Cover Image from "25 Years On" Box Set: Vol 4 CD

Welcome to my Hawkworld...the ultimate Southern website on pyschedelic space-rockers: HAWKWIND

This site last updated: August 6, 2001

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HAWKWIND:

- a U.K. space-rock band little-known in the U.S., is probably the most famous underground rock band in the world. They are known all over Europe and have a "cult"-like following all over the world. The band was founded in '69 by Dave Brock, Nik Turner et al as a musical result of the pyschedelic scene prevalent at the time. Hawkwind devoted itself to the central themes of psychedelia & sci-fi: LSD, hash, space, androids, aliens and the future. These themes have remained their primary focus. With the generous use of the synthesizer and tone/audio generator, Hawkwind practically created a genre of music that can be called: psychedelic space-rock. Their fan-base in the US, although not super-large - is nonetheless super-loyal.
What is this Hawkwind sound? Guitar under heavy delay "effect", ominous 2-part vocals, tons of reverb and delay, constant synth sweeps, constantly pushing synths to the limit. The music is often "barbaric", paganistic, and futurist full of a hard rock sound. Then again many songs are trance-inducing, with repetitiuos chord runs. Some of their music is often melodic and ambient.
It is the repetitious chord arrangements that make the music "mind altering"....these repititions allow for extended instrumental guitar and synth workouts. This invites the listener to "trip". Hawkwind's "acidic" space-rock style made them a big hit with "trippers", "stoners" and "heads". I will say right now that this music is even trippy without acid! Today, Hawkwind's mission is to enchant and entrance you into a fantasy world in the future....and they will take you there whether you listen to them "stoned" or "straight"!

WANNA KNOW MORE?

- Well, over the years, the lineup and the sound has changed and metamorphosed and I suppose that is a true sign that a band is "alive". Founder/frontman Dave Brock is the only remaining original member and he seems to have been the one who has always steered "Spaceship Hawkwind"...he is the captain, as it were. The band never would have made it for 29 years without Dave.
Being a Hawkwind fan has been fun...when you meet other fans, it is like meeting kindred spirits...and there are not many of us here in the US!!! Interested in becoming a Hawkfan? Then you should consider the following efforts which I would recommend to the "beginner:

"25 Years On" Box Set - Presently not being pressed, but it can be found. This is a massive compilation of their best stuff.

Warrior at the Edge of Time ('75) - In my opinion, THE classic album.

Hall of the Mountain Grill ('74) - more classic stuff, similar to the "Warrior..." album. Check out Turner's "D-Rider".

Doremi Fasol Latido ('72) - heavy metal space rock a-la Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister, who later founded Motorhead.

A Space Ritual ('73) - The essential live album

The Church of Hawkwind ('82) - Check out my page on this release. The height of Hawktronics. Very spacey and electronic.

Electric Tepee ('92) Click to check out my review of this CD.

Alien 4 ('94) One of my favorites. Great concept album introducing Ron Tree on lead vocals. Alan Davey's last studio album before going solo.

Distant Horizons ('97) Hawkwind's newest. Very hard to find state-side but worth the search. Jerry Richards joins the band on guitar. Tree replaces Davey on bass. Follows the fine traditions of Electric Tepee and Alien 4

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A PLUG FOR MY MUSIC!

I have my own space-rock/ambient album entitled Archeaopteryx: Flight in Space that features some HW songs on it. My versions of Assault & Battery/The Golden Void, Xenomorph, Spirit of the Age & Nuclear Drive and many other original spacey/ambient songs I have done featuring my Yamaha, ARP & Korg synths are there for you to sample and listen to, and hey, maybe you might decide you'd like a copy on CD or cassette (?). Check it out!
Here are some sample clips (wav files) of HW songs I have done and most of these are on my album:

LSD
Golden Void
Nuclear Drive
Spirit of the Age




CHECK OUT MY "FEATURED SONG" LYRICS PAGE: - Spirit of the Age
MY REVIEW OF THE SHOW ON AUGUST 24 1997: CHICAGO, IL @ THE "CUBBY BEAR"

Hawkwind Album Art

- Hawkwind's album art is part of a psychedelic pop culture that easily illustrates the themes the band subscribes to: space, aliens & sci-fi, metal rock, ambiance and more. Check out the album covers below:

The first cover, from the album Hall of the Mountain Grill addresses sci-fi with the neat image of a crashed spaceship.

The second cover is from the Lemmy Kilmister "metal" days: Doremi Fasol Latido

The third cover is a recent album with Native American influence that reflects their move toward ambient/melodic tracks, (Electric Tepee).

