DAVE'S HAWKWIND CHRONICLES

CHAPTER 3

"SO I DO A LITTLE H(AWKWIND) OCCASIONALLY, I CAN HANDLE IT

(THEY SAY ADDICTS ARE GREAT LIARS, HOW TRUE!)

Before I go any further I think I should explain that what you are about to read was originally supposed to be a couple of paragraphs that would make up the introduction to this chapter. However as I started to put pen to paper things "expanded", and what you now have is a chapter in its own right. I'm not entirely sure if it really of any relevance to our overall story, but I was pleased with the results so here it is anyway!!

Now I've always considered myself as a "regular kind of guy", I enjoy a good drink as much as the next man, will happily smoke a cigar in a social setting (the pub) and on very rare occasions (true) have been known to indulge in the odd "herbal cigarette". I can say with my hand clenched firmly to my heart that I have never had a problem with these or any similar substances. Mind you saying that, this is not to say that I haven't been plagued with an addiction during my life. by now I expect (hope) that you  are curious to find out what this "source of evil was (say "YES DAVE"). So what was my poison "H", "Charlie", "Crack", "Glue", well it was none of those, no in the spring of 1984 the most addictive of any drugs known to myself was a far more lethal concoction than any of the above, and now for the first time I can exclusively of this "heavy psychedelic drug" that gets you " really spaced out" -

Take one moustached and sideburned old bloke who is obsessed with Sgt Bilko. To that you add another person of similar age who thinks that the height of good taste is have your hair in a single spike whilst wearing a skin tight body suit and having a Cortina wheel hub hung around your neck (thinking about it Hawkwind being the visionaries that they are, I suppose the last item was very much the forerunner of the huge gold chains and medallions sported by most of today's r"n"b stars). Anyway before you go any further you must mix these to elements together and than get as far away from them as possible as the results are often explosive. Next add a ginger haired bass player who could quite easily appear on the TV show "stars in their eyes" - tonight Matthew I going to be Lemmy from Motorhead. now you need hair samples from two specific sources, their Latin names being "Lloyd Langtonus Mulletous" and "Bainbrigeicus Curlypermicus". Once these have all been mixed together the final ingredient you require to really get the stuff buzzing is a drummer. Back in the eighties it seemed that you could pretty much use any drummer who came to hand, but since then it was decided that a "Chadwick" keeps the whole thing a lot more settled! So what do you get when you have mixed all these ingrediants together, well what do you think you get -

HAWKWIND

And so you have it, without a doubt once all of the ingredients are mixed together you have a hell of a lethal concoction, infact probably the most lethal and addictive substances known to, well me and my mate Barry who had also fallen under the spell of these evil dealers of "sonic destruction" and in doing so was heading on the same downward spiral. Being serious for one very brief minute, I've heard it said on more than one occasion that heroin is not the "one hit and your hooked" drug that it is often made out to be. On the contrary, it can often be several weeks or months before the body has a physical need for it. Mine and Barry's own preferred poison took hold of you much quicker and after one and two hits respectively it was fair to say that we both had a habit that needed feeding on a regular basis.

Like any addict it was essential that we had regular fixes so as to keep our bodies at some sort of equilibrium. We are talking early 1984 and new releases from the band were coming "thick and fast". If memory serves me correctly "fine albums" such as "Text of festival" (sarcasm settings set to maximum) appeared around this time and keeping the whole drug reference thing going this was what was known as "being dealt some bad shit". What was really needed was a "live fix" to help with the withdrawal cramps that we were now both experiencing. To this end we would religiously scour the pages of "Sounds" newspaper first thing on a Wednesday morning, in the vain hope that some charitable dealer, I mean promoter would see it in his heart to book the band for a tour. Weeks turned into months and it was fair to say that things were getting bad, sure there were occasional murmuring in the press concerning the band and plans for future live work, but nothing was set in stone. It was no good, drastic action had to be taken, it was decided that if our own personal "drug of choice" was not available then we would have to find an alternative, something that could, albeit temporarily ease the pain. It was at this point that we had our first stroke of luck as Motorhead announced a tour, and well Lemmy was a former hawk and the song "Motorhead" is in essence a Hawkwind track, so perhaps in some small way Mr Kilmister and his band of merry vagabonds could somehow help with the muscle cramps, cold sweats and nausea that we were both suffering from (at this point it's probably best that you take this as a work of fiction until otherwise told to do so). So without hesitation a couple of tickets were purchased for the London gig (that bit is true!).

