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Hawkwind Takes Flight | The Spindle
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In 1972 the British band Hawkwind scored a surprise #3 hit with their semi-live/semi-studio burner "Silver Machine," sung by future Motörhead leader Lemmy Kilmister. On this episode of The Spindle, John and Marc delve into this space-bound tune, and why Hawkwind were awesome and...kind of underrated?
Hello everybody. It's the Spindle Podcast with Mark and John.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Spindle, a podcast about seven-inch records. I'm Mark. I'm John. And in each episode, we talk about one seven-inch record and hopefully give you some insight into it that you haven't heard before. We both got into music in the 80s and 90s when 7 inches are super important, especially on independent labels. So that's the era we mostly draw from. But we sometimes pick some stuff earlier or later than that, too. Either way, we try to keep it short and to the point, just like seven inches do. So we are going a little earlier on this episode. We're going to talk about Hawkwind's Silver Machine backed with 7x7, released by United Artists in England in June of 1972. The A-Side was written by Bob Calvert and uh S. McManus, Sylvia McManus, who was we can get into that in a little bit. His wife of guitarist Abe Brock, he used that name as a pseudonym, but we'll talk about that as we go along. Uh B-Side, also credited to S. McManus. Silver Machine is recorded live at the Roundhouse in February of 72 during a greasy trucker's benefit show, with overdubs added later at Morgan Studios in London. And the B-Side was recorded at Rockville Studios in Wales, both produced by Hawkwin and Dr. Technical, which is another name for Dave Brock. And uh Silver Machine was also included on a compilation called Glastonbury Fair. That song went to number three on the UK singles chart and uh apparently charted again when it got re-released a couple different times over the years. The lineup for this one was Bob Calvert on Vocals. I guess I don't know. Is he on vocals?
SPEAKER_02They credit him because he's on the original recording.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, okay. Dave Brock on guitar, Nick Turner on Saks, flute, let me kill Meister on bass, guitar, vocal bass guitar and vocals, uh Michael Davies on synth, or what what what's his nickname? Dick Dick Mick. Oh, Dick Mick, yeah. Yeah. Uh Del Detmar on Synth and Simon King on drums. Yep. So as we were alluding to, uh, well, it's about we we don't have to get into that part right away about about the replacing of the vocals, but that's one of the things that happened. This was recorded live, but they decided later that they didn't think Robert Calvert had sung it well enough, so they had let me come in and overdub his vocals on it.
SPEAKER_02Well, Bob Calvert's we we should probably get into Hawkwind a little bit before we get that deep into it, but uh that's true. Yeah, it's very this is actually extremely early in their career. Like they only have a couple albums out at this point, and they aren't a singles band. So I don't know whether the intent with this single is just, you know, let's just put something out and see what happens. They had had a couple albums out, they were reasonably successful as an albums band, really successful touring around with this grimy, dirty squatter or hippie, like the real back end of the hippie scene. Very biker-oriented, very anarchic. And calling them anarchists give them a level of intentionality that maybe is a bit too much. They were not the only band. So, like, if you get into Hawkwind, a lot of times you also get into bands like the Pink Fairies, the Deviants, uh, the Groundhogs, who made up this kind of subterranean, underground y scene that existed sort of to the end of the 60s and the early 70s in the UK. Acid and speed and things like that were more their drugs. I don't think they I think they thought that things had gotten away again from sort of basics in some ways, you know, like uh rock and roll to them should be loud and noisy and somewhat offensive and somewhat mind-altering in its way, rather than introspective, innovative, you know, right? Like uh technically well played, like that to them, that's not rock and roll. Right. And they're not wrong. I mean, it is this, and then you're talking about maybe the difference between rock and roll and pop. But at that point, there certainly was a big confusion. It's also around the time people started to talk self-consciously about a thing called rock. Let's invent a new, let's, you know, not enough genres in the world, as I've complained about previously. Uh so this is one where it splits off, you know, where you're not like previously a lot of those bands had self-identified as either rock and roll, meaning like something Chuck Berry-ish or something like that, or RB, rhythm and blues, even the white bands, or or something like that, or some mix thereof. So now people had sort of dispensed with the rhythm and blues part and the rockabilly part of it, and you're left with just really loud music that's playing, you know, very simple chords repetitively and yelling at the top of your lungs over it. Right.