blanga" guide to Hawkwind is worth checking out and he has some excellent insight into the world of the two larger than life characters with whom he has worked. He also provides loads of MP3s of his own work and some Calvert live material from 1986 which is worth taking the time to download. Shortcut to the Calvert stuff is http://208.50.7.128/icu/calvert.html.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/hawkwind/ - is the URL for Hawkeye on Hawkwind, one of the best resources on the net. The discography is superb.

http://www.alien-dream.com - is the URL for Michael Blackman's legendary Electric Tepee site which has recently relocated (Jan 2002)

http://www.kadu.demon.co.uk/index.html - is where you'll find Jon Price who really likes good quality live music and does top notch CD artwork (eg. for Voiceprint).

http://hawkwind.4t.com/HWguest.html - is a Jon Jarrett's megalist of former and current members of Hawkwind, along with details of their origins and their discographies.

http://aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert is the new url for the Spirit of the Page site. Fantastic stuff.

http://www.windofchange.org.uk is Mike's site, with clips and photos of various gigs he's been to between 1972 and the present day. Also a load of photos of Stacia, including a recent one.

http://www.unclesamsonmars.co.uk/ which is Sam Sheppard's site which features reviews of lots of gigs he's been to, including a load of Hawkwind ones.

• Bulletin Boards/Groups

http://listserv.ispnetinc.net/archives/boc-l.html - The original list where you can find all the pioneering online fans and a whole load more. I don't know if it's still like this, but it's not uncommon for people to unsubscribe because they get too many emails from this list (I did). You often hear things here first, though.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hawkwind/ - The Yahoo Group which is often cross posted from or copied along with the BOC-L list. This group does have a life of its own, though, as many topics covered here don't go across to the BOC-L. There are now over 900 members of this list, from all over the world. Things get discussed here which are not covered by the official website (Mission Control). Most of it is on-topic.

• Bands

http://www.spacehead-lab23.co.uk/ - Spacehead, featuring Mr Dibs whom you will all have seen lurking in the shadows backstage at HW gigs and, more recently, stepping out into the limelight to recite poems and sing Uncle Sam's On Mars or Upside Down. Check out the MP3 on the Release-Ography page of the Spacehead site.

www.litmusmusic.co.uk - is the website for Litmus who are a space rock band with, as Martin describes themselves, more rock and less space. Great guys too.

http://www.silvermachine.net - sound like a fun bunch of guys who do a complete set of HW covers

www.datasync.com/%7Edavidg59/hawkwind.html - interesting page with some very interesting cover versions

www.btinternet.com/~freakyfungi - a band called Mr Quimby's Beard who are influenced by, among others, early to mid 70's Hawkwind. Tragically they don't often stray too far from their northeastern (UK) base, but I've managed to catch them a few times and they are top notch.

The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain do a cover version of Silver Machine. Here they are at Guilfest 2005 doing just that. And they did it again in at Guilfest in 2006 !!

• Misc

www.terryhawke.co.uk - "Hawke In Space" is a journalistic web by Terry Hawke - a sci-fi aficionado and local radio producer/presenter whose autobiography details associations, fanzines and audiozines etc, with Hawkwind and other space-rock, and ambient-synth musicians.

CD SERVICES, through the vehicle of Hawkfan Andy Garibaldi, specialise in Hawkwind and related material, although they are by no means limited to just this genre.
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Telephone: (+44) 0 1382 776595 Fax: (+44) 0 1382 736702
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