Hawkwind's relationship with Monmouthshire goes back to their best-selling album, Doremi Fasol Latido.

The archetypal space rock band recorded the ground-breaking collection of psychedelic delights in Rockfield Studios in 1972.

"I used to stay at Monmouth quite a lot many years ago," recalled Dave Brock. "I used to nearly live there. Spent about six months a year there.

"It was Rockfield Studios. We used to rehearse down there quite a lot. Either in the old Mill House, which is now a recording studio, or it was at Rockfield. Wonderful place - wonderful memories, you know! Like, swimming in the river, then suddenly being aware that there's a load of dead fish floating along. We used to fish down there.

"We did loads of albums there, a few hits, as many bands have done; Sonic Attack we did there, a bit of Doremi, in the early 70s."

Thirty years on and Hawkwind are still flying high as the original and longest-surviving 1970s space rock band. Last year Dave recalled all the Hawknauts for a birthday gig in the Brixton Academy under the moniker The Hawkestra.

Few bands have had as many members come and go, which was helpful, as the band played for over seven hours! The ensemble performed highlights from Hawkwind's back catalogue with the appropriate members, even Lemmy, who was ejected after a drug bust on the American/Canadian border in 1975.

Dave and co were to have released selected highlights from the night as a live album (selected, as Dave admitted, as some of it was awful!) but band feuding has come between the band, its music and its public.

Egos have always played a big part in the make-up of Hawkwind, and one wonders whether they really did think of themselves as Psychedelic Warlords, the title of one of their greatest tunes. The war-torn cosmos has kept the band's line-up fluid, and even now is proving troublesome.

"The Hawkestra tapes have been... err... Nick Turner (saxophone player, poet, wearer of orange alien costume) took the tapes and we can't have them back because he wants to keep them for himself," laughed Dave in a strained sort of way.

"It's rather annoying, actually, what he's doing. We see a plan afoot there. We've injuncted him. We were offered a deal by a mate of Lemmy's, the label that's got Motorhead (SPV). All that was happening but then Nick got the tapes and it got rather silly."

Instead, the next Hawkwind release will be Yule Ritual, a different live recording from last year.

The following album will be a concept album, based around writings by Michael Moorcock, who has worked with the band in the past, most famously on Warrior at the Edge of Time, which is based on the science fiction writer's Eternal Champion books. Moorcock both plays and narrates on the album.

The new collaboration is to be called Destruction of the Death Generator and is based on a comic by Moorcock and Mike Butterworth, author of The Trigan Empire series of comics.

"It's a fantasy about a band with good and bad vibes," said Dave. "Quite a complicated story with a lot of weird things going on!"

The band is concentrating its energies on a stage-show version of the album, which Dave and co will tour late next year.

"It costs a lot of money!" he moaned. "Three or four dancers, a lighting crew with three or four operators who want a high wage. Where's love gone! We don't make loads of money. We like to have fun and get by..."

* Hawkwind play the Coal Exchange, Cardiff tonight.