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02And so that's the essence, you know, and it's it's true. And I think the there's a very direct connection with England with like skiffle and things like that. A lot of the influences on the original rock and roll are from Scotch-Irish immigrants and Appalachia. It's a very one-to-one connection, you know, mashed up with other stuff. Uh, so there's a very direct connection between the English and why they connected with rock and roll a lot and felt very protective of it and curatorial towards it. And they definitely, I will say, for most of the best bands, instead of just a lot of American bands would fall into just imitating either Buddy Holly or a black band, whoever they chose, little Richard or whatever, being almost too good at it in a way. Whereas the British bands just didn't bother to copy people too much, the best ones. They just kind of learned the song and played it. Just let their own personalities, their own backgrounds fill in everything. It's we got the chords, we got the melody. The rest of it is us, you know. Right. And that's a crucial difference, I think. You know, that brings a creativity to it that means you're re-meeting it on equal terms rather than just aping something to claim it's energy for yourself. You know, energy vampire. Um and so uh Hawkwind comes out of a folk scene that's kind of from that skiffle scene. Dave Brock started off as a busker on the streets of London, but somehow, you know, sort of more a psychedelic, it's like this psychedelic squatter back to basics scene. Makes sense. Yeah, sure. And so they're they were centered. I mean, it ended up berthing the pub rock scene in a lot of ways. Like there's a very direct connection. People like Joe Stromer, bands like Dr. Feel Good, and stuff like that. There actually was a one-to-one connection there. And it isn't just that Lemmy was friends with everybody, right? It it was like if you break down Hawkland, like they're very much just taking those blues things and just shooting them into the sun. So it's like instead of playing a 12-bar blues thing, they'll take a blues lick and repeat it over and over again for 10 minutes. And it's a very reductionist, it's a it shows absolute knowledge of things like minimalism and stuff like that. But it also is a very basic, like we took acid and it sounds good. It's like ringing in our ears. It also has that great quality just following your nose to something cool and different just because it's rattling your brain pan a bit.
SPEAKER_01They were pretty whacked out when they got on stage to do it, I think.
SPEAKER_02I mean, yeah, I wonder about them. I I wonder if they were one of those bands that, you know, I mean, certainly they were no strangers to partying. I don't mean to imply that at all. Right. They were maybe sensible enough to save it for when they were not directly on stage all the time. Like I mean, I suppose I'm acid. It if you're taking it a decent amount, you can't take it all the time. Like you literally can't. Even the 13th floor elevators, it just doesn't work. Like you can't take it every day. It won't work. You can pretty much once a week you'll get the effects. So, this idea that you can get play gig after gig after gig after gig after gig, tripping the whole time, and not possible. You know, they're doing the same stuff everybody does drinking beer, smoking weed, you know, maybe some speed to keep them awake. Then every once in a while it's like woo! But gig-wise, they always sound in their way two together in some ways, you know. I mean, I'm sure somebody did, but and then they are always very they have that huge stage show that's like very difficult to manage, and it was always a big part of it. So, I mean, maybe other people are, but I bet you Dave Brock is somebody, he seems like a guy who's like, no, I gotta keep it together until I don't need to, you know. Right. Uh, they have dancers, they had a PA system. I was seeing an interview where they basically nobody took any money from the band, like they ate and drank and stuff like that, but they spent all the money on the PA or wow, painting stuff, or you know, like they would just constantly upgrade their stage show or spend a lot on the packaging of the records, which was crazy. And they always like to have very like their art designer Barney Bubbles is a legendary British art designer. Like, he didn't just do them, like he did Armed Forces by Elvis Costello. He did the first three Elvis Costello records, those covers are Barney Bubbles. He did the Dams records, he was the house guy for Stiff Records. You he did many records, like he's he was like hypnosis, and then he's their main the main British designer. Uh the Hawkman packages are crazy. That's kind of how I first found out about him. This kid from England brought these records to a party and they folded out like in search of space was like this beautiful die-cut cover. Uh Space Rituals, this enormous cardboard thing with these beautiful inner sleeves and stuff, and the it just is never, you know, it just immediately like you never forget the packaging alone, much less the catching music inside. So it's interesting how they were always very focused on everything coming together. And Silver Machine as a song is a is almost it's a visual song in the way it sounds, you know, even with the color and the title.
