Simon King is probably best known as drummer in stoner rock legends Hawkwind.



Born in Oxford around 1952, Simon quotes his earliest influences in drumming as "some of the jazz greats that I heard a lot of. I always really wanted to play jazz but never got around to it. Early rock influences were the same as everyone else's: Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, etc."



Simon started playing at age fifteen in various local bands, mainly in Berkshire, teaching himself as he went along.



During the sixties he played in the band Opal Butterfly.



When Hawkwind was having problems with Terry Ollis being so stoned that he "kept falling off his drumstool", Lemmy Kilmister (who would become the frontman of famous speedrockers Motörhead) happened to catch Simon King getting out of a taxi in London and offered to introduce him to the band, as a "proper drummer".



During the 1970s, Simon also drummed on Robert Calvert's solo album "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters", "New World's Fair" by Michael Moorcock and the Deep Fix, "Fresh blood" (1980) by Steve Swindells, plus other albums as a session musician, including various tracks on "Here Come the Warm Jets" by Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera.



After 1980, Simon King turned down the drummer's stool in both Inner City Unit and Nico, teaming up with Simon House (also ex-Hawkwind) for a while in a London band called Turbo, though this never made it past the rehearsal stage. Although Simon King rehearsed for a while with Hawkwind in 1982, he decided he'd finally had enough.



These days, Simon King works in rubbish recycling and resists all music-related contact.