By this time the effects of my habit were starting to affect my behaviour at home. A typical conversation around this time would go something like this -

Mum - David are you ok, only you seem very moody, especially on a Wednesday, when all you seem to do is lock yourself in your room and listen to that awful music, hawkwell or hawkstorm or whatever there called?

Me - It's Hawkwind actually, but no, everything's fine!

Dad - Me and your mother are worried that you are "dabbling" in something that you shouldn't be?

Me - (now in full grumpy teenager mode) look don't get at me ok, it's so UNFAIR!

Mum - DAVID

Me - (breaking down in floods of tears) OK, OK I'll come clean, I'll admit it I've been doing some H......

Mum - (interrupting) oh god no, not heroin?

Me - (still in tears) no, no, not heroin HAWKWIND!

Mum and Dad - (in unison) "HAWKWIND"

Dad - I haven't heard of that in the daily mail

Me - (starting to get myself back together) it's not a drug but a bloody space rock band, true the band themselves have been known to indulge in the odd illegal substance and that is about as close as I've come to being involved in any sort of "drug scene"

Mum - oh well, if that's all then just cheer up!!

Anyway lets continue (this bits fairly factual). The Motorhead gig was fine and did go some way to improving our well being. Another bit of good fortune came our way when we saw that The Lloyd Langton Group were to play London's Marquee club and seeing as Huw was a fully paid up member of the hawks, this was as close to the real thing that we were going to get, other than, well the real thing.

The combination of these two gigs in fairly quick succession, did indeed help the pain somewhat, but it was also far from the real deal. But then it happened, opened Sounds one Wednesday morning and there it was, bold as brass on the opening  page was the confirmation we had both been looking for - "Hawkwind announce 11 date mini tour". The news flowed over us and as it did it was almost as if we were wrapped in a large blanket of euphoria, which felt, well euphoric. "CUT CUT", actually it was nothing like that (just trying to make it more dramatic) in reality we quickly scanned through the dates, and what quickly became apparent was that there was no London date, which was our usual stomping ground as far as gigs went. However all was not lost, in fact far from it as four of the shows were in easy reach of our base in Southend. It got better as three of them fell on consecutive nights, they were the gigs at St Albans, Norwich and Ipswich. Both myself and Barry were now working so we had a "few" quid in our pockets (literally) and after much deliberation (well not a lot actually) we decided to go for it. "Going for it" consisted of attending the Dunstable show the previous week, followed by these three concerts. Not only that, but rather than return home every night,we would undertake our own mini-tour of sorts.

The first show that we were going to take in was the Dunstable Queensway Hall gig (is it true by the way that this fine piece of 60's architecture has been flattened and a supermarket built on top of it?), I will leave my memories of this show till the next episode, but for now I will recount an amusing little episode that occurred on the Friday before this concert. Back in those days albums were also released on a Friday as well as the more traditional Monday, and this particular day saw the release of "This is Hawkwind do not panic". Returning to the whole drug reference bit, we figured that "if we score this now, we will have a nice little stash for Dunstable, or in layman's terms "buy it on it's day of release, and we can be some of the first people to get it signed on Sunday". It had become tradition, that come lunch time, we would make a quick exit from work and head straight for our dealer, sorry record shop. Present this day were myself, Barry and another "clean and sober" colleague who we shall call Paul, on the account that was his name!, although he was a big rock music fan, it was fair to say that he had not fallen under the spell of those "evil hawks" the same way that we had. Bold as brass we all marched into said record shop, straight up to the counter to get our hands on the "dope", to the best of my knowledge the conversation went something like this -

Assistant - Can I help you?

Me ( or Barry) - Yeah, do you have the new Hawkwind album?

Paul - (chuckling to himself) Probably haven't bothered ordering any !

Assistant - I'll just get you a copy (produces that "macho" pink sleeve from beneath the counter)

Me - Make that 2 (another duly appears)

Paul - (still laughing) Well that'll be the only 2 copies they've sold!

Assistant - No, actually we've sold 12 in the last hour

So their you have it, we'll leave Dunstable and the other dates to the next time. After what seemed like a lifetime, which in reality was only a few months, we left Southend on a dull, overcast Sunday afternoon on our way to our next Hawkwind adventure!

T.B.C