When The Darkness introduced themselves to the rock n’ roll world with their 2003 debut album ‘Permission to land’, no one expected so many accolades would be bestowed on the newcomers in such a short space of time but suddenly the UK four-piece found themselves showered with praise & awards from heavy hitters such as Kerrang, Metal Hammer, Ivor Novello, The BRITS and even The Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. This new found success didn’t come without its problems, as the group found themselves touring relentlessly and after a second album in the form of ‘One Way Ticket to Hell… And Back’, the band were forced to take an untimely break due to health concerns to front man Justin Hawkins.
2011 saw The Darkness reform and release a third album ‘Hot Cakes’, which was soon followed by ‘Last of Our Kind’, which although had fine moments, never seemed to capture that magic that was achieved on “Permission’. Their fifth album, ‘Pinewood Smile’ saw Hawkins & Co take a step back in the right direction with tracks like ‘Solid Gold’ becoming fan favourites in their live set. Fast forward to 2019 and brothers Justin & Dan Hawkins along with Frankie Poullian & Rufus ‘Tiger’ Taylor are set to unleash their sixth studio album ‘Easter Is Cancelled’ on 4 October via Cooking Vinyl and having heard it, I can gladly report this could very well be their best work since that fabled debut release. The Rockpit caught up with rhythm guitarist/vocalist Dan Hawkins to talk about the new album, touring Australia and what song he wished he’d have written.
Sean: Hey Dan, Sean from The Rockpit here in Australia. How are you doing?
Dan: Hello Sean, I’m good thanks mate. Sorry we’ve been running a bit late – we’ve been running late from the very beginning.
Sean: All good Dan. I’ve just sat down and opened a cold beer before calling you.
Dan: [laughs] Now, that’s the way to work.
Sean: We have to start by talking about the wonderful new album you guys have put together. I’ve had ‘Easter is Cancelled’ on all day – I can’t switch it off.
Dan: Thanks a lot, cheers.
Sean: A lot of new sounds and vibes through this one – quite diverse. I love ‘Deck Chair’ – a real stand out track, quite different from all the others.
Dan: I think that is the most diverse we’ve ever been to be honest. We were kind of channelling 10cc on that one…
Sean: …And there will be comparisons to Justin’s vocals being almost Freddie-like (Mercury), especially in this track. I’m not a guitar player and I don’t want to offend when I describe the guitar work in this track as being so simple, yet beautifully effective.
Dan: You can say that because I’m playing bass on that one [laughs].
Sean: The album kicks off in true Darkness fashion with ‘Rock and Roll Deserves to Die’ and I almost get a hint of Led Zeppelin in the classical guitar intro. Then we travels through a whole range of great rock tracks with these diverse numbers thrown in between – another one that sticks out for me is ‘Confirmation Bias’ which had a completely different feel to anything else on the album.
Dan: With this album we really went to free ourselves from any feeling of doing what we should be doing and we kind of just indulged ourselves. It’s a proper studio album in the way that it was all written in the studio. The pressure is on budget-wise for bands these days and quite often the recording process is the thing that suffers or has the least amount of time – less engineering and more fixing everything at the end because you record it in so much of a hurry. That wasn’t the case with this album because luckily I have my own studio which is a very high end facility and we had the bonus of eight months to do it in. So, we literally spent eight months making this record and I was in there for about sixteen hours a day [laughs]. This is what happens when you are allowed to do whatever you want.
Sean: This is such an unfair question to ask but how do you feel the final results have come out? And when I say unfair what I mean is that ‘Permission to Land’ will always be the benchmark that has been set so high after its huge success, so where do you feel ‘Easter is Cancelled’ sits in comparison?
Dan: It’s so hard to see it when you kind of live with it for that amount of time. It certainly feels a huge step up from the last two or three albums. I feel like it could probably sit… oh, I don’t know, it’s so hard to tell really. When bands have been around as long as we have, things change over time. So, it’s really is hard to say because all our albums are so very different but production-wise its up there with ‘One Way Ticket’ as far as the approach to the production goes and song-wise it’s probably… oh it really is too hard to tell – I’m too close to it to say.
Sean: As I said it’s a pretty unfair question so sorry about that [laughs] but plenty for all to enjoy on the album – fourteen tracks in all and all of them great for so many different reasons. Stand out tracks other than those I mentioned already would be ‘We Are The Guitar Men’, ‘Heavy Metal Lover’ & ‘How Can I Lose Your Love’ but it’s the album cover I’d love to talk more about – just how many politically correct groups are you hoping to upset with it? [laughs]
Dan: [laughs] I think it’s quite funny how… you know, generally the cover artwork has been received in the way that it should be, which is tongue in cheek. The main group that we would probably upset is the Christians really, with Justin up there as Jesus but the thing is the whole concept of ‘Easter is Cancelled’ is what if Jesus had lived. Would the world be in the place it is now, with it ecologically imploding and Donald Trump ruling the world, the rise of the far right in Europe… things could be so different couldn’t they. Also the concept of the album is the birth, the death and the rebirth of rock n’ roll so that kind of all ties into it too. We’ll probably upset some people but it’s not to be mistaken with… we’re not desperate enough to use shock tactics to restart the bands career because we don’t need to restart our career – we just do what we want, whenever we want and if we decide to put Justin on the cover as Jesus then that’s tough shit [laughs].
Sean: The very first time I saw it I just immediately thought of Monty Python…
Dan: Oh my God, thank you. Thank you very much. I keep saying the same as a reference point but I also wonder if Monty Python could have existed in today’s world?
Sean: Since the band reformed back in 2011 you’ve had a steady flow of album releases – four in the last seven or eight years. It seems looking in from the outside that you guys must be on the go constantly with writing, recording & touring.
