Words by Rattle, artwork by Jorclank

Spacedate 200023.006.013, System: Sol, Planet: Earth (Chicago, Illinois, United States of America). For the third day running, this swarm of friendly yet frenzied hominids has gathered in the chilly rain to scratch their collective sonic itch with a traveling group of musicians known as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. As you stand apart, observing that the inhospitable conditions of this planet seem to have little effect on the bipedal celebrants as they line up before the performance to barter for a foamy, grain-based potion known as "beer," familiar words ring out from a nearby amplification device, sending a shock through your cortex: "I lose my body, lose my mind, / I blow like wind, flow like wine..." Via cosmic anamnesis, visions of past and future lives flood your mind's eye: the ribs of a marooned starship's hull poke through a pink alien mist; a horde of horned barbarians wielding cyber-swords charges away on horseback, leaving a cloud of stars in their wake; a shaggy rock band commands the stage of a muddy festival somewhere in the United Kingdom circa 1973, the guitarist slashing at a hypnotic riff while ear-piercing synths and wah-wah saxophone compete for the attention of the thoroughly stoned audience. The whole swirling, multicolored machine, replete with flashing strobes and a half-naked female dancer, chugs along to pulsing bass and driving drums. This is Hawkwind, a band that released some of the most visceral and powerful psychedelic music ever put to tape, and that would help lay the foundations for entire musical movements (metal, punk, shoegaze, techno, modern psych) in the decades to come. You slowly return to your present surroundings as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard take the stage and bang out the opening chords of “Gila Monster,” much to the apparent delight of the shivering crowd.

King Gizzard have always worn their love of Hawkwind on their proverbial sleeves. They have included Hawkwind tracks on pre-show playlists (such as "The Golden Void" on 6/13/23 at the Salt Shed in Chicago) and have even covered Hawkwind in concert, a rarity for a band that prides itself on drawing almost exclusively from their own vast trove of material when performing live. Conduct a basic internet search for "King Gizzard + Hawkwind" and you'll find that seemingly countless music reviewers and journalists have compared our Australian heroes to their British forerunners. (In a pleasant coincidence, separate interviews with Hawkwind frontman Dave Brock and Stu appeared in the April '23 issue of Prog magazine.) Rarely, however, do those comparisons get beyond name-dropping to examine what exactly connects the two groups. Before we start tracing the lines of influence from one band to the other, it's worth looking at the origins of Hawkwind and "space rock" in general.

Most fans that you ask will rightfully say that Pink Floyd is the original space rock outfit. Early tunes such as "Astronomy Domine," "Interstellar Overdrive," and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" have come to define the genre: the lyrics are cosmically themed (with human space travel as a central image) while the music imaginatively matches the subject, catapulting the listener on a journey far beyond Earth's atmosphere. Another prominent feature of space rock is that the musical structure often leaves room for group improvisation. (It's worth noting that Syd Barrett reportedly owned a copy of The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, no doubt a source of inspiration in terms of both subject matter and musical approach.) In the mid-60's, Pink Floyd played frequently at London's aptly named UFO Club, where they often shared the stage with Soft Machine. While the Softs are best known for their early experiments with fusing jazz and rock, they're important to mention here because founding member (and Melbourne native) Daevid Allen would leave after their first album to form Gong, widely cited alongside Hawkwind as one of the most influential and long-lived space rock bands to emerge at the tail end of the 1960s. In fact, Soft Machine, Gong, and Hawkwind are all still recording and touring as of early 2026, although only Hawkwind sports an original member: primary songwriter and bandleader Dave Brock.

Which brings us to 1969 when, according to legend, the band that would become Hawkwind stumbled uninvited into a talent show (nameless and without any rehearsed material), set up their gear, and just went for it. (Remind you of anyone?) The group, known briefly as Hawkwind Zoo, soon earned a reputation on the underground circuit for spectacle and volume. They released a self-titled album in 1970, a straightforwardly psychedelic freakout that's missing the sci-fi and outer space elements that would become their hallmarks. In Search Of Space, the band's sophomore effort from 1971, is the first of what many fans consider the "classic" run of Hawkwind records, continuing with: Doremi Fasol Latido (1972), Space Ritual (1973), Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974), and Warrior at the Edge of Time (1975). In Search of Space includes the song "Master of the Universe," which King Gizzard has quoted extensively in performances of "Robot Stop" (mostly in 2017 and 2018, with a notable one-off return at The Forum in 2024).

