“I’ve had eight pints, brother, so I’ll be interested to see how this pans out.”
Tomorrow morning, Richard Hawley is jetting off to Milan for the first date of his European tour. Before departure, however, there’s some unfinished business to be taken care of in Sheffield.
“I’m sat here right now with my mate Paulie,” he says, sounding remarkably (some might say worryingly) cogent, “and this bloke who we’ve just met, who can play a real mean blues harmonica. We’re sat in Fagan’s, my local, no-one else around apart from Tom, the landlord, and I’m thinking: this is it. Result.”
A South Yorkshire boozer may be a humble setting for an artist who has, with his third solo LP , Coles Corner, released a genuine contender for record of the year. Yet, if this quietly magnificent jewel has managed to worm its way into your collection (and, ergo, your heart), then you’ll no doubt appreciate the synchronicity.
Because Coles Corner – named after a famed post-war meeting-point for couples in Sheffield – has an explicitly domestic setting. It’s a record that draws its inspiration from the oft-neglected moments of wonder that occur every day, underneath our noses. The glowing reviews that have met its release may have thrust Hawley onto the cusp of celebrity. However, the determinedly domestic and mundane aesthetic informing the work – with songs about and inspired by pushing your kids on a playground swing, weaving through shoppers on the high street, worrying over a feckless younger sibling – would suggest that this is one face-eating mask that our hero will manage to resist.
“I’m the son of a steelworker and I drink in pubs,” he says. “I’ve been playing in working men’s clubs since I was 11. If I have a hit record, great. If I don’t, I couldn’t care less. I sing because I love it. I love music. I’ve no desire to be a celebrity, and I can imagine how my family and mates would react if I ever tried to get on like one.”
We should of course be wary of taking Hawley’s cloth cap-isms too literally. Rather than training whippets or carrying canaries down coal shafts, he has actually spent the last decade rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in music. Perry Farrell, Robbie Williams, All Saints and Finlay Quaye all availed of his talents as a session guitarist, while, for the duration of ,We Love Life, he became a full-time member of Pulp. Significantly, the person he names as his most impressive collaborator is someone who is as famous for evading fame as for creating unbelievably beautiful music.
“I loved working with Pulp, but the best thing about that whole time was getting to meet Scott Walker, who was producing their LP,” he says.
“People have the wrong impression of him. That he’s some kind of weirdo recluse. But it’s ridiculous," says Hawley. "Put it this way, he would be happy sat here. When I first met him, he was wearing a baseball cap. Now there’s nothing sadder than men of a certain age wearing one of those – but he was fucking beautiful. I was due to lay down some steel guitar, so I’d been hanging round a few rockabilly shops, looking for the right one.”
He adds: “I came into the studio with a stack of Fats Domino and Eddie Cochran records and he called me over and said, 'Richard, take my hand. Do you know when I was sixteen I shook Eddie Cochran’s hand?' So, through Scott Walker, I got to touch Eddie Cochran. He’s a legend, a man of stature. Fuck the modern world. It’s white noise. Scott appreciates that. He likes to create his own space, march to his own drum. He’d like it here – having a pint in Fagan’s with me, Paulie and the dude with the mouth organ. He’d be well up for that, brother.”
Who else is tempted to pull up a stool?