Hawkwind On The Telly - Quark Strangeness & Charm (Marc)

Hawkwind's second UK television performance, following on from 1972's Top of the Pops promotional film for 'Silver Machine' was on the ITV series Marc in 1977, promoting 'Quark Strangeness & Charm'. Here's what Sonic Assassins says about it...

Hawkwind made only their second UK television appearance in September (recorded late August), performing a version of their latest single, ‘Quark Strangeness & Charm’, on the Marc Bolan-fronted pop show Marc. Although it was, primarily a children’s series – going out at 5:15 on ITV – Marc was one of the first networked TV shows to acknowledge the existence of punk rock, essentially the reason this abbreviated series is still remembered today. There weren’t many other places on national television in the summer of 1977 where one could see bands like The Jam, The Boomtown Rats and Generation X, all of whom featured during the programme’s six-week run. This targeted the very record buyer that Hawkwind were failing to attract, but that they still held relevance for. Bolan shared the same management as Hawkwind at the time, so the opportunity to give the band some much needed exposure was seized upon. Is it surprising, then, that in Adrian Shaw’s opinion, “Brock tried to sabotage the whole thing,” or is it another defeat from the jaws of victory that at times seems to have been a specialism of Hawkwind? Dave Brock failed to arrive at the TV studio where the performance was being filmed leaving the band to appear without him.

For many years after, Dave passed his absence off as being an aversion to miming. However, interviewed in 1998 he became more expansive on the subject, recalling an occasion in the early 1970s when he and some friends gate-crashed one of Bolan’s parties. “We heard Marc Bolan clanking around on his guitar… I had this guitar and played some blues and of course Bolan didn’t like that, ’cos we were good. We were asked to leave.” It seems that Brock had a long memory. “That’s why I didn’t turn up on his TV show in Manchester. I carried resentment for many a year. I didn’t fancy travelling all that way just to mime, anyway.”

Shaw notes that the band decided to go ahead, re-recording the backing track at Granada’s studios in the morning and miming to it in the afternoon. “As Brock wasn’t there I played guitar as well as bass on the recording.” Truth be told, it’s probably nothing to do with Dave Brock’s failure to appear that the track was re-recorded for miming purposes – musician’s union agreements during this period made it practically compulsory for this to happen since it was perceived to guarantee income to session musicians and was certainly common practice on programmes such as Top of the Pops at that time, making it entirely possible that the same ruling was in force for the Marc programmes.  Bolan introduced the band as the people “who should have written Star Wars, but didn’t,” and described them as “my best friends.” Shaw again: “The ‘best friends’ remark was for public consumption only; we didn’t know him very well.”

Sonic Assassins 2nd Edition Extract

Quark, Strangeness & Charm - Tracks & References

The view, according to Adrian Shaw: 

“Bob Calvert was at his peak… and produced some superb lyrics. It’s a shame the Quark line-up didn’t last longer as I think it could have achieved an awful lot more.” (Aural Innovations interview, July 2000).

What they said then: 

Despite a generally favourable write-up in Sounds, the production was described as “naff in parts”, though the reviewer went on to declaim the music as “definitive Hawkwind” (“pulsepulsepulse, chantchantchant, dronedronedrone”). 

What they say now:

“...there’d always been a minimalist DIY side to Hawkwind… this album was a genuine return to form.” (Record Collector, May 2002)

The view, according to their Peers:

“I wish I’d written this song. This is a song that came out in 1977 and it was completely ignored because it was kind of lost in the tsunami of 1977… but I wish I’d written the lyrics!” J J Burnel (Introducing 'Quark, Strangeness & Charm' at an acoustic set for the 2011 Stranglers Convention)

Tracks and references:

Spirit of the Age 

The world’s first test tube baby (Louise Brown) was born in July 1978, a year after the release of this album.

‘oh, for the wings…’ an allusion to the aria ‘For the Wings of a Dove’ by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47).

Damnation Alley

The second use of a Roger Zelazny novel as the basis for a Hawkwind song. In a post holocaust North America, a condemned criminal must earn his pardon by delivering a serum to a besieged town. The book was loosely the basis for the film Damnation Alley (Jack Smight, 1977), one of the worst adaptations of an SF novel in Hollywood history. 

