Hawkwind - The Aliens of Space-Rock

Imagine you've been tasked with giving a general definition of progressive rock. If you're not well versed in 70s music, you dive headfirst into listening to some bands from the period; after names like Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer, you run into a band that throws your attempts at definition into crisis thanks to a peculiar kind of music, different from everything else you've heard so far, with rawer, more decisive, aggressive, repetitive sounds, yet in every way more immediate and simple. The name of this band is Hawkwind, surely one of the best examples of how it's practically impossible to draw up a definitive classification of rock and its genres, especially for a decade as extremely productive and varied as the Seventies. Born out of the initiative of a guitarist and hippie from Isleworth named Dave Brock amid the psychedelic ferment of late-60s London, Hawkwind are one of the longest-running bands in rock history, able to boast dozens of albums to date between studio and live releases, countless shifts in style and influence, and innumerable lineup changes and additions. They are also considered the kings of space rock, the most varied and probably most successful subgenre of prog, which carried great weight in those years thanks above all to the excitement generated by the earliest space explorations and the 1969 Moon landing.

That very year, Dave is, like many other rising stars of rock, a street artist. He spends his days hanging around with his guitar between Notting Hill and the surrounding area. He's also a huge science-fiction fan, with a vast collection of classics by Asimov, Bradbury and Tolkien, and, like many young people of the time, he uses LSD. In the English capital he meets a very young bassist, John Harrison, soon joined by a seventeen-year-old drummer, Teddy Ollis. Thanks to the union of the roadies and only later the saxophonist and keyboardist Nik Turner and Dick Mik, old acquaintances of Brock's, Group X is born, the creative embryo of what would become Hawkwind Zoo and, in November of that same year, simply Hawkwind.

In a very short time the band makes a name for themselves playing in local venues, and thanks to the involvement of Dick Taylor, formerly of Pretty Things, the following year they record their self-titled debut album Hawkwind, produced for Liberty and United Artists. The first track, “Hurry On A Sundown”, lays down the guidelines of the style that would make them famous, built on endlessly repeated lines and melodic passages alternating with firmer, almost obsessive ones; other tracks reveal a strong influence from Pink Floyd: “Be Yourself” opens with the exact same drum line as “A Saucerful Of Secrets”, before developing freely, showing the direction the band's artistic work was already heading in right from their debut.

Despite these promising signs, the album is a commercial flop, but Hawkwind find their true calling in their live dimension. Embracing the Grateful Dead's concert philosophy – playing wherever there's a group of people willing to listen, most of the time for free or for charity – they quickly win over a devoted fanbase. Famous is the show held outside the gates of the Isle of Wight Festival, where they were uninvited guests: three days of music, incredibly free of charge, that earned the band enormous notoriety.

And indeed their second album, In Search Of Space (1971), is a huge success, climbing that year's British charts and reaching the Top 20. The Hawkwind sound is now fully defined, helped along by the arrival of Dave Anderson (formerly of Amon Duul) on bass and Del Dettmar on synth. Dave Brock, the band's creative genius and guiding spirit, an avid listener of Soft Machine, throws Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead and the darker side of Gong into the blender, adding science-fiction-inspired lyrics and raw guitars locked onto simple chords repeated almost to the point of exhaustion, creating a spatial, obsessive, hypnotic, lysergic rock that is both progressive and, at the same time, a forerunner of the punk that would emerge at the end of the decade. Hawkwind's cosmic rock thus positions itself as an alternative to the more melodic, experimental sound of Floyd: just compare In Search Of Space with that same year's “Meddle” to understand how much closer the Hawks were to punk than to the psychedelia of Waters and co. It's a wild, stripped-down kind of music that produces “You Shouldn’t Do That”, over ten minutes built on just two chords, a pounding drumbeat, Turner's sax and improvisation – mostly on guitar – as a way of countering the monotony of the underlying sound, a far cry from the constantly shifting, airy melodic turns of Floyd's “Echoes”; along the same lines sits “Master Of The Universe”, one of their classics, dominated by the synth reproducing the roar of the engines of the Hawkwind spaceship, whose adventures are recounted in the booklet “The Hawkwind Log”, included in the Lp's original packaging, amid encounters with alien civilizations, hippie philosophy and occultism: a true cult object for vinyl collectors.

Bolstered by a more open, suspended sound, “You Know You’re Only Dreaming” is the perfect backdrop to let your imagination run wild; also very interesting are the two electro-acoustic tracks, “We Took The Wrong Step To Go” and, above all, the closing track, “Children Of The Sun”, which can faintly recall sounds and riffs borrowed from Black Sabbath: along with the already mentioned “Master Of The Universe”, it's the song that secures the album's place in rock history.

But once again, it's in the live format that the band truly gives its all. The In Search Of Space tour is a success for several reasons, first among them the science-fiction stage sets, complete with eccentric costumes and the light and bubble effects of the Liquid Light Show; second, the length of the shows, up to four hours of songs stretched into improvised suites to the point of exhaustion; the third reason has little to do with the music (or with LSD) and is Stacia, the dancer hired by the band to dance her own way, half or fully nude, on stage, a hippie, gorgeous and proudly bisexual.

At the start of 1972 Ian “Lemmy” Kilminster joins the band as bassist, alongside Simon King, the new drummer. This is without doubt the high point in Hawkwind's history: in February of that same year they take part in the “Greasy Truckers” benefit event at The Roundhouse in London; captured on an extremely rare Lp and considered one of the greatest concerts in the history of the English underground, it ran almost without a break from 3 in the afternoon until midnight. This concert was also one of the first live performances of “Silver Machine”, their new single and a huge chart success (No. 3 on the UK Chart), remarkable for its catchy, irresistible simplicity.

In November of the same year, Hawkwind release a new album, Doremi Fasol Latido, which many critics and fans consider the true masterpiece of Brock and co. It's also their first concept album, developed with the help of South African science-fiction poet Robert Calvert, who would go on to collaborate with the band for a long time. The story tells of the rituals the Hawkwind people must perform to return to their homeland, Thorasin, amid encounters with Venusians, battles with evil kings, and mysterious attacks.

The opener "Brainstorm" is a perfect hard-rock revisitation shot through with electronic disturbances. The sound is perhaps even more forceful, repetitive and pounding than on the previous album, but it's more complex and leaves room for some new elements. The gorgeous "Space Is Deep" is one of the band's statements of sheer skill: after an ethereal acoustic opening, it gives way to a keyboard solo of rare beauty. Lemmy shows glimpses of his talent on "Lord Of The Light", with one of his first powerful bass lines, and on "The Watcher", featuring acoustic guitar and voice for the first (and perhaps last) time. An acoustic guitar also floats in the opening wind of "Down Through The Night", over an increasingly dark, suspended rhythm between Brock's voice and the synth, creating, in just three minutes, one of the most nocturnal and spatial moments in Hawkwind's history - the handover between the "darkness" of the 60s and the "nightmare" of the 70s. In a swing of visceral emotions, the ethereal textures give way to the claustrophobia of "Time We Left This World Today", a 13-minute labyrinth of distortions, manic yet perfectly executed bass lines, and dialogues between sax and synth, landing in unknown destinations: a truly impressive crescendo.

It's no coincidence, then, that the album climbs to No. 14 on the UK charts. Shortly after, a new single, "Urban Guerilla", is released, causing the band its first problems with radio stations due to its strong themes of urban unrest, in a period made incandescent by IRA bombings in London. The triumph of Doremi Fasol Latido, coming after Gong's "Camembert Electrique" and before Pink Floyd's masterpiece "The Dark Side Of The Moon", would play a fundamental role in establishing progressive rock as the dominant musical current of the 70s.

