Hawkwind have been in existence now for more than forty years and seem to be almost a permanent fixture on the touring circuit. The band still record albums and tour and in 2011 Hawkwind are due to play Japan for the first time in their forty plus year career.
The interview below took place at Dave Brock's Farm in the summer of 2006 when the band were about to relese their then album Take Me To Your Leader. The album was a very successful one for the band and re establishd them both as a touring and recording entity.
An audience with Dave Brock,
Take me to your Leader Earth Date July 2006
In the summer of 2005 Hawkwind were gearing up to perform a series of concerts at a variety of festivals across Europe. The band, which started life as Band X and Hawkwind Zoo were celebrating their official thirty sixth anniversary. Leading the band from the front as he has been for the last thirty six years through success and slumps alike; Dave Brock settles down in the living room of his farmhouse to talk about the bands latest album “Take Me To Your Leader”
Dave was in optimistic mood and eager to talk about the album which features the current line up of Hawkwind which aside from himself includes long time member’s bassist Alan Davey and drummer Richard Chadwick alongside newer member Jez Huggett on Keyboards. The album also features a number of special guests including former Hawkwind member Simon House. TV personality Matthew Wright and long time Hawkwind fan provides vocals on a re make of Spirit Of The Age and Arthur Brown features on a couple of tracks. Just for good measure Lene Lovich drops in to lend her vocals to the track Angela Android.
Jon Kirkman began by asking why it had taken so long for the album to come together:
JK The new album Take me to your Leader is coming out in the near future but it was recorded over a long period of time wasn’t it?
DB We actually did record it then we did it all again. We were learning how to operate a computer and we sort of recorded a lot of stuff that sounded rather sort of wishy washy so we did it all again later on as we got more knowledgeable on the computer.
JK I find that quite odd really. When you think Hawkwind you think very futuristic and here you are saying you have now worked out how to use the computer.
DB We were barbarians with electronic equipment that’s why! We’re not that genned up you know.
JK You always manage to use the technology to your best ability don’t you?
DB Yeah, if you use the machine rather than the machine using you. It is very easy to actually get into a situation where you can loop everything as lots of people do on a computer. It makes it very easy to play the minimal guitar and loop things. You end up doing loops that sometimes take hours and hours where could play in. It is much more fun playing in.
JK
Now, Spirit of the Age, as most Hawkwind fans know is a track that was originally on Quark Strangeness and Charm. Why have you decided to re-record it? Matthew Wright the TV guy is on this particular version isn’t he?
DB Yeah, he is and that is the reason we decided to put it out. He was doing a radio station in London and I went on there. He said he was a big time Hawkwind fan and I said, “I bet you are!” – doubting that he was, you know. He said he knew all the songs so I asked him if he knew the words to Spirit of the Age which he did, reciting them perfectly. I found he had been to Stonehenge and was a staunch Hawkwind fan. I asked him if he would like to come and do Spirit of the Age with us on stage reciting it as a poem actually. Also a lot of people don’t realise that he does write some really nice poetry. He is quite politically orientated and so on – an interesting character. Consequently we asked him to come and sing on the album, so that’s the story.
JK I suppose with a band like Hawkwind – you have been in existence 36 years, does it ever surprise you some of the people who come out as Hawkwind fans these day? I guess there must be a few strange incidences like that.
DB How do you mean?
JK Well years ago people would have said it was a guilty pleasure liking Hawkwind but now a lot of people say they are big fans of Hawkwind. Matthew Wright does not look like your average Hawkwind fan.
DB That’s true but I am sure there are. I do recollect the head of Lloyds saying he likes Hawkwind. It doesn’t give us any free insurance though does it!
JK I suppose these people were sat in a field as teens listening to Hawkwind somewhere down the line weren’t they?
DB Yes I would say so; there were a lot of free festivals that we used to do and such. As they go on through life with their children, believe it or not their kids come down and say to us that they used to hate their dad’s Hawkwind collection but now they think it sounds really good. So we are becoming in vogue again! (laughs)
JK I suppose it is a case of if you are round long enough you will come back into fashion anyway.
DB I think so, it is like a long term sort of graph that goes up and down and then a long line for a while and it will peak a little bit here and there. We have just come back from Germany playing a festival with Jefferson Starship, Robin Trower and the like, sort of old bands and an interesting line up. There were a lot of people so people do like to see old bands because they are pretty good normally.
JK You are reasonably happy being the founder member of Hawkwind just continuing. There has been a constant thread of yourself all the way through although Hawkwind has maintained this very high profile within the rock business. What do you put the longevity of the band down to?
