Artist: Hawklords
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
25 Years On
Year: 1978
Tracks: 8
Essentially a Hawkwind spinoff ring, the Hawklords' run barely lasted a class, just proved important in convincing founder-guitarist Dave Brock to yield his parent band one more scene. The initial impetus grew from Hawkwind's six-week accompaniment least sandpiper 'tween February and April 1978 in America. Brock reportedly base the exercise so disheartening that he sold his guitar exactly transactions after the terminal California.
Hawkwind managing director Doug Smith confident Brock to reconsider. To keep off the contractual and Hawkwind nominate, Brock called his new ring the Hawklords, which formed during the summertime of 1978. The lineup included late Hawkwind stout Bob Calvert (vocals), as well as Harvey Bainbridge (bass, keyboards); Steve Swindells (keyboards) (of String Driven Thing and Pilot, (of "It's Magic" renown); and drummer Martin Griffin.
Hoping for a Jefferson Airplane- to Starship-style transition betwixt the iI name calling, the Hawklords embarked on a 25-date fall 1978 UK tour to push their 25 Years On album and "Psi Power"/"Death Trap" single. The classic Hawkwind wakeless still shone through the new material -- albeit with a rawer edge that as well attracted jr., punk-era fans confused by the band's reputation as cussed '60s-era holdovers.
"Psi Power's" classic lyric just about an unwilling receiver of extrasensory percept power became the to the highest degree abiding Hawklords song, at least for for a while (it opens the 1984 live album This Is Hawkwind, Do Not Panic). But efforts to establish the new ring grew complicated after the third gear reissue of Hawkwind's classical space tilt anthem "Silver Machine," which reached #34 on the UK charts.
Predictably, Brock's and Calvert's ever-fractious alliance didn't hold up intact for long, either; in January 1979, Calvert left to engage his on-again, (mostly) off-again solo life history. Griffin besides departed, enabling Simon King to retake the side that he'd held in both bands 'tween 1975 and 1978.
Now pared to a compact foursome, the Hawklords suffered a farther blow when Swindells defected, as well, departure Brock and Bainbridge to carry the masthead for a few more drifting months. Almost on cue stick, Charisma issued the PXR5 album in May 1979 -- which had been recorded by the final Hawkwind lineup, merely shelved due to the confusion circumferent the parent band's next.
The inevitable happened when Brock reverted to victimization Hawkwind's key out by the summer of 1979, which only made sense -- since several of the same people had played in both bands, in any event. With King back in the congregation, guitar player Huw Lloyd-Langton and ex-Gong keyboardist Tim Blake linked the resurrected Hawkwind in time for the year's beginning gig at Leeds' supposed "Futurama Festival." Brief as it was, the Hawklords' melt down became an show of "commercial enterprise as usual" -- fifty-fifty if the corpus players took an remarkably circular route to get on that point.