Meanwhile, the new protagonists of space rock are called to a string of exhausting live dates all over the world. The legendary "Space Ritual" tour, which echoes the central theme of Doremi Fasol Latido, becomes a cult phenomenon over the years and is documented on a double live concept album, recorded between Liverpool and London in late 1972.

Space Ritual, according to most fans, is Hawkwind's best album, and one of the most significant and monumental live records in rock history. It would reach No. 9 on the UK charts in 1973, the best result ever for Brock's band. It's a selection of tracks trimmed down to roughly an hour and a half, made up mostly of songs from the last LP plus some previously unreleased material, though the tracklist doesn't include their biggest hit, "Silver Machine". No great loss, though: as brilliant as they are in the studio, Hawkwind are truly in their natural element on stage, delivering performances few other bands can match, between improvisations and wonderful instrumental pieces. Among the highlights are "Born To Go" (with a hypnotic, improvised 5-minute guitar solo), "Down Through The Night" (an even better version than the studio one) and "Brainstorm" (one of the most powerful live tracks in prog). Also fascinating are "Lord Of Light", a true hit always requested at the band's live shows, and "Seven By Seven", released as the b-side of the "Silver Machine" single a few months earlier, with a softer, more suspended sound, evidence of an early shift in the band's direction toward more melodic prog.

The album also shows how Calvert's influence on the band grows increasingly important on stage too, with poetry pieces recited over musical backing, such as "The Awakening", "10 Seconds Of Forever" and, above all, "Black Corridor", featuring the first Hawkwind-style definition of interstellar space.

By the end of 1973, Dick Mik and Calvert leave the band; Calvert would devote himself for a while to solo projects with occasional collaborations from Brock and co. Even though Dettman leaves shortly after too, Hawkwind once again prove to be an unpredictable volcano of ideas. The following year, in fact, Simon House (High Tide) is brought in as keyboardist and violinist, and a few months later Hall Of The Mountain Grill is released, also landing in the UK Top 20.

The album is strongly shaped by the arrival of the new member and his favourite instruments, violin among them: the band's typical sound isn't excessively altered, but it does let itself be influenced by elements more typical of classic progressive rock - the guitar remains repetitive and powerful, but also opens up to "lighter", more elegant passages, Brock's voice becomes more ethereal and floating, and the drums alternate between pounding moments and more melodic sounds. A clear example of this new direction is the opening pair "Psychedelic Warlords"-"Wind Of Change": in the first, synth and a guitar, this time less raw, set up another showcase of the typical Hawks sound (it would also be the album's hit); the second, with backing vocals appearing for the first time, layered with mellotron, violins and synth, is a wonderful, celestial crescendo that propels Brock and co. into a spatial dimension without needing obsessive rhythms.

The record never loses momentum: with "D-Rider" the listener is launched from mysterious lunar landscapes into tunnels of enormous black holes, "Web Weaver" alternates between piano, acoustic guitar and a synth gone wild, "You'd Better Believe It" is a less brooding take on the sound of Doremi Fasol Latido, and the title track is a masterpiece from House, who takes on every instrument at his disposal. The album closes with a straight-up hard-rock track by Lemmy ("Lost Johnny"), which he would later revive in concerts with Motorhead, the last song Dettman wrote before leaving the band ("Goat Willow"), and "Paradox", a veritable summary of the influences and sounds one encounters listening to the record.

Hall Of The Mountain Grill is a commercial success and is still considered today one of the most interesting progressive albums of the first half of the 70s.

In 1975, with Warrior On The Edge Of Time, Hawkwind continue along this path, pushing the boundaries of British progressive rock experimentation to the extreme and once again delivering an impressive display of technical mastery. "Assault On Battery" and "The Golden Void", heavily influenced by drug use, are indeed two of Brock and co.'s finest songs, with their dark, otherworldly dimension.

