WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Ian Abrahams, author of the upcoming book "Hawkwind - Sonic Assassins" speaks to the museum about this and his general love of all things Hawkwind
I will just add that although this piece was conducted via e-mail, I've since spoke to Ian a couple of times on the telephone and I can only vouch for his enthusiasm for this project, I've also been privy to a little peek at a small part of the manuscript and from what I've seen we're in for a real treat, I think I can say with some confidence that along with the already released "Out Of The shadows" DVD and the forthcoming and much anticipated new album "Take Me To Your Leader" this book must surely make up the third part of a trilogy of exciting Hawkwind releases in 2004, and finally don't forget that you can make hefty savings on the cover price by pre-ordering from either of the outlets below
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So Ian, I guess the best place to start is at the beginning, so could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a Hawkwind fan
Well, I lead a pretty ordinary 9 to 5 life in Cornwall as a Credit Manager for an American plastics manufacturer. A man in a suit. I have a wife and three children, and a pedigree dog that has never been to a muddy festival, tied to the end of a string!
I really got interested in Hawkwind in the early 1980s. I used to go to a lot of gigs at the St Austell Coliseum, which was a pretty big venue by Cornish standards and used to get all the major touring bands – I saw The Jam for my first gig, and The Who and Elvis Costello very soon afterwards. I would go with my cousin, who always had this same tape on in the car each time – Live ’79 by Hawkwind. I really liked "Spirit of the Age" and "Shot Down in the Night", and so pretty soon had bought the LP myself. Then, because I liked "Spirit" so much, I bought Quark Strangeness & Charm. Imagine not knowing how differently the various incarnations of Hawkwind would interpret their songbook, putting on "Spirit of the Age" anticipating a studio version similar to the live cut and hearing this wonderful fusion of Radiophonic Workshop bleeps and signals, mixed with this marvellous new wave rock sound. So I was pretty hooked and started buying up the back catalogue and getting the RCA LPs as they came out. Favourite albums are Astounding Sounds, Live ’79, Electric Tepee and Quark, Strangeness & Charm.
I first saw the band in 1982 at St Austell, just before Nik rejoined – but it was a below-par performance and I didn’t catch them live again until the last night of the Black Sword tour at Bristol Hippodrome, which was simply fantastic. And what’s curious now, is the number of friends I’ve made in Hawkwind fandom through the discussion groups, who were also at that show! So I’d go and see them a couple of times each year, often Bristol, but also in Plymouth, Exeter and sometimes even down here in Cornwall.
I sort of dropped-out of going to live gigs in the mid-1990s, getting married and buying a house, the usual thing. Then the band played at St Austell in 1999 and I went, got hooked on live performances again and have been getting to as many gigs as possible ever since. At the same time, through getting on the Net, and being contacted by Bernhard Pospiech after posting on the band’s Guestbook, I’ve made many friends across the world who have the same enthusiasm, which is great!
But it's all very well being a fan, but what inspired you to write a book about the band.
I always wanted to be a writer of some description, at school my aim was to be a journalist, but I never really got started on that ambition. A lot of my friends are writers, Keith Topping who writes various TV programme guides (such as for Buffy and West Wing), Martin Day who writes for "Doctors", Paul Cornell who is one of the scriptwriters on the new Doctor Who series… I just needed a kick up the proverbial to get started. Keith suggested a Hawkwind biography would be a good idea, and that it could be marketable as a self-publishing venture if I couldn’t place it with an existing publishing house, so eventually I got started on it. They say you should write about what you know, but as I went along, I discovered how little I did know about the band!
And is this your first foray into the world of writing
First major foray – I’ve written for websites, like offthetelly.com, various fanzines, and some business journals, but this is my first book.
So you decide your going to write a book about Hawkwind, where do you start
You start with Dave Brock! Dave is Hawkwind and Hawkwind is Dave, in a major sense, even though it’s an ensemble cast as well. So I e-mailed Kris Tait and asked if there would be any objections if I had a go at a book on the band, got a very encouraging message back and got started. It has always been an unofficial project, but the support that I’ve had from Kris and the band can’t be underestimated in driving my motivation along. I sent a sample chapter, and although she liked the writing, suggested that Dave "remembered some of it differently", which I thought was a very kind way of suggesting some of it was wrong. So I met Dave and Kris for lunch in April 2003, did an initial interview and it went from there.
What was your vision, how did you see the book panning out
I figured there was a gap in the market for a serious biography of the band – musical, social and political context, mixed with amusing anecdote and detailing some of the influences behind the songs. I thought as a self-published venture it would be fairly easy to sell, say, a thousand copies through the internet and perhaps at gigs, and that if I was a bit sharper, I might get Amazon and some of the chains to carry it. I’ve got a business background and I thought as a project it was "do-able". But it would have been a major financial commitment and fortunately it worked out that an established publisher took it on.
In terms of structure, I had this idea at the outset of doing the story in a non-linear way. I’d read "Racers" by Richard Williams, which is a book about Damon Hill’s Formula 1 world championship – but its also the story of that year’s rivalry between Hill, Schumacher and Villeneuve, and at the same time a history of F1 motor-racing told in a logical, but not chronological way. So I had this idea that you could take the Hawkestra show as the backdrop for the story and by telling the story of the reunion gig, you could also tell the entire history of the band. But it would have needed a much better writer than I was at that point and in the end I ran scared of that approach and went for a straight biography with a major appendices "about the songs – tracks & references" section at the end. But I still think my original approach would have been an interesting way to tackle the book.
