Hawkwind – We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago

March 16th, 2009

I suppose that in 1971 the acid-laced, space rock stylings of the mighty, albeit notoriously hedonistic Hawkwind, might’ve made sense to some people. Possibly those on the same diet of LSD and assorted other substances, legal or otherwise, that is often associated with the band.

hawkwind - we took the wrong steps years ago

This was a time when the naivety of the hippy dream encapsulated in the done-to-death slogan “Peace and Love” had long since shuffled off its mortal coil; trampled beneath heavy boots ideal for cracking skulls, in a mire of mud, unwashed denim, motorcycle grease, and the wild thrust of a Hells Angel’s switchblade at the Altamont Speedway Circuit during the infamous and ill-advised Rolling Stones free concert of 1968. Psychedelic music was no longer the soup de jour, slipping away from the consciousness of the greater public and into the ether like a phased drumbeat. Progressive rock (psych’s heir apparent) was on its steady ascent.

Early Hawkwind was a group embracing both psychedelic and prog rock, touching on the experimental without being avant-garde. If a comparison of their sound is needed then it would have to be with the prolonged spaced-out jams of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. In fact Hawkwind were so spaced out they even recruited legendary sci-fi writer and fellow Ladbroke Grove resident, Michael Moorcock, not only to write some of their lyrics but also to make the occasional appearance on stage to ‘perform’ said lyrics.

But back to ‘We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago’, taken from their second album, In Search Of Space. This is Hawkwind at perhaps their most orthodox -- yet still startlingly eerie -- and none the worse for it.

The song’s message is as resonant now as it was back then, criticising the path along which society was blindly headed. 38 years on and it’s pretty much the same story. “Think about the things that we should have done before, The way things are going the end is about to fall.” The end might have yet to befall us but the same uncertainty for the future still hangs in the air, with the then ogres of cold war and nuclear threat now shunted unceremoniously aside by global terrorism and economic crisis.

‘We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago’ uses an array of ethereal sounds throughout, gently blending between the jangly-guitar driven foreground, as it pitches its stall firmly in the grounds of what would now be dismissed as new-age, lentil-casserole ideology. Particularly the snatches of seagull calls and bursts of keyboard noodling that reproduce whale song, intended or not. Quite amazing for a band that would go on to become a byword for excess. Nevertheless it all adds up to a mix that is both eerie and “out there”. The “out there” fitting in with the far-out spaciness of the rest of the album.

Written by guitarist, singer and pivotal member through a seemingly ever-changing line-up, Dave Brock, the lyrics foretell nature’s own warnings of the rape and pillage of the planet remaining unheeded, a topic just as popular today, with a chorus of “… we took the wrong step years ago …” throughout, acting like a refrain.

Overall it is a powerful song, the occasionally off-key and flat delivery underscoring its message perfectly. One for the collection methinks.

‘We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago’ appears on 1971’s In Search Of Space, available from Amazon.co.uk