Prog - In Search Of New Space

To tie in with the release of a nine-disc boxset reissue of Hall Of The Mountain Grill, Prog magazine asked me to do a piece looking at the events around its recording. I also snuck in a quick interview with boxset remixer Stephen W Tayler. It was published September 2025.

You can view an online version here, but there were a couple of sub-editing snafus in the published article, so here's the original text (complete with formatting mark-ups)...

After the success of their Space Ritual tour, Hawkwind were keen to explore new possibilities for their music. The result was the eclectic but much loved //Hall Of The Mountain Grill//, now released as a nine-disc boxset including three live shows from 1974.

At the start of 1974, Hawkwind were still very much a band on the up. They’d just completed their first American tour, with thousands of stateside freaks attending every show, and on returning home had immediately embarked on ‘The Ridiculous Roadshow’, playing to sold-out concert halls around the UK. Dave Brock might have told the //NME// it was so named “because all our tours are just so silly and disorganised”, but Hawkwind had become a serious force to be reckoned with in the British rock world ever since the success of //Silver Machine// in the summer of 1972.

Yet they were also a band in search of a new direction. The US shows marked the official retirement of the ‘Space Ritual’ set they’d been playing for over a year, and they were keen to move away from the overtly science-fictional image they’d acquired, particularly as space age poet Robert Calvert had temporarily left the band. Speaking to //Record Mirror//, drummer Simon King said, “Some might talk of the space image as a serious trip, but we’re really a fun band. We enjoy playing more than anything else.”

The first sign of this looser, less ‘heavy’ approach to their material had come out the previous August. //Urban Guerilla// might have had Calvert raving about making bombs in his cellar, and ended up being withdrawn after a series of IRA attacks, but musically it was upbeat and catchy, even a little rootsy. Yet it was the single’s B-side //Brainbox Pollution// that really rang the changes, with a central riff that was pure old school rock’n’roll. Used as The Ridiculous Roadshow’s set opener, it set the tone for the rest of the gig, with other new songs including the stomping groove of //You’d Better Believe It// and the joyous cosmic football chant of //It’s So Easy//.

However, Hawkwind weren’t just intent on turning into a space rock version of a barroom band. Brock in particular was also still interested in the possibilities of electronic music, and the potential of adding new colours to Hawkwind’s sound. Synth player Del Dettmar had already told the band he was moving to Canada once the relevant papers came through, and after future soundtrack composer Michael Nyman was briefly considered as his replacement, ex-High Tide and Third Ear Band violinist/keyboardist Simon House was recruited, a decision which would have a profound impact on Hawkwind’s next album.

Simon King had already anticipated how it would turn out: “I’d like to see an album with two distinct parts. The first would be a recording of our new live material. The other side would be very much a studio job, something not really suited for stage. We’d be able to utilise synthesisers, tapes and electronic devices to the full.”

The Ridiculous Roadshow might have lacked the sci-fi gravitas of the Space Ritual, but Hawkwind were still staging events rather than just gigs. This was particularly true of the two London shows they played at Edmonton Sundown, 25 & 26 January 1974. Dedicated to “Timothy Leary – a jailed philosopher”, his partner Joanna Harcourt-Smith introduced the shows with enthusiasm, having declared that Leary considered Hawkwind to be “the most highly evolved band on the planet”. Robert Calvert also made a guest appearance, and delivered an astonishing poem about Leary entitled //America//.

But the most fun was had by the audience, many of whom had entered a mask-making competition, with a first prize of “a weekend on the road with Hawkwind” – though as Lemmy quipped to Canadian magazine //Beetle//, “Second prize was two weekends on the road with Hawkwind. There was one kid there who had a TV set over his head with all sorts of lights and things flashing on and off. I thought he was going to be electrocuted.”

In March, the band returned to the US, with The Ridiculous Roadshow having transformed

into ‘The 1999 Party’. It was a bigger tour than the previous year’s, both consolidating their established base in the industrial Midwest and playing further afield, including a show in Nashville in the middle of a tornado.

As Dave Brock remembers, “It was a different culture… We did this big place in St Louis, and when I went round to the box office, they were actually taking guns off people, booking them in with these guys’ names on – fucking hell! And believe it or not, some of the police were dealing in dope. The police are knocking at the door, and the promoter’s saying, ‘Come in!’ We quickly stop rolling joints, but he says, ‘It’s alright, these guys have got some marijuana for us!’”

The tour also included a benefit gig at the University of California in Berkeley for Timothy Leary. Nik Turner had visited Leary in prison, where the acid evangelist had outlined his plans to escape, which involved Hawkwind being suspended from a helicopter and performing above the prison as a diversion…

After rehearsing at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, the recording of their next album began in May at Olympic Studios in Barnes, and concluded the following month. The first song to emerge from these sessions was //Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)//, released as a single in August. A Brock composition dating back to 1972, it’s an angry protest song propelled by a fabulously funky riff. On the B-side was a live version of //It’s So Easy// taken from the 26 January show at Edmonton – given its singalong chorus, many believe this song would have made a better A-side, but Brock had apparently gone off it.

