Co-founder of Hawkwind, the gods of 1970s space rock
NIK TURNER, the musician, who has died aged 82, was a co-founder 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 on August 26 1940 in Oxford into a family with theatrical leanings: his aunt Margery Mason had acted with Judy Dench and had a cameo in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. His father Charles was an engineer who had worked on Churchill tanks during the war; his mother was Catherine, née Mason.
When Nik was 13 the family moved to Margate, where he worked on the local funfair during the holidays. There, he met Robert Calvert, another future member of Hawkwind.
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, picking up jobs here and there, and while he was 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 his van outside. “The guys suggested I bring it in, and have a blow, and they were impressed enough to invite me to join the band, as well as be the road manager.”
When they heard there was a gig down the road in Notting Hill, they arrived uninvited and were given a 15-minute slot (appearing as “Group X”) and ended up with a record deal.
Settling on the name Hawkwind, they established themselves as a thrilling live act, and the Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor produced their 1970 self-titled debut album.
A series of mind-bending 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. Many of their classic songs were written or co-written by Turner, including Brainstorm and Masters of the Universe.
Hawkwind went on to become one of the greatest live attractions of the 1970s, their stage show enhanced by the mostly 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 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 let him 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 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 forthcoming 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 former Hawkwind colleagues in the band Space Ritual, but when they began calling themselves Xhawkwind, Dave Brock sued successfully for the naming rights.
Nik Turner is survived by his partner Margarita, and by a daughter, two sons and their four half-siblings.
Nik Turner, born August 26 1940, died November 10 2022