Hawkwind
Hall of the Mountain Grill

This review is dedicated to Simon King, drummer-propeller of the Hawkwind spacecraft from 1972 to 1980, now employed in a London municipal company for urban waste disposal: thank you for all the hours of furious "air drum" we spent together.

The "Space Ritual Tour" turned out to be a kind of point of no return.

The intergalactic carousel, which between '72 and '73 had turned the heads of the space rockers of the land of Albion, represented the highest expression of the crew led by Dave Brock, not only from a purely musical perspective, but also and above all as a realization of that "cosmic experience" that has always been the foundation of the group's music. The band was experiencing what can be defined as its moment of greatest success, yet, once back at base, the Hawkwind spaceship found itself once again dealing with that sort of "revolving door syndrome" that had always influenced its affairs.

Since its formation (a few years earlier within the Notting Hill district), the band had, in fact, adopted the modus vivendi of the late '60s hippie communes, to the point of becoming a sort of extended family, from which anyone was free to leave and to which everyone was free to return. However, no one could have predicted what the consequences would be of the small revolution awaiting the group at the beginning of 1974, on the eve of the recordings for the fourth album of originals.

The band had to deal, first of all, with the defection of Robert Calvert, the writer-poet who, in his capacity as a lyricist, singer, narrator of space drifts, and steward of under-attack spaceships, had managed to bemuse more or less all the band members with his sci-fi-apocalyptic fixations, and who at that time was engaged in the solo project "Captain Lockhead & The Starfighters". For the record, it must be said that the temporary absence of their "spiritual father" did not cause much disarray in the band: legend describes Calvert as a character certainly endowed with great creativity, but with the mental stability of a young cobra, a nomadic spirit, restless, used to mysteriously disappearing even for long periods.

Far more traumatic, at least musically, turned out to be the second departure, that of Dik Mik: former drummer, a longtime friend of Brock, who joined the band as a "jack of all trades" and was later recruited as the operator of those strange gadgets called "audio generators" responsible for the effects, effectfuls, and effectuals that have always delighted Hawkwind fans. To replenish the thinned ranks of the combo, none other than the illustrious Simon House, former violinist of High Tide and Third Ear Band, was called in, whose arrival inevitably altered some of the balances that had developed within the group over time.

In a word: House brought "order" where there was chaos before.

Not by chance, "Hall Of The Mountain Grill" presents itself from the first listen as a much more "structured" album compared to its immediate predecessors. The musical center of the group seems to step away from the "non-song form" of the inexhaustible and "malleable" cosmic jams, to be brought back into more traditional sound frameworks, built on the orderly alternation of verses and choruses. From this album onwards, the Hawkwind sound is characterized by a decidedly more symphonic and orchestral angle: Brock's guitar seems almost wanting to stay in the background to leave space for melodic instruments, preferring to be expanded and diluted by delays, focusing on softer distortions and less aggressive riffing.

Thanks also to the temporary absence of the paranoid Calvert, the band seems to distance itself from certain obsessive atmospheres, from certain apocalyptic visions that characterized previous works: the "brainstorm" metaphorically gives way to a "wind of changes," where House's violin (also engaged on synthesizer and keyboards) marries with Nik Turner's horns and Del Dettmar's keyboards to paint epic and romantic soundscapes, pervaded by a completely new melodic poetry, at times even excessively emphatic, especially if compared to what the band had shown so far ("Winds Of Changes", "Hall Of The Mountain Grill").

Yet "Hall Of The Mountain Grill" is an album that does not entirely cut ties with the recent past. In "You'd Better Believe It" the band seems to momentarily rediscover its furious trademark made of endless and obsessive 4/4 beats, tight riffing and psychedelia, to be reworked and transformed live. The award-winning pair Kilmster-King gives us yet another demonstration of an exciting rhythm section, dynamic and with propulsive power. Indeed, Brock allows himself the whim of not even a too-veiled "self-celebration," replaying the melodies of two great hits like "Lord Of Light" (inspired for the vocal lines of the excellent "Paradox") and "Space Is Deep" (of which "D-Rider" seems to be the stoner version).

The truth, perhaps, lies in admitting that, at the time "Hall Of The Mountain Grill" was released, much had changed and much still had to change within the Hawkwind family. With Dik Mik's exit, the band lost much of its "freak," chaotic, and unpredictable component. Soon after, even Dettmar (perhaps aware that House's arrival had made his presence as a keyboard player superfluous) would leave. The subsequent album ("Warriors At The Edge Of Time" from '75) would be the last before Lemmy's dismissal. The last published by United Artists. The last before Stacia, the Great Mother Poppular of all space rockers, decided to retire to private life.

Perhaps the truth is just that the season of great interplanetary journeys was coming to an end.