HW: Re: Space Ritual 2009

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 03:46:35PM -0600, mike coleman typed out:
> I can say that when a friend brought up Nik in the past, Lemmy shut him down
> in an instant....maybe Nik told him he should stop taking speed....
> but enough a my yakin'.....

	I think there is basis for thinking that Lemmy doesn't really 
see any need to deal with Nik. The piece of this evidence that's always 
stuck with me is an interview with Lemmy that was done in the wake of 
the Hawkestra, when Lemmy was decidedly uncharitable about Dave's guitar 
playing these days and complained about doing the songs as a `medley'. I 
think it was also in that interview, and if not that one one at a 
similar time, where the interviewer asked how he got on with Nik these 
days, since Nik had basically got him fired, and Lemmy's answer was 
only, "He just rang me up and apologised for that the other day, you 
know". No further details, just this implication that Lemmy had been 
waiting for that since 1975! I admire his score-keeping. Andy Gilham 
lent me his copy of _White Line Fever_, in fact, and that's my current 
bedtime reading. Lemmy's story-telling is one of his undersung skills, 
but from a man who likes to talk like that, I think a short answer 
probably tells us something... 

	The other thing that has often struck me about this is that when 
it comes to looking back on the glorious early seventies Hawkwind, Nik 
and Lemmy are at opposite ends of the spectrum of memory. Nik's 
interviews always make it sound like one friendly commune giving out joy 
tickets to everyone they came near and Playing for the People Man, and 
this is the `spirit of Hawkwind' he invokes now when he thinks Dave's 
being an arsehole over the name and so on. Lemmy's version seems 
directly built to steamroller that and always goes on about Dik Mik 
using his audio generator to try and make trippers go into spasms and 
generally the band being about messing people up. You have to figure 
that both of them are remembering the Hawkwind they want to have been 
part of, but equally, if those ideologies were similar then, you can see 
how the two of them getting along must have been difficult. To say 
nothing of their *musical* ideologies, Lemmy the ultimate professional 
mercenary bassist and Nik, well... So I find it hard to believe they get 
on now except out of necessity. And why does Lemmy need to? Nik was 
ringing him to apologise to make the Hawkestra possible, I imagine... 
All hypothetical but I like to play the game anyway. Yours,
							    Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk