In Search of Hawkwind

For those of you know don’t know, Hawkwind are a seminal psychedelic rock band; formed 1969 from buskers and hippies, they gave hundreds of free gigs to help raise donations for various worthy causes, attended the legendary Isle of Wight festival where they played for free and got tribute and recognition from Jimmy Hendrix, and have for the last thirty five years toured Britain, Europe, and America, with a distinctive Space-&-Fantasy set of lights, lasers, poetry, readings, and music that predated dance’s ambient, groove, and chill-out, by at least three decades. You might not know their work except their famous single “Silver Machine”, you might not know any of their band members except Lemmy. They got Lemmy before he was famous, and they sacked him, giving him the impetus to form Motorhead. If you have heard of Cream, after they split they got the legendary drummer from that crew, Ginger Baker, and sacked him too (headline: world’s best drummer sacked by world’s worst bass player).

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It turns out they sacked a lot of people over the last thirty five years, and it’s those hirings-and-firings, and the often bitter recriminations that arose, rather than the music, that is the content of Carol Clerk’s “The Saga of Hawkwind”. I could put the 550-page tome down, discovering endless revelations and allegations. I’ve heard it said from Hawkwind fans they found the book “depressing” in parts, sad to see the dirty laundry of a Love-&-Peace band. I don’t see it that way, their music (and live shows) speak for themselves, and the ins-and-outs of the band is incredibly interesting. As Clerk says, sometimes ‘more Spinal Tap than Spinal Tap’. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it’s not a good work to introduce someone to Hawkwind to, but it’s a great read for fans.

Now I know I’ve seen Hawkwind live at least once, where they headed a 12 hour event, the Mildenhall Rock and Blues Festival, above such acts as Mamas Boys, a sub par English Whitesnake, the Atom Seeds, a sub par English Chile Peppers, and the Mean Red Spiders, not the Canadian white-noise pop outfit formed in 1995, but the unknown blues band who gave us the immortal track “she’s a whore in the kitchen and a cook in bed”. For some reason my mind is trying to convince me I saw Hawkwind a second time. This might be, and probably is, pure imagination on my part. But I can’t shake the feeling…

Nonetheless, it looks like I have opportunity to go to the now-annual Hawkfests, a private festival run by Hawkwind, mid June in Derbyshire, a nicely-central location in England. I’m very, very much looking forward to it.