DB Stamina! (Laughs) It fluctuates so dramatically. There are times when you feel like giving up when things go wrong. Music is supposed to be a pleasure that is the mainstay. You are trying to do shows that are interesting and sometimes a lot of bands are similar to us, you have your good and bad days. One day somebody might come to see us and we are mediocre and then the next day we’re fantastic. That is what it is like when you are a musician. It makes it interesting for fans to see if we can keep that level I suppose.
JK Let’s look at the track Greenback Massacre. I am figuring that there might be a message here with this particular track. Would I be right?
DB Yes, It is written by Alan Davey and it is all about the American greed for oil and suchlike as we all know.
JK I think what I like about Hawkwind is that there have been occasions when people have thought that they are just a standard rock band but there have been some songs that have had a very pertinent message. I can go back as far as Urban Guerrilla. There must be a feeling that you really want to comment on something like that.
DB Obviously you have to and loads of bands are doing it now. What you’re trying to put across to a younger audience is look what is going on here. They are all aware of what is going on and it is up to them to try and change things. As you get older you tend to lay back a bit more but words to songs are a good way of putting across these messages the same as poems used to do years ago. It is the same sort of thing.
JK The title track of the album is Take Me To Your Leader there must be a story about that! It is a very Hawkwind title to an album actually.
DB Well it was taken from this little alien doll I was given that when you press it, it goes,”Take me to your leader!” That was where we go the title from. Then we did actually write a lot of philosophical words to go with it.
JK Sometimes album titles come from the strangest sources don’t they?
DB Yeah I think so. That old Sci-fi book, I can see it now. Do you remember 1950s sci-fi books with girls clad in bikinis striking these poses as a monster is grabbing hold of them.
JK The creature from the Black Lagoon!
DB Yeah,Take me to your Leader was one of those as well.
JK Obviously it is a Hawkwind album but you have some special guests on it apart from the track Spirit of the Age with Matthew Wright on. Arthur Brown appears on two of the tracks, we’ll talk about the other in a minute but he is on Sunray. Arthur and Hawkwind must go back a long time.
DB I suppose we do go back a fair time because Arthur is a continuing artiste really. Our paths have crossed a few times and the first time was when he was doing the Canterbury festival. He was doing Silver Machine there and he sang with us. We asked him to come and do the tour which he did. In fact we saw him just two weeks ago at another festival we were at.
JK How do you feel about bringing special guests in like that? Some bands think it is great but others don’t want to dilute the thing and draw attention away from the fact that it is their album.
DB That’s true. It is interesting and it makes it interesting for the audience really to have guests. If you do parallels with jazz musicians, they very often have guests coming along. It is good for the band too. It makes a band pay attention sometimes because you have to keep yourself together and pay attention to what Arthur’s doing. (laughs) He still tries to clamber up the side of the speaker cabinets! We’re shouting, “Arthur, take it easy now!” He gets carried away.
JK In a live situation that adds to the spontaneity though doesn’t it?
DB Yes it does. With Lena(Lovich), Arthur had put us in touch with Lena about doing some vocals with us and what we did was sent Angela Android up there to her studio in Cambridge and she sent various bits and pieces of her voice back down to us which we put in as the android on Spirit of the Age. She sings actually on Angela Android.
JK A lot of people will remember Lena Lovich’s big hit at the turn of the seventies. She has a very unique voice. How does that fit into the Hawkwind mix?
DB Well quite well I think. She is an interesting character and she does have a very individual voice and style of course.
JK I believe the single is going to be Spirit of the Age, is that right? Why do you think that is right as a single now?
DB Well if you use the word relevant, they have been relevant always because ever since the ideas of cloning and so on although there is more of it now of course. They would just go on being relevant. Until they get android sex dolls to do whatever you want them to do it will be relevant won’t it?
JK I suppose this album more than anything proves that Hawkwind are a relevant band. You probably have people who knock the band and say you are just seventies has-beens but an album like this means you are aware of what is going on musically and can see where Hawkwind fits into that.
DB I suppose so. It is like Crosby, Stills and Nash. They have just had their son work with them a while ago and it was fantastic. Look at Man you know with Martin Ace. They have got their boys playing in the band and they are really good hot bands. They are really in touch with what is going on. I think a lot of these bands are good.
JK This begs the question, the way that the philharmonic orchestra carries on with different members, could you ever imagine a time when Hawkwind could continue without any of its original members maybe in another twenty five or thirty years?
