HW: Record Collector / Dave Brock interview

[Jon Browne]

2nd in a series of six (no promises!)

Dave Brock - "guitarist, sole remaining original member"

" We alawys used to get slagged off in the press for playing the same
three chords, but simplicity in music is always the key, and I've got a
very traditional way of playing. Lots of it doesn't sound dated - the
first album still sounded good when I played the new CD yesterday.
     I still take the sci-fi stuff seriously ; I've got a huge library
now.  We all used to read the books, and you'll find that a lot of what
was written in the fifties has now become an accepted part of life.
We've decieded to do this story of an alien who comes to Earth, which
has obviously been done before. But now with Roswell and The X-Files ,
everyone seems to be interested in it again. Last year's tour was very
spacey and tribalistic - you can't go wrong with that!
    We always used to record under the influence of LSD, and back then
it was a very pure form, not corrupted by crap. I used to take LSD when
I was about to mix those old albums, so you could get all those thiings
you knew would register when audiences were under the same influence.
   There was a community. We used to live in Notting Hill, which was an
arty place to live. We all lived in the area and for a while we shared a
house. When that happens, you tend to think along similar lines. We did
loads of benefits then, all living in London, going to the same clubs.
But we've continued doing that to some extent, the odd charity gig.
After the big crunch occurred in 1975, when the band first split up, I
carried on Hawkwind with Bob Calvert.
   The band was full of larger than life characters - there was Nik,
Lemmy, Bob Calvert - strong personalities who could write good music
too. Actually, that had a lot to do with the split as well.
   I wasn't too keen on Nik going out as Hawkwind because a lot of
people turned up expecting to see us. We were pissed off because
basically we are Hawkwind, and just because Nik decides he wants to make
a bit of money at the time....though I have to say it wasn't a bad
sounding band! He did the same thing in Europe and it fucked it up for
us just before we went out on tour over there.
   I don't know if we'll ever get back together all those line-ups (
like last years Gong reunion gig.) Lemmy lives in America and so does
Alan Powell. Del Dettmar lives in Canada. Simon House still plays with
the band on and off, but he's about the only one. "


Typo's mine, sorry.

Tomorrow, Uncle Nik.


--
Jon Browne