Due to the success of their debut album, 2003’s Permission To Land, The Darkness have been some of the unlikely success tales of the early 2000s – and some of the divisive. In 2013, frontman Justin Hawkins, guitarist Dan Hawkins, bassist Frankie Poullain and authentic drummer Ed Graham seemed again on their dizzying rise and the madness that got here with it.
Ask the members of The Darkness to select one reminiscence which defines that loopy interval within the early 2000s after they went from hopelessly retro no-marks to unlikely superstars in what appeared like 10 seconds flat, and their reply is surprising.
It isn’t the second after they heard that their debut album, 2003’s Permission To Land, had gone to No.1 within the UK. Neither is it the wealth and excesses that subsequently got here with it. It’s not the time they picked up three Brit awards on one evening. And it’s definitely not the ill-fated headline slot on the 2004 Studying Pageant that successfully closed the curtain on their imperial interval.
No, the factor that actually sticks within the thoughts of The Darkness is the very first time Justin Hawkins pulled on his catsuit, for a gig within the again room of the Fortress pub in Tooting Bec, South London, on November 16, 2001.
“The catsuit was one thing I wished to carry into it,” says Justin now. “My mom used to hold round with Brian Jones, and he or she as soon as described an outfit he was carrying as being a pink catsuit seductively unzipped to a dangerously low space. She’d at all times reminisce fondly about that. So from childhood I at all times thought that the catsuit was a part of the rock’n’roll theme.”
The remainder of the band have been much less eager on this sartorial extravagance. “I bear in mind having a pint with Dan [Hawkins, guitarist and younger brother of Justin] after the go well with had develop into a daily fixture,” says drummer Ed Graham. “We have been going: ‘You textual content him about it!’ ‘No, you textual content him about it!’ We each ended up texting him to say: ‘We’re unsure about these catsuits.’ His response was: ‘Fuck you, x [kiss].’”
It was an early instance of each the shameless flamboyance and the bloody-minded stubbornness that may outline the band normally, and their frontman particularly. Though within the case of Justin’s debut look in a catsuit, issues didn’t precisely pan out as hoped.
“He wished a white one however they received the fabric fully flawed,” laughs Dan Hawkins. “And as quickly as he began sweating, it become a unadorned go well with, a bit like Shakira. He had denims on, and he began taking them off for the massive reveal and realised he’d left his sneakers on, and he was actually on his again whereas the tune began. We have been making an attempt to maintain it going whereas he was on the ground. Somebody within the viewers managed to prise the denims off for him. A complete fucking shambles.”
Little did the individuals within the viewers realise what the longer term held for the person wriggling round on stage as his dignity took to the hills. Although it’s honest to say that half of them wouldn’t have misplaced sleep in the event that they’d by no means seen the band once more.
“That was a defining second,” says bassist Frankie Poullain. “Some individuals thought we have been actually unhappy as a result of we have been taking part in a pub and considering we have been 70s rock stars, however then different individuals have been coming as much as say they hadn’t seen something that entertaining in years. We divided individuals proper from the beginning.”
For a yr or so within the early 2000s, The Darkness have been the largest band in Britain. Permission To Land had crested the charts on its launch in July 2003, a gloriously anomalous splash of color amid the grim monochrome wasteland of the early-2000s music scene. Making no secret of their love of AC/DC, Skinny Lizzy and Queen, they weren’t rock’n’roll’s future a lot as a souped-up, tongue-in-cheek reboot of its previous. Extra importantly, they introduced again one thing that had lengthy been lacking in music: enjoyable.
The Hawkins brothers had left their dwelling city, the sleepy seaside enclave of Lowestoft, six years earlier. Whereas Justin headed off to Huddersfield College, 16-year-old Dan opted to forego increased training completely and decamped to London, the place he shaped a band, Empire, with French-born, Scottish-raised bassist Poullain. They have been ultimately joined on guitar and keyboards by Justin.
“We had a superb singer, however he wasn’t proper for us,” explains Dan. “At the moment we have been fairly progressive. We’d simply received into ridiculous time signatures, that I don’t suppose anybody might have sung on.”
