Richard Hawley Interview

After 30 years helping to landscape Sheffield’s music scene Richard Hawley’s seventh studio album has achieved his highest album chart yet. A musician whose career has always held high critical acclaim, he was instrumental in Brit Pop with the band Longpigs then went on to join Pulp for a short time. Alongside his solo career he has a tapestry of session work including Elbow, All Saints, Hank Marvin and Arctic Monkeys. For a man who is held in such high esteem by others and optimises rock star cool, when we speak to him he is faultlessly courteous and completely entrancing.

How was it performing at Latitude after breaking your leg?

Yeah I was on crutches, there was a load of old mates and stuff around, it was lovely to see them anyway but they were all quite shocked to see me with a pot on my leg and in a wheelchair. Guy Garvey (Elbow) wheeled me on, he was dressed in one of these high visibility shirts, we looked like that couple off Little Britain.

I was just glad throughout the whole thing I didn’t pull any gigs. I didn’t want to spoil it for everybody in the band and crew but also the audience who have given their money, love and time to come and see us. A lot of people these days, they cry off a tour or whatever and end up in A&E because they have broken a nail, you know what I mean.

You said of your latest record that you deliberately limited yourself with regards to instrumentation, how did it change the way you wrote and arranged?

I think that the fundamental thing, I still wrote the songs in my head, but then a lot of the songs were based from jam sessions. I would just play a song with the guys and we would come up with a bit that would work for certain sections. It was definitely a hands on record, for the most of it anyway you could see the whites of each other’s eyes in the room. It wasn’t like I would lay some guitar down then leave it for a month because that’s the bit where we put the 90-piece orchestra, it wasn’t like that. It was just old fashioned really but I really liked it. A lot of it is recorded live, just us together in a room and I loved that, it was the way I used to make records a long long time ago.

You have just produced Duane Eddy’s new album Road Trip, how has that turned out?  
I love it. I think it’s a great record. I know he is happy with it. He’s not recorded in a studio for 25 years before that and the previous record that he had done was with pop star fans of his like Paul McCartney and George Harrison and all that, it was awful. I’m being honest about it, it was a truly tragic record.

It’s one of those records that I was so glad to have made, to repay a massive debt that I owe Duane. We have become very good friends, I speak to him on the phone, as my wife reminds me when she shows me the phone bill. He is a great artist and he is someone who I think has been criminally neglected and criminally ripped off by the music industry. It was good to pay respect, but not just do it out of that because it’s got some musical merit. I think we have pushed things forward for him without introducing dance music or electronica. Its very sort of much a representation of what he does as an artist but very slightly updated that’s all.

Are you at all involved in Pulp's one-off reunion at Sheffield arena in December?

I don’t know yet, its been talked about but I might be in Australia so I’m not sure. I might be in Australia in December or January, if I’m here, call me old fashioned but I’m there but it’s not certain yet in any way.

You are politically outspoken and a supporter of 38degrees.org, what does the site do?

That and AVAZZ.org. It’s very much for people who want to have a voice and who would literally like to sign petitions for things they want brought up in parliament. The interesting thing about it is if you get 100 thousand signatures it forces parliament to debate the issue so it can’t just be a motion tabled by one MP, the whole of the house has to debate that issue, whether it be climate change, badger culling or the government trying to sell off woodland. I personally think that some of the issues, not everything, but a lot of the issues that they bring up are very important to hold onto what is Britain. It’s humanitarian, it’s issues about what its like to be a human being around the world. It’s a positive use of the internet to me instead of it being about popularity contests like Facebook, which personally I don’t have too much to do with as I find it too weird.

I think it’s a positive use of the internet where people who want to have a voice can. The thing that happened during the Thatcher years was that she demolished the concept of union, not just unions but the concept that if we stick together we can effect change and I think it’s an interesting time at the minute where the internet can be seen as such a negative thing but actually there are lots of things out there very positive. An international and national community that we can communicate just by signing that petition, just say I agree with that. Its not like you are in a party or anything.

Do you think people are less politically aware than they have been in the past?

