henry lowther

I guess first and foremost it's confession time. Until a few days ago I'd never heard of the name Henry Lowther. I came across it as I transcribed the article entitled Hawklords - 25 Years on as he's the chap who plays the trumpet on the opening track on the album of the same name, that song being PSI Power. Intrigued by this new piece of information I decided to do a bit of detective work to try and find out more.

I have to say it was one of the easier searches I've undertaken ( I often attempt such things in the hope of unearthing a further snippet if hitherto unknown information or picture but usually they come to nothing!) and before long I had quite an abundance of facts about the gentleman at my fingertips. It turned out that Henry was a well known trumpeter on the British Jazz scene in the 60's and since then has appeared and worked with some of the greats from a wide variety of musical genre's. These include John Dankworth and Charlie Watts ( I assume from his Jazz band that he runs as a side project to the Rolling stones ) to through to the classical sphere with such well known orchestras as both the Royal and London Philharmonic as well as the BBC Symphony, right through to the rock and pop scene where he's worked with, amongst others Elton John, Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Pink Floyd. Knowing that there's a big crossover between the Floyd and hawkwind I tried to find what track or tracks he had worked on ( I'm still trying to get this information!) and it was whilst doing this that I chanced on another Hawkwind connection as it appears that back in the 60's Henry was in a band that also featured current Hawk's vocalist Arthur Brown ( go about a quarter of the way down the page, it's in the section entitled "Rag Week" ).!

Buoyed by the initial success of the search and the information I had uncovered I decided to drop Henry a line as I had also found an e-mail address for him, the message read as follows -

hope that you don't mind me getting in touch with you like this. I run a web site dedicated to the rock band Hawkwind, who for a short while became The Hawklords, whilst doing some research for the site I chanced upon the fact that you (assuming I've got the right Henry Lowther!) contributed to the self titled Hawklords album back in 1978, the track in question being PSI Power. I was wondering if you have any memories of this session that you would care to share and also if you can remember how you came to be involved. Hawkwind mainstay and only original member Dave Brock is I believe a big Jazz fan so did he know you from "being into that scene"

thanks for your time and any input would be greatly appreciated as I feel it has the makings of an interesting piece for the site, however I also realise that this was a long time ago and having had a quick look at your CV it probably is now nothing more than a distant memory.

I really did this just "on the off chance" that I might get a reply, these days with people having so many e-mail accounts and changing service providers you can never be sure whether a particular address is still active or used, however on this occasion I'm pleased to report that a couple of days later I received the following reply -

I did indeed play on the Hawklords album you mentioned. Unfortunately, although I normally have a good memory of what I've done over the years, I can only dimly recall the session. At that time of my life I was in and out of recording studios all the time, sometimes two or three times a day, and often didn't even know who the artists were. It was quite common for the artists not even to be present and the musicians would be in the studio with only a producer, engineer and tea boy! The Hawklords' session that I did was in a small mixing studio in Wessex Studios, Highbury Park. I seem to remember that I was replacing a French horn they'd tried out or something like that. The whole thing was very quick and I was in and out in no time at all. No other musicians were present apart from one or two guys from the band. How I came to be involved I've no idea. I could have been booked by the band, the producer, the record company or through a contractor.

I would assume from Henry's recollections that the "one or two guys from the band" must have been Dave and Bob as you would imagine that they would be the main creative and driving forces behind such a project, Hawklords was in essence "their baby". Also for those lucky enough to have a copy of the book "This Is Hawkwind Do not Panic" by Kris Tait, towards the end of chapter 5 ( sorry can't give you the page number as they appear to have been omitted! ) there's reference made to Bob and Nik forming a "rudimentary horn section" in 1977, so was it Mr Calverts French Horn or trumpet that Henry was brought into over dub?

Well thanks henry for taking the time to reply, although you only have a minuscule place in Hawkwind history, thinking about it could you be Hawkwind's / Hawklords shortest ever member, not in physical height but in length of time, from what you say probably about an hours tops! it's still good to hear your recollections.

Although the track in question originally appeared on the aforementioned Hawklords album which has long been deleted, your best chance of procuring a copy is probably on E-BAY and with a price tag of around £60 - £70 that's going to be out of reach of a lot of people ( myself included ), however it also crops up on the excellent Epoch Eclipse 3 CD collection from EMI which can be obtained from most good record shops both in the high street and on-line for about £15 - £18.