Robert Calvert is best known as the on-off frontman of influential rock group Hawkwind. Robert was born in 1945 in Pretoria, South Africa. His family moved to Kent in England in 1947. He grew up wanting to be a fighter pilot but ended up a writer, an enthusiastic participant in the 1960s London psychedelia subculture. After meeting Hawkwind co-founder Dave Brock in 1970, Robert joined the underground icons as resident poet, reading his work amid strobes and light cascades on stage.