A BRIEF (AND POTTED) HISTORY OF
HAWKWIND RELATED MERCHANDISE
I'm not sure who would be credited as originally coming up with the idea of the concert t-shirt but whoever it was was certainly on to a winner. From what little research I've done and the little knowledge that I have on the subject I suspect that the first examples appeared around the mid to late 70's. Having been into the live music scene myself for well over 20 years I can never recall seeing a Deep Purple, Stormbringer or a Led Zep, House Of The Holy example even all those years ago so I feel that it is safe to assume that they never existed.
So what about Hawkwind, well you'll see if you visit the t-shirt pages that many are credited as being produced before the date I mentioned above but I feel that most of these were either "one off specials" perhaps for the band or crew or reproductions of Hawkwind material from around that era. For my money I reckon that the first "official" and commercially available shirt was from the 1979 tour and can be viewed here . Previous to this the main forms of merchandising seems to be patches and badges and the trusty Tour programme, the first of which I believe appeared in 1972 to accompany the Space ritual shows of that year. This however was a pretty primitive affair and nothing like the glossy brochures that were to follow, the first HAWKWIND example being for the Astounding sounds tour of 1975. The band then produced one for most of the major tours that they undertook right up until 1988. Personally I never really saw the appeal of these publications, sure they looked nice, but at the end of the day they never seemed to contain much (and I'm not just talking about Hawkwind now) other than a few exclusive pictures that were fine to look at whilst you were waiting for the band to come on but after that I felt they had little or no use other than finding somewhere to store the dam things. They weren't cheap either, I seem to remember the going rate for a proggy back in the early 80's when I first started to go to live gigs was about £3.00 - £3.50 which was a lot of money in those days, when you think your ticket probably cost you £5.00 or thereabouts. Now I'm going to go off on a bit of an unexpected tangent here in so much as I didn't know this was going to lead here either!
Whilst doing a bit of "work in progress" research for this article I decided to see if I could find such a thing as an inflation calculator to see how much your 1982 programme retailing for £3.00 would cost today, well a simple search on Google threw up such a device here and the said "Glossy" had roughly doubled in price with a value in today's money of £6.24 so in all honesty not actually the price hike I was expecting, we are talking about 20 years plus here. This got me thinking as to what an expensive hobby gig going has become and before I go any further I'd like to make it perfectly clear that this is a general observation and not a specific dig at Hawkwind who I've always felt have come in at the lower end of the ticket price scale. That said I did some more delving and having a lot of scans of old tickets I discovered that average cost for a seat on the 1982 Choose Your Masques tour was £4.00 so I put this figure in the calculator and the new total it came up with was £8.32. Now taking away the dreaded booking fee (don't get me started on that one!) what major theatre band could you go and see these days and expect to pay that for a ticket. Using Hawkwind as an example, simply as that was the last "biggish" gig that I went to the cover price for that show was £17.50 (Astoria Xmas gig 21.12.03), well over double what the inflation calculator computed the figure to be! I will add at this point that I can't verify the accuracy of this clever little tool but ones to assume it's there or there about and I also realise that any set of figures like these are in essence "averages" so different commodities increase in value at different rates but all the same it does give food for thought. Also in Hawkwind's defence I must mention last years Hawkfest which at £50.00 per ticket plus a very reasonable £3.00 booking fee, represented excellent value for money for three days live entertainment as well as camping!
