Hawkwind and Arthur Brown

[Glassback]

I saw Hawkwind once - loudest band I ever saw! My ears were ringing for 3 days after the gig.. but then I was pressed up against the front of the stage.. 3 hours, with only a tiny break.. blimey!

Stamina - that's what these young groups of today are lacking! A good dose of stamina.
Stonehenge 1984. It was still light when they came on, so I'm guessing 9pm-ish?
They played right through the night and were still playing while most of us were down at the stones on Solstice morning.
Man, that was ace. Sat in the middle of the stones, sun rising, shitfaced, with Hawkwind playing live a few hundred yards away.
I reckon they gave up about 9am or there abouts.

One night at college, I was in the computer labs typing up an essay, and got talking to a lady about music. Hawkwind came up, and I jokingly said that Lemmy had left Hawkwind to form Motorhead because 'Hawkwind was too repetitive!'. Immediately she came back with 'That's not true..' Apparently she had been Lemmys girlfriend at the time they kicked him out!! Man did she tell some stories.. Sadly I had to finish my essay, and I never saw her again.. o well!

DSP

Great story!

[kevink]

Aerospace Age Inferno and Song of the Gremlin were both tunes from the fabulous and obscure Bob Calvert solo album, "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters", which featured Viv Stanshall and Brian Eno as well as Arthur Brown.

[fake]

ahhh, Hawkwind....

Love em to bits..many happy trippy times.
Gonna have to search out the dvd mick, cheers

When they were at Glastonbury a few years ago, Arthur Brown suddenly stormed off stage. Don't know what that was about! Still good though.

I have the pleasure of having a original 1968 mint copy of "The Crazy world of Arthur Brown" LP, some great tracks including "Fire". His voice on "I Put a Spell on You" is fantastic! One of the first albums I bought and still have.
The covers got some pinhole burns in though for some strange reason.

fake

[knockman]

had to post on this one! in the late 90's i actually played bass with arthur .

i was in an instrumental group, 60's 70's themes and so on - anyway at that time arthur was re-establishing himself - if that's the right word, anyway he had a 'band' at the time made up of 'pros' (who were all far better off than he - arthur was crashing with our guitarist for a while, like many such people he was a victim of record companies). anyway, in order to raise some ready cash, arthur asked us to back him for a few pub/club nights, in fact we went on to do quite a few. we did 'the crazy world' stuff and i remember thinking before the first rehearsal that i'm just not worthy, but in true cliche fashion he arrived and proceded to be the nicest guy you could ever meet - just completely level, i felt the band really gelled in his presence, he's a pretty magical guy and that voice has never gone away!

sadly we were only this 'secret', off the record existence, but on one occasion our keyboardist and i played a show for him in the 'pro' band, don't recall why but the line up was shifting due, i expect, to multiple management hassles, anyhow it wasn't nearly as much fun for me. in fact our keyboardist went on to play a tour with them (as guitarist) but then he was/is fantastically gifted.

well, that's my 15 mins of fame! what's sad for me is when i tell people 'i played with arthur brown' the usual response is 'who?', yet if they hear a few strains of 'fire' they know it! how can arthur's legacy be so broken?

Subplot: our guitarist and drummer also played for hugh lloyd langton.

[kp]

We've played with Huw a couple of times now over this summer (last gig with him was in East Ham a couple of weeks' ago - www.assassinsofsilence.com/ruskin.htm) and he's back with us this Friday (unsubtle remnider :-)).

[Glassback]

Aerospace Age Inferno and Song of the Gremlin were both tunes from the fabulous and obscure Bob Calvert solo album, "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters", which featured Viv Stanshall and Brian Eno as well as Arthur Brown.

Which I've got - on vinyl.
Ages since I played it, I read this then had to go and dig it out.
I knew Aero was on it, but I didn't recognise Gremlin.
I'm sitting looking at the cover now - it's quite a line-up as a matter of fact isn't it?

Paul Rudolph, Lemmy, Simon King, Brian Peter George St John Le Baptiste De La Salle (or Eno for short ), Del Dettmar, Nik Turner, Dave Brock, Twink, Arthur Brown, Adrian Wagner, Viv Stanshall, Jim Capaldi, Tom Mittledorf, Richard Ealing and of course Bob Calvert.
Not to mention The Ladbroke Grove Hermaphroditic Voice Ensemble .

It's almost the classic Hawkwind line-up plus very special guests, actually isn't it?

I'd forgotten how good it is - thanks for reminding me. I don't very often wade through my old vinyl anymore... maybe I should, there's a stack of hidden gems there.

I was lucky enough to see Bob Calvert live in Nottingham on his very last tour. In fact I think he just had a couple of London gigs left after that, then he sadly passed away. Bit of a strange thing to know you saw someone just before they died.
Same thing happened with Frank Zappa. Saw him in Birmingham, UK, on his last ever tour.
Sad when such talent has to leave us.
But in both cases we've been left with a fantastic musical legacy.

[Glassback]

ahhh, Hawkwind....

Love em to bits..many happy trippy times.
Gonna have to search out the dvd mick, cheers

When they were at Glastonbury a few years ago, Arthur Brown suddenly stormed off stage. Don't know what that was about! Still good though.

