“Lemmy was very forceful and pushy because he took a lot of speed. He got the job because he elbowed everybody else out the way!” How Hawkwind made Silver Machine, and gained the respect of Dave Brock’s bank manager

Released in 1972 as Hawkwind’s second-ever single, Silver Machine made an immediate and permanent impact on the band. It spent two weeks No.3 in the UK charts and remained in the top 100 for three months, and sold more than a million copies around the world.

The song had started out with Robert Calvert singing, and even in its earliest form manager Doug Smith felt it had huge potential. He took a live recording from London’s Roundhouse venue in February 1972 and subjected it to a series of studio overdubs, with assistance from band leader Dave Brock (credited as Dr Technical).

In 2022 Andrew Lauder, who’d been head of A&R at United Artists, told Prog about hearing the labour-of-love track, recalling: “Doug pretty much did it off his own bat. He came in with a tape and said, ‘Have a listen to this.’ And I said, ‘Jesus, what have you done?!’”

By that time Calvert’s vocal had been replaced by that of Lemmy Kilmister. The late Motörhead icon used to say he was the last member of Hawkwind to be given a chance to try the song out – but saxophonist and flautist Nik Turner said: “It’s actually bullshit!

“Lemmy was very forceful and pushy because he took a lot of speed. He got the job because he elbowed everybody else out the way! But I was happy with Lemmy’s rendition. It was actually very good, more the right shape for a pop song.”

In a separate 2022 interview with Prog, Brock recalled how the track came together, and what it did for the band on its release in June 1972.

“Bob Calvert wrote some lyrics and I then came up with the music. We were actually a good songwriting partnership, and that’s the way we worked a lot of the time.

The song was partly inspired by Tomorrow’s My White Bicycle, and we then added in a sci-fi element, because that’s what we were all into at the time. But we never thought when it was finished this would have such an impact.

The reaction was great. We played it live for the first time at The Roundhouse and the crowd went mental for it. To this day, I don’t know what it is about the song that got such a reaction. It’s the way things happen in music, isn’t it? Sometimes you get a song that captures the imagination and takes on a life of its own. This is one of those.

In one way it made me feel like a rock star – it allowed me to go into my local bank in Tiverton and get a mortgage for a cottage I wanted to buy. Even the bank manager knew the song, which made it easier for me!

Also, I got a decent publishing deal as a result, which helped enormously. So it wasn’t so much feeling like real stars as it was getting some tangible benefits as a result.

The single might have done even better if it hadn’t been for Alice Cooper, who was at number one with School’s Out. The bastard!

Silver Machine was definitely a blessing. We could afford to buy our own PA system, and a good one at that. We even commissioned someone to paint Captain America and the Silver Surfer on the side. And we could also get our own van. The money the single brought in was very welcome. There was no down side at all.”