“‘Ey up, love,” greets the familiarly friendly voice at the end of the phone line.
On first impressions, Richard Hawley is your stereotypical Yorkshireman. Warm, straight to the point, witty. While, of course, he is all of those things, it would be a massive disservice to suggest he is anything near stereotypical.
After a career spanning almost three decades, Hawley has firmly established himself as one of Britain’s most treasured songwriters. With the release of each of his seven solo albums to date, the 49-year-old has become increasingly loved, and deservedly so.
As he prepares to embark on the second-leg of his biggest ever UK tour, the Bard of Sheffield is in career-best form. “To be honest I don’t want to highlight one particular night we have played so far because they were all really good. That sounds like such a fucking dickhead cliché but it really was my favourite tour I have ever done by a mile,” he says.
“And I’ve done loads y’know but it just feels good right now. I love the excitement of not knowing quite what’s going to happen. And also the old post-punk thing of not giving a fuck either way, there’s some juxtaposition in it that I’m still interested in.”
At his show in Leeds before Christmas, Hawley and his band of virtuoso musicians left an audience awed with what appeared relative ease. In between songs from a setlist drawn heavily from his two most recent albums, the cosmic ‘Standing on the Sky’s Edge’ and the more subtly excellent ‘Hollow Meadows’, Hawley pauses for a chat with the crowd, as if in the midst of a night at his local. “The taxi driver told me Leeds was twinned with Las Vegas. They’re the only two places in the world you can pay for sex with chips.”
Hawley has earned such respect from his crowds thanks to the quality of his songs, from the Velvet Underground stomp of ‘Heart of Oak’, to the twisting ‘Which Way’, to the haunting wig out of ‘Down in the Woods’. The set sways from gentle and tender to epic and rocking. Not that he or his band stress over what to play each night.
“I can never really play a greatest hits tour because I’ve never had any fucking hits! We just pick what sounds best. A lot of the album tracks, especially the early stuff, were performed as they were written.
“I’ve maybe played certain songs once. I played them and the lyrics came out at the same time. Loads of the old stuff was like that, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I couldn’t even remember how the fuck they go.”
This February marks 20 years since Jarvis Cocker famously upstaged Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brit Awards with an inimitable wiggle of his arse. At that time Pulp, who Hawley went on to join as guitarist, were at the height of their fame and Sheffield was renown as one of the hottest musical cities in Britain, if not the world.
Since then Hawley has consistently been at the forefront of ensuring that status hasn’t wavered, and it shows no signs of changing any time soon. Last year, Reverend and the Makers released their best album to date, ‘Mirrors’. Milburn are on the verge of selling out a fourth night at the O2 Academy as they celebrate the tenth anniversary of their debut record, ‘Well Well Well’. And then there’s the small matter of Alex Turner, who accepted the Mercury Prize in 2006 by quipping: “Somebody call 999, Richard Hawley’s been robbed,” bringing The Last Shadow Puppets to town for a date at the City Hall in April.
“The city’s a fucking amazing place. I’ve been quietly banging on about it for quite some years. We’ve got 2.6 million trees here. It’s the greenest city in the EU. People think of it as an industrial shithole. That’s bollocks, it isn’t. It’s got loads and loads and loads going for it. I’m just glad that people are catching up.”
Despite enjoying the most successful stage of his career, the wider world still concerns Hawley, who has spoken passionately in the past about his opposition to the austerity measures introduced by the Conservatives.
However, as a keen astronomer, the breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves has served as a reminder of some of the most precious things in life.
“It fucking massively excites me, the thing is I just need someone to explain what it fucking is! All this bad shit is happening. I look on with incredulity at stuff like Donald Trump and David Cameron and the fact they can be even near humanity’s purpose absolutely does my head in massively. But then you read something like that: ionospheric transfers of energy. It’s mind blowing.
“There’s something in between the two that’s really worthwhile. Thank fuck for Glastonbury and things like that. Thank fuck for music and people turning up to listen to musicians playing.”
Thank fuck for Richard Hawley.
FEBRUARY TOUR DATES:
Thu 18th Scunthorpe Baths Hall
Fri 19th York Barbican
Sat 20th Southampton O2 Guildhall
Sun 21st Norwich UEA
Tue 23rd London Hammersmith Eventim Apollo
Wed 24th Manchester O2 Apollo
Sun 28th Cardiff University Great Hall
Rob Conlon
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