celebrityhf

It's not only us mere mortals who are into the band, oh no even some of the "great and the good" have come under the spell of Hawkwind, here's a few to start with and if any of you out there know of anymore, preferably with some evidence then as ever
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	Could the next "king of the jungle" also be a massive Hawkwind fan?, confused, then I'll explain. It's no secret that Mr Rotten who is pictured on the left is a huge Hawkwind fan and as I write this piece he's currently in the Australian rainforest competing in the reality TV show, "I'm a celebrity get me out of here", not only is he currently the bookies favourite to win, he even mentioned the band by name to his fellow competitors the other day! And let's not forget that the Sex Pistols kicked off their jubilee show at Crystal Palace in 2002 with a version of Silver Machine.
	It's no secret that I'm a fan of Radio 1 DJ Mark Radcliffe and his sidekick Lard, both fans of the band, I do however think that Mr Radcliffe is taking it a bit far with his own personal homage to the costumes worn on the "Chronicle of the Black Sword" tour in 1985
	Peter Hook of New Order, or should that be the former "Mr Merton" (he was married to Caroline Ahern of Mrs Merton fame) apparently took his dad to a Hawkwind concert in the 70's to show him what this "rock and roll lark" was all about!
	Someone who burns a million pounds in the name of art surely has all the credentials of a hardcore Hawkwind fan, so Jimmy Cauty of the KLF seems to have all the qualifications, and he re-mixed Silver Machine for the Epoch Eclipse best of.
	Part time rocker cum stand up artist Henry Rollins was apparently a big time Hawkwind Fan when he was a member of the seminal US punk band Black Flag.
	Here's an interesting one, who's the Geek on the left you ask, well it's hot shot DJ - Remixer type William Orbit who's done loads of work with the self styled "Queen Of Pop" Madonna and is generally credited with giving her career a "kick up the ase just when it was needed. Hawkwind mention him directly in a live web cast that they did a while ago (whatever happened to them, the web casts that is?), at the time he was apparently interested in working with the Hawks. Who knows maybe he's introduced "Madge" to the delights of Space Ritual, DoReMi etc"!*
	It's the fella in the middle that we're interested in, it's J J Burnel from 70's punk icon's the Stranglers, who by chance only today (30.01.04) nailed his colours to the mast by pronouncing the track Quark, Strangeness and Charm as one of his favourite songs from the 70's in today's Independent newspaper, he wrote of it - "This was another song buried by punk. They were regarded as a hippie group, a dog-on-a-string type band, and were involved with sci-fi writers. There are some brilliant lyrics on this song: Copernicus had those Renaissance ladies / Crazy about his telescope/ And Galileo had a name that made his/ Reputation higher than his hopes the track is simple, just a three chord trick, but really rocking. It got buried, though; they were the wrong band at the wrong time. Such is his love for this particular ditty, he's played it live, not only as a solo artist but also with anther outfit that he appears with known as "Three Men and Black" who also include amongst their ranks Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers and Pauline Black of the Ska band "The Selecter".
	Vic Reeves, pictured left, had a huge hit in the 90's with the Wonderstuff with the track Dizzy. I remember reading an article with Vic and "Stuffies" frontman Miles Hunt from around that time where they stated that if they worked together again they'd do an EP of Hawkwind covers. On a similar track, lets not forget fellow Black Country outfit "Pop Will Eat Itself" who covered "Orgone Accumulator" on their first album!
	Not sure if you'd call this clean cut individual a fan, but hey it makes up the numbers!, it's Chris Difford of 70's - 80's - 90's popsters Squeeze but he does talk with some fondness of the band, especially a certain "Miss Stacia" when he was interviewed by BBC Radio London's Danny Baker the day before the Hawks appeared. To hear the interview CLICK HERE and it's in week 50 directly below Hawkwind (hint, it's about 13 minutes into the interview). This also leads us nicely onto -
	Danny Baker, picture on the left of this shot with Chris "The Ginger Whinger Evans" and no that's not computer generated presenter from the 80's Max Headroom next to him but one time footballing genius Paul Gascoingne. Mr Baker more than showed of his Hawkfan credentials when he brought in his own copy of "X In Search Of space" to play when the band appeared on his breakfast show back in 2002. If you haven't heard it click on the link above and follow the same instructions.
	So Danny baker interviews Chris Difford, whilst on the subject of connections lets not forget his former partner in Squeeze, Jools Holland, presenter of arguably the best music show on the box "Later With". In the days before he was hob nobing with the musical elite the ivory tinkler added keyboards to naff NWOBHM act Vardis's cover of Silver Machine.
