In Concert

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 (excerpt, 1980, 772k)

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!