Live Seventy Nine is a 1980 live album by Hawkwind recorded on their Winter 1979 UK tour. It reached #15 on the UK album chart.
This is a reconstituted Hawkwind with Brock, Bainbridge and King emerging from the dissolved Hawklords, joined by lead guitarist Huw Lloyd-Langton who had played on the debut album Hawkwind and keyboardist Tim Blake who was a long-standing friend of the band and had played on Gong's Radio Gnome trilogy.
The new line-up debuted at the first Futurama Festival at Queens Hall, Leeds on 9 September,[3] then completed a 25-date UK tour in November and December with support from Doll by Doll, despite not having a record deal nor any product to promote, and ended the year at London's Electric Ballroom on 28 and 29 December with support from The Psychedelic Furs. The shows included Blake's collaborator from his Crystal Machine shows, the light artistPatrice Warrener using LASERs. although the band would encounter resistance from councilHealth and Safety inspectors concerned at the potential harm the LASERs posed to the audience, Bainbridge even claiming to have locked one such official in a cupboard to prevent his intervention.[4]
Originally the band "didn't think the Oxford gig was very good, but we listened to the mixing-desk tape and were really surprised. So we mixed the master tape and got a deal with Bronze. If we hadn't got that deal, we'd probably have split up - we couldn't have carried on on our own."[5] Manager Douglas Smith secured a two-album deal with Bronze Records,[nb 1] even if Gerry Bron confessed "I don't think we would have signed Hawkwind if it weren't for Motörhead, I can't say I was that interested... Once you run a record label and you're employing people, you have to make good commercial decisions - you can't turn away business, even if the business isn't what you particularly want to do".[6]
The music is more energetic and aggressive than the previous albums released on Charisma Records and the album benefited from the rise in popularity of NWOBHM at the time. Malcolm Dome reviewed the album for Record Mirror positively, feeling it "should have been a total and utter success fit to rank among the best albums of the year", but "to package here only an extract [of the full show] serves only to do the band a disservice".[7]
"Shot Down in the Night" had been written by Hawklords keyboardist Steve Swindells for single release, but he departed during the year to record a solo album. The single was backed by the non-album cut "Urban Guerrilla" and reached #59 on the UK singles chart. Swindells also released a studio version of this track as a single and on his Fresh Blood album which he recorded with King, Lloyd-Langton and Nic Potter. "Lighthouse" is from Tim Blake's solo album New Jerusalem. "Silver Machine" explodes one minute into the song and is suffixed with "Requiem". A studio version of the new track "Motorway City" was recorded on the following Levitation album.
Complete '79: Collector Series Volume 1 is 1999 released album of a 1979 concert by Hawkwind.
During 1999, Brock issued a slew of archive recordings through Voiceprint Records to generate money to pay off an outstanding Inland Revenue tax bill. No permission from the other musicians was sought, although they did duly receive accounting and royalties once the outstanding bill was settled, leading to several members complaining about this activity, and former manager Douglas Smith commenting "I think it's wrong. As a human being and as a manager, I have to get the permission of all the artists involved before I would do a deal."[11]
This recording is not professional, possibly being a mixing desk tape but probably an audience bootleg. The sound levels and frequency fluctuate throughout making this difficult listening despite a good band performance.[12] It purports to be the full unexpurgated concert, but there are clearly edits, notably during "Brainstorm" at 5:08 into Brock playing "You Know You're Only Dreaming".
Exactly why such a poor quality recording was used for this release is uncertain, as the Hawkwind Anthology full versions of "Shot Down in the Night" and "Urban Guerrilla" demonstrate there are superior recordings available. Nevertheless, this CD contains the only available live versions of "PXR5" and Tim Blake's "New Jerusalem". The CD booklet is a reproduction of the 1979 tour programme by Steve 'Krusher' Joule.
Note: The banding of tracks on the CD deviates from the actual songs, the first timings listed being those of the CD tracks, the second being the actual timings of the song.
References
Footnotes
^At that time, Smith had secured Bronze contracts not only for Motörhead and Hawkwind but also for other acts he was managing such as The Damned and Girlschool.
