HW: Night of the Hawks

[Doug Pearson]

To the best of my knowledge ...

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002 18:44:52 -0000, Chris Allen <beautiful_foot at HOTMAIL.COM>
wrote:
>Was the song "Night of the Hawks" part of a song cycle

It was supposed to be.

>or a stand alone track?

But that's how it wound up.

It was originally released on the 'Earth Ritual Preview' 12"EP on Flicknife
(with an edited version also available on 7").  As the title indicates, it
was *supposed* to be a "teaser" for the next Hawkwind album, 'The Earth
Ritual', which was supposed to be a big-deal 15th anniversay (1984) release
with contributions from past members including Lemmy (who's on "Night Of
The Hawks") and Calvert (who wrote the lyrics to "Green Finned Demon" from
the EP, and, of course, wrote the original "Earth Ritual" poem).  The EP
was followed by the 'Earth Ritual' tour, which featured guest appearences
from Michael Moorcock & Dave Anderson, as well as Lemmy (but not Calvert,
although he did a final show with Hawkwind shortly after the tour), but no
live album was released from the tour, and there was no follow-up 'Earth
Ritual' studio recording.  The next Hawkwind studio album wound up
being 'Chronicle of the Black Sword', after Nik's departure.  Since Bob was
working with Nik & ICU after the split, that was the end of the 'Earth
Ritual' concept, except for the live video.

>I've only heard it on a bootleg (Utopia 1984)

Not actually a bootleg, just another dodgy (but fully legal) compilation of
material licensed from Flicknife.  There are also good live versions of the
song on the various 1990 live albums ('California Brainstorm', the new
Voiceprint one, etc.).

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com