37 years ago this month, 29 July 1972 to be exact, Hawkwind played a gig at the Caird Hall which resulted in them being banned from Dundee straight after the show!
What caused the commotion was not so much the band, but their female dancer, Stacia, who liked to perform naked on stage.
Predictably, the concert made the local headlines next day and revealed a rather amusing sideshow.
It turns out that they had actual procedures in place at Caird Hall to prevent such an "incident" occurring, but it didn't go to plan on the night.
It was Dundee Lord Provost Fitzgerald who announced the ban next day, then went on to state what the emergency procedure should have entailed.
The strategy was this - someone in charge would be on standby for any controversial event that took place on stage, at which point the lights would be switched off, the police would be called and those responsible would be charged. However, when the time came to put it into practice, the person in charge wasn't present and the instruction was never carried out!
I don't have a ticket stub to display but I do have an NME guide showing the gig date, an ad published in the local press and a magazine called "Words" also from 1972 with Hawkwind on the cover (that's Stacia in the insert). The article inside says that "Stacia has been delighting rock audiences with her free-form dancing. She believes in complete freedom of expression, even down to taking her clothes off on stage, if and when she feels like it".
So there you have it, when she was in Dundee, she just felt like it.!!
I was 14 when all this was stirring, and although I wasn't at this gig, I did at least have their "Silver Machine" single in my collection!