Yes definitely. Like I said before our concept of union, not just unions like workers unions, I think a lot of people feel very alone. They feel that it’s pointless to bring up any concerns about an issue because they will just get ignored and the only time there opinion is asked is every time an election comes up and they are asked to put their X marks the spot. It’s because of the internet that that’s changed.

It’s no longer about left or right, it’s about right or wrong now to me. Whether it be about things I find abhorrent like wailing, they don’t have anything to do with my music as such, it’s just me as a human being, as a man I feel it’s important to act on. I come from a culture that was smashed by Thatcher’s politics and everything, my family were steelworkers and still all the female members of my family, young and old, are all nurses and they are going through all this hell now. It’s good that it’s not just them fighting alone to preserve the NHS, you’ve got actually the whole country. Whether you agree or not, if you don’t agree you just don’t sign. It’s that simple.

I think we have run into a lot of social problems as a result of people not being politically engaged with their own environment. Environment is everything, it’s where you live and where you’re brought up. It informs everything that makes you a person and to try and improve that or make things better is the goal of humanity isn’t it? There is so much hypocrisy now, real dirty hypocrisy. The whole bankers thing is really distressing, I find the fact that a kid who nicks a pair of trainers in a riot gets two years and bankers who quite clearly break all moral laws and actual laws of the land walk away scot free. That hypocrisy will come to bite us in the arse in the future. Young people, they see it, they’re not stupid. They see it and they know, it’s very confusing for people of all ages, if you steal from Tesco you get 18 months for theft or whatever but if you rob an entire country you get f-all, that’s just not right. 

These people who are in power now, they are very intelligent financial manoeuvres but they aren’t very good social engineers at all, its really pore. The seeds that they are sowing, I think they are very dangerous ones. The flowers of evil will definitely bloom there. I grew up on them council estates, I know what happens, thank God for music for me because it kept me from robbing cars and doing things I shouldn’t be doing.

You have always had critical acclaim and respect through a long career; would you want to be a musician in the purely commercial scale, i.e that have come through with the introduction of reality talent shows etc? 

There are times when the exposures is right and there are times when it’s not necessary. The funny thing is I heard Elton John on the radio and I must be getting old as I agree with him. He was asked a point blank question about what he thought about X-Factor and he said it’s completely the wrong way about becoming successful.  What you need to do is get in a van with your mates and travel up and down the motorway, that’s how to do it. The thing is you get the reward without any of the work, it doesn’t last because it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a castle made of sand and when you’ve got people who are expert manipulators like Simon Cowell, he will chew them up and spit them out. It’s quite an ugly thing to watch. Its not the right way to achieve your goals, it’s the cheapest, but your not going to become whichever artist your meant to because they work for it. It just doesn’t involve any of the components it takes to have a long artistic life. It’s the antithesis of it in fact. I feel sorry for the kids that win it, the ones that are lucky are the ones that don’t, and also to be quite frank I find that whole point and laugh culture disgusting, it makes my skin crawl, I don’t like it at all.

What else would you like to achieve in life?

Well they will all come you see. My grandfather used to say ‘let everything come towards you slowly son’ and that’s my life moto. Things will happen I’m sure, an interesting project will come around, there are a few things in the boil now. I wish I could spend more time at sea. I got a great taste for that when I did a radio show and we all got on a boat and went whale and dolphin watching. Just to have more time to experience natural things I guess. That’s not really an ambition as such, that’s just something I can do if I can get off my arse. 

You have been a touring musician essentially since you were 14, could you ever stop?

I think it’s too late in the day for me to go for that media studies degree, you know what I mean? It is my blood, it’s not just in my blood, it is my blood. Some of us are lifers you see. I was discussing this with Paul Weller when I saw him at a festival, ‘oh its you again’ we were joking and winding each other up.

It depends on your goals you see, mines been a long-term thing that I just wanted to carry on and earn the right to make another record. I became a musician to avoid having a career not as a career move. I see a lot of younger musicians who take up the guitar as a career move and you can see the business plan in their heads almost. The whole music thing, its all random. I think if you put your heart into your music and you’re not into it for financial reward, as the financial sides not always great, but sometimes they can be. You have to be careful, one of the most filthiest words in the English language is compromise and once you’ve compromised you can’t go back.

Published in Yorkshire Evening Post