Free Apathy for the Devil by Nick Kent

the group never tired of lampooning - though never directly to his face. (Eventually he’d get his revenge by trade-marking the band’s name and sacking everyone from the classic early-seventies incarnation, becoming Hawkwind’s sole trustee.) Nik Turner - his second-in-command - was never going to cause Ornette Coleman any sleepless nights with his saxophone playing but he had a lot of natural style and even a hint of charisma and was also the only man I’ve ever witnessed who could convincingly sport eye make-up with a full beard and still not look
completely ridiculous. They’d recently brought on board a vocalist /lyricist named Robert Calvert who was a real, bona fide nutcase. He had occasional flashes of illumination but suffered from a particularly severe chemical imbalance in his cerebral faculties that often compelled him to seek temporary solace in various ‘rest homes’ dotted around the British Isles. Also along for the ride were two ‘electronics experts’ - Dikmik and Del Dettmar - who were really just a couple of former pot dealers who’d fallen into music-making by pure happenstance. The rhythm section was actually the key ingredient to Hawkwind’s growing appeal. Drummer Simon King and bassist ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister - both newly recruited - were able to create a solid rumbling groove for the others to play over and it was this cohesive piledriving contribution - hard, primitive, metronome-like - that ultimately made the group so prized around the country as purveyors of proto-stoner rock.
    Their gigs in London and out in the suburbs quickly became homes away from home for the nation’s young drug-dabblers, not unlike ‘raves’ in the late eighties except with a bunch of hairy biker types playing electrified instruments in place of an anorak-sporting DJ gurning over the turntables. Every day was a new adventure for Hawkwind and those who happened to find themselves in its giddy orbit. No one at this juncture was in it for the money or nurturing any kind of fame-seeking agenda. If the group were offered the choice of playing for free in a field somewhere or performing at a paying venue, they would almost always go for the cash-free option. Hawkwind played numerous impromptu benefit shows for Frendz and were ready to show up for virtually any alternative community cause you could throw at them. In this respect, they were more authentic ambassadors of
Ladbroke Grove’s bohemian demographic than the Clash, who in the late seventies used the Westway as nothing more than a handy photo-op backdrop for their own further self-glorification.
    If Hawkwind had one shortcoming at this time it resided in the undeniable fact that their music - live or on record - invariably didn’t sound too good without the listener first partaking in some form of further chemical assistance. This was made further manifest when the group invited me and some other Frendz contributors to accompany them to a concert being held in one of London’s college venues in early February. The act performing that evening were label-mates of Hawkwind’s - both were signed to United Artists records - and based in Germany. That’s how I got to see Can playing their debut show in England. Tago Mago had just been completed and would soon become available, so the group-a quintet with Japanese vocalist Damo Suzuki very much in the foreground - spent the set further exploring the themes and grooves they’d recently developed in the recording studio. From the moment they began playing, you could tell that these guys were in a different class as instrumentalists. Three of them were master musicians who’d studied in conservatories and who now wanted to liberate themselves from the constraints of academia by playing free-form fusion jams on electrified instruments to stoned hippies. The music had obvious druggy connotations but you didn’t need to be ‘on drugs’ to appreciate it. The spell they cast together was bigger than that.
    Over the