Note: I apologize for the length of this review, and the not-so-attentive reader is advised to go directly (without passing Go and collecting $200) to the SparkNotes inspired summary at bottom.
The Sex Pistols sang, “We love our queen!” And then Johnny Rotten (a well-known Hawkwind fan!) assured the record-buying world, “We mean it, man!” Well, Joe Banks (speaking for the cosmic conscience of all punk-psych-space-Lemmy loving-rock ‘n’ rollers) intimates in the extensively researched Hawkwind: The Days of the Underground (and these are my words), “We love our Hawkwind!” And of course, “We mean it man!”
Trust me: this book isn’t for the faint-hearted tabloid rock fan. But this is dogma for those of us who have always coughed up cash (with great expectations!) for yet another Space Ritual cosmic (and quite literate) rip into prog-rock euphoria. As I write this, I confess to have read and reread Campbell Devine’s All the Young Dudes: Mott the Hoople & Ian Hunter so many times to have broken the spine and tattered the cover, just like I wore out the vinyl grooves of Mott’s albums. I can quote passages from that book. And Joe Banks’ Hawkwind: Days of the Underground deserves that very same broken spine diligence.
It’s amusing: My students could not understand why any book should be read twice! Trust me (again!). I can still quote from The Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, Macbeth, As I Lay Dying, and (Heaven forbid!) Milton’s Paradise Lost. The beautiful nuances are only revealed through repeated reads. It is true that Hawkwind: Days of the Underground will never be published under the aegis of Penguin Classics, but for the devoted fan this book will be dissected, ingested, and enjoyed in equal play time as all the great Hawkwind albums that spin endlessly on our resurrected turntables.
Oh-oh (spoiler alert!): Our Lemmy persisted in wearing leather gear “despite neither owning of riding a motorbike.” Not only that, but “the Beatles were his go-to band”! Ouch!
That said, the beauty of the book is four-fold: The basic (and convoluted) chronology of the band is documented in “sonic attack” clarity. Odd — this is music from long ago, yet the verbs are always active with present-tense alacrity. That is pleasantly creative. And then there are essays (termed “think pieces”) about the time line, which involves music from 1969-80.
Yeah, familiar bands like the Pink Fairies, the Edgar Broughton Band, and the Pretty Things are name-checked, during the drugged festival freedom of Hyde Park London. Mainstay ’70s bands like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Genesis also get a mention, as do Third Ear Band, Gong, Sun Ra (!), Quintessence, Magma, Can, and Amon Duul II. Let’s just say my album collection is well represented in these 550+ pages.
I also enjoy the historical overview in essays such as “The Death and Resurrection of British Psychedelia: Reigniting the Flames of the Experimental ’60s.” and “The Origins of Space Rock.” Of course, as fellow progsters Procol Harum sang, “Still there will be more,” as the book is very song specific (and highly opinionated) with its detailed commentary on every album. And the various solo records as well, like Lucky Leif and Capt. Lockheed, Michael Moorcock’s The New World’s Fair, and (even) Xitintoday by Nik Turner’s Sphynx, get a glance. That’s really nice for the true fan.
Then there are the interviews, which cast a very current climate (having been given between 2016-19) into this Hawkwind history. All the big players cast their dice onto the rock ‘n’ roll (pretty cool) craps table. It’s an illustrious crew: Stacie Blake (dancer extraordinaire!), Nik Turner, Michael Moorcock, Paul Rudolph, Doug Smith, Adam Powell, Adrian Shaw, Dik Mik (aka Mike Davies), Harvey Brainbridge, and (wow!) Pamela Townley, the wife (albeit briefly) of one Robert Calvert! There are also countless photos of band members, ticket stubs, posters, and actual lyrics dispersed throughout the book. It’s cool stuff.
Author Joe Banks notes that “the book moves in chronological direction, though you may experience some sideways motion in time,” which is a very nice thing to do every once in a while. In truth, it pretty much describes the experience of Hawkwind’s music. He also says Hawkwind: The Days of the Underground “can be read from page one onwards or dipped into as the mood takes you.” And given the massive amount info here, that’s sound advice!
The lengthy appendix lists a discography (including post-1980 stuff), BBC sessions in the ’70s, a filmography, and a further listening section (including “Parallels, Precursors & Influences” / “Fellow Travelers and Related Contemporaries” / ”Sci-Fi Connectors”/ and “Post-Punk Descendants”) that gets down and dirty with both the obvious: The Stooges, the Grateful Dead, and the Soft Machine, but furrows deeply into obscurities like Fifty Foot Hose, the United States of America, Neu, Jimmy Pursey (of Sham 69 and Imagination Camouflage fame!) and Canada’s Simply Saucer. So, this is the real deal!
Hawkwind: The Days of the Underground, just like the band (and all great rock ‘n’ roll), certainly begs William Blake’s eternal question: “Enough! Or Too much.” And by the way, I haven’t enjoyed the impeccable and informative footnoting since reading Dante’s Inferno or anything by David Foster Wallace.
Well, the music of Hawkwind, what with Barney Bubbles’ artwork and all of that, must collide (as worlds often do in sci-fi stories) with the writings of Kurt Vonnegut.
In his novel, Sirens of Titan, the Harmoniums are described as “creatures in the deep caves of Mercury,” who are “nourished by vibrations.” And, to make a very long and wonderful story (kind of) short, Winston Niles Rumfoord (the puppet master of the book) uses these peaceful Harmoniums to “arrange themselves” with “dazzling patterns of jonquil-yellow and vivid aquamarine diamonds” with messages to Unk (aka Malachi Constant and The Space Wanderer).
Well (again!), to inject further fiction into the circulatory system of other fiction, (or perhaps, speculate on a theoretical quantum-physics possible parallel universe in which dinosaurs still exist and, coincidentally, Vonnegut is a big fan of the Hawks and rewrote Sirens to include their music in the Caves of Mercury scene), those beautiful Harmoniums (still “nourished by vibrations”), after soaking in the sounds of say, Doremi Farso Latido, would indeed spell out in broad Harmonium letters (just as Joe Banks does in this tome): “We love our Hawkwind.”
With universal cosmic consciousness consensus, they’d also proclaim with punk-psyche-space-Motorhead Lemmy-loving clarity, “We mean it man!”
This book is a well-written and exhaustive chronicle of Hawkwind. There are loads of pictures, interviews, and oddball facts. And, by the way, leather clad Lemmy never owned a motorbike!
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