Dave Thompson

Space Daze: the History and Mystery of Space Rock Dave Thompson

In the beginning, there was Hawkwind. Not quite in the very beginning, of course; sundry creation myths notwithstanding, nothing springs from absolutely nothing. In terms of Space Rock though, while, without Hawkwind, there would still have been Space and Rock and, maybe, some people would have put them together and said "ah, this must be what we mean," Hawkwind was never simply "put together." Neither, though adherents of what we today call Space Rock can argue all night about its ingredients, can they be removed from the equation. What, after all, is Space Rock? To the earliest Hawkwind fans, who saw the adverts in the music press that advertised their first, eponymous, album beneath - yes, beneath the banner SPACE ROCK, it encompassed everything from the blues-driven throb of "Hurry On Sundown," to the spectral echoes of "Paranoia" (parts one and two, divisible only when you got up to change the record; on CD the break's just an irritant), and on to the full-blooded freak-out of "Seeing It As You Really Are," ten minutes of eerie electronics - except the sounds are all organic, and what you hear whispering, howling and hooting in your head is not necessarily what you have going on in your ears. Space Rock embraced all these things; Space Rock thus became all these things, and it was only later, once other musicians had borrowed its elements, isolated them and developed them as single strands, that maybe the basics became a little blurred. Plus... Daevid Allen, Syd Barrett, Tim Blake, the Edgar Broughton Band, Arthur Brown, Can, Robert Calvert, Chrome, the Deviants, Mick Farren, Faust, Edgar Froese, Gong, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Hillage, Kraftwerk, Legendary Pink Dots, Man, Michael Moorcock, Pink Fairies, Popol Vuh, Pressurehed, Quiet Sun, Ramases, Klaus Schulze, Sky Cries Mary, Sphynx, Tangerine Dream, Steve Took, Nik Turner, Twink AND MORE!