SPEAKER_01And you and it it's interesting you you bring up like you know, they had a record called Space Ritual, and that and the kind of the the first thing you ever most people seem to ever hear about them is oh, Space Rock, you know, and they kind of invented space rock, or at least were one of the first bands to sort of do this thing that had this relation to you know to make it sound spacey or sound outer space. Sure, yeah, outer space, you know, and and that I mean this song is probably one of the main reasons why they got that rep, I imagine, right?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh, the thing I'd say though is I per personally, I mean, I yeah, people try because they are they're into space, space is deep, search of space, but but I think they're more like sci-fi. They're a lot of their they go through different phases in their career of exploring different science fiction themes. The first one, well, the first album is all acid y introspection, exploring the self. So then the other stuff is more space-oriented. Then they go into a phase, the the Chronicles of the Black Sword, where they're like doing fantasy. And so it's like they fit seamlessly in with like the rave kind of scene. They were they right into that because that whole science fiction mentality is like that's a very big through line for them. Now, Silver Machine, though, as I've just read, uh, is actually about a bike.
SPEAKER_01Right. And but they knew what they knew that they knew that they were explaining something that people could interpret as a as a socket ship or something, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, you mean he's deliberately clouding it, but it's funny because he it's Alfred Yari that he got the idea from in the pataphysical stuff, how he would take absolutely insane stuff and describe it uh in very, very technical terms. They did a whole encyclopedia like that. Then the but it really reminded me though of there's a uh Yari book called uh The Supermale, which ends with this concept of creating this perfect man who lives on this one particular type of food. Back in those days, they'd have these endurance bike races where there's like the idea being there's 10 guys on this one bike, and it ends with them all dead, but still so male, so testosterone later, they're all still by riding the bike and pumping the pedals and racing a train. And uh, it just sort of reminded me of that, like, because it's almost like he makes it sound like they're they're already they push themselves into a different dimension uh through exerting themselves into death. And uh, so it is it seems to call that up to me, you know, it's very a very yari kind of concept, right?
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah, and it's great, it's great when you find out that it is about a bike because it it totally works on that level too, and it's kind of awesome that that he's saying I got a silver machine like this, and it's just a bicycle. But it's cool that it's just a bicycle.
SPEAKER_02I live as well. Bob Calvert's great, and he's like an he's an energy guy, so like you hand him a microphone on stage, there's lots of live recordings of him. He's great, he's fine, he's yelling his head off. But when it comes to a single, it's probably not the best vocals for it. Like it just is like he's probably like, I gotta ride, right? So I'm saying, you know, just yelling it, great life. But Lemmy could sing it in that smooth, drony way that kind of went with the guitar and went with the riff. So it was easier, I think, to replace that. Lemmy's a good singer, he's a little deceptive. I mean, I don't know if you're a big motorhead fan. I'm sure a lot of people are.
SPEAKER_01I like him, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's he's great, he's like really good musician, uh, knows how to sing a song. It's not like he's got some wide range, but he knows exactly what he's doing, you know. So uh this is a great early example of that.
SPEAKER_01And then then then there's the space aspect beyond sort of the content of the song, this song or other songs is like it sounds like space, like the way the guitars work and the way you know they they were able to. I sometimes I think that's more why the space rock fits for them than necessarily the content of the lyrics, although they go together, obviously. But like this is the first one of the first bands I heard that this early was doing something that sounded like you know, that they were that sounded like rock uh the whoosh of rocket ships and the and the kind of cosmic aspect of things.
SPEAKER_02They did it long before it, but it does sound like that famous scene in Star Wars where this the spaceship goes over your head, the enormous spaceship goes over your head. Or uh crowd close encounters. Like uh that it really it's funny you said that because it really does sound like that. You're just sitting in space minding your own business, you hear this sound, it's like a burbling sound, there's a whooshin', and then it just gets louder and louder, and then the riff comes along, and it's the spaceship just going and you're like, oh, you know, yeah, and it looks at first it doesn't look very detailed, but the closer you look, you realize, well, this is a huge thing I'm seeing from far away, and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's great.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, plus the riffs are bulletproof, like they really are worth repeating for 10 minutes. You know, you and I, we did a Hawkwind tribute. We could say this, you can play those things forever. You can just sit there and go, we were playing what we played Time Then we left this world today, which and you just it just goes on and on, you know.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, quite a few years ago, we we were involved in this thing in DC where bands just for one night were doing Hawkwin covers, and our band did did a couple songs, and it was pretty awesome. I mean, that's the most I've ever dug into them and realized how much is going on in their music and stuff. I liked them anyway, but but yeah, that was really fun to play those songs. It's it's great because it's like there the you know, I think some people kind of tend to uh maybe lump them in with a little bit of prog aspects, but the stuff is so primitive, it's not it's like it wasn't hard to learn how to play the songs because that wasn't that wasn't the point. It was more the you know what was going into the energy of the songs, right?