In the year that sees the synthesizer reach its full consecration thanks to another Floydian masterpiece, "Wish You Were Here", tracks like "Assault" and "The Golden Void" could be considered Hawkwind's answer to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". But it's with "The Demented Man" that the kings of space rock reach the highest peak of their output: a melancholic, ethereal acoustic ballad, with Brock's voice set against the distant sound of seagulls, as synth and mellotron accompany the sun as it sets over a sea of faraway planets.

In this concept album, inspired by the figure of the "Eternal Champion" from science-fiction writer Michael Moorcock, also worth noting are "Spiral Galaxy", an extremely powerful space journey between synth and electric guitar, and the closing "King Of Speed", a catchy hard-rock mosaic that almost feels like a continuation of "Silver Machine". The song most closely associated with the record, though, is "Magnu", the sixth track: seven delirious minutes of lysergic, Eastern-tinged sounds with an ending that borders on cacophony.

This record, too, keeps pace with the sales of its predecessors, but something is slowly beginning to crack in the relationships between band members. During the American tour, Lemmy is found in possession of amphetamines and cocaine by Canadian police (Hawkwind boast almost 70 of these "incursions", even on stage). The bassist is held in jail for a long period, and the group is forced to cancel almost all of the remaining dates. The affair still has mysterious undertones today, given the many different versions of events offered by the band and the bassist himself; the ending, however, is known to everyone and has gone down in rock history: the band, long since tired of Kilminster's uncontrollable behaviour, replace him with Paul Rudolph of the Pink Fairies; from that same band Lemmy would recruit Larry Wallis and found Motorhead (named after the last song he wrote for Hawkwind), with which he would earn enormous fame and become one of the most influential figures of the 80s and 90s.

Within Hawkwind, the change - perhaps too often underestimated - undermines the already fragile balance; shortly after, Stacia leaves the music world and the group signs to Charisma Records.

Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (1976), despite decent commercial success, betrays the difficulties of this complicated moment: the band's trademark sound is still there, but the quality drops drastically, leaving very little worth saving. Nonetheless, the single "Back On The Streets" becomes another hit thanks to its pop-rock appeal, climbing into the upper reaches of the UK charts.

That same year, Turner and Rudolph are pushed out due to difficult relations with the rest of the band, which by now is increasingly controlled by the Brock-Calvert duo, not unlike what happened with Pink Floyd under the leadership of Waters and Gilmour; from that point on, the band's founder and its resident poet became the sole voices and signatures behind subsequent records.

Quark, Strangeness And Charm (1977) is the band's last truly great record and proves a solid commercial success, thanks above all to the opening track, "Spirit Of The Age", which shows a remarkable ability to adapt to the emerging punk phenomenon without disowning its progressive roots. Another standout is the title track, which, like "Back On The Streets", marks a significant move toward the kind of pop-rock that would define the 80s, while still retaining traces of the psychedelic solos of the early 70s.

Other notable tracks include "Hassan-I Sabbah", which echoes "Magnu" with its Middle Eastern-tinged sounds and lyrics inspired by the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts of the time, along with "Damnation Alley" and "The Iron Dream", inspired by the science-fiction novels of the same name by Roger Zelazny and Gustav Holst.

All the tracks are written by Calvert and conceived to work best in a live setting. This same approach also explains the move toward pop and the choice to favour catchiness over experimentation.

The tour spanning '77 and '78, however, is plagued by the poet's worsening mental health problems, and the new album, PXR5, ends up delayed by a year. Both this record and its predecessor, "25 Years On" — released as Hawklords due to legal issues over ownership of the band's name — turn out to be a blend of old-school space-rock and the band's new pop sound, caught between loyalty to its roots and a gradual adaptation to new musical trends that would inevitably end up altering its DNA. Worth mentioning is "25 Years", the biggest hit of the bunch, which perfectly captures this new "halfway" sound of late-70s Hawkwind; "High Rise", where the organ is used extensively for the first time; "Death Trap", a powerful, decidedly punk-rock track; and "Uncle Sams On Mars", a hit suspended between pop and synths that even brings to mind the Goblin of Simonetti.

