TRUE OR FALSE? Spectacularly unfashionable psychedelic popular beat combo Hawkwind were approached to provide the incidental music to Season 26's "Battlefield".
I normally get all sulky and over-protective at the prospect of one of my favourite bands doing something remotely populist (if you can conceivably call working on Doctor Who in 1989 as being down with the kids). But in this case I think it would have been a genuinely interesting collaboration if done properly.
Normally somewhat shambolic, Hawkwind were actually in pretty good shape in 1989. With the departure of Huw Lloyd-Langton the previous year, the band was finally escaping from the sub-Heavy Metal ghetto that Huw's oft-excessive lead guitar noodlings had thrust them in to.
By the time preparations for Season 26 were well underway, Hawkwind's line-up would have consolidated as Dave Brock, Alan Davey, Harvey Bainbridge and new drummer Richard Chadwick. This incarnation of the band combined pummelling space rock with increasingly sophisticated and multi-layered synth and sequencer work. Pretty much ideal for a Doctor Who soundtrack, you'd think. (And enough to make Keff McCulloch shit his bloody pants).
Come Serial 7N's transmission, Simon House had returned to the band, and Hawkwind embarked on a winter UK tour, seemingly unconcerned that the Who gig had fallen through. (Maybe House was lured back to the band with promises of meeting Sylvester McCoy. He looked pretty miserable during the concert at Sheffield; I was in the front row and pretty much in his eyeline the whole time, and I don't think he cracked a smile once).
But was it true, or was it naught but a rumour?
Sadly, it was all a hoax. Click on this link here to see just who the perpetrators were and why they did it.
And do try not to get too starstruck when you remember who was hanging around on rec.arts.drwho back before they used to let any old riff-raff on the internet...
