Calvert & Brock "Sniffin' Flowers" interview

[M Holmes]

I picked up a fanzine "Sniffin' Flowers" at a record fair. There's a
Calvert/Brock interview in it and also a Moorcock one. Thanks to Jill
for typing this up.

The date looks like autumn '77 when the "Quark, Strangeness and Charm"
album came out.

Could someone with Knut's address please alert him to this in case he
doesn't have it?

FoFP


*********************************
Interview with Dave Brock and Bob Calvert recorded by and published
in "Sniffin Flowers" magazine (2nd issue) c. 1977


Sniffin' Flowers:       How did Hawkwind come about?

Dave Brock:     Well it was formed in 1969 by me and then I met Bob
 Calvert who was a poet down Notting Hill Gate and he comes up to
 me and says "I got this idea, I've written this Space Ritual" and
 Nik Turner this mate of mine wanted to join up with the band, so he
 did.

 And then, he (Bob Calvert) left, he decided he could do better by
 himself and he suddenly discovered he couldn't so he came back
 again, a wandering star he is.

 Last year we nearly folded up because we were in so much debt.
 Last year was the closest we've ever come to folding, but it's
 looking a bit better now.   There's a brief history.

S.F:    Why the name Hawkwind?

D.B:    Well it was to do with Nik Turner's rude behaviour right, he
 was always hawking wasn't he?

Bob Calvert:    He still is.

D.B:    And he used to fart a lot too and he said to me one day,
 let's call it Hawkwind and then there's the mythical story behind
 it isn't there Robert.

B.C:    What?

D.B:    It's got a lot of mystical significance.

S.F:    (To Robert Calvert) Why do you keep leaving and rejoining?

B.C:    Cos I'm a very restless person I suppose.   I suppose really
 this band's always going through changes you know.   Sometimes there
 are nice people in it and sometimes there aren't.

D.B:    Sometimes there are nasty people in it.

S.F:    Would you like to name anyone?

B.C:    Paul Rudolf.

D.B:    Alan Powell, were the worst influences on the band.   They
 were the reason the band nearly folded up.

S.F:    Musical influences or what?

D.B:    Musical and personal because of their egos.

B.C.:   They wanted to make the band into a funky soul band 'cos
 about a year ago that was the vogue thing to do.

S.F:    (To Bob Calvert)  Why do you now concentrate more upon the
 vocals than you did in the past?

B.C:    Well, I used to stand there and read poetry which I think is
 not very exciting. It's all right now and then, but we try and work
 towards generating some excitment now, things have to change.

D.B:    I mean, you can't do the same thing all the time.

B.C:    You have to digress.  It's only like half way between singing
 and talking, you know which I think is more acceptable.   Actually the
 German classical composers did that a lot.   Kurt Weil used to call it
 'sprechgesang', which means talk-sing.   There's no way of putting
 poetry to music.

S.F:    Why don't you do a lot of the earlier numbers anymore?

B.C:    It's just that they are old numbers, you know if you are a
 composer like Dave Brock you don't want to do old things, you've got
 new ideas all the time and half the time you haven't got outlets for
 them.   I mean he's got loads of tapes of things that haven't been
 heard yet.   It's not very encouraging to keep on doing stuff you've
 done over and over again.

S.F:    Are the more recent numbers less Science Fiction influenced?

B.C:    No, I think the newer numbers are more influenced by Science
 Fiction.   I think we're maturing a lot now, I mean on Amazing Music
 there were numbers that weren't anything to do with Science Fiction,
 you know.   Rudolf was always carping about not doing it and it
 affects you.

D.B:    You get an idea and you like things to be a sort of unit and
 we were in the  studio and he was in a chair playing his bass and we
 were doing a high energy number!   You can't do things when people
 are behaving like that and it's the same with your ideas.

 This album that we've just done is a step in the right direction.
 One part is a whole concept, it's more towards what we were doing
 with Doremi and all that lot.   We are going back to where we sort
 of went off course.

S.F:    Would you consider yourself an S.F. band?

D.B.:   Yeah, we do, in actual fact we are the only band that is
 doing that sort of thing.

B.C.:   We are the only band that gets written about in S.F.
 fanzines.   Moorcock didn't make it an S.F. band he was drawn to
 it because of what it was.

S.F:    Who are your own S.F. influences.

D.B:    I haven't really got any influences there I mean you read a
 book and you get an idea.

B.C:    It's more a case of actually being influenced by the science
 that's all around you.   You can't help but come into contact with
 it all the time, rather than being influenced by S.F.   We make what
 we make of the world into music and it comes out as S.F. which I think
 is the only valid way you can write about the times we find ourselves
 in.   I always try to write about things that haven't happened quite
 yet, but I'm quite sure will happen.   Like Spirit of the Age is
 not quite about the age that we are in now, but one we are heading
 for.

S.F:    How did Hawkwind become associated with Michael Moorcock?

B.C:    It came about from him being in Notting Hill Gate when we were
 in Notting Hill Gate.   Before I did anything with the band I went to
 see them at the Roundhouse.   Barney Bubbles had just done those
 cabinets and the drums and I thought how very Moorockian they
 looked, at the same time I was working for Friends magazine and I
 did this interview with Moorock and I told him about the band and
 he came to a gig in Paris Square.

S.F:    How did the Space Ritual idea come about?

