The Story of Sonic Assassins; the band that nearly became the new Hawkwind.

Supporting HAWKWIND on tour, 2006 : Part One, The Birth of LASTWIND.

Our tour poster, designed by my son Sam (Doseprod)

In January 2005, I was feeling terrible. I had pains all round my chest area and felt I was heading for a second heart attack. My doctor knew I had a really stressful, all consuming job: I was director and senior manager of Unity Bristol, an organisation which provided residential care with education for some of the most disturbed young people in the UK, particularly those of an Afro-Caribbean background. We had 75 Jamaican staff out of a total of over one hundred and just dealing with those people was hard enough, without talking about our young 'clients' who lived in ordinary houses dotted around the 'ghettos' of the inner city. Anyhow, my doctor suggested I needed some time out and, knowing I had two sons living in the South of France, told me to go away and live with them for a few months. So I did.
However, my youngest who lived just outside Najac, had three very young children so it was not so peaceful there and when I moved on to my other son, who lived in Chateauneuf du Pape, they had just had a baby so same thing there. So, on a whim, I flew out to Dominica, the small island where my partner was from staying there for a couple of months of peace then flying home to bring my partner out there because nobody had seen her for 18 years.

Where I had my tumour removed on 14th Feb 2006

Meantime, Unity Bristol had gone down the tubes because no one had been doing the job I did every Friday, chasing money we were owed and the company called in some outside people to try and sort out the lack of cashflow, at that point being owed just over half a million pounds by various Social Services. All this stressed me out even more so I returned to France and one day, by the pool, my son said did I know that I had a huge lump on my back, and I didn't. He sent me to see his doctor who sent me for an X-ray and told me I had to have the lump removed. Stupidly, and mainly because my partner could not come to France without a visa I said I would go back to the UK to have it done. This was in August 2005 and I entered hospital to have it removed in February 2006, the time it took to have all the necessary appointments for scans and biopsies which led the specialists to say I had a large tumour in the muscles of my back next to my spine, hence all the pain. They removed it, apparently the size of a flattened tennis ball. I was out of hospital quite quickly but told to stay in bed and rest for quite a long time due to the way the internal muscles had been cut. Now I'm not one for enjoying being in bed day after day particularly as I didn't get many visitors except Liz, my partner and I would have been bored to tears but for the fact that my sons, particularly Sam, got me into writing new music and putting it up on my own web site. (Liz and I also watched every ball of the Test Match series against Australia where we brought the Ashes back home - laugh as you will non-Brits.
Then, one day, completely out of the blue, I got a phone call from Dave Brock. After a short chat, sort of catching up (we hadn't spoken for twenty something years) he said he had bumped into my web site, liked my music and did I have a band so that I could come on tour supporting Hawkwind in a couple of months or so's time. Well, I was very surprised, very pleased and said 'Yes' even though I didn't really have a band as such.
I had done a recording while I was waiting to go in hospital, 3 of my tunes, one with my lyrics and two

Sonic, who recorded with me, went to school with Banksy
and told me I knew him under another name.

with lyrics by Sonic, a Bristol DJ and MC. This was organised by the keen Richard Nowell and his Feel The Quality record label. The musicians for this had been a guy from the popular Bristol dub band, DUB FROM ATLANTIS (my memory for names is bad and getting worse) on bass, Latch Mangat (who played bass in the third version of Lastwind) on guitar, Laurence de Loes sang my lyrics (and was part of Lastwind version 2) and Rob, famously having toured the world with Roni Size, on drums.(He was also famously married to the daughter of John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame.)
I started with these people and Rob agreed to play drums and Latch, bass, and I was thinking of an excellent guitarist friend from France. I had enough songs ready for a forty minute set and we organised a first couple of rehearsals. So far so good.
Of course, Dave needed the name of the band for publicity purposes and I had one waiting around; Lastwind. About 4 years earlier I had been introduced to a Jalal Nurinda, a black American from New York who had been in the original rap group, the LAST POETS. I didn't know of them at the time but his significance was made clear to me when a group of us, including him, went to see PUBLIC ENEMY at a largish venue in Bristol. They got him up on stage and introduced him as the Godfather of Rap, quite something. Anyhow, he was preparing a new album and needed some music and

Jalal Nurinda

samples and we started working together on several tracks in the bungalow in my garden in Bristol, my hideaway and studio, and, knowing I had played with Hawkwind, he came up with the name Lastwind from using the first and last parts of our previous two group's names. He went to France to visit a girlfriend and was refused permission to return to the USA because he had overstayed the time given on his visa. A TV company put on a concert for him years later, 2014 to be precise, where he was to perform live the original album. To give an idea of his importance to that genre a music, GEORGE CLINTON was among the musicians who turned up to play for him. I was invited but I was crossing the channel on my way to France the day it took place. Jalal is now living in a State-run old peoples' home in Atlanta.

