Album review: Hawkwind – Love in Space

Love In Space is the last truly great live album from Hawkwind. Augmenting their surprisingly versatile and headstrong trio line-up of Dave Brock (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Alan Davey (bass, vocals, synths) and Richard Chadwick (drums, vocals, synths) was previously unknown vocalist and front man Ron Tree. He did appear to belong in Hawkwind, though: before he ever thought about joining the band he had built his own 10 foot tall robot out of scrap for his own amusement! An image of it is captured on the rear sleeve of this album.

The double-live Love In Space commemorated the tour supporting their previous album, Alien 4, and it contained several new songs broadening the scope of the concept and satisfying long-time fans. Hawkwind often worked best in the live environment and Love In Space is proof positive. On release it was noted that the album was a little short, although it fitted perfectly into a double vinyl format, but the addition of three rare EP tracks to this reissue has made the album all the more desirable.

One day, all remasters will sound like this. Mark Powell and his team of sonic warlocks (Paschal Byrne, Ben Wiseman, Craig Thompson and the Audio Archiving Company) seem to have the power of necromancy, disinterring long forgotten dusty gems and polishing them until they glow again. It can’t just be the remastering process that makes these albums sound so good. These boffins of resurrection are masters of their art; otherwise all remasters would sound this dynamic. And, believe me, not all of them do. The Rolling Stones early London-era albums for one. Oh, just imagine what Mark Powell could do with Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed… His team’s remasterings of Jethro Tull’s and Van Der Graaf Generator’s debut singles on the Spirit Of Joy Polydor compilation box set are light years ahead of earlier efforts. It’s just such a pity that the Jethro Tull b-side couldn’t get the treatment as well.

Love In Space is a science fiction epic cast in the same concept-album mould as Live Chronicles, and it nearly achieves the same result: an album better than the studio original. Unfortunately the songs aren’t up to the same standard, and the sweeping synthesizer washes are now old hat rather than intriguing diversions. Musically this is a powerful space rock opus, but aesthetically it loses something in translation. Where you could see pictures in your mind’s eye on previous concept pieces, here you’re struggling to match the photographs in the booklet to the songs on display.

Ron Tree really makes his presence felt in the visual arena but his vocals (unfortunately close to Robert Calvert’s timbre and style) simply recall earlier versions of songs that sound more definitive. The stage show was spectacular. The music accompanying it was flabby and strangely lacking in force: it’s almost like Hawkwind karaoke, and that’s unforgivable.

However, all is not lost: Alan Davey contributes the humorous Steptoe-and-Son-in-space tale of “Sputnik Stan”, the space detritus scrap merchant, and Dave Brock again finds his evermore fitful muse in the astonishing liquid float of the title track, which finds itself slow-burning through a mighty sex-in-zero-gravity tale. “Abducted” produces the same goosebumps as the original on Alien 4, but running through almost the entirety of that album on Love In Space appears to make the studio version redundant. That’s not strictly true, however, as some of these live attempts are pale shadows of the punchy clear originals. “Death Trap”, “Alien (I Am)” and “Xenomorph” suffer particularly, but are redeemed by an energetic version of “Blue Skin” and the encore of “Assassins”.

Unfortunately “Silver Machine” gets another pointless and perfunctory outing as an encore and the bonus “Love In Space” studio remix loses all the grandeur, subtlety and grace of the version already present by ripping out the lyrical guts and hammering on new (and redundant) keyboard parts to make it more ambient-dance contemporary. The remixing by renowned producer Zeus B. Held is obvious. You’d think the abject failure of Hawkwind’s ambient dabble on White Zone (wisely attributed to The Psychedelic Warriors) would have shown them the error of their ways… but hey, no-one’s remotely perfect. Oddly enough, Zeus’s input on that album would have made much more sense. It’s rather more welcome to report that the other extra live tracks on Love in Space make up for it.

Love In Space is the fourth best live Hawkwind album and deserves its place in the collection, but it’s not quite the musical statement that the band needed at the time. They would need the 30th anniversary compilation Epocheclipse to kick-start them again.