PRESENTS

THE TRUTH BEHIND ALAN DAVEY JOINING HAWKWIND

It's generally accepted that Alan Davey's entrance into the Hawkwind ranks came by way of a phone call from Dave inviting him down for an audition after hearing a tape that the aforementioned Mr Davey had sent him. However as it's often said "the truth is stranger than fiction" and here for the first time we can reveal the actual events that led up to the Bass assassin becoming one of the hawks longest serving members, Alan it's "apparently" over to you.

"Well it was like this, I'd gone down to this Stonehenge used car fest, it was 1984 and had been going a few years by now and has become the biggest used car lot in Europe for that week in June and I was looking for a little run around so I thought where better to go!, anyway I'm having a browse when I came accross this little Japanese number, think it was a Toyota, might have been a Mazda, anyway I liked the color, it was green, I'm seeing if it's got a radio and if the seats look comfortable when this sales bloke comes over. Now I know that this sounds like a cliche but wasn't like all of the other dealers, mainly because he wore scruffy clothes and had long hair and a moustache, that said he did know how to give the hard sale. I can remember as if it was yesterday when I asked him if the car had a full service history, he replied -"
'documentation? well it's only had 1 owner, I've got the MOT certificates, but if you're looking for a complete service history - well, it's a bit light on specific data'
He did have the decency to tell me that the car had failed the MOT, something to do with a Fable of a Failed Brake, knowing bugger all about cars it meant nothing to me but he did assure me that if I did decide to buy then the car would come complete with a years ticket!. It was getting quite late by now and darkness would soon be upon us so asked if it would be possible to take a test drive,  which he agreed to somewhat reluctantly muttering something about 'Hurry on sundown and lets see what tomorrow brings'. Anyway I give the car a go and have to say that it drove very nicely, the only thing that concerned me was the temparature guage that seemed to be hovering around the red over heating zone and not the white zone that denotes that everythings OK but when I enquired he told me -
'Oh that's natural with these cars they do run a bit warm, the optimum temparature for these motors to run at is 232.7' centigrade, or in farenheit 451'

Once we got back I had a look around the bodywork and I could have sworn that I heard him say 'You should'nt do that', but anyway it loked fine to me so all we had to do was hatch a deal and this is where problems started in earnest. It was marked up for £300 but I only had £275 on me which I offered him there and then but he was having none of it, at one point he got a bit shirty with me saying something about

'look I'm just an honest bloke tring to make an honest wage, it's not as if you're dealing with the devil here'.

As it looked as though he wasn't going to budge I had no option but to walk away at which point he came after me and said that he would try and sort out something and asked if I had anything else that I could put in to make the money up. I said that the only thing that I had of any value was my Rickenbacker bass guitar, 'did you say bass guitar young man!' he exclaimed, yeah I replied, a smile came over his face, 'you can have this heap of s**t,  I mean lovely little motor on one condition, 'what's that?' I replied, 'well' he continued 'me day job is being the captain of the space rock band Hawkwind, to say that we've had a fluid line up over the years would be an understatement and now the bloody bassist has decided he wants to play keyboards and we're supposed to be playing for this lot later on, so how about it?'

The rest as they say is history, I played the gig and so impressed was they with me that I was invited to join full time with the car being payment for this gig as well a more extensive 40 date Uk tour later in the year. Knowing a good deal when I see one I jumped at the chance. Returning back to Dave's (I knew his name by now) patch the next morning to collect my new pride and joy I had to wait as he took care of a somewhat disgruntled Italian customer, I clearly heard Dave say to him

  What do you mean the car won't start? Is the key buggered? I Opa Lockasmith can fix that  (think about that one!)

Anyway I was soon heading back to Ipswich with me new car, she ran quite well, at some points going downhill I reached 45mph, a King of speed I most certainly wasn't but the only thing I found really disconcerting was a smell of rubber coming from the back seat area. When I went for my first full rehersals with the band I asked Dave about this and he told me
that perished rubber smell in the back, ? Might be a Lost Johnny"

Below are a couple of pictures that support this story

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