TO BE CONTINUED : HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A BAND REALLY QUICKLY.

Happy Birthday Captain Dave Brock.

I'm a bit late because I've had a very busy week but I wanted to say Happy Birthday to Dave on his 75th birthday and say many congratulations on still keeping going all these years.

I remember seeing Dave and Chris in the dressing room after a gig in Bristol in about 2007 and Dave looked shattered as he dried himself off. I said it was a great gig and he seemed satisfied but replied."I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this".

And yet,  he and the band show no signs of stopping and in certain ways are going from strength to strength, as the very successful Hawkeasters have shown, particularly since being held in Seaton where the hall has been renamed after BROCK. I lived opposite that hall for a couple of years and I remember all the concerns and the opposition to the first suggestion of Hawkeaster happening in Seaton. Both Dave and I had long term connections with the town because both our respective parents had moved there for retirement.

I first met Dave in 1975, so 41 years ago....is that possible? We toured supporting Hawkwind with ARK that year, which was a big deal for us.

I know that lots of people like me, who have played for Hawkwind or been involved with Hawkwind over the years, have made public their gripes and groans about Dave and the way he has led the band and dealt with issues within the band and been rather stingy about money matters and I know Dave has considered me at times to be one of the ungrateful people who would have achieved nothing without him. I think this is mainly based on the fact that I am friends with the member of Hawklords and also Nik Turner who had played with my last British group, LASTWIND.

Anyhow, partly to clear up any misunderstanding, my present to Dave is some big thankyous because my life just would not have been the same without the input from Dave. 

So this is a big thank you to Dave for the following things :

*   Inviting Ark to support Hawkwind,

Harvey, Martin and me meet up for the first time in years.

*   Inviting me and my mates Harvey and Martin to be part of Sonic Assassins, which has led to           many friendships and much musical recognition,

*   Asking me to join Hawkwind for the 78 American tour, inviting me for my first ever Sauna in the City Squire Hotel, NYC, Taking me to see the first Star Wars film and Close Encounters in fantastic NYC cinemas, Taking me to the Indoor Gardens, Tropical, Desert, European and Nordic, in Milwaukee and various other outings throughout the tour and, a big one, getting to eat with David Bowie, a longtime hero of mine.

*   Asking my band, Lastwind, to support Hawkwind on the 2006 British tour, which gave this new band some credibility, led to a record deal with Flicknife and the making of many new friends including people like Don Falcone, Jerry Richards.....

LAST WIND supporting HAWKWIND 2006

Then as a result of all this, the possibility of getting 'guest tickets' to so many different shows over the years, e.g. U2, Pink Floyd, Eurythmics, UB40, BAD, respect from musicians I met such as Caravan, Motorhead, Massive Attack and Topper Headon of the Clash.

Finally, after the Hawkwind US tour, giving me the courage to move to France and start a different life.

I could go on. My life has been totally changed for the better due to my involvement with Dave and the opportunities he gave me.

So, many, many thanks Dave. Long may you continue to pilot the good ship HAWKWIND.

Touring with HAWKWIND. Part ONE.

It was the winter of 77/78, a cold and seemingly never ending season. We were living in Newport, a village attached to Barnstaple, North Devon, in a brick-built, semi-detached house belonging to Bert Bell, the social worker attached to Chelfham Mill, the school where I worked. My French wife, Simone, seemed quite happy with our life, being able to get out and about a bit with our 2 and a half year old son, Nat, whilst Sam, now 6, was enjoying life at the local primary school, being used to listen to other children read cos he could already do that perfectly.

