HW - Article from the Arts Page of the Glasgow Herald, October 1993

[Alan Taylor]

Here's a news article I dug out.  I think I was inspired to tap it out by
Mike and Jill posting  some news articles a few weeks ago, but once I read
it again there's nothing really that Brock says that is new and lots of the
article is just journo-fluff (although David Belcher was a good sort).
However, since I had typed it out and probably few have seen it, I am
posting it anyway.  Alan

Headline - 'Blowing On'
Column Name - 'BOSS GROOVES'
David Belcher feels the force of Hawkwind
The picture with this was one of those from the inner gatefold of
IITBOTFTBD.

Twenty-four years on and Dave Brock still hasn't mastered the business of
selling his music.  Whenever you ask him to explain his art, he'll sound
stumped and issue a wheezy "search me" kind of a laugh.  It is probably as
it should be, creative-wise.  In Italics- Don't think; do, man.  Music
criticism is the sound of one hand clapping, dig?

So, like, wow, we salute ye, oh Hawkwind, ye loose aggregation of Ladbroke
Grove anarcho-squatters who were born to play benefit gigs and free
festivals.  What the Guinness Encyclopaedia of Popular Music describes as
"chemically blurred science-fiction" rock has endured.  That which was
somewhat tatty to begin with shall never wear out, it seems.  Ambient,
perambulatory psychedelia is in style at last.

Hawkwind's twenty-second LP It Is The Business Of The Future To Be
Dangerous, came out on Castle last week.  The sole Scottish date on their
wide-ranging European tour is at Glasgow's Barrowland on November 20.  Yet
things weren't always so ongoing.

At one point, founding member Brock lost the rights to Hawkwind's very name.
There's also been a 10-year royalty battle ("no money yet, but it's close to
being resolved"), while a massive 18 album surfeit of Hawkwind anthologies ,
collections, compilations, and live in-concert mementoes on a plethora of
labels has tended to obscure the fact that the band are still in action,
creating new material.

What about the new LP?  Dave umms and arrs, laughs and splutters.
"Explaining a record is like explaining a light show. I dunno. It's got some
long tracks, 16 and 17 minutes.  There's no need for 40-minute CDs anymore.
It's trance-like music...the sort of thing Can , Neu and Kraftwerk started."

"At our shows we get all ages from 12 to 60.  It should always be all ages.
If you go to reggae clubs, especially in the Caribbean , you'll get lots of
mums and dads.  But sometimes music gets tribal - 'this is only for 15-year
olds, not the forties.' That Guinness book's description of us sounds about
right."

Never fashionable, Hawkwind have nevertheless carved a niche for themselves.
"We've done things and then been noticed for them five years later.  Our
light-show ideas get used by other people.  We get sampled by other bands,
big ones- I don't like name dropping, I don't have to."

Ask Dave about the oddest scenes from Hawkwind's long strange trip and he
can oblige with a famous name, however: "The Baader-Mienhof gang.  I was
once arrested naked in bed early one morning in a hotel in Paris on
suspicion of being a member."  Something to do with a dummy gun used in an
on-stage bit of symbolism.

Hawkwind's current stage line up features Brock and two musical associates,
Alan Davey and Richard Chadwick, plus "a couple of dancers, some
fire-eaters."  Unreconstructed males of a certain age still yearn for
Stacia.  "A very nice girl.  Large.  Statuesque.  But we did a single with
Samantha Fox recently, you know."

As for the future, Dave plans a renewed collaboration with science fiction
writer Michael Moorcock, and envisions "an even-more-wonderful stage show
for '94; mime, lights, music.  We're going to be auditioning contemporary
dancers - applications from Scotland most welcome."