I’ve been glued to the coverage of the Artemis II splashdown tonight. Incredible stuff. I was so relieved to see the mission end successfully.
Of course, while I was watching Artemis II I was playing some records in the background as kind of a pseudo soundtrack to the event. It mainly focused on Hawkwind. Hawkwind was one of the premier bands that pioneered the space rock sound in the early 1970s.
Their first couple records are good, though kind of embryonic. 1971’s In Search of Space has a lot of trippy jams on it, but it lacked a bit of the power that Hawkwind later became famous for in their epic audio journeys.
By 1972, the “classic” lineup had formed with the addition of bassist Lemmy Kilmester (Yes, the Lemmy who went on to front Motorhead!) and drummer Simon King. This heavy-duty rhythm section perfectly suited Dave Brock, Nik Turner Dik Mik, and Del Dettmar. The studio album this group created was Doremi Fasol Latido which has some of their all-time classics on it like “Brainstorm” and “Space is. Deep” but in my opinion it tends to run out of gas by the end of the 2nd side.
Hawkwind reached greater heights as a live band, and fortunately they recorded a lot of their shows. They released a live single called “Silver Machine” that showcased their prowess in concert. This video, which has some rare live video of the band during the era is pretty incredible. If I had a time machine, I’d definitely be setting the dials for a show similar to this one to go to:
This band played hundreds of shows by the end of 1972 and were playing like a well oiled (yet drugged out) machine. Luckily, they had a foresight to record a couple of the shows that eventually became the live album Space Ritual, which is today’s pick!
Space Ritual was recorded December 22, 1972 at Liverpool Stadium and December 30 1972 at Brixton Sundown in London. The entire album plays like one long composition with all the tracks seguing into each other. There are also little interludes with spoken word pieces by Robert “Bob” Calvert thoughout. It’s an all encompassing space rock overload. An advertising tagline for Space Ritual at the time was “88 minutes of brain damage” and that summarizes the album better than I ever could.
The entire album should really be experienced at full volume from beginning to end, but I’ll highlight a few things if you want to get the gist before devoting the time for the full Hawkwind live experience.
The album launches with “Earth Calling / Born To Go”. The gurgling synths and sound effects of “Earth Calling” eventually explode into driving bass and drums that start the 10 minute epic jam of “Born To Go”. There is no going back once this song fully kicks in!
To see how far they’ve taken the sound to the far reaches of the space rock galaxy, you could just compare the studio version of “Space is Deep” to the live version on Space Ritual. It really isn’t a fair comparison because the Space Rirutal version runs laps around the original on Doremi Fasol Latido.
The live version of “Brainstorm” is also completely off the chain. This video it also pretty incredible because someone made some sort of A.I. video that simulates what the Space Ritual concerts might have looked like. This is a pretty welcome visual as there is no known video footage of the band playing these concerts:
“Master of the Universe” is also incredible. It single handedly invented a space rock / heavy metal hybrid before anyone else realized this would be a cool thing to do:
Hawkwind also debuted new songs on Space Ritual that were not on previous studio records. “Orgone Accumulator” is one such example that absolutely rips!
Unfortunately this lineup of Hawkwind was not built to last. Dik Mik left the group soon after the Space Ritual shows. A short while later Lemmy was kicked out of the group when his drug use became to untenable for the rest of the group (believe it or not). The band carried on and put out some more classics, but none quite touching the heights of Space Ritual
Like I mentioned earlier, scoping some of the highlights of Space Ritual is a good teaser, but to truly get this record you need to hear it front-to-back. Set aside an hour and a half. Turn down the lights. Turn up the volume. Commence brain damage.