House subsequently leaves the band temporarily to play alongside David Bowie on his world tour, and Calvert fires newly recruited drummer Griffin. The 70s come to a close with the leader himself stepping away from the scene — a necessary choice, in order to devote himself fully to literature and to ward off the risk of total mental breakdown.

Literally reformed around Brock, King, Bainbridge, old acquaintance Langton and ex-Gong member Tim Blake, Hawkwind embark on a UK tour that would be immortalised on the live album Seventy Nine, a solid success driven by "Shot Down In The Night", a hugely powerful single straddling space-punk and hard rock.

1980 brings Levitation, the first studio album of the new decade. Produced by Bronze Records, it sees Brock back on vocals and marks a return to the 70s sound, though now contaminated by punk and new wave in a highly interesting, heterogeneous mix, similar to what other progressive bands would create in the 80s, such as Gilmour-era Pink Floyd and, above all, Yes (see the famous single "Owner Of A Lonely Heart").

The choice proves commercially rewarding, pushing the band back into the UK Top 20. Of particular note is "Motorway City", the band's biggest-selling single of the entire decade and a clear example of the array of changes and influences mentioned above, with Brock finally back in the spotlight and on top form on guitar. Along the same lines is the title track (decidedly punk-rock at first, before veering off into the band's classic guitar-and-synth experimentation) and "Who's Gonna Win The War" (the album's second single, and distinctly close to the sounds of Floyd's "The Wall").

The following album, Sonic Attack, stays on the same track, though drawing more heavily on hard rock and metal (as in the album's biggest hit, "Angels Of Death") and benefiting from the contribution of Moorcock, who returns to the band after years away, taking on the same crucial role Calvert had held at the end of the previous decade.

The rest of the 80s is a continuous, tedious cycle of line-up changes, with the band's best moments coming from headline slots at numerous festivals, including Reading, Glastonbury and the famous, evocative Stonehenge Free Festival.

The albums Choose Your Masques and Church Of Hawkwind offer precious little of interest, though they do contain some notably dark moments, including the recorded commentary on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in "Some People Never Dies" (a song also found on an extremely rare 1970 LP released under the name They Call Me Gun).

Of greater interest are the metal single "Night Of The Hawks" (1984) and the concept album The Chronicle Of The Black Sword (1985), inspired by stories and characters from Moorcock's novels, which, like the following The Xenon Codex (1988), leans heavily on 80s hard rock and metal influences. Both albums reach respectable levels, especially compared to their immediate predecessors, and both crack the UK Top 70.

Hawkwind's third decade of activity sees both the continuation of the "mythologising" process already begun in the previous one — through live albums, reissues and compilations of unreleased material — and, at the same time, a stubborn refusal to simply fade away.

The decade's first album, Space Bandits, keeps pace with the band's output from the end of the previous decade, with contaminations even from the ambient sounds of Tangerine Dream, as shown by "Black Elk Speaks", inspired by John G. Neihardt's book of the same name about the famous Sioux shaman, featuring a contribution from Bridget Wishart (the singer hired for this album and the next one) over an electronic backdrop.

The decade's second studio album, Electric Tepee (1992), brings Hawkwind back into the UK top 50 after years of absence, thanks above all to the fine single "Right To Decide", yet another attempt by the band to adapt to the times.

In 1995 Hawkwind are back in the spotlight: they are in fact called upon to compose the soundtrack for the film Alien 4. The result is a solid album that earns a fair amount of critical and commercial success, crowned by a subsequent American tour (documented on the double CD Love In Space). Produced for Emergency Broadcast System Records, Alien 4 shows further changes for Hawkwind, who, without abandoning their classic instrumentation, once again try to stay in touch with the contemporary rock scene. Here in particular, some noise-rock influences typical of the Nineties come through. The emblem of this is the album's biggest hit, "Sputnik Stan", which comes close to certain Sonic Youth sounds of the period.