Going nowhere slowly, Empire determined to name it quits. Dan turned a session participant, Frankie went off to develop into a tour information in Venezuela, and Justin carved out a small area of interest for himself writing music for movies and adverts (the nagging ditty for Ikea’s The Shlomp marketing campaign was his).
Fortuitously, the brothers each returned dwelling for Millennium Eve. It was whereas in Lowestoft that Justin entered a karaoke competitors, performing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. He astounded his brother not solely by efficiently aping all of Freddie Mercury’s vocals, but in addition by throwing in a number of star jumps for good measure. That’s when Dan realised the person he was after was proper beneath his nostril. “I knew he may very well be the band’s singer then,” says Dan, “so I gave up making an attempt to work with good musicians and scrabbled collectively a band with my brother and my finest mates.”
Poullain gave up his job as a tour information and returned to London, and so they persuaded Ed Graham, an old style good friend, to ditch his present band and play drums for the band they’d simply christened The Darkness. However they nonetheless had an terrible lot of labor to do. On the flip of the last decade, report labels have been nonetheless making an attempt to exploit the Britpop scene, regardless of the actual fact it had lengthy since curdled. Camden in North London had been Floor Zero through the heady days of the 90s, and A&R males continued to flock there within the hope of discovering among the previous magic nonetheless hanging within the air.
![The Darkness - Get Your Hands Off My Woman (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/hI9eVW4cTR8/maxresdefault.jpg)
So did The Darkness. In August 2000 they bagged an unofficial Saturday evening residency on the Monarch, a pub-cum-venue reverse Camden Market. They might open the present for whoever was taking part in that evening, taking the stage at 8.30pm sharp. The next April they graduated to a midweek slot, however their common month-to-month Saturday evening gig could be a mainstay for the band for the most effective a part of two years.
“Up to now we’ve stated we wished to do these Saturday evening exhibits as a result of we didn’t wish to play in entrance of the business, as they solely got here out within the week, and that we wished to construct a fan base,” says Dan. “The reality is that we performed these slots as a result of nobody else would e book us. However it labored for us. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than we have been filling it out.”
Most of the songs that may find yourself on Permission To Land have been already totally shaped. I Imagine In A Factor Referred to as Love and arch energy ballad Love Is Solely A Feeling have been featured within the set as early as their fifth gig. “In that earliest interval we wrote a few of our strongest songs,” says Justin. “We began figuring out who we have been early on.”
That was greater than may very well be stated for the report labels. The band’s unapologetically retro influences have been out of step with prevailing tendencies, whereas their frontman’s outrageous posturing – half Freddie Mercury, half Angus Younger, half Catwoman – put as many individuals off because it drew in.
“We did have a lot of A&R males strolling out and being reprimanded by senior A&R guys,” says Poullain. “They’d actually be led out of the venue after we’d achieved a few songs, nearly as if we’d performed an April Idiot’s joke on them.”
If the band have been going to succeed, they needed to make it occur themselves. Their debut EP, I Imagine In A Factor Referred to as Love, received the eye of sections of the music press when it was launched in 2002 on the tiny unbiased label, Should Destroy!. The media consideration in flip made the labels suppose once more.
“I feel we needed to go to a sure stage ourselves earlier than they’d leap on board, after which everybody tried to leap on board,” says Dan.
By the spring of 2003 The Darkness had been picked up by Atlantic Information. That April they offered out the two,000-capacity Astoria in London.
“We had this tiny financial institution of lights both facet of the stage, which we made certain have been the identical color as Queen’s,” says Dan. “The DJ from the evening earlier than had left a few of his tables out and we made a riser out of them, nevertheless it was all gaffa‑taped collectively and wobbling like fuck. It might have gone horribly flawed. What a strategy to go although.”
Fortunately, all 4 members of the band made it by means of the gigs with limbs, and dignity, intact. Abruptly this most retro of bands was in severe hazard of turning into stylish.
For all their frontman’s peacocking, The Darkness had a reliably British earthiness to them. Fittingly, Permission To Land was made on the type of finances that may barely cowl the catering invoice on many greater information.
