CLASSIC ROCK: Hawkwind in Worthing

“I look on it as being captain of the ship,” laughs Dave Brock, founder member of the English space rock band who play Worthing’s Assembly Hall tomorrow (Thursday, December 9).

“We have had various crew members that have come on board and have got dropped off at different ports.

Basically I have captained the ship throughout the oceans of the world.

I have managed to pump out the water to keep it going.

We have had some rough times where I have had to patch the boat up, but we’ve carried on.

“We’ve been going so many years now that it is like a graph where you can see the ups and the downs, but the great thing now is that we are in a situation where we are able to do what we want to do.

“When we were younger, we would put up with being in a van and driving miles and miles and not getting much sleep, but you wouldn’t want to do that now!”

Dave set the band up in 1969.

“I wanted to create a space rock band. I had been busking in the streets for quite a few years and it became a bit hectic. I used to play around with my electric guitar and I used to do lots of tape loops and weird things.

“I used to have a blues band in the 1960s and I wanted to get back in a band again.”

He teamed up with John Harrison; Huw Lloyd-Langton worked in a music shop just down the road from where Dave was busking; and the name emerged… You can take your pick just how.

“It could be a reference to the hawk that flies over the forest and the eagle that flies over the sky,” Dave said.

“The other explanation was Nik Turner, who was in the band, was always farting a lot and clearing his throat – hawk and wind.

“The mystical explanation is the better one, but the truth is that it was probably more about Nik’s farting!”