Ballardian

Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Simon Sellars.

All the evidence accumulated over several decades cast a critical light on the high-rise as a viable social structure, but cost-effectiveness in the area of public housing and high profitability in the private sector kept pushing these vertical townships into the sky against the real needs of their occupants.

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J.G. Ballard. High-Rise (1975).
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At some stage, I hope to post something on the work of Robert Calvert, who wrote lyrics and sang for Hawkwind on and off from the early to late 70s. Calvert was rubbing shoulders with Michael Moorcock, and his lyrics and poetry reveal a strong influence from both Moorcock and Ballard.

For now, here are Calvert’s lyrics for the Hawkwind track ‘High-Rise’, from the PXR5 album (1979), based mostly on Ballard’s High-Rise, but with a bit of help from the JGB story ‘The Man on the 99th Floor’ (1962) as well:

Flat block
Of two dimensions
Neon totem pole to the sky
Keeping scores of people stacked up so high
Above the ground
But all they can hear is the sound
Of the wind in the antennae
It’s a human zoo
A suicide machine

High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
All stacked up in a high rise block

Childhood
Of concrete cube shaped
A flypaper stuck with human life
Caged up rage
Swarming all the time
Tear out the telephones
Rip up the pages of directories
And wreck all these
High speed lifts and elevators
Be a sabotage rebel without a cause

High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
All stacked up in a high rise block

Starfish
Of human blood shape
Tentacles of human gore
Spread out on the pavement from the 99th floor
Well somebody said that he jumped
But we know he was pushed
He was just like you might have been
On the 99th floor of a suicide machine

High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
Living in a high rise
High rise
All stacked up in a high rise block”

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‘High-Rise’ (lyrics by Robert Calvert; music by Simon House).
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