The last studio album of the Nineties, Distant Horizons, represents the last distant horizon reached by Brock and co.: the hit "Love In Space" even reveals heavy contaminations with the electronic and dance music of the decade, calling to mind, not all that vaguely, The Orb and their debut album of the same year (1997).

Hawkwind enter the new millennium with Epocheclipse, a sprawling three-CD best of celebrating the band's thirtieth anniversary. It includes a remix of "Silver Machine", titled "Silver Machine Infected By The Scourge Of The Hearth". The album comes packaged with the Hawkestra experience, a three-hour live set featuring historic members pulled back in from the band's many lives.

Spacebrock (2000) is Dave's first solo album, even though it can be considered a Hawkwind album in every respect, given the extensive collaborations with the trio's members, while Canterbury Fayre 2001 (2003) is regarded by critics as the band's best live album since Space Ritual, documenting the 2000-'01 celebratory tour of England. The tracklist features live recordings of virtually all the hits that made the Hawks famous over the decades, from "Hurry On The Sundown" to "Sputnik Stan".

To the voices claiming the tour was the band's swan song, the Hawks responded with a surprise: two new studio albums, Take Me To Your Leader (2005), featuring a collaboration with Lemmy following his 1975 firing, and Blood Of The Earth (2010), split between a studio side (with unreleased tracks and new versions of previously released songs) and a live side (including a version of Syd Barrett's "Long Gone").

Having long since passed 40 years of uninterrupted activity, the band is now preparing a new world tour taking in Australia, Hell Fest in France, and their absolute debut in Japan. Onward (2012) marks Brock's return to the scene, and four years later, with the same lineup, he records The Machine Stops (2016), a concept album based on the novella by E. M. Forster, which imagines a dystopian future in which a great machine provides for every human need until, however, it begins to malfunction. On one hand, Hawkwind want to shine a light on this bleak vision, focusing on the alienation of people in the post-modern age; on the other, the title seems almost to allude to the closing of a cycle begun with "Silver Machine", the song that became the ultimate anthem of space-rock.

Exactly one year later comes the sequel titled Into The Woods (2017), continuing the story begun in The Machine Stops, whose dystopian future is now set in the countryside, inspired by Dave Brock's own farm in Devon. Aesthetically, the album presents Hawkwind's classic cosmic wall of sound: granite-hard rhythms, guitar solos up front, synthesizers simmering in the background, frequent stylistic twists. What changes, however, is the location: this is a more earthbound record, one that seeks to evoke the magic and mystery, but also the hostility, of the nature around us. The title track itself, placed at the opening with its tenacious riffs and menacing nursery-rhyme chant ("we've been waiting for you," Brock declares!), warns the listener that they've entered a place full of traps and dangers.

Things don't get any better when we turn the corner and run into the intimidating "Cottage In The Woods" and "The Woodpecker", with the sounds of nature imitated by the instruments, plunging the listener into utter paranoia. Luckily, the psychedelic verve of "Have You Seen Them" — released as a single — brings us back, for a moment, to more cheerful, safer territory. Over the course of the album, Hawkwind prove they remain faithful to their rock prototype, while still adding some variations on the theme, such as the sinister R&B of "Vegan Lunch", the celestial boogie of "Magic Scenes", or the utterly strange country-space-blues of "Space Ship Blues", amid malevolent banjos and swirling synths.

In this triumph of stylistic variety, one of the best tracks on offer is the sonic "Wood Nymph", while the album closes with the nine minutes of organ- and guitar-driven trance that make up "Magic Mushroom", which seem to carry us back up there, into space, where Hawkwind made their history and shaped a musical cult destined to recruit countless devotees.

After fifty years of activity and on their thirtieth studio album, Hawkwind prove they still have something to say and know how to put themselves on the line with a varied, well-crafted record. So hats off to Hawkwind, one of the most important, long-lived and original bands in prog and in the whole history of rock. And may the Space Ritual carry you off into unknown dreams, light years away, where it seems good old Dave Brock has absolutely no intention of waking up.

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