The frontman of a cult 1970s rock band is to be commemorated with a blue plaque on a block of flats in his home town.

The sign dedicated to Hawkwind singer Robert Calvert will adorn the side of Arlington House in Margate, where the musician lived with his family in the 1960s.

The ever controversial brutalist tower block was the inspiration behind the space rock group's classic track High Rise.

The plaque will pay tribute to the imposing seafront building, as "the birthplace of space rock".

Calvert was the band's lead singer from 1971 to 73 and 1976 to 79, and co-wrote the million-selling single Silver Machine.

In his youth, Calvert worked at Dreamland, during which time he befriended future Hawkwind members Nik Turner and Michael 'DikMik' Davies.

To celebrate the plaque’s unveiling on Friday, space rock band Hawklords will play a one-off show at Olby's Soul Café in Margate, with support from Motorheadz and Superheads. Tickets are available for the show here.

After leaving Hawkwind in 1979, Calvert returned to live in the area, settling in Ramsgate. It was from this base that he wrote his last two solo albums, Freq and Test-Tube Conceived, before dying from a heart attack in 1988 at the tragically early age of 43.

The unveiling is open to anyone who would like to attend, and was organised by local residents Nick Dermott and William Gary.

Mr Dermott said: “Living in Arlington House, Calvert would have been surrounded by the vastness of the sky – for J.M.W. Turner, ‘the best skies in Europe’, which in the late 1960s would have been filled with US Air Force fighter jets based at RAF Manston five miles away.

"Robert Calvert, Hawkwind and Arlington House are all under-appreciated examples of British culture that need to be celebrated.”

The plaque was inspired by a similar one for T.S. Eliot affixed next to the Nayland Rock Shelter on Margate seafront.

The singer was the driving force behind Hawkwind’s transformation into a science fiction rock band, as well as being a hugely charismatic and influential performer.

The plaque will be officially unveiled at Arlington House at 1.30pm on Friday.