25 Years On

25 Years On

Hawklords is the eighth studio album by Hawkwind, released in 1978. It released under the name Hawklords for legal reasons, as there was a dispute over ownership of the name "Hawkwind" at the time. It reached #48 on the UK album charts. It was originally titled 25 Years On and the first 25000 were pressed as this until the band decided to simply call it Hawklords. Subsequent re-releases have reverted to the name 25 Years On and the band also now use this name on their web site.

Hawkwind had self imploded on a USA tour earlier in the year leaving only Robert Calvert, Dave Brock and Simon King to embark on this project. They were joined by Harvey Bainbridge who had played bass in Devon group Ark who in turn had performed with Calvert and Brock as the Sonic Assassins, and by keyboardist Steve Swindells who had been in Pilot. During the Devon recording session King returned home to London and was replaced by Martin Griffin (also from Ark), but King subsequently returned giving the band two drummers. Simon House had left the earlier band to join David Bowie but contributed violin to the sessions, as did noted British jazz trumpeter Henry Lowther. Road manager Les McClure also sneaked a performance in.

The music is perhaps as far removed from the generic space rock as the band would ever get, these tracks being tightly arranged pieces more in tune with New Wave of the time rather than the band's history. Lyrically this is Calvert's most diverse dealing with themes such as telepathy ("Psi Power"), sky diving ("Free Fall"), Australian drug misuse ("Flying Doctor"), heroic bravery ("The Only Ones") and espionage ("The Dead Dreams Of The Cold War Kid"). There's a light hearted playfulness to these tracks, only the lyrics of "The Age Of The Micro Man" hinted at the bleak cold futuristic factory workers concept that Calvert and Barney Bubbles put together for the stage show of the album (see tour programme). This programme is reproduced in the CD booklet of the Atomhenge re-release.

"Psi Power" and "25 Years" were released as singles but are slightly different versions to those that appeared on the album.