Anyway, where were we, ah yes merchandise. So the start of the 80's also heralded the boom that was to be the concert t-shirt. Whilst not exploiting the potential of this garment like some acts have, I'm thinking Iron Maiden and Metalica here, they have all the same produced a wide variety of designs over the years. With any good i.e - money making ideas you'll also get those who try and take advantage of the situation and in this case came in the form of the pirate t-shirt sellers that would be waiting to pounce on unsuspecting customers outside major concert halls the length and breadth of the UK and to this end HAWKWIND were no different. I remember arriving at the famed Hammersmith Odeon (in my eyes it'll always be the Odeon, Apollo who are they trying to kid?) for my first 'Wind experience in 1982 and sure enough there was a bloke walking up and down the queue outside the venue shouting out something along the lines of "get yer t-shirts here, HAWKWIND concert t-shirts only £3.00". As with any dodgy goods (not that I know much about this sort of thing you understand) the "unofficial gear" tended to be a bit cheaper than the proper stuff inside and for this reason alone you would often see money going in the pockets of these less than reputable tradesmen. I always prided myself (and still do) that I would never buy from these sources as the garments would invariably be of a poorer quality and the designs and prints would almost exclusively be out of date. However in a strange twist of fate if ever I was to have brought such a shirt it would have been the aforementioned "Masques" one. Not only was I a bit disappointed in the hawks that night but on this occasion the t-shirt was a pretty accurate replica of the official with the front print for both being the cover from the album that accompanied the tour whilst on the rear they both had the dates. The most ironic thing on this occasion was though, that for all my banging on about the unofficial shirts being of an inferior quality it was these ones that seemed to stand the test of time better over the years when you saw them being worn by other fans. I'm sure a lot of you will have noticed that you tend not to get the rogue traders anymore, certainly at theatre type gigs. One if the main reasons for this was that for a while most bands whilst not overjoyed with this practice simply tolerated it as a necessary evil, that was until Iron Maiden took it upon themselves to challenge such traders by taking out a team of lawyers on the road with them to stamp out this form of bootlegging. It no doubt cost a small fortune at the time, but think of how many Maiden t-shirts you see around and I'll bet good money that they all official! Mind you, all that said there does seem to be something of a resurgence of the pirate shirt although these days the preferred way of selling appears to be via certain well known auction sites, if some of the pictures I've swiped from them are to be believed.
During the height of the t-shirt boom there were a number of companies set up to handle bands merchandising needs and if memory serves me right it was a firm called Concert Publishing who looked after Hawkwind. I'm not really sure how it worked but I'd imagine that these organisations would design and produce the shirts on the bands behalf in return for a healthy cut of the profits. The band continued in such a relation up until the Earth ritual tour of 1984. By this time it was not enough to just have one design (even for a band with such free and easy hippie ideals as Hawkwind) so as well as the standard t-shirt, pictured here there was also the slightly "upmarket" baseball shirt shown here which I guess you could best describe as a garment you average rock fan might keep for his or hers Sunday best. For whatever reasons the bands association with Concert Publishing seems to have come to an end after this tour and from thereon till the present day the bands merchandising needs are handled by Dave's "other half Kris Tait. Have a look at the t-shirt galleries here and I think you'll find that most if not all of the official designs from the Do Not panic shirt from 1984 onwards are the work of the subsidiary company now known as Hawkwind Merchandise although I also note that over the years it has been known as "Kris Chaos Incorporated" in 1985 and by 1988 was simply "Chaos Inc"
Nowadays I get the impression that there is not so much demand for t-shirts certainly as far as Hawkwind are concerned. Admittedly the Hawkfest did produce 2 different colour shirts as well as a vest top the only other design that appears to be doing the rounds is this one here, this logo has appeared on both a black and purple shirt as well as with and without tour dates on the back.. Without record company backing I would imagine it's quite a gamble to produce batches of new designs if they're not going to sell in sufficient quantities.
unfortunately
I haven't still got it but I can tell you that HAWKWIND t-shirts existed before 1979. I
bought an 'astounding sounds' t-shirt at Sheffield city hall on the original tour (1977?).
if it helps it was a white t-shirt with the stylised eagle emblazoned on it in red. At the
re run of that tour a few months later I bought a black 'doremi' t-shirt at the Coventry
gig although I cant remember the exact venue, other than I recall it being a cinema.
Previous to that the 1st shirt I can remember buying was a Rick Wakeman ,journey to the
centre of the earth, long sleeved purple thing, at his gig at Leeds university
And now these images kindly supplied by Steve Starfarer
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On the
left we have a wide variety of merchandise that was offered for sale in the Choose your
Masques tour programme, although I'm sure the observant amongst you will notice that it
all relates to previous tours, primarily the Sonic attack jaunt from the previous year,
amongst the goodies available were Sweatshirts at £9, T-Shirts at a Fiver and Patches for
a pound! On the right is the associated order form that you sent to the aforementioned
Concert Publishing for processing.
well I
hope this potted little history has proved to be interesting reading for some of you. It's
not by any stretch of the imagination meant to be definitive, more a collection of
memories aided with a bit of research (emphasis on the bit!) so if their is anyway that
you can help or have things to add then as always please
E-MAIL HERE