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Well, I mean, they're like, see, this is the thing. Hawkwood to me is is definitely I love to to do these episodes about people that I think are not really properly rated or understood or paid attention to. Hawkwood might be one of the most underrated bands to come out of the 60s and the 70s or out of the UK. They're way more influential than people know, particularly on UK musicians, but also their use of electronics was off the chain for the time. Nobody had thought of just cutting the electronics loose. Most of the synthesizers were difficult to control in a harmonic way. You could not track chords, you couldn't play consistent melodies, you you had to, you were at the mercy of the electronics. And Hawkwind, instead of fighting that, just let it rip. And so, you know, without them, there I mean, I would put them on par, although I don't know that they were really aware of this. It's definitely somewhat like the 13th floor elevators in the jug situation. I think that the that has had a lot of influence, particularly like Parubu comes to mind immediately. Uh, but uh almost all of the British kids at some point, those British punk bands took acid and watched Hawkwind at a show and had their minds blown by it, you know. Uh, you've also got more direct influences like like fucking Lemmy, you know, and Motorhead. They're where Hawkwind is kind of blues, motorhead's rockabilly in that way, you know, and just kind of they I don't know, they do so much. Like, I can't think of a Hawkwind record I don't like. Like, I've heard them all. I really truly I like every single one. I like it is the business of the future to be dangerous from the mid-90s. I like their fucking shoe gaze record called Space Bandits with the girl vocalist. It's really good. They're great, they're great all the way through. They have this new wave phase in the late 70s where they like do Quark Strangeness and Charm and the Hawk Lords, which is incredible. I don't know. That's like it's all good. They had a little like house phase where they did like trance music that's cool. They put out a three LP live set like a year and a half, two years ago. That's amazing. Their new record is good. I don't know. But nobody really talks about them too much. It's sort of like they're they're sort of I mean to me, they're a lot like the fall, in that that it's like you have this one person, but he always conceives of it as a group, even if there's people coming in and out of it. He's still like, I'm only gonna exert so much influence because I'd rather have these other influences on it. So it's pretty much Dave Brock, but he also allows other strong personalities in the band to function as themselves, even if he's fighting with them. And that's Lemmy got kicked out because Dave Brock wanted to keep him in the band, but the others thought he was grumpy on speed too much, so they voted to kick him out. And Dave Brock had to go tell Lemmy, I'm sorry, lad, I was outvoted. You're off, you're gone. But Brock was like, I didn't want to do it, but I was outvoted. They would give votes to like the roadies, and sort of Henry Cow did something like this too at one point. Like everybody had a say, and it got, I'm sure it got to be unwieldy to a point, you know, but they they stuck with their guns and functioned that way. They always remind me a little bit of Crass, maybe. Like it's like it's a it really is like more of a life than a career. And I'm sure if you're not the central person making money off of publishing, it's probably hard to make a living being the lead guitarist in Hawkwind. Like you're gonna play a lot of gigs and you'll probably be okay, but it's not like this is you know, you're gonna be rich or something. Right.
SPEAKER_01It's uh wild that this was such a hit. I think it's got the aspects of like you can understand why people enjoy it, but just like such an unlikely like first of all, it's a live track, although they do add studio stuffs to it. And then there's this story about Top of the Pops wanted them on, but they didn't want to mime it, so they actually filmed them at playing live, but then put the track over top of the live stuff, and it's just such a it's a wild phenomenon that this was like a number three song.
