This area is a time-capsuled sampler of
Hawkwind in concert over the years. The live
sound clips used are quite rare.
1972 - "Space Ritual" tour

The classic Hawkwind lineup, captured at their
original best. Dave Brock's archetypal rhythm
riffs, Bob Calvert doing the poetry and quite a
bit of singing, Lemmy propping up the wall of
sound with his monster bass, Simon King 'power
drumming', Nik Turner freaking out on Sax and
vocals, Dik Mik and Del Dettmar providing the
keyboards and electronic whooshing noises(!).
Plus, of course, Stacia out front doing the
dancing, sometimes famously unclad.
Video clips: Silver
Machine (4MB)
1977 - "Quark, Strangeness and Charm" tour

Right back on form after the vagaries of the
"Astounding Sounds" era, this tour featured Bob
Calvert at his most sparkling, Dave Brock as
rocky as ever, Simon King as crisp and sharp as
I've ever heard, Simon House on keyboards and
electric violin and the much under-rated Adrian
Shaw on bass.
Sound clip - Master
of the Universe (excerpt, 841k)
1979 - "Masters of the Universe" tour

Perhaps Hawkwind at their last truly great peak?
Dave Brock now on lead vocals, chanting out the
space lyrics and strumming heavily phased rhythm
guitar, Simon King in fine form in his last ever
tour with the band, Huw Lloyd-Langton now
returned to the fold, with his blistering lead
guitar solos, the legendary new age messiah Tim
Blake on keyboards and trusty Harvey Bainbridge
on bass. What a line-up!
Sound clips - Levitation
(excerpt, 1979, 3105k), World of Tiers
(excerpt, 1980, 114k), Dust of Time (on Re-Mixes
page).
1990 - (Space Bandits tour?)

Another personal favourite period of mine - Huw
L-L had just left, unfortunately, but Richard
Chadwick had come in (replacing Danny Thompson)
on drums, doing his darned best to sound like
Simon King much of the time and pulling it off
really well. Bridget Wishart had also joined for
a while on vocals/poetry and the odd bit of
posturing - Hawkwind's sound with her in front
was sometimes noticably different and all rather
refreshing. Alan Davey and Dave Brock added a
very empathic guitar section and Harvey
Bainbridge and Simon House were usually found
helping out, on keyboards and electric violin
respectively. Sadly it only lasted for a year or
so, before Bridget left and Hawkwind started
side-stepping into ambient, techno and indian
mythology... [Sigh]
Sound clip - Wind
of change (excerpt, 972k)
Video clip - Golden Void
(30 second excerpt, 2700k)
2002 - Out of the shadows

Stop the presses. Well at least the video ones.
After a couple of decades of decidedly average
video productions, finally something has come
out which almost perfectly captures
Hawkwind in concert. It's got everything - Dave
Brock, Alan Davey, Richard Chadwick [of course]
- plus Huw Lloyd Langton guesting superbly on
lead guitar - plus Tim Blake, guesting on
keyboards - plus Arthur Brown, adding lunacy of
his own. Yes, there are plenty of technical
mistakes here and there, but the sound is
superb, the pictures superb and there's such a
tremendous feeling of fun throughout. Available
on DVD from the likes of Amazon, 'Out of the
Shadows' is a MUST for anyone remotely
interested in what Hawkwind can be like Live! As
featured by me on Top 5
Music DVDs.
Also, courtesy of the BBC, here's their 1972 video montage of
Hawkwind in concert, playing 'Silver
Machine' (4MB MPG format). I also have a
much higher resolution VideoCD (30MB MPG)
version, but it's too big for inclusion on the
web site!
|