	Arguably the most high profile of all and the one who's nailed his colours to the mast most firmly, it is of course Channel 5 TV presenter Matthew Wright. Legend has it that Dave Brock appeared on his radio show last year and at the time was not convinced of Mr Wright's claim of being a big time hawkfan, so in an attempt to catch him out asked him to recite the words to Spirit Of The Age, which apparently Matthew did so perfectly, since then a firm friendship seems to have developed with the presenter making an appearance on stage with the band with Dave, Kris and Alan returning the compliment by being part of the studio audience on one of his shows.
	Not an individual but a band this time, it's welsh act Super Furry Animals, who by their own admission admitted that their single Rings Around The World sounded like "The Beach Boys playing Silver Machine" and to be honest I can't think of a more apt description. Things don't stop there though as many of their other tracks are littered with spacey synth noises and audio generators, worth checking out!
	As are these dirty little buggers. It's Seattle rockers Mudhoney who are generally credited with being one of the first exponents of the "Grunge" sound, which for me is good enough reason to investigate them further, add to that the fact that they have taken to playing Urban Guerrilla as an encore on recent tours, as well as recording it for a session with Radio 1's john Peel, and then there's the latest album 2002's Since We've Become Translucent which is very Spacey in places. Makes you wonder if a certain Mr Kurt Cobain was also aware of the Hawks! In 1993, Mudhoney main man Mark Arm revealed that one of the tracks to change his life was Master Of the Universe, he went on to say "As for Hawkwind, I really admire a band that can play one riff for 10 minutes. When it comes to spaced stuff, all there songs seem to be out there. They call there albums things like 'In Search Of Space' and 'Space Is Deep' "
	Clive Mantle obviously deserves his celebrity tag having starred in such great TV series such as Vicar Of Dibly, Heartbeat, Holby City, Casualty and also Robin of Sherwood (as Little John), Clive has also climbed Mount Everest for charity, so ther you go. Interestingly on one of the BBC biog sites Clives lists one interest as smoking! The celebrity Hawkfan revelation came from my brother who was a sort of a casual Hawkfan so I have no reason to doubt his integrity. Apparently, in the early 90's, Clive appeared on one of those Saturday morning shows that the BBC pumped out for so many years. The usual thing on these shows was to get some kids in the audience to lay some tough questions on the unsuspecting celeb. The kids always threw in the music question, hoping that the celeb would like the same as them; you know - Take That, East 17 or some other similar dire boy band. So came the morning when Clive was on. Cue squeaky kid with his page of music related questions. Squeaky kid - "Clive what music groups do you like?" Clive - There's only one group for me, Hawkwind" That line of questioning got cut short, the squeaky kid was confused and speechless and the presenter was babbling about for a quick link to the next question. But it did give us a celebrity Hawkfan and at 6'5", he must be a really big Hawkfan. (Thanks to Mark Van Bargen for this amusing contributuion)
	This chaps name recently came up on the Yahoo discussion list, the answer being sought at the time was "is he a Hawk fan as the band are mentioned in passing in a couple of his books", so you will probably have now worked out he's an author, and a best selling one at that, it's Scotish crime novelist Ian Rankin. The definative answer came only last week in the Independant On Sunday Magazine where Ian was interviewed for a section called "My Secret Life" to the question - It's not fashionable but I like he replied "Hawkwind, a psychedelic band from the early seventies. They're still together and I'm still buying their albums." Pretty conclusive i'd say and probably one of the most high profile celeb hawkfans to date! Thanks to my good mate Pete Revell for finding this.
	No, not the fat bloke on the left, that's director of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, have to say personally I thought his earlier efforts such as Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Brain Dead were far superior to his later big budget blockbusters ;-) So who's the chap on the right, well it's Producer, Director, Actor (the list goes on) Lloyd Kaufman, who whilst not being a household name is apparently very big in cult movie circles. He's been involved in such (reasonably well known) movies such as "Toxic Avenger" and "The Class Of Nuke 'Em High". An unconnected Google search came up with an interview with Mr Kaufman where he mentioned his love of Hawkwind. Apparently a certain bass played answering to the name of Lemmy is a huge fan of his films and has worked with Lloyd. It's worth taking a look at the following LINK just to read the write ups on the movies he's been involved in, I don't feel the likes of Spielberg and Scorsesse will be losing too much sleep!