SPEAKER_02It is pretty crazy because, like I said, they even at that time they're like still fucking squatters and stuff, and like they aren't like they're a they're a weird sort of their own operation, you know. Long before other bands kind of got like that, they were like their families traveled with them. They had like like they would bring along Michael Moorcock, who's a famous sci-fi writer, and he would do nothing but walk on stage and read his poems every once in a while. They had like full light shows always. When I saw them though, they had a brilliant, they were they came to America. I saw them in the 90s, they were so good, they were great. But they were a power trio, they were basically just three of them, and then they had a singer who would come on and some sing some stuff every once in a while. But they had all sorts of lights. He had this awesome jacket where he'd taken filament lights and stuck holes, stuck them through holes in the jean jacket. So when he turned around, these lights would like shake on his jean jacket, these filament lights, and he called it he called it the suit of lights. And so they would were very focused on even in that level presenting this visual, this visual element, you know, making that a huge part of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I just it's it's wild to me to imagine this this song like being on the radio a lot and and a bunch of people going in and buying the single. I mean, it's awesome that it happened. Do you think it's a novelty song, kind of? Uh, I mean, I guess it's got a little bit of that, especially like the kind of the spacey aspects of it. But it's also like it does not sound like a calculated song at all. Like it does there's nothing in it where I'm thinking, oh, they really wanted this to you know, which is that's kind of the interesting thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what made them think like I have to admit. I mean it's catchy though. It is. You might just go like I mean maybe they I mean you do put out singles. You don't always put out singles because you think they're gonna be a huge hit. Sometimes you just put it out, you need to put out a song, you know, let people know it's it is it's a standalone single though, as far as it's not on any records, right? It's not on Space Ritual, which was recorded the same year. Uh-huh. They didn't slap it onto In Search of Space, which came after it. They seem annoyed by it sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. Yeah, and it's also interesting. There's a bunch of different live versions since, right? Like I've found of just listening around, and they and they play it at different speeds, and it works. It works fast and it works slower. It's kind of awesome that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. They they they they only play it sometimes. Like they played it, I think, for a minute, and then they weren't into it, and then they like every once in a while it'll pop up. Yeah, they did a different version in 1980 or something, right?
SPEAKER_01Right, yep.
SPEAKER_02See, that era is highly underrated. That we call I call that new wave hawkwind. It's like one of my favorite eras. I don't know what's different about it, but it's really cool sounding. The that era is great, they have a lot of good songs from that era.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I mean it's it's interesting. I mean, they they do have this. I mean, there's so many people in the in the lineup for this record, and they do, like you said, the fall thing, but also this kind of weird collective thing where all these different people had sort of say a say in how the whole thing came out, and it feels like like it doesn't feel like a uh a a band with like a just a distinct, well, this guy is the is everything, even though Brock ends up through the history being the main guy. Like, yeah, that's they'll be especially on this song, it just doesn't feel like a vehicle for uh like a front person.
SPEAKER_02He was he was saying, I saw an interview with him where he was saying basically that at this point they were kind of all on the same page, so it was easy to get things done. He said the single though was a problem because they weren't they were definitely not prepared for a hit or fame in any way, shape, or form. A lot of the people in the band were antipath antipathetic, just disliked the whole concept, and were at least, you know, kind of ambivalent about it. So in some ways, they didn't care that Lemmy sang the song, although I think Bob Calvert did seem like the sort to be like, you know, it's my song. Um but in general at first they were fine, but as they got more success because of the single, it started to become more of a struggle with everything, which kind of happens. Like so then they go over and they tour the US. I mean, Lemmy doesn't get kicked out for another three years, so it's not like it's like you know, this immediate blow-up, but it started as sort of a a band that just wasn't ever trying for fame, unprepared for fame, but some personalities in the band more prepared for it than others, right? And basically it led to a process that over the next four or five years the band just disintegrated and then reconvened and then re-coalesced.