I was probably the least satisfied. My teaching job, working in a specialist boarding school for maladjusted 6 to 13 year old boys, no longer inspired me, as I felt that my efforts to make the school's systems of behaviour management work better were not appreciated. The school's owner seemed to be using myself and a few others to help him get his doctorate and he was a 'fundamentalist behaviourist' who would not tolerate any ideas that seemed to dilute or contradict his beliefs. To make matters worse, after rehearsing for and playing the Sonic Assassins' gig just before Xmas, I was wondering where all that was going. Dave Brock had taken us all off to Martin Griffin's studio outside Bodmin to add some overdubs to the recording of the concert which was rather serious and not much fun. For the keyboards he just wanted me to redo the beginning of FREE FALL, to find something that made it sound more interesting which I did successfully. He seemed happy with then rest of the keyboards so I just spent a lot of time sitting around bored.

I am sure that even the most devoted HAWKWIND fans are not aware that this track and DEATH TRAP were very much Sonic Assassins creations which we should have all been credited with. For example, the keyboard riff central to Death Trap was my creation, found in Umberleigh Village Hall which was where we rehearsed. I was quite amazed when these two tracks appeared on the later album and I was not credited, but then all of this was a learning experience.

Anyhow, as day after day passed, I wondered where my music career was going whilst going through the motions at work, teaching my class OK but not looking for any new projects. Then one day my wife called me at school during the lunch hour, very excited. She told me that Dave Brock had phoned to ask if I wanted to go on Hawkwind's American Tour which was coming up very soon and that he needed an answer quick. I asked what she thought and she said, to her credit, "You must go. if you didn't you'd always regret it!" Wow!! I phoned up Dave and asked for some details and said yes, fine.

The first thing I had to do was send my passport up to the management office, to Doug Smith, so that they could get me an American visa. Time was short. Then Dave said he would drop me round the set list on a cassette so that I could learn it and. finally, I had to go up to Abbey Road studios to get a look at the new Yamaha CS8 polyphonic synthesiser that they had just invested in.

I went up to London the coming weekend and met Simon House, Adrian Shaw and Simon King, the other musicians in the band alongside Dave and singer Bob Calvert. at Abbey Road. What an experience!! To get to play in the famous studios! The others had been in there recording some music for a Kodak advert. This fantastic new keyboard, groundbreaking at the time, had a piece of felt running right along the keyboard in front of and below the keyboard. You could play a note or a chord and make it side up or down by running your finger along the felt. Fantastic. Simon showed me how they had recorded the 30 second ad just by using this feature. I didn't really know these other Hawkwind musicians. after all, us members of Sonic Assassins were sort of rivals for the future of the band.

But they were friendly and were bantering about the up and coming tour and about life on the road in the States. They kept laughing about the number of BJs they'd be getting. I was so naive at this time, I didn't even know what they were talking about. They were obviously quite jealous of Simon House who was leaving the band to join David Bowie's band for his US tour, obviously a step up the rock ladder. Because Simon, as well as playing keyboards, played violin and it was because of this skill that Bowie had sought him out.

I had hoped to take the Yamaha home with me to get used to it but apparently it had to be fitted with a travel case and then sent to the airport with the rest or the band gear ready for shipping out. I was also told I didn't need to take any of my keyboards with me. Trying to get to learn the keyboard parts was not easy as it was often not clear what was keyboards and what was the synths that Dave used to play. Also, most of the tracks we were to play were new tracks I didn't know well. new songs like High Rise and Robot, and it was difficult to prepare without the keyboard I would be using, particularly preparing what sounds to use.

But all in all I was too excited to worry about any of that. The main problem was going to be getting the time off work. It was to be a six week tour with a few extra days at the beginning for rehearsals. And it was due to start in early March, in term time. So, I went to see my boss to ask for the time off. I knew he had let other musicians in the school have time off, particularly for the New Orleans Jazz festival (he was a trad jazz fan and (poor) drummer), so I hoped for a positive reply. But his answer was a firm NO. I said I would go anyway and he replied that if I did I would come back to no job. I told him, I didn't care, he didn't believe me and that Monday when we set off, he had not even arranged any cover, so sure was he that I wouldn't go. So he had to take my class himself. And I bet he found it difficult too.

To be continued.

Sorry. I lost my camera after a few days on the road so I have no photos of the tour at all.