Dan: Yeah, it’s interesting because I feel like we’ve been toeing the line as far as what we are expected to do in today’s industry because of the way downloading works, people’s attention spans and also the consumerist element of music and the social networks combined. It’s like if you’re not in people’s faces or doing something all the time then your forgotten and people don’t buy your stuff – well that’s the theory anyway. I feel like maybe it’s time to kind of break off from that – we can endlessly write and there’s so many songs that can be written and so many things that need to come out from our point of view but I’m actually thinking that we may take a break after this record and just go away and do something that maybe isn’t as regular as clockwork. Bands need time to go away and fans need time to really want them to come back again.
Sean: That makes sense but before all that can happen, you have some tour dates that you will be embarking on and lucky for us you have been one of the bands who have been fairly regular visitors to our shores. The Australian Tour opens here in Perth on March 11 at Metropolis in Fremantle, which you have played before and is followed by shows in all the major cities around the country – I’m really looking forward to this one because I’ve not caught you guys live before.
Dan: It’s going to be amazing. Perth is quite far away from the rest of the cities…well they are all pretty far away from each other but Perth is another level [laughs]. But we love Australia but more importantly Australia seems to have loved us from the beginning. We are a strange beast in that we were a huge ‘pop’ phenomenon but we were always a rock band. So, when that first album finished, that transient pop audience went somewhere else but we were very lucky to hold on to a global fan base for the band to still function for nearly twenty years. It didn’t happen everywhere though – in places like Germany it just dropped off completely, we’re going back to Scandinavia on this tour but we had to miss it out for the last few tours because we couldn’t sell tickets. But we are still really big in Australia and places like Italy & Spain so we are just so really thankful that the wonderful people in these countries love The Darkness.
Sean: When bands get five or six albums under the belts I always have to ask about set lists. Obviously, the new album will heavily influence the set list, as will the fan favourites but how do you select the rest? It must be hard when you have to drop a personal favourite from the live set.
Dan: I know, it is tough. I fight tooth and nail sometimes for songs and people think “why is he doing that”, it’s just the fact I love playing them so much [laughs]. As long as I get to play ‘Give It Up’ in a set, which is a track off the first album, then I’m happy to do whatever really. That song is pretty special to me.
Sean: You mentioned Italy just now and I was messaging a good friend of mine earlier, as he is a big fan of The Darkness & of you in particular and he wanted me to ask what the attraction of playing at Alcatraz in Milan is. It’s your most played venue in Italy apparently.
Dan: I don’t know what it is really. We did two nights there a couple of tours ago and it’s just an awesome space. It’s the perfect size for us you know – it’s big enough to put a decent production in as well as fit three of four thousand people in too and it’s all standing as well. It’s got that old school kind of club show feel to it…
Sean: …Like a bigger version of The Astoria or somewhere like that?
Dan: I guess so, yeah. I tell you what it’s like, the Brixton Academy. If you can imagine the Brixton Academy without the top tier. It’s such a great venue.
Sean: I was hoping to squeeze a couple of my regular questions in if I may; If I could book you a table at a restaurant and you could invite a few people from the music world, dead or alive, to join you for dinner who would you invite?
Dan: This is really easy… The restaurant would be Terre à Terre, which is a vegan restaurant in Brighton and I would have Paul McCartney there and also John Lennon [laughs]… so there would be us three and in that imaginary situation they would consider me the Bob Dylan of their generation [laughs]… not the Dan Hawkins of their generation.
Sean: Poor old George & Ringo would be looking through the window wondering what you three were writing and discussing…
Dan: They could go next door. There’s a good Indian Restaurant next door [laughs].
Sean: So in the digital world of playlists we sometimes forget the humble but wonderful ‘album’. What was the last album you listened to?
Dan: Wolf Alice’s last album… I think it was ‘Visions of a Life’. Because it’s so easy to click ‘BUY’ I tend not to. If I’ve been recommended an album, then I’ll buy it but I don’t consume music like most other people do. If someone tells me I really need to listen to an album then I’ll buy it. Back in the day we had ‘Melody Maker’ and ‘NME’ telling us what was good & bad and we would have labels you would follow and you would pretty much know you would like something on it – you knew what you were getting if you were buying a ‘Soft Pop’ album or a ‘Creation Records’ album and we don’t really have that any more so it’s important to spread the word.
Sean: Easy one to wrap up with Dan, if you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Dan: ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles. Only because it’s the most performed track of all time, therefore it will generate the most amount of money [laughs]
Sean: That one or ‘happy birthday’ and you’d be set for life…[laughs]
Dan: I think ‘Yesterday’ maybe the most covered song if I remember rightly.
Sean: I was looking through the accolades you guys collected in the early days; Kerrang, Metal Hammer, BRITS but you’re the first person I’ve interviewed who has won a Smash Hits Poll Winners Party Award [laughs]
Dan: [laughs] Those were the days, hey!
Sean: Thank you so much for your time Dan. We would love to wish you and the rest of the guys all the best with the wonderful ‘Easter is Cancelled’ album and we can’t wait to see you all over here in March for the tour.
Dan: It’s been great mate. We are really looking forward to it. Thanks a lot.
‘EASTER IS CANCELLED’ AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2020
WED 11 MARCH – METROPOLIS, FREMANTLE
FRI 13 MARCH – ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY
SAT 14 MARCH – FORUM, MELBOURNE
SUN 15 MARCH – THE GOV, ADELAIDE
WED 18 MARCH – THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE
FRI 20 MARCH – POWERSTATION, AUCKLAND
Tickets on sale at https://sbmpresents.com/tour/thedarkness
