An Interview with The Darkness

Pulse was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a recent teleconference with Justin Hawkins and Dan Hawkins of The Darkness and find out about their next album, their tour, their sense of humor, and more… Here are a few of the questions asked and answered:

The first question is from John Dugan with Time Out Chicago.

Q: I wanted to ask you guys who is sort of the master of your finely-honed tongue-in-cheek humor which I think is one of the things that really distinguishes The Darkness from every other, tight-trousered rock band is that there is a sense of humor behind a lot of what you do.

Justin Hawkins: Yeah, I’ve seen a few bands that have tight trousers and do guitar rock and, I know what you’re saying because what I felt was that there was a certain earnestness about the band I’m talking about and I sort of realized that, that is what makes us different in some ways, but I wouldn’t be able to identify any one member as the master of it.

Because it has to make us all laugh and cry in equal measures before we do it and that’s why we don’t do an album a year because collectively we have to all feel really confident about everything we do.

So and it has to take that particular box that you’ve just mentioned there so I think we’re all masters of it, I mean, we’ve all kind of had very similar upbringings and three of us are from the same town and, you know, we all hit a point in our lives where we thought well, there’s no point in trying out-Radiohead Radiohead.

There’s no point in trying to out-Coldplay the Coldplay band and there’s no point in trying to do battle with bands that are younger and better-looking than us, you know, so we might as well do what we like, because when I got to 25 I thought it was game over from there.

I saw a lot of people coming into the music scene who were 18 and making me feel old, so at that point you just got to do what, true to what turns you on, and you have to sort of just do your thing and forget about everybody else and we all hit that point at the same time and decided to do Darkness.

 

This question comes from Gary Graff of Billboard.com:

Q: Can you give our readers a sense of what the new album sounds like?

 

Dan Hawkins: Hello, everyone. Yeah, I guess it’s kind of … we’re kind of trying to get back through the more organic sort of rock sound of The Darkness, hence we’ve kind of done a joint production with Nick Brine. He’s an engineer that’s worked with us a lot rather than going for a big-name producer, we decided to do it ourselves as per the first record really.

You know, we kind of… we just wanted to develop the songs and make sure they were really spot-on and kind of basically take a minimal approach across the board apart from when we need to go really over the top so yeah, I guess it’s kind of following-on from the first record rather than the second I suppose, you know, which was kind of more about the production than the songs probably.

 

Alan Sculley with Last Word Features asks:

Q: You know, I’ve read several articles that have talked about the band since it got reformed and you got going again with touring and recording and all but no one in the articles has really explained how the reunion actually happened so I thought I’d do that one and find out exactly how it went from Point A to Point B to where you are now.

Dan Hawkins: …It’s kind of well it’s kind of a long story I suppose but I guess, you know, we fell out really badly and we kind of I think it was a couple of family meetings, etcetera, etcetera, not AA meetings I might add, only certain members of our family are alcoholics, not all of them. I’d say at least less than 40%.

Anyway, so basically there’s, yeah, we kind of messed up a couple of occasions and Justin came to a band that I was in called Stone Gods. We played in London and he came down to see us play.

I went down to see his band play when they were playing at Brighton’s where I was living and I might have had a few too many and might have gotten on stage and ran through an old Darkness song and I think that kind of fueled the fire really.

And then it got to Christmas time at the end of that year and then I ended up because we (thought of them) we were getting on better, I ended up staying at Justin’s over the Christmas period and the inevitable happened really.

We kind of did what we’ve been doing since we were about eight years old just, you know, write songs together and it kind of snowballed from there and then we kind of weren’t supposed to really do anything this year but we had this offer from Download to play the festival in England.

It was a really good billing and it was supporting Def Leppard and it seemed like the perfect time to just go for it and we thought well, let’s go for it…

Justin Hawkins: Yeah, so the whole plan was always to do the album and release the album in 2012. That was always the plan from Day 1 when we first started writing.

But the offer that we couldn’t refuse came in which kind of (in the) favor of our timetable sort of, I mean, actually all it did was give us the impetus to get things moving a bit quicker and in fact we’re still on schedule for the 2012 release that we’re all hoping for.

But we’ve managed to shoehorn a few festival appearances and a U.K. tour in 2011 which was unexpected but a lovely side bonus.

 

The next question is from Nick Freed with Consequence of Sound.

Q: Okay. I just wanted to ask, I know in sort of a hiatus with the band, you both did a lot of work, you know, with other artists, writing songs, producing, things like that and I know that you Justin worked with – you actually wrote a couple songs – for Meat Loaf’s new album which I’m actually very interested to hear because I loved that album and the songs that you had on it were really fantastic.

And I guess what was it like, you know, working with these other artists and how has that kind of influenced your – the new album – and the way you write songs now and things like that?

 

Justin Hawkins: Yeah, oh it’s a good question actually because that writing for other people opportunity was, you know, started with Meat Loaf really and familiar anywhere. It was kind of – it was really nerve-wracking – because I had to go out to Calabasas and go and join a writing camp.

And it was sort of, you know, walking into a room full of people who have written loads of really great songs and trying to take part and make yourself heard in a room like that was quite daunting really.

But I bumped into – well I met – (Eric Malu) there who’s obviously the singer from (Foxy Suzanne) and I think that the weeks I went to that writing camp, they wanted people who have (unintelligible) for their performance and try and bring an element of that to the writing.