Dr, Strangelove is a character from Stanley Kubrick’s first SF film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963). “Strangelove is sexually aroused by the idea of cleansing Holocaust,” notes Peter Nicholls in his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The film itself is based on the novel Two Hours to Doom (Peter Bryant, 1958).

Fable of A Failed Race 

The imagery is reminiscent of the poem ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, wherein John Keats (1795-1821) writes “Then I felt like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken”.

Quark Strangeness & Charm 

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German-born physicist and mathematician, noted for his theory of relativity E=MC2. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was an early advocate of the theory of the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) a founder of modern science, though his views were so heretical to the Catholic Church that the Vatican didn’t absolve him until 1992! Geniuses all, though they had no luck with the opposite sex. Allegedly.

There’s also a reference to Choderlos de Laclo’s novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses about debauchery and sexual morals in 18th century France (filmed, as Dangerous Liaisons in 1959 by Roger Vadim).

'Quark...' 7" Acetate and Picture Sleeve

Hassan I Sahba

Hassan ben Sahba (aka Sheik el Jebel) was exiled from the Persian court in around 1090. Stumbling across the Hassassin Valley he established a fortified encampment. Whipping up his status as a prophet of the True Belief, his band of followers (believed to be the root of the word “assassins”) became feared throughout Asia and Europe. The cult was finally eliminated by the Tartars in 1256. 

Black September was the Palestinian terrorist organisation responsible for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. 

 Hassan I Sahba Italian Picture Sleeve and Promo 7"

Forge of Vulcan

Vulcan was the son of Jupiter and Juno in Roman mythology and represented fire and metal working. Vulcan was also the name assigned to a planet believed to exist inside Mercury’s orbit. The name has often been used in science fiction stories, most famously as the home planet of Mr Spock in Star Trek.

Days of the Underground

Che Guevara (1928-1967) was an Argentinian revolutionary who supported Fidel Castro’s invasion of Cuba in 1956. A mythic figure for the political left in the 60s and 70s, “we saw that head held up” refers to the iconic picture of Guevara by Alberto Korda that once appeared on every self-respecting student’s wall. 

Real life characters appearing in the song included roadie “John the Bog”, whilst Jeff, noted as being a poet, was a friend of Calvert’s who perished when diving in an outdoor pool. 

The song’s title might be a reference to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864). 

The Iron Dream 

The title is probably from the SF novel The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad, 1972). Spinrad’s novel Agent of Chaos is likely to be the inspiration for the name of Brock’s side-project Dave Brock & The Agents of Chaos.

What this author says:

Quark… was Hawkwind’s most cohesive, integrated exploration of modern SF themes to date; indeed, it arguably still has that distinction thirty years later. Like the SF of Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine, it retains an awareness of the threats and challenges of modern society in a scientifically advanced age. Calvert summed it up as being “not quite the age we are in now, but one we are heading for. I always try to write about things that haven’t quite happened yet, but I’m sure will.” Indeed, today its cautionary messages on cloning, the oil-led clash of civilisations and the nuclear weapon debate haven’t dated at all. This author remembers Dave Brock introducing ‘Assassins of Allah’ at Swindon’s Wyvern Theatre by recounting how “Bob Calvert wrote this song years ago and nothing’s changed; the same old problems.” Calvert had written of the petrol-dollar crisis of the 70s, of the Palestinian splinter group Black September, the organisation from within the Palestinian Liberation Organisation that had murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Now it was the 3rd of November 2001; the horrors of 9/11 were less than two months previous. I can still hear the nervous groan of the audience and feel the tension that Bob Calvert, had he lived, could have carved through with the scimitar he’d used as a theatrical prop all those years before. Brock was right; Calvert had achieved his goal back in the day by declaiming an age that was just around the corner, while in this album the band had cut a stone-cold classic that had not only a lyrical relevance but one which in its new wave freshness captured the sonic ‘Spirit of the Age’ as well. In that sense, it probably has a claim to being the reason the band continued onwards: it has a verve that was contemporary and advertised the band’s twisting, changing nature that made them both adaptable and influential.

(Sonic Assassins, 2nd Edition)