ROCK’N’ROLL CONFIDENTIAL
Sheffield’s Sinatra talks a new album, time travel, and guitars beyond value.
“MY DAD used to say, ‘Son – stay on the surfboard.’” Ever philosophical, north country guitar man Richard Hawley has ridden his wave as a solo artist since 2001, using his smoky croon, melodic potency and steady hand to express the beyondness of the everyday, with full fealty to the romance and roots of rock’n’roll. New album In This City They Call You
Love continues this tradition, with its sweet but sturdy songs of love, dreams and hope. Additionally, his Sheffield-set musical drama Standing At The Sky’s Edge has now opened in the West End. “Great music never disappoints,” he says. “It’s like the tablets from the fucking mountain. It’s the thing I believe in passionately and truly…”
Hello, Richard. What are you doing?
I’m trying to learn to sing Fats Domino’s Walking To New Orleans, with conviction, just for my own pleasure. Fats, the way he sings – fuck! Literally reduces me to nothing, like I’m some kind of vapour or something, not even that. It’s good to have these compass points to aim for as a human being. Fats, and Santo & Johnny, those two are just pivotal to the fulcrum in my head, and Little Walter, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Muddy Waters… music resets, it’s like a phone when it’s fucked. You just turn it off and turn it back on again, heheh, and everything is all right! So be the fulcrum, ignore the seesaw, because it’s going to happen anyway.
Why’s the new album called In This City They Call You Love?
In Sheffield, which is my muse and will always be, people do call you ‘love’. Every single day of my life I hear the word ‘love’, ha ha! It’s the language that we use, very much a ‘here’ thing. Then you read the news, which is enormously depressing, and you just seem to see the word ‘hate’. So it’s that, and voices singing together. Something positive, and I don’t mean this in a soft arse way. This concept of unity seems to be something that’s kind of missing out of the world. So some sort of healing, I think was going off. From what? Probably the last few years, we’ve all been battered and bruised, but it’s not a lockdown album.
How does it feel to have a play running in the West End?
We thought at best we’d get a week at the Crucible in Sheffield, now it’s opened in the West End, fucking bonkers! It’s not a happy ride for people, y’know, there’s no jazz hands, no tapdancing routines and all that shit, it’s dark as fuck. But at the end, there is hope. And there’s no political or moral finger-wagging, there’s nobody on a soapbox. All it is, is telling the story as
