Interview - Richard Hawley

Image by Dean Chalkey

“We need to get together to affect change. We mustn’t be afraid. They use all the power they have to make us afraid. They make us doubt ourselves, they demonise young people and people who want to make a change to the way we think. The album is a reaction against all that.”

Richard Hawley is not known as a political songwriter. Across a musical career spanning over three decades, the Sheffield singer has turned his hand to many things: film scores and soundtracks, countless collaborations including with Manic Street Preachers and Arctic Monkeys (he even played the guitar on All Saints’ cover of ‘Under The Bridge’) and, most recently, a theatre production inspired by his landmark 2012 album Standing At The Sky’s Edge’. 

Yet, as he explains to CLASH, Hawley remains characteristically aware of his limitations and acknowledges that – while explicitly political songwriting is beyond him (so he says) – the state of society pervades most of his work: “I’m not a very good political writer. I’ve tried to do it, but I’m not as eloquent as people like Billy Bragg, who I love. His work and him as a man, he’s a great guy. I always end up taking the side of the people who have to deal with the fucking fallout. Which I was, and still am. That’s the point of the record.”

https://www.clashmusic.com/features/its-chaos-innit-richard-hawley-interviewed/