CHRONICLE
Right: Turner meets with fellow ‘art rocker’ Arthur Brown; the official flyer for the Hawklords’ Space Ritual 2009 memorial to Barney Bubbles at the Roundhouse.
rest of my days!” ever more revolutionary equipment.
So were there actually any ‘Lensmen’? Well yes, of From a content perspective there was little of
course. The wingmen originally comprised biologist, Bubbles’ work. The main providers were Sally Vaughan,
‘Molton Mick’ Mike Hart (who later became a who had been responsible for the first sets of animation
veterinary haemotologist), ‘Astral Al’ Alan Day, John slides for the Traffic show back in ’70, Nick Milner, plus
Perrin and John Lee. “But later, as Hawkwind became leading sci-fi artist David Hardy, who contributed a fund
more committed to touring and travelling to the USA of ‘spacescape’ slides.
more often, the permanent core became myself, John There was, in fact, very little integration whatsoever
Lee and John Perrin; Mike and Alan both had proper among the creatives, Smeeton remembers: “The band
jobs.” were the band, the lightshow was the lightshow; I
With John Lee contributing his 17cwt van to don’t think we ever projected any of Barney’s art other
become Britain‘s first lightshow ‘roadie’, they hauled than the Hawkwind double-headed Hawk logo.
a 20-projector show around the increasingly large “We both lived in the Ladbroke Grove area in
venues, to meet increasing demand after Hawkwind’s London so we saw a lot of each other. Things were
‘Silver Machine’ had gone to No.2 in the singles chart... discussed in normal conversation, but we never really
and the money started to flow. sat down and had a production meeting.”
What a farrago the collective represented. Liquid TPi
Len was expected to animate a scenescape comprising Photography: The TPi Archive, Laurie Lewis
an exotic dancer, a poet, sci-fi writer Michael and courtesy of Jonathan Smeeton
Moorcock, the audio generator work of Dik Mik and With acknowledgements to
graphic sets of Barney Bubbles. Small wonder he added the Starfarer website www.starfarer.net
a pinch of nitroglycerine to the mix.
Paul Gorman’s book, ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life
REVOLUTIONARY and Work of Barney Bubbles, is published by Adelita
The 1972 Space Ritual tour had been a landmark, but
by 1974, as they embarked on the second of their three Jonathan Smeeton’s website:
US tours in 12 months, most of the slide material had www.robotsforpeace.com
been replaced and new concepts evolved, with the
band threatening to spiral out of control in the face of NEXT MONTH: A NEW LIFE IN AMERICA
TPi MARCH 09 • 69
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