SPEAKER_01Almost the same people, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, Jay. Well, Dave Brock and Bob Calvert in particular, but off and on, yeah. A lot of the same people, including Hugh Lloyd Langton and people, right, who were in and out of the band. They're a weird, like the personnel thing is crazy. Like the two the two other big people other than Brock that really exerted their personality, because Levy was only in the band for three, four years, or Nick Turner and Bob Calvert. Bob Calvert is is literally bipolar, I think, or schizophrenic, and would have breaks on stage sometimes, would have to be hospitalized for long periods. He couldn't redo the vocals for Silver Machine because he was in a psychology psychiatric hospital. Right, right, right. So Nick Turner is insane. Like he's just one of those dudes that's just full on. I don't know that he's diagnosed like uh Bob Calvert was, or if he's that kind of insane, but he's just very difficult to work with, headstrong, knows what he wants. Other people bend to my will. So he and Brock would have a lot of problems. Brock was saying that that saxophone, he would just play it through everything, just would not stop, whether it's in the right key or not. He's just and you can hear, you know what I'm saying. There's a lot of live recordings where you're like, wow, that's a lot of sacks. That's some sacks. And he Dave Brock said at one point he unplugged a guitar, he threw a full beer can at his head, unplugged his guitar, went over, started screaming at him, like, stop playing the sacks. Oh my god. What's the Miles Davis said to John Coltrane? Take the horn out of your mouth. And uh, so there was always friction, but he didn't kick him out of the band. You know, it was all a group. Once Dave Brock decided it was democratic, sort of the Robert Fripp does something similar. Like Robert Fripp is nominally in charge of King Crimson, but once King Crimson is set up, Robert Fripp regards King Crimson as a democracy where others exert as much exist, you know, as much control as he does. Sometimes that troubles people, they feel like he's abdicating. Whereas he's like, the my charge, my charge is to form and decide, okay, this is King Crimson. Once that's decided, it's collectively our idea and our work. And I think it seems like Dave Brock has a similar attitude towards it, you know. Uh Mark Smith, too. Like if you were a musician in the fall, you had free reign. Smith might say, I'm not using that track, but he would never preemptively be like, don't do this, don't do that. He'd expect you to come up with a lot of things. You'd expect a few things to be rejected because, but he would also maybe pick out something you didn't think you liked sometimes and be like, oh, that's good. And so they you're allowed to be super creative in that context. It's just, you know, you're dealing with somebody who likes to spend their time in the pub, drinking beer, doing speed, and has strong ideas about things. Dave Brock seems like a mellower personality overall than a lot of these like irascable band leaders like David Thomas. Like he seems like a a nicer guy. Like it seems easier to be in a band with him, you know, just in general. He doesn't he has his thing, but and I'm sure he's, you know, I don't think he's a pushover or something like that, but he just seems to make an effort to get along and likes things to be fun and nice, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and he seems like he's not like super obsessed with like the band has to be I have to be the face of the band.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, no, he seems to have a good sense of knowing that it's better if other people carry some of it too, because that makes for a better like sometimes you can't even tell who's singing a Hawkwind song. Is it is it Bob? Is it Nick? Is it Lemmy? Is it Dave? It's really they all have you know the same kind of British names that everybody has, so they could all be the same person. Uh but uh uh you know what I mean though, it's like it's just that that and that's part of it too. That adds to the whole overwhelming spaceness of it, right? It's like almost faceless humans, like so many of them singing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and there's never never this super uh emphasis on one specific element or what like there's not like soloing in that kind of way, it's always a lot of stuff happening at any given time. There was a pretty cool little like piece on Uncut magazine's website that I found like from about a decade ago, where they just talked to everybody just about this song, and there are a lot of cool quotes, but I I really like this Nick Turner one. He's like Hawk when we're the people's band, we had grassroots support because we play every free festival that have us. Silver Machine was just the point where that crossed over into the mainstream, but we were about expressing ideas rather than technical ability. We left that to Pink Floyd, which is funny, but uh yeah, I mean they seem to they they all seem to kind of know what they were trying to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and Nick Turner made some great records as is actually. Um we have a mutual friend that played terms with him sometimes, Sam. Oh and uh he made he actually, if you see a Nick Turner record, sometimes they're really kind of cool, you know. It's sort of like you could pick up a it's sort of like Chrome, or you could pick up a you know, an album by some other member of Chrome, it'd be kind of cool, you know. Oh Damon Edge and Helios Creed. So he's he's cool in his own right. There's a reason those guys actually managed to throw together something that you know, Bob Calvert wrote some great lyrics and uh could write some really cool songs. Their songs are catchy as hell. Like I it's I can rattle off the top of my head a bunch of great catchy cool uh Hawkwind songs, like they're sort of underrated in that regard, too. Like you can sing Levitation, Motorway City, you know, Search of Space. Like you can sing these songs. You know, they are kind of pop, like they're like psychedelic pop in a way. Uh it just if they weren't 