This album is one from a very "synthy" album called Church of Hawkwind where most songs address aliens and the future.

Hawkwind's super-cool concept-album, Alien 4 is a great album featuring new singer Ron Tree. Notice the graphics...they reflect the very-near concept approach of the music: extraterrestrial space rock! Love the song, Sputnik Stan.

One of Hawkwind's more recent albums is Distant Horizons The album cover displays neat hieroglyphs. Could Hawkwind be suggesting through this album art possible links of extraterrestrial visits with Ancient Egypt?

Bassman/keyboardist Alan Davey's 1996 solo album, Captured Rotation continues in the fine tradition of the Spaceship Hawkwind. I recommend this release which has music befitting the cool images on the sleeve as shown above. An added bonus is that the CD itself has the same graphics imprinted on it! Then there is Ron Tree who sings on a couple of tracks. Very spacey!!! Good job on the release, Alan!!!

More neat art can be found inside of these albums. A lot of the art Hawkwind used over the years has come from the hand of artist Barney Bubbles.

Hawkwind Live!!!!

- Until recently, I had never seen Hawkwind "live" except on video. I flew from Mississippi to Chicago to see them during August 97. Check out my review (lots a pics too). HW is renowned for their mind-altering shows, heavy on "psychedelia"....fluid light shows with lots of black lights, strobes and smoke. The live albums and videos from Hawkwind are well-known for capturing some of the excitement...many persons shy away from live albums made by rock groups, but with Hawkwind, it is different. The best example is the 2-record set, A Space Ritual.
Live Chronicles is also pretty good and seems to feature a lot of material from former guitarist Huw Lloyd-Langton (songs about swords and dungeons and dragons, e.g. Elric stuff).


Alien art from back sleeve of "Church of Hawkwind"





MORE INFO:
Long ago...Hawkwind albums were rare here in the U.S. I never could get any in the regular record shops - only in a rare moment would a small record shop with some import stuff have a clue as to where some albums were. I mainly depended on this friend I had from the U.K. who turned me on to his albums. Well, the friend moved away and my bootleg cassette got damaged, and there went my Hawkwind! Then times changed - Griffin Music, a Canadian Record company, received permission to handle many of Hawkwind's recordings and did a great job of "boxing" several releases. Hawkwind CD's even started showing up in record shops in the malls!!! Another label handling the CD's is One Way Records (part of Capitol Records in Hollywood). But Griffin Music was the one who really provided Hawkwind CD's for us in America. Their ultimate release was a "Best-of" 4-CD compilation called "Hawkwind: 25 Years On" that was available for about $70. Inside were 4 full-length CD's compiling songs from nearly every mainstream album. Also included is the comic-styled booklets "Further Extracts From the Hawkwind Log" and "Ledge of Darkness". Each of the 50 or so songs is accompanied by lyrics and info (e.g. source album, date, etc). This set would instantly gratify anyone wanting a Hawkwind collection - this was a b-day present from my wife and I love it!. A great job on compilation and sleeve design was done by Canadian author Robert Godwin. In addtition, there is a never-before-released song "I Am the Eye That Looks Within" on the 4th CD.... the song actually seems to be a "prototype" of the song Blue Skin on the most recent album Alien 4.
I talked to a salesperson at RPM Records (Dallas, TX) and he said sales of Hawkwind CD's were slight but steady here in the States.

SOME HISTORY OF THE "SOUND" AND THE LINE-UP:

