Alan Powell (drummer)
British musician

Alan Powell (born James Alan Powell 1948, Middleton, Lancashire) is a British musician.
In 1964 Alan joined the Manchester R&B band Ivans Meads who released their first single "The Sins of a Family" for EMI in October 1965, followed by "We'll Talk About It Tomorrow" in September 1966. The band split in 1967.
His first notable appearances were with Chicken Shack, appearing on the 1974 live album Goodbye, and Vinegar Joe ("Proud To Be a Honky Woman"). He continued his friendship with Robert Palmer from Vinegar Joe co-writing "Gotta Get a Grip on You, Part 2" (from Some People Can Do What They Like (1976)), "The Silver Gun" (from Pride (1983)) "Jealous" released as a single from the album Secrets and "Life in Detail" also released as a single, (from the soundtrack to Pretty Woman (1990)).
During 1974, he joined Hawkwind as a second drummer, recording two albums, Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) and Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (1976), and contributed to Hawkwind collaborator Michael Moorcock's 1975 album New Worlds Fair. On leaving Hawkwind, he sessioned on Nik Turner's 1978 album Xitintoday.
In 1977, he formed the short-lived touring band Kicks with Paul Rudolph (Hawkwind), Steve York (Vinegar Joe) and Cal Batchelor (Quiver), then teamed up with Mick Farren for the "Screwed Up" EP (1977) and Vampires Stole My Lunch Money (1978). In 1978, he formed Tanz Der Youth with The Damned leader Brian James, released the single "I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry"/"Delay", recorded a Peel Session, toured with Black Sabbath and appeared at Turner's 'Bohemian Love-In' event.
At the end of the 1970s he emigrated to San Francisco, and fronted his own new wave band, Jo Allen and the Shapes, releasing the 1980 single "Cryin' Over You"/"Lowlife" and "Shimmy, Shimmy" on the 415 Music compilation album.
The public source identifies “Alan Powell (drummer)” as british musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alan, Powell and drummer.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11850521. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1964, 1965 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alan Powell (drummer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.