Fronting The Darkness gave the former advertising jingle writer fame, huge commercial success and a collection of catsuits, but that brought with it a downside that included an early band split and serious health issues. He tells Classic Rock all about it and more besides.
It was one of the greatest, silliest rock images of the early 2000s, and perfectly summed up The Darkness: their showboating lead singer Justin Hawkins, wearing a shiny catsuit, riding over the audience on the back of a white tiger stage prop, like a cross between Dave Lee Roth and Mowgli from The Jungle Book.
The Darkness were a loud, unashamed, spandex-clad rock band in the era of Coldplay and The White Stripes. Their 2003 debut album, Permission To Land, reached No.1 in the UK; its flagship single I Believe In A Thing Called Love went to No.2, and they even challenged Slade and Wizzard with their seasonal hit Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End).
The brainchild of brothers Justin and guitarist Dan Hawkins, it was elder sibling Justin’s falsetto and five-octave range, his absurd humour and extravagant fashion sense that grabbed the headlines. Many seasoned rock fans got it, while others muttered disparagingly and went back to their old Gillan LPs. But The Darkness also crossed over to a pop audience who didn’t give two hoots for Deep Purple, never mind Gillan.
The Darkness underwent a messy separation in 2006, then reunited in 2011. Since then, Justin Hawkins has straddled the worlds of rock (with five more Top 20 Darkness albums), Saturday-night TV (via his stint on reality music show The Masked Singer) and YouTube, where his Justin Hawkins Rides Again channel has close to half a million subscribers.
In October, The Darkness celebrate Permission To Land’s 20th anniversary with a bumper reissue (reviewed this issue) and a birthday tour. Today, Justin Hawkins is talking to Classic Rock from his adopted home of Thurgau, in eastern Switzerland. He’s not the only émigré British rock star in town, though.
“I’m about an hour away from where Phil Collins lives,” he divulges. “That’s why I’m here. It gets awkward since he’s taken out that injunction…”
It’s twenty years since the band’s debut album Permission To Land. How has it been going back to it again?
We are writing a new Darkness album, so now is a good time to listen to it. I like it, but I don’t feel like the same person that recorded it. But I tend to go through an identity crisis every seven to ten years. So that’s like two whole existences in my life.
Everything in The Darkness’s world seems accelerated, though. You split up after the second album then reunited five years later.
I think that’s because we weren’t equipped for all this. We came from normal workin