Some of the Hawkwind sound has been compared to early Pink Floyd in some ways, I do agree there are some similarities, but Hawkwind has remained true to space-rock.
Not long ago, I was listening to "Heads" from the Xenon Codex album and an acquaintance asked me, 'Is that some Pink Floyd that I must have missed along the way?". I smiled and replied, "It ain't Pink Floyd, dude." I listened for a moment and sure enough, I saw a similarity in that song.
The Hawkwind sound has continued to metamorphose and evolve: the "experimental" & acoustic sounds of early releases, e.g. ('71) album "In Search of Space", changing to the metal sound of their days with bassist Lemmy (Ian Kilmister of Motorhead) (mid 70's) on to the jam-session days of the 80's with Huw Lloyd-Langton's signature guitar-leads and then finally to the sequenced, clean melodic sounds with lots of Alan Davey "dreamscape" imagery in efforts like Palace Springs ('91) and Electric Tepee ('92) - yes, one can detect definite evolutions.
We are at this point in time blessed with the on-stage persona of Ron Tree....who is really contributing to a "new Hawkwind" image full of sci-fi and punkdom that I have found to be really great.
Although Brock has essentially remained the cornerstone of Hawkwind, the effect that co-founder Nik Turner had in the earlier times cannot be left out. Turner was an original punker - ahead of his time as it were. There are a lot of different opinions on the effect he has had on Hawkwind. I must admit that I have found some of his horn blowing to be distracting at times - but his flute/sax work is definitely a trademark of Hawkwind and here & there in the later works, I miss his presence. He does a great job with his horns in the song Golden Void and also his super-fabulous song: Dying Seas - both from the album Warrior at the Edge of Time. Another one of my fav Turner songs is "D-Rider" from Hall of the Mountain Grill. Turner left Hawkwind and became a frontman of the band Inner City Unit . Turner left ICU after several years and even toured the USA in 1995, calling his tour, "Nik Turner's Space Ritual", coincidentally, Hawkwind simultaneously conducted their own USA tour called "The Spirit of the Age". In 1997, Turner met up with Hawkwind at the Strange Daze festival in N.Y. and the result was a wild jam session where Turner kept playing even when the outdoor lighting was being extinguished in the wee hours of the morning. Keep the faith, Nik!!!

During the '80s, Huw Lloyd-Langton, practically a founding member, returned after 10 years to rejoin, Lloyd-Langton chose to form his own band, "The Lloyd-Langton Group" and made several albums on the Flicknife label in the U.K. He & Harvey Bainbridge provided a neat direction in my opinion. Bainbridge began gravitating away from the bass guitar and began concentrating on the keyboard/synth and singing kinda weird (listen to the song, "Coded Languages" for ex.). I think Lloyd-Langton really has a good lead guitar as well as a keen songwriting ability and he possesses straight-forward vocals Lloyd-Langton guitar usually always includes this heavy delay effect that's almost like reverb. This effect, which cycles only 1x, occurs at about 80% volume of the original note and following far enough behind the original note that I can tell it is delay (echo) but close enough to simulate reverb. I have copied this effect with my (Roland) Boss ME-6 multiple effects rack and I enjoy playing along with Huw - I truly love his style - which actually is not too complex. Since I am talking about sound "effects": Hawkwind uses this same delay effect in their lead vocals constantly and I love it! I get "into" cranking up some Hawkwind, flipping on my Peavey Stereo Chorus 400, kicking the effects rack in, grabbing my Strat and then following along with Lloyd-Langton's lead. Langton's singing voice is well represented in HW songs like: Dragons & Fables, Sea King & Rocky Paths, Dreaming City etc. Many of these songs were written by Huw and his wife, Marion. I have a site for Huw's CD, "On The Move" (released in Nov. 97).
During the "Space Bandit" days (mid to late 80's), Hawkwind employed Bridget Wishart as a lead vocalist - certainly a twist for Hawkwind and she has been to this day the only "official" female Hawkwind-er. There was another female...uhhhh...in a way... her name was Stacia. In the "early-days", Stacia performed as a dancer who would perform "spacey strips" - adding an "erotic interpretation" to Hawkwind's live performances. As to what happened to Bridget Wishart? Answering a question I fielded to former bassman/synthman Alan Davey in hawkwind.com's cyberinterviews , said, "Bridget's performing art was very good....it almost worked".

Sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock has been closely associated with the band, especially after the death of the band's original space-poet and lead singer, Robert Calvert. Moorcock has contributed strongly to their hold on the theme of androids, space and the future. Check out this link on Moorcock's collaboration with Calvert.





HAWKWIND (Until Summer 1997): Dave Brock, Ron Tree, Alan Davey (no longer with the band) and Richard Chadwick

NEW MEMBER: RON TREE:

