The New Cue #329 October 23: Richard Hawley
"If you’re going to turn into a fucking balloon, you better make sure someone’s holding the string."
Good morning!
Hope your weekend was lovely jubbly. Today, we have a thoroughly enjoyable chat with Richard Hawley to kickstart your week. As well as being one of this country’s finest songwriters, Richard is also a reliably great interviewee. Alongside his own tales and stories, he offers up his tips on how to not turn into a “gargantuan arsehole”, advice everyone needs from time to time. Not New Cue subscribers though, you’re all wonderful. Are you a paying subscriber though? Mmm…
We’ll see you on Friday for some bumper Recommender shenanigans - before then, feel free to rectify your subscriber status by clicking Subscribe Now below.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Richard Hawley
Singer, songwriter, guitarist and owner of the best-maintained quiff in Britain, Richard Hawley first rose to prominence as guitarist in ‘90s Britpop act the Longpigs. After that group spluttered to end, he joined Pulp in the early 2000s while also working as a session guitarist, then launching his own solo career with a self-titled mini-album in 2001 shortly followed by the sublime Late Night Final in 2001. That record 50s-flecked, drizzle-soaked balladry still sounds enchanting, doesn’t it?:
Alongside two Mercury Prize nominations and four Top Ten albums, Hawley’s gone on to work with artists from Arctic Monkeys, Manics and Elbow, to Lisa Marie Presley, Nancy Sinatra and Duane ‘King Of Twang’ Eddie. On Friday, he put out his first ever Greatest Hits compilation. It’s titled Now Then and it seemed like a great excuse for Chris to call him up for a chinwag…
Hi Richard.
Hello mate.
How are you?
Not too bad, thanks. Actually, having said that, I think I’ve broken my ribs.
Jesus, what happened?
I was just on tour with John Grant and I banged into the side of a table. I think it’s just bruised to be fair, but I’m laying very still.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll try my best not to make you laugh uproariously during the interview.
Ha! My wife’s a nurse and she says it’s bruised and to stop whingeing.
Either way, thank you for taking some time out of your convalescence to chat to us. What led you to put out a Greatest Hits at this point in your career?
It’s 25 years since I’ve made my first solo record. Call me old fashioned, but I think that’s a quarter of a century. My manager suggested we have little listen through it all. I never really looked back, I don’t think anybody does. I don’t know if it’s a post-lockdown thing, but it felt like a good idea to gather everything up and then move on from that. The idea has come up before and I’ve always said no, but 25 years seemed to make sense to me. I listened back to a test pressing the other day and it’s a good compilation of songs. [Ed’s note: after checking the numbers, the 25th anniversary of Richard’s first self-titled release won’t actually be until 2026, but who’s counting]
How does it feel for you going back and listening to your first album Late Night Final?
It’s like listening to another human being. It’s a completely different mindset. Those early records, they were definitely the last roll of the dice for me, which I find funny now. I’m a 56-year-old guy, still playing music, which I’ll do till the day I die, and I’m listening to somebody who was 32-years-old who was thinking, ‘I’ll just have one last go at this and then that’ll be it’, shelf-stacking here I come’. It didn’t work out like that and I’m very, very grateful that I’m still doing it.
Coming out of the Longpigs and playing with Pulp, doing session work, did you really think if this didn’t happen then it was all over?
I didn’t think I wasn’t going to play music anymore, but it was the concept of making a career of it. I had a young family and they needed feeding and the options of having an independent music career and being able to feed a family, those things are in the back of your mind. I don’t exaggerate when I say things got very desperate very quickly. I guess it’s a lesson in life that you really don’t know what’s around the corner and things can go tits up very, very quickly. The lesson is to be brave and just keep going, which is what I did. It wasn’t easy. That’s not to say I didn’t get a little help from my friends. I’m sure there’s a famous band that said that. In fact, my godfather Joe Cocker sang that song…
But playing music was always what I wanted to do since I was a kid. I quickly realised I wasn’t going to be an astronaut. Growing up in a council house in Sheffield, that concept quickly disappeared, and I realised I wasn’t going to be centre forward for Sheffield Wednesday either, so the best option that I got was that I was lucky enough that my parents gave me music.
Did having Joe Cocker as your godfather make a career in music seem more plausible as a kid?
My dad and Joe used to fit radiators together for the gas board. They were just really good friends. My dad and Uncle Frank used to step in and play with Joe sometimes and they’d all play together. It’s hard to get your head round knowing what happened with Joe and his life, his career was so massive, but he just used to come and watch dad and Frank play after work in a donkey jacket and on occasion he’d get up and sing onstage with them. No one had a concept that Joe would get up and do that thing at Woodstock [then relatively unknown, Cocker’s performance of With A Little Help From My Friends on the third day of Woodstock is widely credited as the moment that launched his career], that was light years away from where he was. He’d turn up to a gig in a donkey jacket half pissed and proceed to get even more so. But he was lovely, a really nice man. He was one of dad’s best mates.
