“I do this because it’s fun…”
On July 20 1969, the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle touched down on the surface of the Moon. It was the most momentous event in modern history, simultaneously unifying and euphoric. Suddenly, humanity was no longer shackled by its earthbound chains. Space travel was a reality. Why stop at the Moon? Why not Mars? Or Saturn? Or some other planet beyond the fringes of this galaxy?
A little over a month later, on August 29, 1969, a group of misfits, freaks, poets, pagans and interdimensional visionaries calling themselves Group X launched their own Moon shot. The scene was decidedly less futuristic: rather than Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the Florida coast, it happened the All Saints Hall, in Notting Hill, West London. And it certainly didn’t have the technological might of NASA behind it, nor the world’s eyes on it.
But it was the beginning of a fantastic journey nonetheless. By the end of the year Group X had mutated into Hawkwind Zoo, and then again into Hawkwind, the name by which these founding fathers of space rock would become renowned. Humankind has never made it further than the Moon. Yet 50 years after they achieved lift-off, Hawkwind continue to explore the far reaches of, if not the galaxy, then at least
