Hawkwind founder pioneered space rock
b August 26, 1940 d November 10, 2022
Nik Turner, the musician, who has died aged 82, was a cofounder of Hawkwind, titans of space rock; he played flute and saxophone, improvising wildly on top of the crunching, driving riffs, helping to construct the blistering wall of noise that overlaid their sonic trips into orbit. ‘‘I had this vision of playing free jazz in a rock band,’’ he once said, and it was a vision fulfilled.
Nicholas Robert Turner was born in Oxford into a family with theatrical leanings: his aunt Margery Mason had acted with Judi Dench and had a cameo in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The young Turner fell in love with rock’n’roll and idolised James Dean; he completed an engineering course then briefly worked for the Merchant Navy.
He took clarinet and saxophone lessons and wandered around Europe for a while, picking up jobs. While working for a travelling rock’n’roll circus at Haarlem in the Netherlands he met Dave Brock, who was playing at the circus.
Back home, Brock was forming a band, and Turner, who had a van, was heading for a job as roadie. But at a rehearsal he mentioned that his saxophone was in the van outside. ‘‘The guys suggested I . . . have a blow, and they were impressed enough to invite me to join the band, as well as be the road manager.’’
(Another aspiring roadie, Michael Davies, aka Dik Mik, was also enlisted in the band, and went on to play sweeping and swooshing electronics on an audio tone generator bought in one of the electronics shops along Tottenham Court Road.)
When they heard that there was a gig down the road in Notting Hill, they arrived uninvited and were given a 15-minute slot (appearing as ‘‘Group X’’). They played a song based on a John Coltrane riff. ‘‘It was very well received,’’ Turner recalled, ‘‘the organisers ultimately offering us a record deal, airplay and work.’’
They became a thrilling live act at free festivals, and the Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor (an early member of the Rolling Stones) produced their 1970 self-titled debut album, which declared the era of space rock open: ‘‘We are trying to levitate [people’s] minds,’’ as the sleeve notes put it.
Indeed, a series of mindbending albums followed, such as In Search of Space, Space Ritual and Warrior on the Edge of Time, as well as the hit single Silver Machine, on which Lemmy sang lead vocal (Turner claimed credit for persuading the future Moto¨ rhead frontman to switch from electric guitar to bass for Hawkwind, and played a saxophone eulogy at his funeral).
Many of their classic songs were written or co-written by Turner, including Brainstorm and Masters of the Universe.
Turner was realistic about his contribution. ‘‘It’s the overall feel rather than the individual parts of the music that we’re interested in. I don’t have any illusions about my technical ability.’’
Hawkwind went on to become one of the greatest live attractions of the 1970s, their stage show enhanced by the frequently disrobed exotic dancer, the 6ft Miss Stacia – as well as Turner’s costumes, often inspired by Ancient Egypt.
But his vision of a free jazz/ rock hybrid led, in a sense, to his dismissal from the band in 1976 after colleagues complained that he persisted in playing over them. He travelled to Egypt, where he persuaded the authorities to play the flute inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Back home he got together with Steve Hillage and other members of Gong – fellow travellers of inner space – in an outfit named Sphynx to augment the recordings, with Turner intoning words from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Their efforts culminated in the 1978 album Xitintoday.
Brock invited Turner back in 1982 to sing lead vocals on a Hawkwind tour, but sacked him again two years later.
Between his Hawkwind stints Turner had formed a psych-rock outfit, Inner City Unit; he reassembled them for a couple of albums, then toured for several years with the jazz-inflected Nik Turner’s Fantastic All Stars.
In 2000 he joined some of his former Hawkwind colleagues in the band Space Ritual, but when they began calling themselves Xhawkwind, Brock sued successfully for the naming rights.
Turner is survived by his partner Margarita, and by a daughter, two sons and their four half-siblings.