Having your dad’s best mate become this international star, did that make it seem more achievable for you?
Yeah. But also, I was instilled by my grandfather as well, who was a musical performer as well as being a soldier and a steel worker. These four men: my dad, my grandad, Frank and Joe to a certain degree - I rarely saw him, but he used to pass on stuff to dad to tell me - they told me about the dangers. They told me how the whole fame thing can lead you to very dark places. It can lead to isolation and loneliness and believing that you’re something really important. They instilled in me the idea to basically not disappear of your own fucking arse just because you think you’re something special. If you’re going to turn into a fucking balloon, you better make sure someone’s holding the string. You don’t get anything from giving the big I am and it could disappear at any minute. You’re still the same arsehole you were at the start. You can’t escape that. And I wouldn’t want to. I didn’t have to learn that the hard way because I was taught it.
When I was playing on sessions which you just alluded to, not only did that give me a huge insight into how to record music and how to work quickly. It taught me to not be a cunt, to put it brutally. You have to get on with people and work as part of a team. I won’t name any names because I’m not that kind of person, but I did see what the fame side of things did to certain individuals I worked with and it wasn’t good. When I saw that, I was very clear that if this ever happened to me then I wasn’t going to do that.
Did you lose a sense of yourself prior to that, being in the Longpigs in the ‘90s and seeing that craziness around you?
It’s very quick for that to happen. It’s not a short process, it’s extremely quick, and the minute cocaine and money turns up, you’re completely fucked. It’s a very, very quick journey. You spend your whole life trying to get to that point and then when all those people turn up all of a sudden and they’re your bezzie mates with the cocaine and the bullshit, everything that you were trying to achieve evaporates in seconds. It’s why they call it instant arsehole powder. Thankfully, because of my wife and my friends and family I was quickly drawn back into the fold. I luckily survived it, but a lot of people didn’t. They physically died in that period of time. It’s extremely dangerous.
That’s why when I started my own solo career it was very important that I built up a good group of people around me. Every so many years, I re-sign my publishing deal and the last few times I’ve done it, I sign the deal in the goalmouth at Sheffield Wednesday and we take a photo and all the people involved - my manager, my band, the road crew - they’re all the same people pretty much. And my marriage as well, it’s my 25th wedding anniversary and we’ve been together for 33 years. She deserves a medal as big as a fucking bin lid, and more besides. But to somehow have this gravitational pull that keeps all these people together, it’s a lovely thing.
How much is that grounding and that sense of self down to staying in Sheffield?
I think it’s kind of a rhetorical question in a way. Obviously, the city has changed so much since I was growing up. But there’s still an industrial aspect to it because there’s still a steel works on the outskirts and there’s still a certain level of humility. There’s amazingly brilliant people who can do fabulous things about in the city, but they don’t crow about it. In the city, crowing about stuff is not cool. If you do that, you’re a nob and we’ll sniff you out really quick. If you’re that kind of person, they’ll sniff you out and it will be difficult for you if you’re a gobshite. Being a bighead is a definitely no-no, whatever you’ve achieved.
Recently, I went to see the [Arctic] Monkeys when they played in Sheffield and they all texted me individually to ask if I was coming to see the gig. All of them. There was no management or anything. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll go along and maybe there’ll be a guest area’. They got me a fucking car, man. They drove me straight into the dressing room area next to the tour buses and within five minutes we were having a beer and a joke. They haven’t changed. All that massive success they’ve had, their level of success is up there with Joe’s, it’s huge and I can reliably inform you that they’re not arseholes. They’ve not changed and it’s beautiful to see. And it means I’m right as well! It’s not some kind of myth about this Sheffield idyll that Hawley has invented, it’s true. That level of success they’ve had, not only can it mess with your head, but it can destroy you as a human being. There are examples of that in similar bands where people are gargantuan arseholes. Again, I’m not naming any names, but you see it all of the time. Like I said, if you’re going to turn into a fucking balloon, make sure you’ve got someone to hold that string.
Thank you so much for talking to us Richard, I hope you feel better soon.
I’ll be fine. It’s bruised ribs, I’m being a whinger. If I get a sniffle, I’ve got pneumonia, it’s that typical bloke thing. If I feel a pain somewhere, it’s arse cancer straightaway. Bit of Derek And Clive for you there.
Cheers Richard, take care.
Alright pal, bye!
CC