In the summer of 1996, HW announced the addition of a new lead singer named Ron Tree. Also a bassist, Ron became exclusively a front-man singer for HW and brought into the band his own particular style of stage presence. At first news, I was disappointed to hear of someone coming in that I had never heard of before. However, all I had to do was listen to "Alien 4" and then also watch the video "Love In Space" to realize that Ron is the best thing to happen to HW since Alan Davey came on. Ron is absolutely wild and crazy and brings a stage-presence that HW has not had in decades (since Calvert!). Ron Tree brings the eccentricity back to HW which had been missing for too long. The lineup of the 80's with Lloyd-Langton and Bainbridge was cool, but just too stable and level-headed!!! Now with Ron Tree...the SHOW is so much more psychedelic and crazy. Picture this....the lights are dimmed on stage...the synths are droning...out comes Ron Tree with one half of his body painted black, the other painted white...hair all a mess and full of silver strands, swimming goggles on and a jacket totally covered with blinking lights. His voice in crescendo, yelling BEAM ME UP! BEAM ME UP! BEAM ME UP! I'M BEING BEAMED UP!!!!!!! Tree's voice is perfect for singing HW songs. Listen to "Are You Losing Your Mind?" on Alien 4: "...walking down the street.... I had a funny feeling in my mind...like...like...I had a silicon chip in my head....like a silicon chip...in my head? a....a...a...silicon chip in my head? A silicon chip in my head. A SILICON CHIP IN MY HEAD! GOTTA SILICON CHIP IN MY HEAD!!!! A SILICON CHIP IN MY HEAD!!!!!!! I'MMMMMMMMMM - I'M LOSING MY MIND CONTROL! I'M LOSING MY MINNNNNNNNNNND!!!!!!" It is just too cool for words....just absolutely wild.

NEW MEMBER: STEVE RICHARDS:

When Davey left in the summer of '97, leaving Brock the only one on the synths, someone else had to come in. This person is Jerry Richards, on guitar. I met him briefly after their show recently in Chicago. Click here to see a snapshot I took of him.. Since I really don't know much about him I will simply say that he is a great guitarist, and like Tree, the band will probably move in some different direction because of him...but that is how HW always has evolved.

HAWKWIND: WHY UNKNOWN IN AMERICA?:

My opinions, of course. The fact that Hawkwind has never deviated from their central mission (space rock!) has contributed to them being non-mainstream in America even as an underground band. They refuse to do it any other way than "their way". And here in the USA, any band who refuses to play to corporate-music's whims is bound to end up less well-known (and less financially endowed) as a band that is willing (e.g., Pink Floyd). Early Pink Floyd had tons of experimental sounds, and songs too long for the airwaves. Hawkwind refuses to "ride the gravy train": they remain on the physchedelic/fantasy/space/mind expanding track with total disregard to "air-play" potential. However, one can note that on the success of their only big "hit"; Silver Machine ( top ten in UK, 1972), Hawkind became a force to be reckoned with and it looked like they would possibly break into the US music scene - the revenues from this hit financed their elaborate "Space Ritual" tour during the early 70's. Yet, Hawkwind never caught on in the US. The music is simply never going to be heard over American radio (except maybe late at night by an enlightened DJ!). In the now defunct website hawkwind.com, the cyberinterviews , Brock stated how it felt to be the frontman in the most popular underground band in the world by replying: "Not very rich...but fun!"

MORE ON HAWKWIND'S SOUND:

Who else can Hawkwind be compared to? Well....some of Hawkwind's music has an experimental/progressive sound likened to the stuff from the '70's by King Crimson , Robert Fripp, ELP, and Brian Eno and others in that genre. Another comparison could be some Kraftwerk that went astray to analog rock & roll...then of course this nagging Pink Floyd comparison. A lot of what binds these comparisons together is the use of the synthesizer.
A lot of people probably haven't seen the connection between some of Hawkwind's music to that of Blue Oyster Cult - but, in fact, BOC jumps on the "band wagon" (pardon that pun!) by using a poem written by Moorcock on the album, "Fire of Unknown Origin" - the song is "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (nicely delivered by BOC's Eric Bloom).
Hawkwind has a few songs that remind me of BOC, namely: Needle Gun, also Lloyd-Langton's Dragons & Fables and then the song, Motorway City. Some of Alan Davey's vocal harmonies have reminded me of some I have heard by Yes. There are more comparisons: David Bowie shares some of the lyrical themes but the sound is definitely different. I have often thought that some of the songs by Uriah Heep are reminiscent of Hawkwind's sound. Then there are some similarities to the Moody Blues here and there: the reading of poetry between songs and also some of the vocal harmonies, a song which comes to mind is the chorus of Psi Power
. Hanwkwind's more recent "New Agish" sound has been coming from the heavy use of synthesizer "voice pads" and this exploration into "melodic" or ambient music is one of the more significant "strayings" from what could be interpreted as HW's original agenda: pyschedelic space-rock. However, I will be the first to say that they have produced some great melodic music - and they try very hard to keep the "old agenda" within these songs. Listen to Going to Hawaii from the album "Electric Tepee" - a perfect example Hawkwind's ambient persuasions.
Hawkwind can finally be compared to many lesser-known Euro-U.K. bands, such as Amon Duul, Soft Machine, Skinny Puppy, Earthstone, Camel and Ozric Tentacles - by the way, if you haven't listen to anything by Ozric Tentacles, then you are really missing out!!! I recommend Jurrasic Shift as an appetizer.
Actually, it's difficult to put HW's style into a single category unless you create a category especially for them!
Hawkwind has a few "trademarks" to their sound, in my opinion...synth sweeps being one of the main ones. Synth sweeps seem to occur constantly throughout their music. Hawkwind saw the potential of this music device before many other bands, even before the advent of what we know as the present-day synthesizer...back long ago when they were simply audio-generating devices without piano keyboards, or if they had keyboards, it was only a couple of octaves. Synths in all of HW's albums since 1969 prove that Hawkwind has many times been ahead of their time.
There is another trademark of HW: guitar chord runs (almost always by Brock) that stay within a fret or two of each other that are reminiscent of the Western interpretation of what Arabic music sounds like. Brock uses this run in tons of modified ways. I cannot count the number of Hawkwind songs that I have heard some version of this. The song Magnu is a perfect example, Sword of the East, LSD & Rites of the Netherworld are others that contain this type of guitar-riff.
Then there is another "trademark" worth mentioning...dual vocals using a quasi-chant in a 5th or 7th note harmonic. Many of their songs have this dual-vocal that evokes an ominous pagan-like chant feeling. Assault & Battery, Golden Void, Dying Seas, Sword of the East and Sadness Runs Deep are a few examples of the many, many such songs.