I have the pleasure of having a original 1968 mint copy of "The Crazy world of Arthur Brown" LP, some great tracks including "Fire". His voice on "I Put a Spell on You" is fantastic! One of the first albums I bought and still have.
The covers got some pinhole burns in though for some strange reason.

fake

Yeah, I got an old copy of Crazy World too.
On Track, but in stereo so I'm not sure if it's a re-issue or if it did in fact originally come out in stereo.

Can't think why it should have (the obligatory) pinhole burns on the cover though?

My personal fave AB album has to be Journey by Kingdom Come though. If you've not heard it, I can't recommend it enough.

But there's also a few more obscure bits and bobs, like the little known, yet excellent, Chisolm In My Bosom (another fave but very very different to Journey) and the slightly odd Requiem.

[Glassback]

had to post on this one! in the late 90's i actually played bass with arthur .

i was in an instrumental group, 60's 70's themes and so on - anyway at that time arthur was re-establishing himself - if that's the right word, anyway he had a 'band' at the time made up of 'pros' (who were all far better off than he - arthur was crashing with our guitarist for a while, like many such people he was a victim of record companies). anyway, in order to raise some ready cash, arthur asked us to back him for a few pub/club nights, in fact we went on to do quite a few. we did 'the crazy world' stuff and i remember thinking before the first rehearsal that i'm just not worthy, but in true cliche fashion he arrived and proceded to be the nicest guy you could ever meet - just completely level, i felt the band really gelled in his presence, he's a pretty magical guy and that voice has never gone away!

sadly we were only this 'secret', off the record existence, but on one occasion our keyboardist and i played a show for him in the 'pro' band, don't recall why but the line up was shifting due, i expect, to multiple management hassles, anyhow it wasn't nearly as much fun for me. in fact our keyboardist went on to play a tour with them (as guitarist) but then he was/is fantastically gifted.

well, that's my 15 mins of fame! what's sad for me is when i tell people 'i played with arthur brown' the usual response is 'who?', yet if they hear a few strains of 'fire' they know it! how can arthur's legacy be so broken?

Subplot: our guitarist and drummer also played for hugh lloyd langton.

Great story knockman.

The best I've ever seen Arthur playing live was at the Dracfest just outside Whitby Bay a few years ago, I think during his come-back phase, not certain about that. I got a CD single from it - still got it somewhere; Vampire Love?
Anyway, everything about the gig was superb stuff - from his triumphant entrance where he entered the marquee from the back, being carried aloft, through the crowd to the stage, on a gigantic shield which he was kneeling on, arms stretched skyward like some kind of messiah! What an entrance.

His band were wearing kind of brown cowl things, hoods completely covering their faces with little red light shining out as eyes and played like bastards. They were superb.
The man could not have done anything wrong in that gig - including the few times where he was whirling round so fast and furiously he fell off the stage a couple of times.
Being in that audience, feeling the absolute respect he had from the crowd was extremely emotional and completely unforgettable.

[Glassback]

Another thing about that DVD - it was from the tour a couple of years ago where Tim Blake was back in the line-up. I didn't see them on that tour cos I had radio station commitments at the time.

I was actually gonna go see Tim live not long back but due to 'circumstances' was unable to make it.
On the DVD, he played (or tried to play) Lighthouse from New Jerusalem and although musically, especially with Hawkwind backing him, it was excellent, his voice! Man, he sounded like a really, really old man that couldn't cut it anymore. A far cry from the days of Seasalter festival.
I'm glad I didn't see him live now - I think if I'd seen him doing the brilliant New Jerusalem sounding like that, an illussion may well have been shattered.

[kp]

I've heard him doing New Jerusalem live recently - it's not pretty.

And he spent ages rebooting his Mac too...should have gone with a PC (OK, that's below the belt, but it did keep crashing on that tour!).

[pljones]

/sigh/ It's so long since I saw Hawkwind live... I think the Brixton all nighter was the last one I went to. Can't remember what year...

Tim Blake does Spirit of the Age on the "Daze of the Underground" Hawkwind tribute CD. He sounded really croaky on that... so much so I wondered what was wrong with him.

Anyway... Nice sound, kp, on (Arrival In) Utopia. Needs to go just a little bit wilder (The Meads of Asphodel version (on DotU) made me smile...)

Slightly OT... I'm hoping I just got Warrior on CD for a steal on eBay. I'm just hoping it's not literally a "steal" when it turns up... the dealer had several (still were a couple going when I last looked)...

[Bruce Bartlett]

Anyone else have or heard the Richard Wahnfried LP (which was really Klaus Schulze and friends) with Arthur Brown singing?

[thehumanPlugin]

Now you see, this is why America sucks, not only because of bush but because we don't get any of these shows here!!! I just got into Hawkwind about a year ago and when will they come here, probably never We suck

[Scot Solida]

Anyone else have or heard the Richard Wahnfried LP (which was really Klaus Schulze and friends) with Arthur Brown singing?

Yep, and there is also "Dune", with Arthur Brown singing on side 2. Excellent use of vocoding, 'cello and synths as well...

[Glassback]

Anyone else have or heard the Richard Wahnfried LP (which was really Klaus Schulze and friends) with Arthur Brown singing?

Yep, and there is also "Dune", with Arthur Brown singing on side 2. Excellent use of vocoding, 'cello and synths as well...

Not come across the Wahnfried album, but wasn't Wahnfried 1883 one side of the brilliant Timewind?

Dune is superb, as is Body Love (in fact most KS albums. )