Hawkwind’s “Master of the Universe”:

After the release of In Search of Space and the departure of bassist Dave Anderson, a pivotal moment in Hawkwind's history occurred: Lemmy Kilmister joined the band. He would soon lend thundering bass and trademark vocals to the tune "Silver Machine," Hawkwind's first and last taste of mainstream singles chart success (and covered twice, that we know of, by King Gizzard).

Hawkwind performing “Silver Machine”:

King Gizzard with O.R.B. performing “Silver Machine”:

With Lemmy taking over on bass, something truly clicks at this point in the Hawkwind discography and the first half of the 70s finds the group at their creative peak. The next two albums, Doremi Fasol Latido (my personal favorite Hawkwind release) and Space Ritual (a brain-blistering live double LP), drew ample critical acclaim and remain touchstones of space rock and psychedelic music in general. And for good reason. If the band is "in search of space" on their second album, then they find it in spades on Doremi Fasol Latido. The music ranges from heaving slabs of noise ("Time We Left This World Today" nearly slides off the rails into oblivion) to the anxious-yet-meditative ballad-ish vibe of tracks like "Space Is Deep" and "The Watcher." The album's seven tracks balance perfectly across the span of 40 minutes, making Doremi Hawkwind's most focused studio effort and a great starting point for the curious newcomer. (Another solid point of entry is 1977’s Masters of the Universe, a compilation of tracks from the band’s years (‘71-’74) with the United Artists label and the source of visual inspiration for the artwork at the start of this post.)

Hawkwind’s "Time We Left This World Today"

Hawkwind’s "Space is Deep"

Space Ritual, on the other hand, is an unrelenting double LP stocked with feral jamming, white-noise synth assaults, and unsettling spoken narratives from Robert Calvert (more on him in a minute). Even if you've never heard the album, there's a good chance you've seen Space Ritual's iconic artwork. The original double LP jacket unfolds into one giant sheet featuring two sides of spiritual and cosmic imagery juxtaposed with equally cosmic literary and textual fragments. Musically and physically, Space Ritual is an essential psychedelic artifact.

Hawkind’s Space Ritual (full album):

After Space Ritual, beloved synth-torturer Dik Mik (aka Michael Davies) departs and the Hawkwind sound becomes a smidge more guitar-heavy, with Hall of the Mountain Grill bringing out the band's most thunderous riffs up to that point. The most song-based album to date, Mountain Grill combines studio and live tracks, and features the keys and violin work of Simon House. House would go on to work with another space-centric British artist (David Bowie) and his entrancing textures distinguish both Mountain Grill and the next Hawkwind product, the majestic and mad Warrior at the Edge of Time. Including lyrics and narration from sci-fi/fantasy novelist Michael Moorcock, Warrior catches Hawkwind at their most conceptually ambitious. The album's thematic content merges the ancient and futuristic in a fascinating and memorable mix that holds up across multiple encounters. The music is again nothing short of mind-bendingly psychedelic and maybe the closest Hawkwind gets to out-and-out prog. Warrior exhibits Hawkwind reaching for another artistic peak, but change was in the air.

Hawkwind’s “The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke”:

Hawkwind’s “Assault and Battery / The Golden Void”:

When Lemmy was fired from the band mid-tour in 1975 after an incident at the Canadian border (imagine being kicked out of a "drug band" for doing too many... drugs), the band's sound mutated almost overnight. Lemmy would of course land on both feet and form Motörhead, a group that would surpass Hawkwind in terms of both popularity and influence (see Cavs' frequent donning of a Motörhead t-shirt for Gizzard gigs). Motörhead's self-titled first album would include three Lemmy-penned tracks previously performed by Hawkwind, albeit in drastically different form. ("Motorhead" was recorded for Warrior but left on the cutting room floor, while "Lost Johnny" appeared on Mountain Grill and "The Watcher" on Doremi.)

