Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age Of Paranoia

Fifty years on, the English rock band Hawkwind continues to inspire fervent devotion from fans across the globe. Its influence spans the entire spectrum of alternative music, encompassing psychedelia, prog, and punk, right through to industrial, electronica, and stoner rock. Hawkwind has been variously, though sometimes erroneously, positioned as the heir to both Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground, and as Britain’s answer to the Grateful Dead and Krautrock. It has undeniably defined a genre—space rock—while consistently operating on a frequency that is uniquely its own.

Hawkwind offered a form of radical escapism and an alternative narrative of a strange new world for a generation of young people growing up on a planet that appeared to be teetering on the brink of destruction, under threat from economic meltdown, industrial unrest, and political polarisation. While other commentators confidently asserted that the countercultural experiment of the 1960s was over, Hawkwind took the underground to the provinces and beyond.

In Days of the Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. This is no easy feat. As with many bands from this era, a simplistic narrative has developed around Hawkwind that fails to do justice to the breadth of its ambition and achievements. Banks effectively debunks the popular perception of Hawkwind as merely one long lysergic soap opera; with Days of the Underground, he vividly demonstrates just how revolutionary Hawkwind were and the incendiary potential of their ongoing legacy.