FILTER BOOKS
Sideways Through Time:
An Oral History Of Hawkwind In The 1970s
★★★★
Joe Banks
STRANGE ATTRACTOR. £14.99
Newly expanded, the space rock pioneers and friends speak.
Of Hawkwind’s amazonian dancer Stacia, PR man Richard Ogden recalls her once giving a fireman’s lift to her boyfriend Terry ‘Beefy’ Bennett, “the former coal-mining lead singer of Sassafras.” They may have trance-rocked the cosmic infinite, but as this conversational compendium proves time and again, Hawkwind always had one foot in the corporeal midden. Initially a limited accompaniment to Hawk-ographer Banks’ 2020 tome Days Of The Underground, this new edition is like sitting in the company of many of the band, management, crew, lighting men, partners and others, and Hawkfans will be fascinated. This new edition adds eight new interviews illuminating their best decade, from late sax-lizard Nik Turner’s aquarian positivity about underground west London to manager Doug Smith’s laments for the squandering of potential. Doomed, brilliant bipolar poet Robert Calvert emerges with particular fascination, with multiple perspectives on his dramatic public meltdown in Paris in 1977 and harrowing testimony from his ex-wife Pamela Townley.