HAWKWIND

Recorded in a big hurry, so I remember reading once. United Artists didn't particularly want Hawkwind -- they wanted another London outfit called Cochise. Cochise and Hawkwind and their management company stuck together, and UA signed both.

This first album is actually their standard live set at the time, but recorded in a studio, broken up into chunks and given some random titles, and then bookended by the two songs they had, Hurry On Sundown (a flop single) and Mirror of Illusion (with some knockout guitar by Dick Taylor of the Pretty Things, who also produced).

I bought this album in 1972, when I discovered Hawkwind at age 16, so it's been like an old friend for a long time now. Still like to play it sometimes. Nice sound on it -- reluctent as UA may have been, it sounds like they didn't skimp on studio equipment. It sounds far, far better than Doremi, for example. In Search of Space is still my favourite, though, despite it being pre-Lemmy, who turned out to be the secret ingredient in the magic 1971-75 line-up.

I went to see them once more after they unforgivably sacked him, in Guildford in England in 1976. The magic had gone, and I stopped buying the records and going to gigs after that.

Hell, they were really something in their prime, though.