An account of the English rock band Hawkwind shows them to be one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s.Fifty years on from when it first formed, the English rock band Hawkwind continues to inspire devotion from fans around the world. Its influence reaches across the spectrum of alternative music, from psychedelia, prog, and punk, through industrial, electronica, and stoner rock. Hawkwind has been variously, if 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 defined a genre—space rock—while operating on a frequency that''s uniquely its own.
Hawkwind offered a form of radical escapism and an alternative account of a strange new world for a generation of young people growing up on a planet that seemed to be teetering on the brink of destruction, under threat from economic meltdown, industrial unrest, and political polarization.