Because obviously Meat Loaf is, you know, whereas a lot of vocalists are kind of like 50% vocal technique and 50% performance inflection. He’s more 90% inflection and 10%, you know, technique.

I mean that in a loving way really because that was the thinking behind us getting involved in the first place so, you know, grateful for that and then yeah, we – as soon as I saw (Eric) – I was aware of his other work and I’ve been following that band on YouTube so I was like yeah, I want to work with you.

It just kind of felt like we were the least experienced writers in that camp and it was kind of like so it kind of made sense for us to sort of get together and try and get through it together. It’s the only way that we wouldn’t get not really bullied but, you know, we weren’t (unintelligible) searches because we weren’t experience enough.

Yeah, so I just went to them – (Eric) mostly – and we wrote kind of five or six songs together. We were really prolific and a couple of them stuck so we got lucky I think. Yeah, it was just a great experience in the sunshine and just, you know, really loved it and from that I ended-up getting a song on Adam Lambert’s album as well.

That was a great one because it was 100% me. It wasn’t a co-writer or anything. It was just like I have a song and I think everybody in L.A. wanted to get a song on that first Adam Lambert album and we got the opener so I was quite lucky with that release.

Yeah, and then to take those – it’s hard to describe – how it affected The Darkness thing because The Darkness is a totally different way of writing, you know, it’s me and my brother kind of completing each other if you know what I mean, like some of the like I can’t do the things that he does and he can’t do the things that I do so we have to find a way to accommodate each other.

And the only song where that really pays off is when you get a, you know, a magical Darkness song is when it’s genuinely half me and half him, you know, so it takes a while to get the balance right and it kind of felt like all the experience that we’ve had in the hiatus became irrelevant.

We kind of went back to Square 1 and, you know, because you can’t rely on any tricks or you’re not writing from somebody else’s perspective, you’re writing from your heart and that’s actually a lot harder than it is to just write a song, you know, for somebody so a great experience.

It’s hard to describe how it really helped, you know, if anything it kind of hindered because, you know, when you start at the dots, we brought a lot of stuff together from our earlier kind of imaginings, you know, and then put it all on the table and said look, this is what we got, let’s try and make it work.

You know, so in the hiatus me and my brother were kind of doing stuff and, you know, sharing our creativity with other people and you’ve got nothing in the tanks left when you get back together. You know, it’s the kind of thing oh god, I wish I hadn’t given away music again and it’d be nice to use that.

But so you just have to find more and there’s always songs out there. It’s just scary just to sit there with a mix and no ideas and wait for something to happen.

 

Joe Daly with Nervous Breakdown asked:

 Q: Hey you guys have done a good number of European dates since the reunion and this is going to be your first U.S. tour since 2004. Do you notice any big differences between European audiences and U.S. audiences?

Justin Hawkins: Well historically looking back I just remember there being a lot more of the kind of mania. Is mania the right word? I don’t know, our fondest memories of audiences is from the States. I mean, there’s one time in San Diego and somebody sitting there, they left me all (child up) on the stage and then we sang with him for a bit and then put him out on the crowd surf back to the back of the auditorium and then home again.

And I’m going hoping that he’ll be there actually. I wonder how old he’ll be now. He must be probably a teenager. He’s probably old enough to make his own decisions now.

I wonder if he’ll opt to come and see us again so yeah, I mean, I just remember it feeling a lot realer and it kind of being overwhelmed by it in (certain times) and thinking it was exactly why we were kind of – we wanted to do it – in the first place.

You know, we always hoped that America would be a great place for us and on that first tour, it felt like it was going to be, you know?

 

And the final question is from Dustin Schoof with Express-Times.

Q: …The first time you sat down with Dan and started throwing out riffs and ideas for the newer songs…What was that feeling like for you to be kind of back in that mindset, sitting down, writing again and just being able to kind of create music together after years of not doing it?

Justin Hawkins: Well, to be perfectly honest, it felt natural anyway because if it had been strained anyway then it wouldn’t have happened and everything, you know, there’s too much water under the bridge.

But in the end, it was just obvious that it was going to work and, you know, the first thing that we write was, you know, I don’t think it’s, you know, I’m not – I am a pretty modest person – but one of the greatest things we’ve done, you know, it was instantly kind of oh, this is great, you know, and it ended-up being easily the most popular thing we’ve got in the set of some new stuff.

And it’s really a real song-y song, you know, and it was a natural songey song, flowing thing, sort of the nearest thing it would be geez, it was dot, really, we were really, I mean, it helped is that we found the song that was awesome to begin with, you know, and I always thought that if you’re writing stuff, then you’re pretty much just sitting there waiting for an idea to come along.

But you have to have the guitar in your hand to catch it, you know, and so it was really lucky that that happened at that time, you know, but just straight away we were feeling it, you know, and there was no banging our heads against a brick wall, no going down the blind alleys with riffs and ideas and lyrics and all the stuff that happened afterwards.

It was perfectly normal when you’re trying to get a body of work where you love every single song, there’s going to be some blind alleys, you know?

There’s lots more to learn about The Darkness, so definitely spend some time at:

www.theactualdarkness.com

www.facebook.com/thedarknessofficial

www.twitter.com/darknessactual

~ and catch the band live February 3 at Paradise Rock Club!

 

 

Special thanks to Bari Lieberman and Moderator Libby Coffey of the Mitch Schneider Organization (MSO).

Photo courtesy of Marianne Harris