“It was all achieved pretty cheaply,” says Dan. “The producer, Pedro Ferreira, was my finest good friend, and we had our personal manufacturing room, which was a part of a studio in Willesden in North London. The nice factor was that we might go into the primary studio when it wasn’t getting used.”
In contrast to many bands on their first album, The Darkness eschewed the ‘out and in’ ethos, preferring to pore over their songs, piling on layers of guitars and vocals that may have achieved Freddie Mercury proud. However the strategy had its draw back. “We took so lengthy that we ran out of cash,” says Dan. “After six months we solely had 4 or 5 songs achieved. It had all gone a bit Def Leppard.”
Scrabbling collectively a finances to report the remainder of the songs, they relocated to Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, the place they completed off the report in seven days with the assistance of a sleep-deprived Pedro Ferreira. “That’s why a few of it’s actually uncooked in some locations after which over-produced elsewhere,” says Dan. “However I feel we nailed it.”
By the point the report was launched in July 2003, The Darkness had loads of wind of their sails. Earlier single Get Your Palms Off My Lady had given them their first Prime 20 hit, and the band have been constructing a popularity as the most effective reside acts round. Even so, nobody anticipated simply how effectively the album would do – it entered the UK chart at No.2, and climbed to the No.1 inside just a few weeks.
With hindsight, the truth that The Darkness have been so outlandish counted of their favour. Document firms have been hedging their bets by signing Coldplay clones and Dido soundalikes, whereas nu metallic had given strategy to the middle-of-the-road stylings of Linkin Park and Evanescence. Solely a brand new wave of storage rock spearheaded by The Strokes and the White Stripes supplied a glimmer of pleasure. Nobody was performing star jumps, not to mention rocking a catsuit.
![The Darkness - I Believe In A Thing Called Love (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/tKjZuykKY1I/maxresdefault.jpg)
“It was all so boring throughout that interval, musically,” says Ed Graham. “We have been an antidote to what was occurring. Once we supported Robbie Williams at Knebworth [on August 1-3, 2003], that’s the factor that put us in The Solar and helped us cross over. We every had a glance, and there have been all these girlies who had their favorite Darkness member. Clearly, my enchantment was extra selective.”
However not everybody embraced them. Justin Hawkins’s shriek and OTT stage antics polarised opinion like few different frontmen. The band have been even seen with suspicion by a big part of the heartland rock viewers, who noticed them as some type of elaborate conceptual joke.
“It made individuals nervous that we have been smiling and having fun with what we have been doing,” says Dan. “Individuals get uncomfortable round that. It’s as when you’re not taking it critically, so why ought to they?”
“James Dean Bradfield as soon as stated we have been a vaudeville band,” provides Poullain. “I assumed that was fairly astute. What was it Adam Ant stated? ‘Ridicule is nothing to be frightened of…’ And lots of people are frightened of being ridiculed. We weren’t.”
Although the band have been now correct pop stars, they have been nonetheless skint. Once they’d supported Def Leppard at London’s Brixton Academy earlier within the yr, a broke Dan Hawkins needed to take three buses to get to the gig. Even then he’d needed to stroll the final little bit of the journey. “We had a gathering with administration after the album had charted, and stated: ‘Is there any method we are able to keep away from public transport? It’s beginning to get a bit embarrassing. That’s once we have been lastly placed on a wage.”
Their ship really got here in on the finish of that yr, when Permission To Land was effectively on its strategy to promoting an eventual 1.5 million copies within the UK alone. The band went from worrying that they couldn’t afford to eat, to having the ability to afford to purchase a home.
“I went to a cashpoint and I assumed I had about ten quid left,” says Dan. “I noticed one thing that seemed like 100 there as a substitute. I assumed, God, I’m overdrawn once more. Then I checked out it and noticed it was 100 and some noughts after it, and that I used to be in credit score. It was Christmas, so the very first thing I did was purchase the most costly sledge I might discover for one in all my mates who’d simply had a child, and went straight spherical his home and stated: ‘Merry Christmas’. That was wild.”
Things would get quite a bit wilder than spontaneously bought festive presents. Because the band’s success grew, so did their consumption of booze and, within the case of sure members, different substances. Requested now if there was a particular level when the wheels got here off the wagon, Dan Hawkins laughs.