Motörhead’s “The Watcher":

At this point, aside from Dave Brock, Nik Turner was the last remaining original member of Hawkwind. After adding his wind and reed touches to 1976's Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music, which flirts weirdly (in a good way) with funk and disco, Turner was also fired and a rapid series of personnel changes ensued. Another major development in 1976 was the emergence of writer and vocalist Robert Calvert. A previous collaborator (his first solo record, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters (1974), is a de facto Hawkwind album, featuring all then-current members of the band), and sometime live vocalist (see Space Ritual), Calvert now stepped into the spotlight, bringing dystopian lyrics and sneering vocals to Astounding Sounds. This new blood opened fresh avenues for the band's thematic content. While perhaps an acquired taste, Calvert's voice and words became trademarks of the band's sound in the second half of the 1970s. The albums Quark, Strangeness, and Charm (1977), 25 Years On (1978, under the pseudonym Hawklords), and PXR5 (1979) all bear his unmistakable stamp, yet he left the band in 1979. Across these four projects, Brock's musical choices in the studio lean into synthy textures and tighter structures, trading the raw edge of the early albums for a more polished surface.

Hawkwind’s “Chronoglide Skyway”:

Hawkwind’s “Damnation Alley”:

Hawklords’ “Age of the Micro Man”:

Hawkwind’s “Uncle Sam’s on Mars”:

1980 is where this listener admittedly slacks off. That's not to say that there are no worthwhile moments in the many albums that follow (check out Levitation with Ginger Baker on skins and guitarist Huw Lloyd-Langton, who left Hawkwind after their first album only to return a decade later), but Brock left to his own devices steers the group's sound toward hard rock, with less emphasis on both instrumental improvisation and sonic experimentation. (Apologies to all my post-70s Hawkwind freaks out there—maybe someday I'll dip my toe back into the rest of the catalog...) For me, however, '70 through '79 is enough to revisit and enjoy for a lifetime. The Calvert years are certainly worthwhile, although I find myself reaching for the “classic” Lemmy years (‘71-’75) most often. Both eras (and beyond) would influence multiple generations of musicians to come, and lay the groundwork for psychedelic music (in all its permutations) to be recognized as a style unto itself and not just a passing trend.

Hawkwind's underground status and DIY ethic (the band's core output in the 70s almost exclusively lists either Brock or Hawkwind as producer) made them one of the very few "hippie" bands respected by the punk movement (John Lyndon, aka Johnny Rotten, is on record as a fan). Modern psychedelic figureheads such as Jason Pierce (better known as J. Spaceman of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized) and Paul Major (of Endless Boogie and Prison) both count Hawkwind as an influence, and West Coast psych guru Ty Segall has told multiple interviewers that Hawkwind is his "favorite band." Which brings us back around to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.

While themes of space travel and astral reckoning underpin Hawkwind's mythos, the same is not entirely true for King Gizzard. For one, King Gizzard had a longer incubation period before they began to involve fantasy/sci-fi-based narratives in their music (it happened after just one album for Hawkwind). And while cosmic and fantastic concepts certainly populate the core of the classic Gizzverse albums, the band has not been afraid to explore more directly social, political, and autobiographical topics (as on Butterfly 3000, Omnium Gatherum, and Flight b741 among other albums), or even mix it all together (see Phantom Island, where space travel is used as a metaphor for the life of a touring musician). The "space rock" influence is but one face of many worn by King Gizzard, although it is an essential factor whose absence would significantly alter the band's creative identity.

