Far from giving up the ghost, Hawkwind are scaling new heights - with Samantha Fox, Matthew Wright and "futuristic sex-robots" in tow. Dave Brock tells all to Edwin McFee

After spending five decades on the road with legendary space-rockers Hawkwind, singer and guitarist Dave Brock is starting to get a little fed-up with the constant travelling.

"I'm sitting in a car travelling up to Glasgow and the rain is absolutely pouring down," he says. "The one thing I hate about being in the band is all the travelling we have to do. It seems like it's never going to end. Perhaps by the time we eventually make it up to Scotland the sun will come out and we'll all be wearing shorts."

Dave and Hawkwind have spawned literally hundreds of imitators, but no-one ever seems to come close to matching the intensity of the band. Perhaps that's why Hawkwind still has a huge fan-base after all these years.

"We've actually just finished recording our new album, even though we don't have a name for it yet," says Dave. "We've got a lot of our friends like Arthur Brown to collaborate with us and it's turned out great.

"It's taken us a long time to get this record made because we're still trying to get our heads around working with computers you see."

When most people hear the name Hawkwind they immediately think of their hit from the seventies, Silver Machine. The song featured vocals by Lemmy, who later went on to form the equally legendary Motorhead.

While Lemmy and the rest of Hawkwind split somewhat acrimoniously, Dave and he are still good mates.

"We have Lemmy singing a new version of Silver Machine on the new record," he says. "It's kind of like a traditional punk/mod version of the song, if you can imagine what that sounds like.

"We're pleased as punch about the new stuff. We've actually enlisted Matthew Wright from the telly to sing on a song and we're filming a video with him in a few days time. He's been a Hawkwind fan for years and said our gig at Stonehenge changed his life. Whether we changed it for better or worse we don't know."

As if having an ex-Daily Mirror hack in their video wasn't bizarre enough, Hawkwind have also managed to persuade former Page 3 girl Samantha Fox to make an appearance.

"What we wanted for our new video was a load of Page 3 models to cavort around the stage with us. We were talking to Sam about it a while ago and she said 'I'll do that, don't you worry.'

"Talking about strange collaborations, we actually may even be recording with John Lydon soon as well. He's been a big fan of Hawkwind and we thought it'd be cool to do something with him.

"All these people seem to pop up and occasionally we like do some weird things with them."

While the band are all in their mid-fifties, they have absolutely no intentions of quitting just yet.

"We're currently planning our tour around a theme of androids and futuristic sex-robots - the kind of thing everyone dreams about.

"Music is all about escapism and having fun, isn't it? If it stopped being fun then that's when we'd quit."

Hawkwind play the Limelight, Belfast, May 5. Tickets www.wonderlandpromotions.co.uk.