- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- This is the first album by one of my very favorite bands. Along with Pink Floyd, Hawkwind founded the space rock genre in rock music.
Hawkwind – Hawkwind (1970): This is the first album by one of my very favorite bands. Along with Pink Floyd, Hawkwind founded the space rock genre in rock music. A friend told me once that Hawkwind has been more popular than Pink Floyd in England (both are British bands), though it is very much the other way around in this country, where Hawkwind is not particularly well known. While there has been a bewildering amount of turnover in personnel over the years, with only founding guitarist Dave Brock remaining through it all, Hawkwind is still active and released a CD in 2020 marking their 50th anniversary, called Hawkwind 50 Live. Their first album, Hawkwind was produced by Dick Taylor, the original bass guitarist for the band that became the Rolling Stones and the long-time guitarist for the Pretty Things; Taylor apparently contributed some guitar to the album also.
Hawkwind is first and foremost a live band, though they have made some wonderful studio albums over the years as well. After a few fumbling attempts, Dick Taylor decided to simply record the band as they played live in the studio. After about a minute of “Paranoia”, at the end of Side 1, the music slows down as though the turntable were stopping, with the song then resuming at the beginning of Side 2. Other than “Hurry on Sundown”, which was released as Hawkwind’s first single, and despite being broken down into several song titles, much of Hawkwind is a freeform, mostly instrumental performance. Side 1 of Hawkwind is pretty scuffed up, with many skips and scratches; but Side 2 plays as well as ever.