The first overt appearance of "cosmic" imagery in the Gizzverse might be "Invisible Face" (the lines "the universe is a machine / that has awoken from a dream" would feel at home on virtually any Hawkwind release). It's up for argument, of course, but Nonagon Infinity is where this listener hears the first pronounced presence of Hawkwind in King Gizzard's artistic vision—musically, lyrically, and conceptually, although one can certainly point to earlier evidence. Broderick Smith's spoken narrative on Eyes Like the Sky is reminiscent of Calvert and Moorcock's soliloquies, the themes of madness and paranoia centered in I'm In Your Mind Fuzz are ones frequently examined by Hawkwind, and the repetitive chorus and open-ended form of "Pill" echoes the incessant lyrical minimalism of Hawkwind jam-fests like "Time We Left This World Today" and "You Shouldn't Do That." When speaking to Jonathon Cohen for Creem magazine on the subject of "jam band" music and King Gizzard's early evolution as live improvisors, Stu said “[b]ack then, we did a different show every night because we didn’t feel like practicing. It was loose because it was loose. Then, we got tighter and tighter and the songs became more woven together, like we were trying to figure out how to be Hawkwind or something."

That "weave" first announces itself on I'm In Your Mind Fuzz but is perfected on Nonagon, the first Gizzard record to take us completely out of the literal world and into an imaginary one (perhaps with the exception of "Mr. Beat"). Just as it is with King Gizzard, putting Hawkwind on shuffle is an exercise in frustration. Many (if not most) tracks bleed seamlessly from one to the other (especially when it comes to Doremi, Warrior at the Edge, and Space Ritual), reinforcing the idea of the album as a unified text designed to immerse the listener in its sonic landscape. Shuffling these albums results in a jarring and disorienting experience, and the same holds true for Gizzard projects like Mind Fuzz, Polygondwanaland, and Nonagon Infinity. This sense of the album as a unified expression and not just a collection of songs is not unique to Hawkwind (depending on who you ask, it was either The Mothers of Invention or The Beatles who released the first concept album), but they perfected their own version of it over the course of the 1970s and have no doubt served as one model for King Gizzard's own conceptual approach to album construction.

On Nonagon Infinity, we find advanced technology (automatons and super-trucks) but also symbols of the ancient and natural (wasps and demons and beanstalks). Highly appropriate for an album that asks through its circular form if we are at the end of the universe or the beginning. As mentioned earlier, Hawkwind also frequently blends future and past (and they were doing it a few years before George Lucas hit us with "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," although Sun Ra arguably did it first in the late 1950s when he began to meld ancient Egyptian mythology with visions of the space age). It seems no accident, then, that "Robot Stop" became the showcase for King Gizzard's live Hawkwind homage in the form of Stu singing the first verse of "Master of the Universe" over a brief jam. In fact, I’ll never forget the first time I heard them do it. I was walking the dog on an autumn day while listening to 9/23/17. When Stu broke into the “Master of the Universe” lyrics, I stopped in my tracks and exclaimed, “Holy shit, that’s Hawkwind!” (to the momentary consternation of my Labrador). As an already devoted Hawkwind listener, it was a vital event in my King Gizzard fandom, one that instantly heightened my love and respect for KGLW and drew me even deeper into the Gizzverse.

Along with lyrical themes, you can hear Hawkwind's spirit in the instrumental makeup of Nonagon as well. The synths in "Evil Death Roll," just before the "Invisible Face"/"Robot Stop" sections, are straight out of Dik Mik's bag of electronic tricks and have become an essential element in Gizzard's live sound. (For a recent example, check out the semi-acoustic "Theia" from Sunday night of 2025's Field of Vision festival.) The incessant and propulsive guitar vamps of Hawkwind echo throughout Nonagon and can be heard as a key element in Gizzard’s style moving forward (especially in Murder of the Universe). Additionally, along with Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead and John Entwistle of The Who, Lemmy as a member of Hawkwind was one of the first to treat the electric bass as a lead instrument and not simply as part of the rhythm section, and one can certainly hear that influence in the more melodic aspects of Lucas' playing on Nonagon and beyond. While Nonagon shares conceptual and musical lineages with Hawkwind, the crucial jigsaw pieces of space travel and cosmic contemplation (beyond the passing lines about the universe in "Invisible Face") have not fallen into place (yet).