Now I think I'm right in saying that this was basically a "labour of love" for a long time and you had no backing from a publisher, how did you go about coaxing band members both past and present on board for interviews
I must tell you, people who’ve been involved in the band over the years tend to be pretty proud of that and like to talk about Hawkwind, so its not too difficult – you just have to ask nicely. Dave, Richard and Alan were generous with their time the first occasion that I met them, and hopefully I created the impression on them that I could achieve what I set out to do. I also visited Nik Turner fairly early into the writing of the book, and Adrian Shaw is related by marriage to somebody where I work so an interview with him was easy to fix-up. But, for sure, the taps opened on interviews once I had a publisher on board and could demonstrate that people’s time would not be wasted – though many past members spoke to me before that happened. I also enjoyed support from Keith Kniveton, who has been an important friend to the book over the last year, which I greatly appreciate.
How were these interviews carried out - face to face, over the phone etc
A mixture. Some e-mail, some by telephone (my bill tripled during the writing of the book! British Columbia is particularly expensive!), but also some face-to-face – I’ve been most privileged to visit Dave, Alan, Richard and Nik at their homes. That’s a pretty big thing for somebody who has been following Hawkwind for over twenty years. Dave Brock asked me recently what my parents thought about the book – I said my mum was more impressed that I was invited to the home of this "Dave Brock" person she’d heard about all these years.
Any amusing \ unusual incidents whilst you were carrying out these interviews
I found that Alan Davey had a similar taste in TV SF when he was growing-up that I had – UFO, Marine Boy, all the great programmes, so one of our interviews was substantially delayed for a reminisce about those shows! I found with Alan that each time we met or spoke on the phone we generally found something to have a laugh about, which is a great way of feeling "at ease" with somebody.
I warmed to Richard as soon as he sent me directions to his home that included the phrase "look for the statue of the Silver Surfer in our window" – I just knew I’d have a good time there!
I was sitting outside of Nik’s Cadillac Ranch in deepest Wales, warm sunny afternoon – Nik told me that he’d lived near a US airforce base when he was a boy, and had wanted to be a fighter pilot. Only a few minutes later, two tornado jets came screaming down through the valley. I looked at Nik, and said, "That could have been you…..".
But the thing that made me laugh the most (I was in hysterics for ten minutes trying to explain it to my wife) was proof reading some text and discovering that I’d described the lyrics to "Star Cannibal" – flesh fondue/main course stew – as being rather "cheesy"…
I presume all the time you were working this around the "day job" and your family life, your wife and kids must be pretty understanding
It’s not easy – it took quite some time to figure out where the slots were that I could work and not disrupt the family life too much! You can’t doing something like this unless your family are supportive and understanding.
So how did the deal with SAF come about, did you have other offers and if so what made you go with them
Marketing! The more material and interviews I accumulated, and the better I got as a writer (mainly influenced by the critical and proof editing skills of Keith Topping and Alan Linsley) the more likely it became that I could find a publisher. I went into the local Ottakars, checked out who was publishing what, found SAF’s book on Kraftwerk, looked at their "list" and thought that Hawkwind would be a good fit. Sent them some samples, a marketing pitch and a list of interview commitments and they rang up a few months later and accepted the book. I thought I’d done a great job identifying the right publisher, turned-out that Dave Hallberry and Mick Fish who run SAF are 1970s Hawkwind fans and fancied the idea of doing a book on them! They were the only publisher I sent the book to, and it was a really happy choice.
Tell us a bit more about SAF and what was there reaction to somebody pitching a book about Hawkwind at them
SAF are a specialist music publisher – aside from Kraftwerk, they’ve published books on Can, Tangerine Dream, Focus, Mountain, Coil and many others. They produce really good quality editions – they’re just some guys who love their music, really. This year, aside from Hawkwind, they’ve got books on U2, Thin Lizzy and a very exciting looking text on Suicide and the New York punk scene, amongst others.
How much input do they have in the final product, do they employ an editor
I guess the way they basically work, is that Dave does the business side of things, and the setting out of the books, and Mick is the editor. Dave was great to work with, always available at the end of the phone for advice and encouragement. For a first timer like me, that was critical. Mick really came into the thing once the first draft had been delivered – we had one of those traditional publishing industry liquid lunches once he’d done an edit on the text. I thought the manuscript had loads of alterations on it, but most of them were observations about Hawkwind gigs I’d mentioned and he’d actually been at!
You've already mentioned that they're be some rare photos, how did you come across these
From the collection’s of Dave Brock and Alan Davey, from various people I’ve interviewed for the book – and from people reading about the book on the Hawkwind Museum and offering pictures that they’d taken. There’s a great selection of very exciting stuff!
What's your proudest achievement as far as the book goes
Hard one that! Meeting the band was a really big thing for me, of course. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but without exception I liked everybody I came into contact with very much indeed.
What I’d like to think, is that we’ll sell the book to people who followed the band in the 1970s, had all the UA albums and the Charisma LPs but lost track of them afterwards. I like to imagine somebody like that buying the book and thinking "I should get Electric Tepee" or "I must look out for the new CD" and have them realise there’s this whole creativity that they should get up to date with. It’s working already – I said this to Mick at SAF and he reckoned there was a few newer albums mentioned in the book that he ought to look out for!
So has this wetted your appetite to do another book and if so what do you think the subject matter will be next time
Yes – if this is the only book I ever do, I’ll sort of wish I hadn’t done it in a way, because I’ve got a real taste for it. Killing Joke would be a possibility, The Waterboys another – both bands that, like Hawkwind, seem to exist outside of the traditional music business. Or a biography of Jenny Agutter – interviewing for that one would be nice :-)
I’m sure there’ll be a next one soon!
Now I’ve seen the film Bridget Jones Diary, will you be having a book launch party like the one featured there and am I invited ;-)
In this crazy world of rock ‘n’ roll, anything can happen!