The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins is recalling the first time he wore a catsuit onstage. It was in a pub in Balham. “I remember changing in the toilet,” he smiles, “but you don’t think about the effect that sweat will have. I declined the opportunity to buy a dance belt to protect my modesty, so everyone was just looking at my knob. There were 12 distinctly right wing-looking people watching me prancing around with my genitals out”.
From this Spinal Tap-esque early humbling grew one of the rock music phenomena of the 21st century. That was August 2001; less than two years later the band’s 2003 debut Permission to Land was on its way to selling 3.5 million copies.
And how different they were, as unfashionable as their hometown of Lowestoft, Suffolk: here was a band taking cues not from 70s New York or arty 80s post-punk but from classic and glam rock like Queen, AC/DC and Aerosmith; with an extravagant singer armed with every affected move in the rock manual and an eye-watering falsetto; singing fun, expletive-filled songs about genital warts and mythical East Anglian dogs that were melodically pop enough for any radio station. It was a knowingly ridiculous spectacle, and people – briefly – couldn’t get enough.
The other members of The Darkness – Dan Hawkins (Justin’s guitarist brother), bassist Frankie Poullain and drummer since 2015 Rufus Taylor (son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor) – are with Justin on video call from Brussels mid-European tour. They are in good spirits – in conversation they don’t take themselves (or anything else) too seriously – and why not? The Darkness are having a revival.
Earlier this year, a co-headline tour with US rock band Black Stone Cherry put them back in arenas; a December run of UK shows in celebration of a 20th anniversary reissue of Permission to Land sold out in hours; a new documentary film, Welcome to the Darkness, directed by Simon Emmitt, gives their career – the rapid rise, the crash and burn, drugs, illness, reunion – an intimate, heartfelt, sideways interpretation.
“It felt like a wildlife programme,” Dan says. “Meerkat Manor with music,” Justin adds. “We were the subjects,” Dan continues. “We’ve been observed. It doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story.”
The story it does tell is a pretty remarkable one. After a decade in failed bands – Justin made a living writing advertising jingles for brands like IKEA and Yahoo! – the penny finally dropped. They needed to be true to themselves. “We just said: ‘Forget about music that’s cool or could possibly get us a record deal,’” Dan says. “Let’s just do the stuff that we love.”
Fighting against “cool” proved a lifeforce. “I like pissing people off,” Justin says. “And I especially like pissing people off when they think they’re cool. That’s actually my favourite thing to do. We’d see the stuff that was coming through and declared the next big thing and we always used to despair how f**king shit it all was. And inauthentic as well. We weren’t interested in doing the things that you’re supposed to do to make you a bankable commodity.”
Leotards and bombastic riffs loaded, everything then happened at warp speed: by the end of 2003 they’d had a number one album, a megahit in the form of bona fide rock classic “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”, and released their festive track “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)”, the great Christmas number one that never was. The band were pipped to the top spot at the last minute by Gary Jules’ downbeat cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” “We’re still counting it,” Justin says. “We were number one in the midweeks. Wednesday is just the same as Saturday.”
But few bands in recent memory have elicited such extreme reactions. The Darkness were loved – even Justin Timberlake declared himself a fan – but the vitriol was sharp. Some of this was a misunderstanding of the band, pegging them as a novelty (for all the jokes, The Darkness approached their music with utmost sincerity in the classic rock heritage). But criticism could be brutal. One critic wrote: “True awfulness… is truly something to behold. Behold The Darkness.”
“Yeah, the hate was always mutual,” Justin says of the detractors. “F**k ‘em. That was always our motto.”
It didn’t halt The Darkness juggernaut: in 2004, the band won three Brit Awards and an Ivor Novello, headlined Reading festival, went on a UK arena tour and ended the year as the British band most likely to properly conquer America.
But behind the scenes it was falling apart. The band had become addicted to drink and drugs – especially Justin, and especially cocaine. “I would say there was a correlation between how badly I behaved and how successful the band became. But I was just interpreting that in a way that suited my own demons. Because I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with drugs since I was a kid, and I suppose [with the band] I had means and opportunity. And then I invented a motive to complete the triangle of excuse.”
Justin alone reportedly spent £150,000 on cocaine. Does he remember the moment when he thought it’d all gone too far? “You’re making it sound like there was only one,” he says laughing “I remember several. It was usually about two o’clock in the morning every night.”
“I think it was when we put actual shovels on the rider,” Dan says.
“Or when we bought the golden hoover,” Justin adds.
It all sounds wildly old-school rock star excessive: Dan tells me about a technique called “iced eyes” the band devised for when they were worse for wear pre-gig. “Our wardrobe assistant would pluck out two large pieces of ice and then just push it into your eyes for a minute. Amazingly, it cuts through a three-day bender. That was basically the only way to get us on stage sometimes. It’s amazing we’re not blind.”
“My eyes don’t work very well,” Justin says. “No, mine don’t either,” Dan agrees.
It was against this backdrop that their second album arrived, 2005’s One Way Ticket to Hell…. and Back. The public didn’t go for it in anything like the same way. The album reached just number 11 in the charts and sold only 150,000 copies in the UK. Yet Justin gives me short shrift when I say that commercially, they’d fallen off a cliff.
“It just means 10 albums sold better that week,” he says. “And it came out Christmas time (28 November). That was a mistake.” He points out that worldwide, the album sold one million copies. “I’d give my right fucking testicle and left testicle and actual cock to sell a million records in this day and age. It wasn’t a complete disaster.”
Still, within a year the band was over. In August 2006, Justin checked himself into rehab; on leaving The Priory he quit the band, fearing the touring lifestyle would impact his recovery. The band were subsequently dropped by their record label; in the fallout, the Hawkins brothers were estranged for two years.
Today Dan is stoic about that aftermath of the split – “you just do what you need to do, you bury it, move on, dig it up when it’s matured again” – but Poullain is more forthcoming. “The end wasn’t pleasant,” he says. “There was so much negative energy around the band. If you’re talking about a nature programme, we were surrounded by hyenas and jackals. People trying to squeeze the juice out of us and not care about us as people.”
The band reformed in 2011 after an uneasy truce between the Hawkins (during the making of third album Hot Cakes, they were brought closer together again after Dan was diagnosed with testicular cancer). The documentary makes an emphasis of Justin’s guilt at his role in the band’s initial demise – that he feels the others, especially Dan, wouldn’t forgive him for his behaviour, or for quitting. When I bring it up, they are adamant that’s not the case. “We’re not moping around thinking about missed opportunities,” Dan says.
“Tell him about my mum’s message,” Poullain says. “Oh my god, Frankie’s mum sent me this lovely email,” Justin explains. “She tried to make me lighter. She said it wasn’t me letting everybody down. It was me discovering myself.” He smiles at the thought.
In contrast to their rise, The Darkness’s second act has been a slow burn. As Dan puts it, “a lot of people might not realise we’ve been putting albums out every two years for well over a decade now”.
Justin is content with their standing as a cult band – “compared to being flavour of the month you’re more bulletproof” – but they still harbour bigger ambitions. There’s a new album in the works that Dan says will justify the large venues they’ve booked for 2025.
And their masterplan? “We’re going to make Permission to Land again, but just change a couple of notes and the titles and some other minor adjustments,” Justin says. “We just need to get the chord progressions back from ChatGPT.”