Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age Of Paranoia’ | Interview with Joe Banks ‘Days Of The Underground’ is a decade-long trip into the music of Hawkwind, exploring the ideas and concepts that fuelled the band during their classic 1970s period, and speaking to the crew that manned the ship. Along with the Pink Fairies, Hawkwind were certainly there at the start, playing free outdoor gigs in and around Ladbroke Grove, particularly under the Westway arches (as photographed on the fold-out sleeve of ‘In Search Of Space’). The Canvas City performances outside of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival were also crucial to Hawkwind’s identity as heroes of the underground, while the festival itself lit the touchpaper of the free festival movement when the fences came down on the final day. Hawkwind’s philosophy of just turning up and playing was certainly an inspiration, and even after becoming a big top 20 band, they went on to appear at many of the 70s’ key free festivals – Windsor, Watchfield, Stonehenge et cetera. As such, they were absolutely talismanic to the whole movement, and continued to be during the Peace Convoy years of the 80s and the outdoor rave scene of the 90s. “Hawkwind were responsible for bringing the good news of the counterculture to every corner of Britain in the early 70s” The classic story of having an older brother with a large record collection! I started off playing his Slade singles, and ambiently soaking up the music from his bedroom – Pink Floyd, Queen, Deep Purple, Judas Priest… “They were musically unique”

Whereas other bands used the emerging synthesiser technology as just another keyboard instrument, DikMik used an audio generator – at the time used by no other band in the world aside from New York’s Silver Apples – to create whole species of pure noise. Buffeting, whining and roaring on top of the pounding rhythms, it sounds like nothing so much as a pagan god of electricity thinking out loud to itself. Disc Seven has a live recording from the Sonic Assassins at the Queensway Hall, Barnstable on 23 rd December 1977. This concert has been remixed from the original master tapes, and a fine job has been done, the sound quality is good and clearly shows a band that are together, tight and have not lost any of their Hawkwind impetus in their performance of classic Hawkwind songs. Joe Banks: I’ve been a serious music fan since the age of 13. After school and university, I worked in music shops, sang in a band and made my own music. This of course meant that I was effectively broke most of the time, so in my late 20s, I bit the bullet and got a “proper” job in PR, which I did as a full-time career until 2013. Since then, I’ve been looking after my daughters while freelancing in PR. Oh, and passing myself off as a music writer. ALSO INCLUDING THE PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED PROMOTIONAL FILM OF HAWKLORDS AT UXBRIDGE UNIVERSITY IN 1978 AND A PERFORMANCE OF ‘QUARK, STRANGENESS AND CHARM’ ON THE MARC BOLAN TV SHOW, PLUS A LAVISHLY ILLUSTRATED BOOK, ESSAY AND A POSTER.In shamanic cultures, the rituals and ceremonies are ultimately about transformation – the ability of the shaman actually to become another being, to be possessed by another spirit. For Banks, this is a key aspect of what he calls Hawkwind’s radical escapism: they offered not just a counter-culture but a counter-reality to a paranoid and profoundly disillusioned decade. Reality you can rely on, to use one of their slogans from later in the decade. As the country lurched deeper and deeper into crisis – be it political, economic or environmental – and trust in authority bled away, the band’s millenarian rejectionism of corporate and societal norms seemed a positive model for action. This is a quite comprehensive set of this period in the band’s history, well presented with plenty to discover and enjoy. It also shows the band’s ability to successfully ride the rising punk wave and deliver a period covering what could be one of the highlights of their long career. This is a set that should attract the attention of fans, collectors and casual listeners alike. In Days Of The Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. Rejecting the accepted narrative that views the band as one long lysergic soap opera, he shows us just how revolutionary Hawkwind were and how enduring their legacy remains. Profusely illustrated with rare and previously unseen archival material, Days Of The Underground will rewire your perceptions of Hawkwind forever.

In Days of the Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. It's not an easy task. As with many bands of this era, a lazy narrative has built up around Hawkwind that doesn't do justice to the breadth of its ambition and achievements. Banks gives the lie to the popular perception of Hawkwind as one long lysergic soap opera; with Days of the Underground, he shows us just how revolutionary Hawkwind were, and their ongoing legacy's incendiary potential. Nearly a decade after the release of the acclaimed surround mix of Warrior on the Edge of Time, a limited edition 8 CD / 2 Blu ray boxed set from Hawkwind that showcases the band's tenure with Charisma Records in the late 1970s is released in March 2023. On this deluxe box set titled “Days of the Underground: The Studio & Live Recordings 1977-1979” fans will find the music that breaks new ground, producing a series of classic albums that adapted to the changing musical times with invention and flair. Specifically, the boxed set features three albums: “Quark, Strangeness and Charm,” “Hawklords: 25 Years On,” and “P.X.R. 5” each with immersive 5.1 surround sound and Stereo remixes by Steven Wilson.

Tracklist

Wilson is at work on remixing 1978’s 25 Years On which they released as Hawklords due to some legal issues. Typically perverse Calvert offers some unexpected lyrical content,including a long description of jumping out of a plane on Free Fall, and Aussie drug abuse in Flying Doctor – so a big departure from the sci-fi influenced work they’d been doing previously. This mighty book by music writer Joe Banks covers what many people consider to be Hawkwind’s golden era (from the formation of the band in Ladbroke Grove in 1969, to 1980’s Levitation) and what a decade (and ride) it was aboard the Hawkwind Silver Machine. With that out of the way, let’s move on to what we have got here. As one would expect, the Steve Wilson remixes of Quark, Strangeness and Charm, 25 Years On and PXR 5 are excellent, clear, sharp and with great instrument separation, but all the while they manage to maintain some of the original recorded feel and atmosphere.

FEATURING NEW STEREO AND 5.1 SURROUND SOUND MIXES OF ‘QUARK, STRANGENESS AND CHARM’, ‘HAWKLORDS – 25 YEARS ON’ AND ‘P.X.R. 5’ BY STEVEN WILSON. The four discs of live recordings from the period contain a great number of unheard (by me, anyway) gems, and all three albums have enough high quality outtakes with them to give each of them a greater resonance. In short, this is an exhaustive trawl for fans which also contains very little fat which could be trimmed – which is a remarkable balancing act.I’ve always loved Hawkwind, but it was the strongly positive response to an early article I wrote for The Quietus about Space Ritual – which attempted to place the band in the cultural context of the “apocalyptic 70s” – that first made me think there was something more to write about them beyond the two perfectly decent biographies that were already out there. So it was a desire to pull all the socio-cultural threads together – the idea of the “underground”, the science fiction mythology, their influence on punk et cetera – that really got me started. In many ways, Hawkwind embody an alternative history of the 70s. As if we don’t get enough Hawkwind in various forms from beneath the Cherry Red umbrella (including an upcoming new studio album at the end of April) here’s a collection that pushes the boat out. The period between 1977 and 1979 when Hawklords continued to fly the Hawkwind flag is safely gathered in with a set of live and studio material from the era. Steven Wilson’s been at it again, with new masters/remixes of Quark Strangeness & Charm, PXR5 plus the Hawklords’ 25 Years On, all of which get expanded into a swirl of surround sound in 5.1 on the Blurays.