Taken broadly, Hawkwind's relationship with the cosmos is gritty and fatalistic, perhaps even downright barbaric when compared to the stoned-to-the-bone utopian inner-journeys of Gong, the celebratory interstellar stomp of Parliament, or the Afrofuturist hybrid of free jazz and swing perfected by Sun Ra. While liner notes to several albums announce Hawkwind as conquering heroes sent to bring peace to the universe, rarely does anything go right during their songs. In "The Watcher," the listener (invoked by Lemmy's brutal use of second-person point of view) finds their self-destruction, and that of planet Earth as a whole, observed by merciless interstellar beings who refuse to intercede on humanity's behalf ("the last thing you will feel is fear"). Fast forward a couple of years, and the ageless combatants in Warrior at the Edge of Time feel no joy or achievement in their immortality. Quite the opposite. In the track “Standing on the Edge,” these warriors feel trapped in their permanent cycles of making love and enduring physical and psychic conflict, confessing that they are “tired” and “cold.” On an ‘80s compilation entitled Out and Intake, (which saw Nik Turner returning briefly to the fold), Hawkwind re-recorded a version of “Standing on the Edge” (now called “Warrior on the Edge of Time”) that featured some new Moorcock lyrics. In this version, the speaker goes so far as to futilely declare “death to death and time and space,” a chilling sentiment that ripples outward across the decades and puts us face to face with Han-Tyumi’s deathless, hyperdimensional despair in the closing segment of Murder of the Universe.

Hawkwind's flavor of space rock offers no solace in progressive technology or the sleek utopian gloss of ‘50s and ‘60s futurism, but rather an expansive location for anxiety, fear, and suffering to inhabit. In Hawkwind's cosmology, we might be able to leave our planet behind (even if only via the imagination) but not the human condition.This seems to be a viewpoint that King Gizzard has inherited (whether consciously or not): space is not your friend. Indeed, space for both bands is often enough not a place of rescue or refuge, but a setting for doom and disaster. Enter Infest the Rats' Nest and its central theme of interplanetary colonization in the face of ecological devastation.

In a rare moment of environmental concern, Hawkwind point out in “Uncle Sam’s On Mars” (from PXR5) that while Earth is slowly dying as a result of man’s debasement, the United States government is more focused on exploring other planets: “shoals of dead fish float on the lakes / but Uncle Sam’s on Mars.” Robert Calvert’s lyrics grow ever-sharper barbs as the song unfurls all-American images of McDonald’s franchises, twin-car garages, and baton-twirling majorettes colonizing the red planet. (“I hope you brought your credit card,” Calvert snarls in the song’s outro). Any self-respecting Gizzhead is already two steps ahead of me if they’ve drawn a dotted line from this song to “Mars for the Rich” and its bold-faced critique of capitalism and elitism. Once again, humans may try to escape the planet they’ve defiled, but maybe there’s no escaping the monster within. When Sun Ra and his Arkestra chant "Space is the Place," they're assuring the listener that there is a realm of possibility and freedom beyond the oppressive realities of Earth. When Stu sings the same phrase at the beginning of "Perihelion," it's loaded with irony and hubris because we know that the crew's trip to Venus is doomed (and “pilot in the twilight is a deep dream” is another image that would be right at home in a number of Hawkwind tunes). After Rats' Nest, we can find the theme of interplanetary and interstellar travel present in a number of Gizzard songs, and honestly, the comparisons between Hawkwind and KGLW could go on for a very long time, if not forever! For the sake of the reader's attention, I'll close with one last comparison.

One of the first Gizzard songs that popped into my head when I conceived of this post was “Kepler-22b.” While the music of the Omnium Gatherum version isn’t particularly cosmic (live Nathan-ized versions gleefully correct this), the lyrics focus on another theme frequently visited by Hawkwind: we are not alone in the universe. The narrator of “Kepler” seeks solitude in space, planning a voyage to a distant planet, only to find “a telescope pointing back” when they zoom in on their desired destination. Compare this to Lemmy’s “The Watcher”: “we are looking in on you now” and “you’re very small from way out here.” While Lemmy’s speaker fails to mask their disdain for the human race, the mindset of the distant astronomer residing on Kepler-22b is not revealed, although the song’s narrator seems optimistic enough (“obsession is good for ya”). If Earth is likely a doomed place (and looking more that way every day, I’m afraid), does space indeed offer a viable solution or are we damned to carry our doom with us? Neither Hawkwind or King Gizzard seem comfortable landing on one definitive answer to the question, opting instead to explore our place in the universe (past, present, and future—good, bad, and ambiguous) from a variety of narrators and circumstances. The only constant is the music. These literary considerations always float upon a tapestry of super-charged riffs and synth-tinged atmospheres crafted to match the subject and complete the listening experience. The great paradox is that while the music and lyrics promise escape via the imagination, they often end up confronting humanity’s limitations.