Now I don't mean to say that everything I have ever heard by Hawkwind is God-sent...on the contrary, there is some stuff that, try as I may...I cannot love. However, since HW has spawned over 100 albums - most of these being compilations of the 25 or so "mainstream" albums) - you are assured that in them, you will find tons of great stuff and they are without question my favorite band in the world.

HAWKWIND AND THE NET:

The Internet has really been kind to Hawkwind. There are tons and tons of websites on them. (Question: How did you find MINE out of so many of them??? ). There is a connection between Hawkwind, the Internet, the hundreds of webpages on them and it is this: Hawkwind has always espoused the FUTURE...and a good glimpse of our future can be seen on the Internet. With so many Hawkwind fans being computer-users, naturally, Hawkwind ends up having a very large WWW presence in the form of personal websites.
What is awesome about this is that 10 years ago (as I have previously mentioned), Hawkwind was so obscure, you could only get their albums/cassettes from import record shops. Now, here in U.S., CD's & videos of Hawkwind can be found in most all of the larger record shops. Their presence is growing...after 25 years!!!! What this all means is that the electronic-aged culture we exist within has finally caught up with the Spaceship Hawkwind . This "Super Information Age" has become the Spirit of the Age and has helped to create a new-found fame and deserving presence for the greatest underground band on Planet Earth. Thanks for checking into my website and... Keep on tripping into space and into the future, my friend!
PSI POWER!
DWG

HAWKWIND ON THE NET:

hawkwind.com - Nuthin' more needs to be said!

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Hawkwind Norway - Norwegian Hawksite...a "must see" page!

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Strange Trips - Jim Lascko's HW site. You must check this out!!!

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Hawkwind Mission Control - HAWKWIND'S PERSONAL SITE FOR THEIR FANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the official website at present.

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Mpreal.com - Go here to see Steve Swindells new CD "Y2K".

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Hawkwinder's Home Page - HAWK-U.S./Time & Space Fanzine & personal HW website of a dude I chat with on AOL. Definitely cool!!!!

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Hawkeye on Hawkwind -with the band during Hawkwind's USA Spirit of the Age Tour: 1995. By a guy named "Age"...comprehensive...one of the best on the web.

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Interview -with the band during Hawkwind's USA Spirit of the Age Tour: 1995. Very neat interview with a couple of pictures.

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GEMM Site - You can order almost any Hawkwind album or CD you'd like over the Net. Also used CD's. Subject to availability, of course.

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The Golden Void - Personal site ran by a guy I met at a HW concert in Chicago. The site has a really cool approach - definitely worth a visit!

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Roadside America's Mini-Site - A bit of tongue-in-cheek humor about HW.

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Huw Lloyd Langton - My webpage on Huw and his new album "On the Move". Page created Jan. 31, '98.

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Silver Machine - Hawkwind cover band.


Archeaopteryx: Flight in Space - my space-rock & ambient album! Come to my webpage, check out some wav samples and order one if you find that you like it.

My Album Cover



Image from inner sleeve of Xenon Codex CD



Alien (I am)...I reject your human touch!
ALIEN 4

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