Origins of Hawkwind

[Rik Rx]

Curious that Dave has been 'written out' of this version :-}

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:20:31 -0400, Stephe <lindas1 at ADELPHIA.NET> wrote:

>Hi Folks. I copied this from the Spaceritual.net website. May be of
interest to those who think they are total crap. Cheers Stephe
>
>
>
>The start of early Hawkwind/Group X from the eyes and ears of Mick
Slattery, guitarist back then at the dawn of Hawkwind and now guitarist in
spaceritual.net.
>
>Augusts 69. Famous Cure had folded, but out of its ashes had come
something a little bit different. We were still a sort of blues / rock band
but then we recruited Nik and Dik-Mik and started experimenting with avant-
garde and electronic sounds. Now I had a flat just off the Portobello Road
in Talbot Road and Terry Ollis lived in the back room and most days
everyone would meet up there, mainly to exchange drugs and get high before
going off to rehearse. It also gave Nik the opportunity to heat up his tin
of baked beans and blag several cups of tea.
>
>Just down the road was All Saints Church and in the basement or tabernacle
someone had been putting on bands on Friday nights. So one Friday evening I
popped in as they were setting up the stage. I spoke to someone who looked
like he was in charge and asked him if there was any chance we could come
along later and do a couple of numbers? He said "Yeh - just turn up and
play" he was probably only the electrician - but thats what we did. I
rounded everybody up and we thought we'd better get a couple of numbers
together and make up a name, but after a good few spliffs all we could come
up with was Group X. But no matter, off we trotted to church, where we were
given a ten minute spot by a bemused Doug Smith. We hadn't come up with a
couple of numbers either, so we decided to just have a jam around a couple
of chords (probably the only ones we knew). Actually it was the intro to
Eight Miles High and then some very long solos and Dik-Mik twiddling with
his generator and Nik honking up a storm and me and Dave getting our
guitars to feed-back the way we'd seen Hendrix do it, and Terry thrashing
his drumkit to within an inch of its life, while the strobes and liquid
light show added to the air of chaos and insanity.
>
>And then, twenty minutes later it was over, and much to our surprise,
everyone loved it, including John Peel, who was in the audience and
apparently advised Doug Smith to sign us up. which he did. Funnily enough,
we've all remembered the number which we did back in 1969, which was called
Sunshine Special. We played it at a recent gig in Crewe, where we had
almost the same line-up and it was pretty weird doing it again - thirty two
years later.
>
>I've really enjoyed the gigs that we've done. The music has been wonderful
in places and will get better. It can get pretty chaotic on stage, no one
really knows what's going on - or what's going to happen. I only know about
three of the numbers really, and so does Terry, though probably he doesn't
know the same three as me!! So we more or less make it up as we go along,
and that's exactly what we were doing at the beginning, so there we go!!