After writing most of this post, I sat down and made a list of every King Gizzard song not discussed here that shares an obvious link to space and sci-fi/fantasy themes, recognizing that such a task is subjective and therefore can never be considered exhaustive. After making this list, it was instantly clear to me that this is a field of study ripe for further inspection. I hope that there are other writers out there with an interest in continuing this discussion and that this post serves as an ice-breaker of sorts. Here’s the list I came up with: “Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer,” “Gamma Knife,” all of Polygondwanaland, “Doom City,” “Nuclear Fusion,” “Superposition,” “All Is Known,” “Planet B,” “Organ Farmer,” “Venusian 1,” “Venusian 2,” “Hell,” “Automation,” “Pleura,” “Static Electricity,” “Gaia,” “Ice V,” “Gliese 710,” “The Land Before Timeland,” “Hypertension,” “Exploding Suns,” most of Phantom Island, and the entirety of both Petrodragonic Apocalypse and The Silver Cord.

This list doesn’t include the numerous side-projects and Gizz-related artists that also delve into the aforementioned themes, but they certainly exist. (Off the top of my noggin: Pipe-Eye’s Cosmic Blip and Dream Themes, and select songs by The Murlocs, such as “Space Cadet” and “Skyrocket.”) Just as it is with King Gizzard, you’ll find an entire family tree of Hawkwind-related artists waiting to be explored: Lemmy’s Motörhead, the solo work of Robert Calvert, the Pink Fairies (Never Never Land (1971) and What a Bunch of Sweeties (1972) are both completely kick-ass), Twink (Think Pink from 1970 is a lost psych classic), Nik Turner’s Sphynx (Xitintoday (1978) was partially recorded inside the Great Pyramid at Giza and features members of Gong), Inner City Unit (another Turner project, this one leaning into post-punk), and many others.

Interested in more "space rock" and other space-adjacent music beyond Hawkwind? For that classic 70s feel, check out Gong (especially the famous Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy of Flying Teapot (1973), Angel's Egg (1973), and You (1974)), Neil Merryweather and the Space Rangers (Space Rangers (1974) and Kryptonite (1975)), Nektar (A Tab in the Ocean (1972), Remember the Future (1973), and Down to Earth (1974, with special guest Robert Calvert)), the early albums of the German group UFO (specifically 1971's Flying-Spacerock), or Magma (a French prog band that projects themselves into space by inventing their own alien language, culture, and religion—try Üdü Ẁüdü (1976) or Attahk (1978)). An underrated spacey band that emerged in the '80s is Ozric Tentacles, a still-active U.K. outfit that straddles the gap between new age and techno, yet still manages to rock out a fair bit (Erpland (1990) is my personal go-to). And that's just the edge of the solar system when it comes to rock. More recent rock-oriented bands to pick up the theme include Spiritualized, The Flaming Lips, Man or Astro-man? (sci-fi surf rock!), Blood Incantation, Moon Duo, Golden Dawn Arkestra, HENGE, and many, many more.

In the jazz realm, we of course have Sun Ra and his ever-changing Arkestra (I recommend Jazz In Silhouette (1959) and Lanquidity (1978) as trailheads into his prodigious catalog, as well as the PBS American Masters documentary released earlier this year), and also performers such as John Coltrane and Lonnie Liston Smith (among many others) who invoked the cosmos in their recordings and performances. (A recent favorite is Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, a riveting mix of spoken word, electronics, and free improv.) From electronica to hip-hop to experimental, the list could go on and on. If you have your own thoughts about the Hawkwind/KGLW connection, or thoughts on space-inspired music in general (or further listening recommendations), I invite you to stop by the KGLW.net forum and join the conversation here.