What Do We Like About Hawkwind?

[JKL2000]

In the NEARfest thread Mr. Toad asked the reasonable question "What do you all see in Hawkwind?"

To me Hawkwind is like a moving train, and if you jump onto the wrong car you can easily get a wrong impression. There's a wide variety of sounds with all the studio albums, live versions of studio albums, multiple live versions of different songs, different personnel, etc. What I can say is that I HATED Hawkwind at first! I started out at a bad place on the train - the studio album "The Chronicles of the Black Sword." It was their new album at the time and being a Michael Moorcock fan, I went for this, but it did NOT sound good to me. Several years later I found the album Live Chronicles which sounded much better to me.

It really just took several stabs at different albums, and eventually it clicked. There are still a lot of albums I've never heard, and overall I'm more familiar with later albums rather than the earlier ones - I've never even heard the first couple of albums.

Here are a few tracks I like a lot, but I suspect people will recommend a lot of different kinds of tracks.

Most of these tracks ends at an unfortunate point since they're from live albums, and they just picked weird stopping points before switching to the next track.:

[Nador]

I couldn't begin to understand someone hearing without thinking it totally rules.

[elliottnow]

The UA years are incredible. Heavy space rock doesn't get any better for me.

[PROGMONSTER]

1976-80 was cool. Before that they just sounded like amateur hard rock with some space synth

[NogbadTheBad]

They're soooo spppaaacceeeeyyyy

I got into them from the early albums, Space Ritual is a landmark & shows them at their best. I also quickly got to the Calvert albums, loved his vocals and lyrics.

[notallwhowander]

So I thought I said this, but Jen thinks she said this, so one of us said, "It's like a comic book for the ears."

Yeah, it isn't Shakespeare, and it doesn't try to be, but sometimes you get to read a really cool comic book. Hawkwind is a really cool comic book, for your ears.

Also, Hawkwind isn't all that consistent. But when they hit, they hit it big. It's worth bobbing through the uninteresting bits to suddenly be leaving the outer atmosphere and off into deep nebulae.

I didn't really get them either, until I heard "Sonic Attack" off the Space Ritual album. Then it all clicked into place.

[JKL2000]

I didn't really get them either, until I heard "Sonic Attack" off the Space Ritual album. Then it all clicked into place.

Yeah, Space Ritual is great, as is the song Sonic Attack and the intro.

[JJ88]

The UA years are incredible. Heavy space rock doesn't get any better for me.

Agreed. Terrific stuff.

[markwoll]

Usually the silence after the end of a track.
I do like Captain Lockheed & the Starfighters though

[Interstellar]

My first encounter with Hawkwind was Hall Of The Mountain Grill. I felt it was a balanced mixture of heavy rock, psychedelic and atmospheric music. It made me travel, without the help of any other substance than the sound itself.
I'm not a big fan, but Hawkwind has a kind of naive charm, yes the same as a comic book. It's refreshing, often raw sounding, and when it takes off, it really takes off. The ever-changing line-ups add an element of diversity and surprise.

[Steve F.]

The UA years are mostly amazing and there's plenty of very good stuff after that and even more not as good.

But they defined a genre and a sound and, like Magma or Soft Machine, many bands followed in their wake that probably would not have existed without them. That's a pretty heavy box checked in their favor, even if you don't like them.

IMO

[notallwhowander]

Here's a track I really like. A friend of mine once said that when Hawkwind take themselves too seriously, they start getting really good. It's true on the following track. Cavlert is approaching the whole thing way too seriously, and it's pretty awesome.



Also notice the deep space break around the 3:20 mark.

[JKL2000]

I just remembered that part of what I first hated about Chronicle of the Black Sword was the song Needle Gun, because the lyrics are kind of just Needle, needle, needle, needle gun, Needle needle, needle gun...

[GuitarGeek]

I just remembered that part of what I first hated about Chronicle of the Black Sword was the song Needle Gun, because the lyrics are kind of just Needle, needle, needle, needle gun, Needle needle, needle gun...

So you didn't like the fact that it had a repetitive chorus refrain, much like millions of other songs recorded by, well, just about everyone?! And there's more to the lyrics than that. Off the top of my head, there's:

I see you're alive
I thought you was done
I'm gonna bring you down
With my needle gun
Feel my pinprick
tattoo your spine
Give it a minute
Your life's entwined with mine

But anyway, my first experience with Hawkwind, actually, was The Xenon Codex. It didn't quite sound like I expected, from the descriptions I had heard of their music. But at the time, it was the only album you could find by them, since virtually everything else was either out of print or never released Stateside in the first place (and we didn't have any good import stores on the east side of Cleveland).

But as I listened to it, I found a lot to like. I was always into hard rock music, so I got into that aspect of the sound, and I especially got into Huw Lloyd Langton's guitar work, which I always thought was second to none.

Then, as time went on, I slowly acquired all their other 70's and 80's era albums, as well hearing stuff on college radio (which I started listening to around the same time), and I came to like or love pretty much all of their albums up through Electric Tepee. I really haven't heard much of what they've done since the mid 90's, though.

