Richard Hawley
Sheffield’s finest crooner has transcended his indie origins to become a minor treasure of British music, and his celeb anecdotes aren’t bad either. Claire Mahoney listens in.
What does gaffer tape, Lambert & Butler and Dame Shirley Bassey have in common? Well, they all feature in a priceless backstage story involving the singer Richard Hawley.
Hawley, who was performing with Shirley at the Electric Proms back in 2009 at the Camden Roundhouse, was one of only two other people invited backstage to meet the Welsh diva – the other being the Manics’ James Dean Bradfield. Shirley, like many artists, liked to enjoy an aftershow cigarette.
“The smoke from her Lambert & Butler kept setting the fire alarm off,” laughs Hawley. “And the bouncers kept saying to me, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to go outside’. I mean, can you imagine me and Shirley Bassey going outside the roundhouse to have a cigarette? So I got Gordon, one of my roadies, to get a plastic pint pot and a roll of gaffer tape and I sat on his shoulders and put this pint pot over the smoke alarm and I said to the bouncers, ‘is that alright?’ and they said, ‘yeah fine’. So me and Shirley just carried on chatting while she carried on smoking her Lambert & Butler and drinking Asti Spumante.”
This story is typical of the spit-and-sawdust approach to stardom that Hawley has. In the space of our half-hour conversation he moves easily between talk of playing with the likes of Scott Walker and Nancy Sinatra to walking his dogs in the local graveyard. Like most great lyricists, Hawley finds romance and depth in the most ordinary of things. Yet his sumptuous ballads swell with echoes of Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison delivered in Hawley’s warm and timeless baritone.
Hawley has just released his eighth studio album, Further, which he says aims to capture a sense of the past within the spirit of moving forward. “After the end of the last record, I knew that I had reached a point in my life where I needed to learn some new skills. I guess it’s a landmark thing. I wasn’t even really sure that I would make another record.”
For the last few years, he’s been busy writing soundtracks for film – including last year’s Funny Cow (with Maxine Peake) and Denmark (which stars Rafe Spall) along with a theatre product at Sheffield’s Crucible. “I hadn’t even thought about making a record for years,” says the 52-year-old. “I definitely wanted the record to be straight to the point, so I wanted to test myself to be really succinct. For me, the things that I’ve done musically that have had the best outcome are those when you have loads of great ideas but absolutely fuck all time to do them in.”
Further is a neat mix of gritty guitar licks and gentle, country-style shanties, along with some killer trademark ballads. But it has a more wistful and lighter touch than some of his earlier work. “I think you have to create music first and foremost that satisfies yourself and that you believe in,” he says. It was this self-belief which, when asked to write a song for Shirley Bassey, led to the smouldering ballad After The Rain in 2009. “I went for a walk with the dogs and I was thinking about it, and my instinct told me that everyone was going to write one of these big bombastic songs she is famed for; I thought, I bet she hasn’t sung that many quiet ballads.” The risk paid off.
Despite having worked with some of the music business’ biggest names, Hawley has remained resolutely down to earth and stills lives in his home city of Sheffield. In fact Further is the first of his albums that hasn’t been named after a local location or landmark.
“My love of where I live is born out of the fact that I didn’t have the same choices as some of my contemporaries. I’m a steelworker’s son and my dad was in the union. Ultimately, where you come from massively reduces any choice you’ve got. You react to what is around you and think it is often out of hardship that you get the best creatively. Basically, I don’t think any rich person ever sat down and wrote a great rock’n’roll song.”
Richard Hawley, Great Hall, Cardiff University Students Union, Thu 3 Oct. Tickets: £27.50. Info: 029 2078 1458 / www.cardiffstudents.com