Come in Number 9, your time's up!

April 13th – You’d think, after 44 years of sloggin’ the circuit, that you’d probably want to pack it up, wouldn't you? I mean, the music business is good, but it aint that good…is it? 

You've got to be some sort of masochist to think that this is a good way spend your one circuit round right up to the point when you’re 60+ years old and, let's face it, are on the downward slope of life no matter how charitable we want to be. Dave Brock certainly gets my vote for The Rock Musician With The Most Staying Power, particularly when you consider the hoops both he and the band, Hawkwind, have jumped through during that time.

As is the case with a large number of the bands and musicians that have featured in this guff I write, drugs, booze and breakdowns have contributed in a large part to the direction, musicality, personnel dynamic and longevity of many hands, no more so than Hawkwind. OK, promise you won’t look? OK, promise… Your starter for ten: how many members have there been in Hawkwind since its inception in 1969? 

Forty-Three! Yup. 43…and five of those are now dead.

That’s almost as many members as years. They've done the biggest festivals and the smallest halls in our suburban surroundings, toured the States and Europe, released 29 albums (and argued their way through most of them). If you did a schematic of their rock family tree however, you would find they've contributed, in one way or another either, through past members or musical influences, to an array of bands and musical genres that formed the backbone of the musical scene in 80’s and 90’s…so, not so big a waste of time as I first thought…and to name a tour that they finished on this day back in 1975 as The Dead Singer Tour…? Got to be worth doing forty+ years just to put that on your C.V.