“
When I heard Lizzy for the first time, I thought, ‘Great, all the best bits of ABBA, without the flabba!'"
Screamin' J Hawkins: The Darkness frontman cranks out some monster riffage
doing it, and it greatly adds to the band’s take home pay. This seems fair enough, and if fans want it, then who’s to argue? There’s a great story about why Rufus loves Frankie so much. The band was doing a show in Sweden and a football was lobbed up onstage. Justin, being Justin, did a few tricks before kicking it back into the crowd. The balls made its way back, landing in front of Frankie, whose steeltoed cowboy boots dispatched it, with great force, into the face of a woman in the front row, leaving the band both mortified and in tears laughing.
LAST CALL
The first order of business is a radio interview that Justin insists I sit in on, much to the bafflement of the genial interviewer, but she’s a good sport. There’s nothing wrong with the questions, but we’re like a couple of schoolboys, and I am naturally in tatters, although Justin will later declare it good work. Once the soundcheck is half completed, the VIP punters are brought in. “I want things to be perfect as a cut diamond, not a piece of old coal. I live for my fans, write that down!” Justin bellows beforehand and, if the band feel uncomfortable in anyway, it doesn’t show. They give out a song and then pick some names out of the hat to play with them. Two likely lads – Dazzler and Foxy, apparently – add guitar and vocal to ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’. Disappointingly, for the sake of this story, they’re great, and Justin is grinning throughout, wondering if he might get a night off. The Q&A session is a bit stilted; perhaps the fans are slightly nervous, but we do get a shocking story about some unnamed “rock legend”, who apparently tore up a photo offered to him for signing by a terminally ill child. I say unnamed, but I’m not naming him here, although he possibly employs his own hairdresser. Ally, Justin’s hard working and long suffering assistant – a woman who could not have been nicer to me if she tried – hands me the microphone to help out. Because of where we are, I ask Dan about Thin Lizzy, as he regularly sports their familiar logo on his t-shirts. “We were really into ABBA as kids,” he says, “and whenever there’s a guitar solo on an ABBA song, they’re always harmonised, with a similar kind of tone. So when I heard Lizzy for the first time, I thought, ‘Great, all the best bits of ABBA, without the flabba!’ I was pissed in Camden and my mate had the shirt on, which I thought was cool, so we swapped. That was the only good t-shirt I had for the early gigs, so people saw that as my trademark, which meant I didn’t have to worry about it!” The photos taken care off, Frankie and I go down to the corner for a glass of wine. A thoughtful and considered man, he regrets the split: “Male pride is an awful thing, that caused a lot of the
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problems, that and bad management.” But he’s enjoying it now. “Touring is harder when you’ve done an album where you realise after a month that it’s not as good as you thought it was,” he says. “But I think this album stands up to the first one.” You hear stories about bands with brothers – everyone knows who I’m talking about – who just can’t get on. How do the Hawkins men do it? “They have great parents, so they’ve got very strong ideals and principles. I feel very privileged to be working with these two amazing, talented guys, and if you wished for someone to play drums for us, you couldn’t have imagined anyone more ideal than Rufus.” Young Rufus – a veritable horse of a man who hits harder than the death of a pet. With his background, the potential to be an arsehole was enormous, but he’s an incredibly nice fellow and a credit, as my Ma used to say, to his parents. Frankie is quick to agree. “Of all the people I know, he just has no arsehole in him. He’s able to be very mature and immature. Justin has that too, the ability to access his inner child, which is so important when it comes to being creative. That’s what we all love about him.” Frankie Poullain – does that translate as ‘The Frenchman who loved chickens’? – reserves a special appreciation for Hawkins’ lyrical acumen: “I’m always so surprised that people don’t read Justin’s lyrics and appreciate how brilliant he is. He’s such a great lyricist and it is very nuanced humour. If he were French they’d love him. Serge Gainsbourg was celebrated for that, the word play.” The Dublin show is a riot and Hawkins seems to be having the time of his life. There are handstands; guitar-wrangling; a cavort into the crowd on shoulders; even a few push-ups. Worryingly, he points at me during the fellatio section of ‘Solid Gold’, which engenders some strange eyeballing from the front row. Justin introduces me as the greatest writer in the world, which even I think is overplaying things. The smattering of slow claps that follows is the sound one might hear on mentioning beastiality in a eulogy. Afterwards, there’s a ferry to be caught, I say my goodbyes and thanks to the brothers with vague promises to meet up in London; get a hug from head honcho Andy Shillito, a lovely man who gave me a well-deserved bollicking on night one for being over-eagerly stupid; and receive a treasured Darkness tea towel and mug set from Jo, who refuses to take any cash, because that’s the kind of decent people I’m dealing with. The ferry, of course, doesn’t stop Frankie and Rufus venturing out for one last drink. Poullain gets mobbed in the pub and Rufus politely fights off the affections of a very ardent admirer. When we get a minute to ourselves, he discusses his Dad with obvious affection (“Why wouldn’t they go out on tour and have a good time? He’s still a bit of an animal and he introduces me as his wild child.”) The time has come, they’ve got to go. We embrace and Tim and I return, rather enthusiastically, to the bar. The circus is leaving town, but this clown doesn’t want to go home.