Icarus Flew Too Near The Sun
It’s October 1977, and Robert Calvert – sci-fi poet, frontman extraordinaire and self-declared “hypo-manic” – is running down the middle of a road in Paris. He’s dressed in full military fatigues and is shouting at a car to stop. The car contains Calvert’s bandmates in Hawkwind, and is about to become stuck in a traffic jam. As startled passers-by look on, Calvert catches up with the car and tries to wrench its doors open – but they’re locked. He shouts at its occupants to let him in, but they all ignore him. When the traffic clears, the car drives off, leaving Calvert stranded in a sea of honking vehicles.
This isn’t the end of Calvert’s tenure with Hawkwind, but it’s where the line between playing a role and being taken over by it cracks wide open. He’s used the band as a canvas for expressing his own dreams and obsessions, developing a rich mythology for the band that resonates to this day. He depicts them as starfaring saviours of the earth and heralds of a new type of science-fiction music – but a combination of mental health problems and creative passion means Calvert lives constantly on the