“The wheels have been by no means on,” he says. “It was at all times carnage. We partied on the highway on a regular basis, then I’d get dwelling and see my mates and begin the get together over again. It received to the purpose the place I assumed, “If this carries on, I would die.’ That’s after I left London and moved to the countryside.”
However amid the booze and drug-fuelled chaos, there was nonetheless work to do. With an surprising No.1 album within the UK, Atlantic have been eager to push the band Stateside. America, the label reasoned, would embrace The Darkness’s traditional rock’n’roll stylings, if not their flamboyance. And so it proved – a minimum of initially.
“The primary time we went to America we couldn’t get out of the automobile with out being recognised,” says Justin. “At one level they stated it was the biggest-selling debut album in America because the Spice Women, which is a stunning statistic – I need that on my gravestone. However we have been simply touring and touring, and we ended up going again there with no second hit single to play to the identical individuals, when it might have been good to cease and focus on the place we have been heading subsequent.”
In August 2004 The Darkness introduced the Permission To Land marketing campaign to an in depth with a headlining look on the Studying Pageant. It was an under-par efficiency by their requirements – the band seemed misplaced on an enormous stage, they padded out the set with unfamiliar new songs, and even Justin appeared to have left his confidence within the backstage Winnebago. Looking back it was the purpose at which issues started to show for The Darkness – their crueller critics instructed that the emperor had been discovered stark bollock bare on the street.
![The Darkness - Growing On Me [Live at Knebworth 2003] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/t7oOlqD3VGY/maxresdefault.jpg)
The issues at their coronary heart really manifested themselves on their second album, One Method Ticket To Hell… And Again. Recorded at nice expense with Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, it discovered the band tearing themselves aside on the seams.
“Sure narcotic-based components exacerbated current tensions,” says Justin. “All of us modified in an disagreeable method. It was solely a matter of time earlier than we stopped speaking completely.”
Frankie Poullain was the primary sufferer of those tensions. The bassist was fired midway by means of the classes, and changed by roadie Richie Edwards.
“I feel I used to be fairly abrasive,” says the bassist now. “I assume it was my job to be the one who questioned issues, and I received carried away with it. There was the consuming, a few of us have been on the powder, a few of us have been simply hopping from mattress to mattress… I assume you develop aside, don’t you?”
Ed Graham calls One Method Ticket… “the million-dollar failure”. It lacks the appeal of its predecessor, and its overblown excesses definitely sound just like the work of a band on lots of cocaine, nevertheless it wasn’t the musical catastrophe it has been painted as. Commercially it was a unique matter. Launched in November 2005, it didn’t dent the Prime 10.
There was worse was to return. In September 2006 The Solar introduced that Justin Hawkins had accomplished a three-month stint in rehab and was leaving The Darkness. The temporary however wonderful burst of enjoyable was over.
As we speak, the success of Permission To Land seems like a wierd dream. Not solely did it flip a gloriously OTT band from Lowestoft into A-list superstars, it did so at a time when the type of music they have been taking part in couldn’t have been much less cool. It additionally feels just like the final time a rock band correctly made an affect on the broader world. You couldn’t think about it occurring now – extra’s the pity.
The Darkness reunited in 2011 after a six-year hiatus during which their respective solo initiatives (Dan and Ed’s Stone Gods, Justin’s Scorching Leg) didn’t set the world alight.
The band’s most up-to-date album, final yr’s Scorching Desserts, was a positive comeback effort, even when the band have been conscious that it might by no means replicate the freakish success of their debut. “Permission nonetheless has that zeal and vitality of a gang,” says Dan. “And we stopped being that gang. So it’s no surprise the information by no means sounded the identical after that.”
“I feel,” provides Justin, “if you wish to be fascinated by what you’re doing, you need to realise how treasured it’s. I don’t imply the success, I imply the artwork of it. As a result of that’s what’s satisfying – the method of it. These 4 males, who don’t have anything in widespread, actually kicking ass collectively. It’s a hilarious expertise.”
Initially revealed in Basic Rock situation 191, November 2013