DB Yeah! I say yes because as you know there are quite a few bands like Jefferson Starship who only had one original member but they sound like the original band. It is not a bad thing. A lot of people do want to see what these bands were like and that is the nearest you are going to get. There was the Illegal Eagles that do a total take off of the Eagles show and they sound very like them.
JK Have you ever seen a Hawkwind tribute band?
DB There are quite a few actually.
JK There is Spacehead isn’t there who do some very good versions of Hawkwind songs.
DB Yeah, there is also Silver Machine too, there’s a few I can’t reel them all off. They have sent me a few CDs, Time Brothers from Scotland is another one. They have done the whole of the Space Ritual in their show.
JK Where do you draw the line between being flattered and upset about these things?
DB It is the audience that matter. They might want to see the original if you are putting on a good show. It costs a lot of money to get a big show with a light show with four or five people operating lights, dancers and roughly about eighteen people on the road. Obviously they have to be paid if you are putting on a good show. You couldn’t do this in small clubs it would not be possible.
JK You were talking about the band doing a lot of festivals. There seems to be a never ending supply of festivals these days all over Europe and in the UK. In the summer months there seems to be a festival every week end.
DB Yeah but we are not playing on them though.
JK You have played a few of them this summer haven’t you?
DB Yes in Europe, not over here
JK What do you think of Glastonbury? I suppose people would associate Hawkwind with Glastonbury wouldn’t they?
DB They do but we don’t play there either. We always used to play at the free festival at Stonehenge. Having said that we topped the bill in 1981 but unfortunately the stage got destroyed. It was supposed to finish at twelve o’clock and everything had run late. New Order were on before us. They finished at quarter to eleven and we went on at quarter past. It got to midnight and the chief of Wiltshire police was saying that everything had to finish at twelve o’clock and we had to end it and apologise. We had this big firework display that never went off and everyone started smashing the stage up and someone set fire to it. I think we were banned from ever playing there again after that. We went back in 1989/1990 and we did In Travellers Field and we got in trouble for doing that with Michael because we were playing at five o’clock in the morning and waking everybody up.
JK Surely everyone at a festival is meant to be awake at that time?
DB A lot of them were in bed, I was in bed. Then there was this knock on the door and I told that we were going on stage!
JK Digital Nation is again a very Hawkwind sounding title, obviously these things just come to you. How difficult is it to keep coming up with something that is not only relevant to the band but going to relate to your audience? That must be hard after thirty six years.
DB Sometimes! Sometimes not! You don’t actually write stuff all the time. In the course of a year you might write a lot of songs and different tunes but maybe at the end of the day only use four. The members of the band have different ideas of writing. You might have twelve or fourteen numbers in there and you decide which ones you are going to use for an album and to go on the road with. It is always better to play these things live at first before you record them because then they flow nicely. Quite often we do it back to front unfortunately and you will find most bands do a similar thing and have the same problems that we do. It’s all the same.
JK Another important track on the album is entitled A Letter to Robert; it is another track that features Arthur Brown. Am I correct in thinking this is another link to your past here – something to do with Robert Calvert?
DB That was one of those magical moments. Richard (Chadwick) and I had actually done the backing track for this, we were mucking around and made up this electronic track. Arthur came down one day and we were talking about Robert and we had a rough idea of what we wanted to do a song about. Arthur went off on one of his ramblings which was a magic moment captured there and then that I thought was quite brilliant.
JK A case of the right place at the right time then?
DB Absolutely.
JK I suppose a lot of people do associate Robert Calvert with Hawkwind and rightly so. Do you think he would have been pleased by the end result himself?
DB I think he would be pleased because he was an artist whose stuff we are still going on doing. Some of his old songs we do differently. We are actually going to be doing the Calvert album putting a lot of his poems to music which is totally different to what I have done. It has still got Richard(Chadwick) and Alan (Davey) on it but we have got this black singer from Bristol who has got a fantastic voice and she does some weird things as well. I think he would love all that.
JK Here we are in the summer of 2005 and the album is due for release. I presume there will be a tour to promote this album.
DB Yeah we are doing a tour in December..
JK How much of this album can anyone reasonably expect you to include in the set? You have to draw the line between playing the songs that people want to hear but you are tied to promoting the new album as well.
DB We are doing three or four tracks. I mean, we have been doing them for the past year to see how they go. Obviously we can’t do the ones Arthur is on but you never know he might pop up and do the Astoria with us, who knows?
© Jon Kirkman 2006 and 2011
Buy Take Me To Your leader and other Hawkwind albums and DVDs at the Gonzo Website
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