I think in general, the "best" stuff would be, as was said, the United Artists era stuff, basically In Search Of Space through Hall Of The Mountain Grill (plus the respective non-album singles). For me the apogee would be Space Ritual. That's gotta be one of the trippiest most psychedelic records ever made. I love Dave Brock's wah wah guitar work, Nik Turner's electric sax, and Del Dettmar's synth work.

Special note I have to make of Del, because he played his EMS Synthi A nothing all like most rock keyboardists play synths. Most of the time you hear a synthesizer, like when someone like Wakeman or Emerson uses the instrument, it's basically being used as an extension of the organ. Del Dettmar used the synth more as a sound generator, which he used to create abstract shapes of sound that weren't about "soloing" so much as just making a trippy sound.

One of my favorite Hawkwind tracks for that sort of thing is the version of Time We Left that appears on Space Ritual Vol. 2 (and which I gather has been appended onto some sort of "deluxe" edition of the original Space Ritual album that came out about 10 years ago, and which I still haven't managed to acquire):



Bob Calvert I think saw himself as a "serious" science fiction poet/author, so his lyrics on the late 70's albums often reflect that. One of my favorite tracks from that period is of the Hawklords album, something called Psi Power:



And finally (for now), something from the 80's, from the album Levitation, with Huw Lloyd Langton on guitar and Tim Blake on keyboards (and some guy who used to play with Eric Clapton on drums):

[glawster2002]

They're soooo spppaaacceeeeyyyy

I got into them from the early albums, Space Ritual is a landmark & shows them at their best. I also quickly got to the Calvert albums, loved his vocals and lyrics.

Ever sine I first heard it in the mid '70s Space Ritual has been one of my all-time favourite live albums. The Collectors Edition has the full concert recording over two CDs, the double album was time-limited by the fact it was vinyl of course, as well as a 5.1 mix of the album on DVD.

[JKL2000]

So you didn't like the fact that it had a repetitive chorus refrain, much like millions of other songs recorded by, well, just about everyone.

They said Needle a hell of a lot of times. But I like them now!

[Onomatopoeic]

After buying a radio station promo copy of Doremi Fasol Latido with a large hole punched through the corner in 1973 for 50 cents, and then a few weeks later, a used copy of In Search Of Space with a Hawkwind Log booklet inside, I was a fan and Hawkwind album collector for life.

[Mythos]

When I was 15 I won tickets to my first concert, which turned out to be the Hawkwind Space Ritual Tour, complete with all the cool guys, and Stacia of course!

Love the UA years..!

BTW: On the first album, their is a CD remastered version that contains an alternate version of Hurry on Sundown, with the harmonica replaced by saxophone, it's really cool...

[Obscured]

The shows with Steve Hillage last year were amazing. Wish I had crossed the pond for some of these.

[progman1975]

They're soooo spppaaacceeeeyyyy

I got into them from the early albums, Space Ritual is a landmark & shows them at their best. I also quickly got to the Calvert albums, loved his vocals and lyrics.

Quark is sooooooooooo freakin' good!

[notallwhowander]

Quark, Strangeness & Charm is the most consistent album I've heard by them. No false-steps to these ears. However, it's peculiar, stripped-down sound isn't all that representative of the band. Still, it is essential. Kudos to Esoteric/Atomhenge for keeping it in print.

[DrGoon]

I first discovered Hawkwind at the start of the 80s when they had already passed through their first two classic phases (UA years and Charisma years). However, with Huw Lloyd Langton back in the band and Brock's fellow Sonic Assassin Harvey Bainbridge on bass and keys they were still a mighty live band and they made a big impression. Of course I very quickly started collecting and loving the back catalogue. I saw a vast number of Hawkwind gigs including some very special events where they turned in truly great performances. I got to meet a lot of the die-hard fans over the years and it's fair to say that in Britain at least there's a community vibe to any Hawkwind gig. Later in the 80s almost every former crew member with a tape in his pocket seemed to be releasing a Hawkwind album and things got a bit crazy on the release front, but on the whole they have continued to play more good gigs than bad and their official albums have usually had enough of merit on them to be worth repeat listens.

There not much on video that does their peaks justice. You could pick any of the second through fifth studio albums as a means of introduction. ObSelection: Lord of Light (Doremi Fasol Latido).

[Mr. Toad]

So you didn't like the fact that it had a repetitive chorus refrain, much like millions of other songs recorded by, well, just about everyone?! And there's more to the lyrics than that. Off the top of my head, there's:

I see you're alive
I thought you was done
I'm gonna bring you down
With my needle gun
Feel my pinprick
tattoo your spine
Give it a minute
Your life's entwined with mine

Like I said, "Spinal Tap". But, you'll never have to worry about me borrowing your Hawkwind CDs.

[notallwhowander]

Like I said, "Spinal Tap". But, you'll never have to worry about me borrowing your Hawkwind CDs.

Not that I like that particular song, but you just have to roll with the Tappishness if you're going to enjoy Hawkwind. This is why the comic book analogy is so fitting. Now, you may not like comic books: not your thing. That's alright. But there are particularly good ones in the Hawkwind catalog, you just have to roll with lyrics like...

We are the Warriors at the Edge of Time
And we are tired... Tired of making love!

...which out Taps Tap really.

Fun.

[kid_runningfox]

Huw Lloyd-Langton.