Space Rock
From The Space Library
Contents |
Early Experiments
"Space Rock" is a sub-genre of popular music. The birth of Space Rock is generally attributed to a handful of British rock bands formed during the late 1960s. However, it could be argued that the 1962 hit single "Telstar" written by Joe Meek and performed by British band "The Tornados" was the birth of the sub-genre. The main theme of "Telstar" was played on a clavioline, an early electronic musical instrument.
Space Rock would become heavily associated with electronic lab equipment; such as synthesizers, theramins, oscillators and audio generators which in the 1950s and 60s were adapted to create musical sounds. A theramin was used extensively for the effects for the science fiction movie "Forbidden Planet" in 1956. In 1963 an oscillator was used for the theme music to the Doctor Who space travel television series by Ron Grainer of the BBC's Radio Electronic Workshop.
Pink Floyd
As the space race became the center of attention in 1966 the British rock band Pink Floyd, and specifically the band's main lyricist, Syd Barrett, began to write lyrics with a space component. The first Pink Floyd album was released in 1967 and included the tracks Astronomy Dominée and Interstellar Overdrive. The former has lyrics by Barrett about traveling around the solar system while the latter was an instrumental with a repetitive pulsing pattern followed by a protracted improvisation. This would set a template for other so-called "progressive" bands to follow suit. Pink Floyd would also often be accompanied by an ambitious light show which used hot oil projections and abstract shapes.
Pink Floyd's second album, in 1968, would include another lengthy track called "Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun" which followed a similar improvisational repetitive structure and lyrics loosely based on British author Michael Moorcock's space science fiction novel "The Fireclown". Moorcock had been the editor of New Worlds magazine, a job that had previously been held by Edward John Carnell of the British Interplanetary Society. At one point the members of Pink Floyd were urged to meet with Moorcock at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Moorcock later remembered that although they seemed "like a nice bunch of fellows" no one seemed to have any real idea why they had been brought together. Nothing further developed from that relationship.
Pink Floyd were later approached by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who made 2001 A Space Odyssey in 1964-1968, but the band chose not to license their music to him.
The soundtrack to the motion picture "More" featured a thinly veiled space-themed track named "Cirrus Minor".
From 1969 onwards very little of Pink Floyd's music followed the science fiction theme. Barrett went into retirement and was replaced by David Gilmour who had a private interest in aviation. Songs such as Point Me At the Sky and Learning to Fly followed this path. The track Childhood's End by Gilmour (1972) was loosely inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name. Pink Floyd's biggest hit, the album Dark Side of the Moon, despite its title had nothing to do with space.
Summer of 1969
In July of 1969 British pop singer David Bowie released the first version of his song "Space Oddity". Bowie was a fan of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett and his image at that time was a very obvious attempt to copy Barrett. Bowie's lyrics were plainly about space travel and the title was obviously playing on the title of Kubrick's film, but it would not become a hit until Bowie unleashed his fictional character "Ziggy Stardust" and his band "The Spiders from Mars" in 1972. Bowie would later create other songs about aliens and space travel, and his son Duncan Jones would direct the science fiction movie "Moon" in 2009.
Also in July of 1969 Pink Floyd were asked to come into the BBC studio to provide incidental background music for the BBC's live coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing and moon walk. The recording of that night has never been officially released but the band did perform during breaks between commentary by James Burke and Sir Patrick Moore. The broadcast was from the same studio where Doctor Who had been filmed six years earlier.
That same summer a group of musicians in the Notting Hill area of London coalesced around street busker Dave Brock to form the band Hawkwind. Most of the members of the group had little musical experience. They comprised of a saxophone player/flautist who played loose jazz, a jazz bass player, an untrained member who operated an oscillator and audio generator, two guitarists and a drummer. Their debut album mixed together the early Pink Floyd repetitive rhythms, the soaring electronic sounds associated with science fiction television and movies, Brock's street busking guitars and free-form jazz improvisations.
Hawkwind
The first Hawkwind album was released in early 1970 and the term "space rock" was soon applied by reviewers in reference to their sound. Comparisons were also made to Barrett's early Pink Floyd sound although influences of Jimi Hendrix and specifically his album "Electric Ladyland" could also be heard.
As the third moon landing was taking place Hawkwind asked a South African poet/writer named Robert Calvert to join the band. Calvert was a fan of Moorcock, who had just written a novel called "The Black Corridor" about a man who takes his family into deep space. The novel used some of the same tropes associated with deep space travel that Kubrick had used in 2001 A Space Odyssey, such as cryogenic freeze for the crew. Calvert began to write short narratives which he would then perform on stage with Hawkwind while the band would surround the narration with sweeping electronic noises that frequently sounded like those used in science fiction movies to represent space ships landing and taking off.
In spring 1971 Hawkwind would be joined by Dave Anderson who had been playing similarly experimental music in Germany in the band Amon Duul II. Anderson's driving bass guitar parts would propel Hawkwind's second album, "In Search of Space", and gave the band their own entirely unique sound. Calvert authored a booklet,sold with the album, which told the story of the fictional spacecraft Hawkwind on its adventures through space and time. The band members featured as the fictional crew. As the leader of the band Brock inherited the title of Captain of the ship.
By early 1972 Anderson had been replaced by bassist Ian Kilmister, known as "Lemmy". Around this time Calvert and Brock composed the hit single "Silver Machine" which audiences assumed was about a spacecraft (in fact it was about Calvert's bicycle.) The song, sung by Lemmy, was a hit in many countries and generated enough revenue for the band to be able to stage an elaborate live concert tour which they called the "Space Ritual".
Space Ritual
The Space Ritual concert tour allowed Calvert to fully explore his idea of a crew of space explorers moving into strange worlds and situations. The entire stage set-up was meticulously created by respected artist Barney Bubbles who modeled his design on Johannes Kepler's music of the spheres concept. The show was accompanied by an assortment of slide shows depicting spaceflight. The concert would start with Calvert intoning through a megaphone "This is Earth Calling" before the band would launch into a 100 minute concept piece. Moorcock contributed some of the poetry which Calvert would intersperse with the songs.
The Space Ritual concert tour set the template for the sub-genre of space rock. Over the next 45 years Hawkwind would release dozens of albums frequently inspired by science fiction. Moorcock would join the band live on stage on many occasions between 1970 and 1985.
Calvert would release his own concept album "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters" in 1973 based on the ill-fated Lockheed F-104 aircraft. This allowed Calvert to explore the world of the test pilot with his song "The Right Stuff". He would also look back into the pulp era of science fiction with the 1976 Hawkwind album "Astounding Sounds" before writing the hit single "Quark Strangeness and Charm" in 1977 which featured humorous references to Einstein and Copernicus.
Dozens of bands have subsequently taken Hawkwind as their inspiration. Although the sub-genre of Space Rock has never really reached mainstream popularity the combination of electronic instruments, heavy repeating rhythms, ambitious abstract light shows and science fictional lyrics has set it apart for almost five decades. As disco, punk, glam and many other sub-genres have come and gone the smaller subset of space rock has endured.
Robert Godwin - July 2016