10 minutes long, like if they were all just two minutes long, you know. Time we left this world today, that's catchy as hell. Like once heard, never forgotten, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's funny. All these things we're talking about with them with the with the what you were just saying, and also the fact that they were sort of democratic and collectivish and and changed a lot. They almost feel like the the like the the Krautrock band that didn't exist in Germany, you know, like if the only difference is they weren't in Germany, but they seem to have a lot in common with like Can and Faust and those bands, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they were compared to them a lot, I think, at the time. And they and they were on United Artists, which was like the label that put out can and put out Amadul. There was a moment in the US where they were kind of cracking in the bottom edges of the Billboard 200 where people heard about them. I don't know, like I have to admit, I heard about them in the 80s. It took me forever to find their records where it wasn't just a flat out expensive import where I could afford it, you know. So there weren't a lot of Hawkwood records in the US at the time, which means that you know all the U.S. hipsters were probably into them, right? Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I do think you you have a point about them not not being the being underappreciated, both both over there and and especially here. Like, I mean, there's so much going on with all with their whole career that it just doesn't seem like it's been fully reckoned with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I can't tell. Sometimes in England it seems like they're seen as a bit of a hippie joke. Uh it might take American eyes to be like, no, this is something more than that, right? It might not seem exotic enough to them. It's like that's their big brother who was in the mud at Glastonbury, and goddamn, he's he's great, but he took a lot of acid. I don't know. Yeah, I I think they do they have a huge fan base, you know, so they definitely they still tour and sell out big pretty big places over there. Um, but here they are still relatively unknown, and especially it's faded. They used to tour every few years, they'd pop through, and I don't think they've come through in a really long time, but I could be wrong. I don't know. I haven't seen them anywhere near where I live, anyway. Yeah, well, they must be pretty old, old dudes too. He's 80, Dave Brock is 80 something, but I think the band is somewhat younger, right? But Dave Brock is in his 80s, and he seems the same. I don't know. You know, you can go on YouTube and look, they sound fantastic. Uh they still sound as good as ever, and definitely one of those things like The Fall or some of those other bands where the key is you find a voice, but then you sing lots of different songs with that voice in a way, like you put the voice in different contexts. Miles Davis is similar, you know, it's like always recognizable, but that that means your responsibility is to not just overuse a particular context to find new places to put yourself. And they pretty consistently did that. Also, the formula is so loose that you just put four other people behind Dave Brock and it's gonna have a different feel. You know, he's not turning around being like, no, you gotta play it like this. He doesn't give a fuck, you know, just keep up the energy and stay in time. We're good. That's pretty awesome.
unknownThat's cool.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, yeah, this is a great one. I'm glad we got I I it reminds me I need to dig into their albums where every time they come up for a little while, I'm like, oh, I gotta go get this one and that one. And I and I start and then I don't follow through completely, but I definitely feel like they're one that I need to go through the whole discography at some point.
SPEAKER_02They're they're every one of their albums is great. One point I was at working in a distribution company that distributed uh the people who reissued their albums, and I managed to get my hands on everything I hadn't had before. And there's there's literally nothing I didn't like. I I maybe I'm an idiot, I don't know, but like every all of them were cool as hell. They were really ready for it was sort of like the fall, they were kind of ready for the 90s in some ways because they'd already been a bit weird, a bit electronic, a bit trancey, you know, repetitive. So it was very simple for them to be 90s-ish and they sound great, you know, all the 90s records sound good, and I don't know, they seem to have just stuck stuck together and done a good job. And what can you say? I think it's funny because we base stuff all a lot of our ideas and tropes about bands come from these original 60s bands, and meanwhile, sneaking under the radar are bands that have been more consistent than any of those bands, making records for almost as long. You know, I mean the pretty things made a million great records continuously, you know. And uh, you know, but because they never quite scaled the stadium heights, you don't really pay attention.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's cool. I hope people who haven't heard them much will check this one out and dig it based on what we've been telling, because I think you should. So do I, Mark. And if you don't, there's probably something wrong, and you might not want to listen to music anymore. You might want to check your human card. Yeah, you might want to go into something else, maybe like get into fixing cars or something. Yeah, all right. Go listen to rocks. Well, awesome. Thanks everybody for checking out this episode, and we'll see you the next time on the spindle.
SPEAKER_02All right, cheers.
SPEAKER_01The spindle is produced by John Howard and me, Mark Masters. I'm also the audio editor. Our theme song is by the great band Honey Radar. Our podcast is brought to you by WaystOids, audio and video from Hello More. Find more podcasts and videos at WaystOids.com. And please leave a rating and a review of our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.