NT: That’s right, yeah. Robert had had the idea of The Space Ritual for some time before and ‘Silver Machine’ was actually part of it. What’s quite silly is that ‘Silver Machine’, which allowed us the success to be able to put The Space Ritual together, was never used on the Space Ritual album.


SD: Subsequently Hawkwind also had a few more highly acclaimed albums and a couple of hugely successful US tours, but it’s still often said that they reached their high point with the Space Ritual tour and album. What would you personally say was the band’s finest hour?


NT: I think quite probably, that the Space Ritual albumand tour were the height of the band’s powers. But I think the band was at its most creative with Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music. I personally liked that album, primarily because it was a much more democratic record; most people in the band had songs on it. With regard to previous albums – I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ll probably perceive that 90% of the songs were written by Dave Brock.


SD: On a similar note, when did things in Hawkwind start to sour as far as you’re concerned?


NT: Probably when Lemmy left, that was probably when it started going downhill, but that was when people started seeing money, you know?


SD: You’ve have had this on-off relationship since your first departure in ’76…


NT: I met Dave and Mick Slattery back in ’67, in Holland, when they were with The Famous Cure and I was with a rock ’n’ roll circus, Tent 67, roustabouting. We seemed to get on really well, and became good friends – if there was some other agenda, I didn’t notice it whatever it was (laughs). Two years later we formed the band Hawkwind together and everything was groovy for a long time, ‘til I left in ’76. But then I went back to the band in ’82 for a couple of years, which was also very enjoyable.


SD: So it’s unlikely that the rift between you and Dave, especially since the X-Hawkwind court case, will ever be healed by the sounds of it?


NT: Well the rift between myself and Dave was caused by the fact that when Hawkwind was formed we signed a recording contract jointly as Hawkwind. It was only later that Dave trademarked the name of the band, which was after I had left the band in ’95. I then had a band which was called X- Hawkwind, all ex-members of the band, which I thought was not unreasonable, and Dave sued me. I don’t have anything against the guy –I just feel sorry for him, because this is most definitely not in the spirit of which the band was formed: peace and love and all the things that Barney and Bob and myself promulgated.


SD: OK then, moving on from Dave Brock, of all the variations of Hawkwind related


line-ups that you’ve played in what’s your personal favourite and why?


NT: Wellllll. I think I probably like the first line-up. That was really quite a good line-up because that was all very fresh, before greed, manipulation and unscrupulousness surfaced. I liked it when Robert Calvert was in the band as well. Another favourite line-up is Lemmy, Simon King, Robert Calvert, Dave Brock and Simon House. Paul Rudolph (Pink Fairies guitarist and Lemmy’s replacement on bass in Hawkwind) I get on well with, and I still get on well with Lemmy (laughs) in spite of him slagging me off in his book!


SD: How do you like playing small low-key gigs such as tonight at the Xposed Club?


NT: I like it very much. I enjoy doing gigs like this… this is on the edge for me. I jump in at the deep end really, and I don’t know what it’s going to be like, and in some ways… it’s just very experimental, so it’s quite fun really.


“I’d fill my car up with people and fucking


bomb up the motorway, out of our heads.”


Olympia and I used to go to Middle Earth and The Roundhouse. I used to go and see The Soft Machine and people like that. Previously I had a couple of stalls on the sea front in Margate selling buckets and spades, and I thought it’d be more interesting if I was selling psychedelia, so I sold joss sticks and posters, and International Times and all sorts of stuff like that. I got involved with International Times through that. We all used to go to The Roundhouse on a Saturday night and go to an all-nighter and stuff like that. I’d fill my car up with people and fucking bomb up the motorway out of our heads and buy a load of dope, and whatever people were doing and take acid and stuff like that (laughs).


SD: Can you tell me more about the experimental albumErsatz that was released under the name Imperial Pompadours?


NT: Yeah, well that was actually another Barney Bubbles thing. He said to me ‘I’ve been given some studio time, would you like to come and make an album with me? I’ve got all these songs”, and Andrew Lauder gave him all these cassettes of different songs that were really off the wall, ‘There’s A Fungus Among Us’, ‘See You Soon Baboon’, ‘Don’t Mess With Fu Manchu’, and all these other old songs, ‘Black Denim Trousers And Motorcycle Boots’ (The Cheers) and ‘Little Black Egg’ (The Nightcrawlers). We went in the studio with part of Inner City Unit, which was basically the drummer, Ermanno Ghisio-Erba, Trev Thoms the guitarist and myself. Ultimately Barney gave me the album, so I’m going to put it out very soon. It’s very interesting.


SD: It was probably one of the last things he contributed to in a musical context then?


NT: Well, he wasn’t really involved in music, but if you read the book (Reasons To Be Cheerful by Paul Gorman) you do get the impression that he always wanted to be a pop star or a musician. He played guitar in a band for some time, and he never told me that.


SD: Where next now for you, and after you’ve done The Hawklords’ Space Ritual ’09 gig are there any more plans to continue?


SD: Were you in many bands before you were in Hawkwind?


NT: Not really, no, I was in a jazz band with my brother – a college band in Canterbury. We played one gig I think: it was at a party and we only played for quarter of an hour. We were called The Canterbury Tailgaters. There was another band called Virgin which was some friends of mine and I saw them playing on the back of a lorry and I jumped on the lorry with them and played my saxophone (laughs).


SD: You used to live in Margate, so how did you first get involved in the London counterculture scene of the mid to late ’60s?


NT: I used to go to a lot of concerts. I went to things like The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at the Alexandra Palace and saw Jimi Hendrix at


NT: I think I’d like to do The Hawklords if there’s a market for it. I did a few gigs with Inner City Unit last year that were not terribly successful, and it rather disheartened me to do Inner City Unit because people had said ‘There’s a great demand for Inner City Unit, why don’t you get the band together again?’. We ended up getting £65 off of three gigs, and I did all of the driving! I just thought, ‘Well this isn’t good really’.


SD: What about with The Hawklords?


NT: I would like promote The Hawklords into large festivals where we get a lot of money: 10 grand or something. I don’t know how realistic it is, but if there’s a demand for it then I’d like to do that. I’d do The Space Ritual on a regular basis but for decent money, and Inner City Unit if there’s a demand for it –I’m quite happy to do that. And The Nik Turner Band, which I’m doing gigs with all the time generally, so I’m quite busy (laughs).


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