Two other live tracks from 26 January would appear on the actual album: //You’d Better Believe It//, and //Paradox//, an aggressive yet melancholic song with a classic stun guitar riff. As with //It’s So Easy//, both songs were overdubbed significantly by Simon House, including a bluegrass fiddle hoedown added on //YBBI// and sweeping Mellotron on //Paradox//.

The album, punningly titled //Hall Of The Mountain Grill// in honour of both Edvard Grieg and the band’s favourite café, was released 6 September 1974. Leading off with the full-length version of //Psychedelic Warlords//, it segues into the dramatic, faux-orchestral //Wind Of Change//, which gives definitive notice of Hawkwind having moved into new territory. Once again, House makes a major contribution on Mellotron and violin. As Brock understates, “I suppose it was quite proggy in a way.”

All of the aforementioned songs are Brock compositions, and he also wrote the edgy psych rock track //Web Weaver//. But it’s the contrasting songs from Hawkwind’s other members that give the album its uniquely eclectic vibe.

Nik Turner’s //D-Rider// (as in ‘Dragon Rider’) is strangely weightless, both surging and floating. Turner said, “I wrote it while I was tripping in the woods near Clearwell Castle playing my oboe. It was basically a fantasy, sort of mixing mythology and astrology – ‘Our course determined by our stars’ – all those sort of references. It’s introspective and cosmic! I really like that song.”

House’s instrumental title track is an exquisitely sinister pocket symphony, and proof that Hawkwind could now hold their own with their progressive contemporaries if they so desired. Lemmy was a big fan of this track, but less keen on his own contribution, the swampy biker rock of //Lost Johnny// (with lyrics by Mick Farren). “It was crap, the Hawkwind version,” he said to Carol Clerk in //The Saga Of Hawkwind//. “But //Hall Of The Mountain Grill// is the best studio album I did with Hawkwind. I was quite to the front.”

It was Del Dettmar’s last album with the band, and his proto-ambient track //Goat Willow// reflected his desire to move in a more experimental direction. After an attempt to remove the string frame from a piano led to him nearly being knocked unconscious by a piece of flying wood, he decided instead to base his piece around an African kalimba, with harpsichord from House, flutes from Turner, and apparently piano from Lemmy.

Resolutely ambivalent, Brock said of //HOTMG// in //The Saga Of Hawkwind//, “Some of it’s all right and some of it isn’t.” And contemporary reviews weren’t exactly glowing either, with the press increasingly critical of Hawkwind’s refusal to conform to ‘standard rock band’ criteria. Yet the album peaked at 16 in the UK and 110 in the US //Billboard// chart, an indication of the group’s popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.

While there would be further ups and downs to come in Hawkwind’s journey through the 1970s and beyond, //Hall Of The Mountain Grill// was a pivotal album for the band and remains much loved by fans both old and new.

BOX-OUT

The Good Mixer

Stephen W Tayler on breathing new life into classic albums

Stephen W Tayler started as a tea boy at Trident Studios in 1974, but went on to work with a dazzling array of artists, including Kate Bush, Rush and Peter Gabriel. Most recently, he’s become renowned for his 5.1 surround sound and stereo remixes for artists including Be-Bop Deluxe, Van der Graaf Generator, Camel, the Moody Blues, and Hawkwind. His mixing skills have graced Atomhenge’s //In Search Of Space//, //Doremi Fasol Latido// and //Space Ritual// boxsets, and now he’s added //Hall Of The Mountain Grill// to the list.

The multi-track tapes for //HOTMG// are missing – how did you ‘demix’ and then remix the album from the master tape?

I use an algorithm for detecting and separating the components, or ‘stems’ – this then allows you to remix using these individual tracks. Recent specific demixing software gives further control of instruments and vocal parts – but it doesn’t always separate things clearly if the instruments were blended in the original mix, which they often were! However, it does allow for greater control of equalisation, dynamics, positioning and effects.

How do you generally approach a remix?

I usually start by getting to know the original mix inside and out! I start the process by trying to get close to it. Then I stop listening to the original and follow my instincts. With live concerts, I tend to not try and replicate the original mix even if there is one. I just like to try and create the feeling of being at a gig. 

The Edmonton, Chicago and Cleveland live sets in the //HOTMG// box sound fantastic…

The Edmonton mix in the boxset is the first night (25 January 1974), but the live tracks released at the time were from the 26th – [those multi-tracks] have gone missing. When I was presented with the transfers of the US shows, the box labels showed they were two recordings from Chicago. It was only when I listened to the end of what was listed as ‘Chicago show No. 2’ that I heard the voice say, “We wish you a very good night, Cleveland!” Which came as something of a surprise!

Can we expect more Hawkwind mixes from you?

Watch this space!!