B.C:    Well, it didn't really come about, it was an idea that didn't
 ever really get off the ground.

D.B:    It was never done to its fullest, it was only half done.

B.C:    But I think the idea of it made a lot of the things that you
 now see in the band happen.   If it hadn't happened like that it
 wouldn't have developed the way it is now, the light show might not
 have been along the lines it is now.

S.F:    How did the Light Show evolve?

B.C:    Along with the band Jon Smeeton had been doing light shows for
 other bands.

D.B:    He was another guy around Notting Hill Gate at the same time
 when we were all living round there and we just met up with him and
 he's been with us since 1971.

B.C:    That's when Notting Hill was like the left band in Paris with
 its out of work artists and it lasted for 2-3 years.

D.B:    And then it became degenerate, full of junkies and alcoholics.

B.C:    I think that LSD was a major influence on our generation in
 art and music.   A lot of people, especially the New Wave enthusiasts
 have dismissed the whole psychadelic era as if it were totally
 insignificant which they are very wrong about.   There was far
 more creativity than there is now.   Punk music although it is
 very energetic and I find it a lot more refreshing to hear than
 what older bands are doing, doesn't have as much actual creativity
 as we had when we were that age and we were a new wave.   I'm sure
 that very soon there's going to be a lookback at that time and on
 our new album we've got a song about the period which is not
 making excuses for it, but holding it up as something we are
 actually proud to have been involved in, which is not a very
 fashionable view to take now.   It was the most important era in
 rock and in another year or two, you're going to have nothing but
 people looking back on that time.

 Rock and roll had started out as just an energy dance music, then
 it was influenced by the blues and then it started being
 influenced by a whole lot of things like poetry, eastern music,
 LSD, mystical experiences and S.F. suddenly coming into it and
 opening it up as an art form, which it maintained for quite a long
 period with bands like the Pink Floyd and us, who were really
 spearheading the movement and it splintered out in different ways.
 The Floyd became comfortable, bourgeois and settled and just
 professional studio musicians and then punks came along to smash
 apart that sort of complacency,  but they are not doing anything
 creative.

 The psychadelic era will be revived, we've not dismissed it, we've
 not said right it's fucking over now we'll play funky music
 because that's the thing to do.

D.B:    Not a revival as it was but a revival to what's happening now,
 'cos everything that's done has been changed, it'll never be like that
 again. You can only touch on the outside of the circle that you're
 in.

B.C:    But journalists will try and revive the era, look at the way
 nostalgia has been going.   It started off with the twenties for a
 short time, then through the thirties and forties very quickly, got
 into the fifties, now they are moving into the sixties, then they
 are going to have to move into 1971 because there is nothing
 happening now.

D.B:    So in a couple of years they will be well into psychedelia and
 "You remember those good old days" and all this.

B.C:    The music and the art that was happening then was really good.

S.F:    What do you think of the bands that have come out of Hawkwind?

D.B:    Motorhead are alright.   I'm really glad Lemmy's got it
 together.

S.F:    What about Kicks?

D.B:    They are nothing to do with Hawkwind.

B.C:    Kicks are quite a funky band and are the sort of band Alan
 Powell and Paul Rudolf should have been in rather than trying to
 disrupt things in this one.

D.B:    Lemmy's band are the nearest to Hawkwind, Lemmy's you can say
 is like a splinter off the tree.

B.C:    Like the Grateful Dead and the New Riders.

S.F:    Where did you get hold of Adrian?

D.B:    Well he used to play for Magic Muscle in Bristol, who we have
 known for many years, they used to do free gigs with us and in fact
 he had played with us before on and off when Lemmy didn't turn up,
 he was a natural choice, it's a pity he didn't join sooner.

S.F:    What's your opinion of the Hawklords book.

D.B:    Well it's a sort of joke really.

S.F:    Do the characters in any way resemble yourselves?

B.C:    I shouldn't think they do.  They're sort of like cartoon
 figures.

D.B:    I think he did touch at the surface of people's characters
 'cos he went to Mike and asked him about them.   I think that's what
 he did because some of the characters do behave vaguely like we do.

B.C:    I don't think you expect characters in this sort of stuff.

D.B:    Like Dan Dare.

B.C:    I think that this book is aimed at young people, which a lot
 of our following is amongst, which I can't understand.   We get a lot
 of people who are young enough to be our children.

S.F:    Maybe you're something they can relate to.

B.C:    Yeah, Hawkwind has always had two strains running through it,
 one is the heavy street type music and the other is the spacey type
 music.  Lemmy has taken the heaviness and got rid of the spaciness
 and we are halfway between the two really.   I mean we were part of
 the more militant side of the underground culture, we regarded
 outselves as a guerilla band and we were against the established
 music business at the time.   We refused to follow the dictates of
 record companies to produce hit material.   Silver Machine was
 never a planned thing it was accidental.   We didn't know we were
 going to have a hit single until it happened and I suppose that
 changed our attitude a bit, 'cos a lot of money came in which we
 hadn't set out to make.   And from then onwards it became less of
 a pastime and more of a professional occupation.

S.F:    Did you always want to be rock stars?

B.C:    I certainly never did, I wanted to be a poet, which I still
 want to be.   Actually I've got my first book of poems coming out
 called "Centigrade 232". I don't think we ever wanted to be stars,
 but to be at the head of a small cult would be enough.