“I’ve got this loneliness I can’t shake”

In 2012, Richard Hawley was in Germany backstage with his band after the last night of a tour with Nancy Sinatra, when theater producer Rupert Lord came to see him with an offer. “He said, ‘Your songs would make a great musical.’ Hawley’s reaction? “Honestly, we pissed ourselves laughing.”

But on a ferry ride home the next day, something about the idea began to appeal: a musical set in Hawley’s hometown of Sheffield in the brutalist Park Hill complex overlooking the city. “It was such a curve ball. And I thought, well, I know absolutely damn everything about musicals. I actually hate musicals. And I don’t know anything about theater. So then I thought – “Shit. Let’s do it.’ Because I felt the opposite of what I should be doing.”

As it turned out, Hawley’s music was a natural fit for the resulting award-winning production, Standing at the edge of the sky. He says his songs “come from the fabric of the city”, although he’s very much shaping that fabric so far: a lifelong Sheffield native, the 57-year-old’s sumptuous, weighty and timeless songs are full of heart. romance, longing, hope, doubt, loneliness and loss, often grounded in gritty realism. His solo albums were invariably named after local landmarks (2005’s Mercury-nominated Coles Corner; the 2007 years The Lady’s Bridge2015 Hollow Meadows).

Even the vintage-sounding title of his new album, In this town they call you love, pays homage to the people of Sheffield, inspired by a conversation overheard by two out-of-towners sitting outside a cafe. “One of them just said, ‘You know, in this town, everybody’s called love.’ I thought it was actually very nice. It’s a unique thing and we punctuate every sentence with it. There’s something disarming and charming and honest and genuine about it.”

Standing at the Edge of Heavennamed after Hawley’s atypical angry 2012’s Mercury-nominated album proved a revelation. Written by local playwright Chris Bush, it uses Hawley’s songs to blossom a narrative that weaves together three generations of Park Hill residents: we see the optimism of the working class as it is newly built in the 60s, the ruinous decline of the Thatcher era. -led the decimation of the steel mills in the 80s and its revival after redevelopment in 2015. It is heartfelt and deeply moving, touching on hot societal issues (capitalism, immigration, housing, gentrification).

Coming from a tribe of musical steel-working men – the women in his family all worked in the NHS – Hawley’s family saw it first-hand: in 1961, his grandparents were forced to move from Park Hill when the slums were cleared before of regeneration. ; his father and uncles were brought down by the defeat of the miners. “But I was determined that it would not be an exercise in political agitation,” he says. “The story was enough on its own. More than anything, I wanted the voices of Park Hill residents who had been forgotten and abandoned to be heard.”

Yet in a post-industrial, post-austerity, cost-of-living landscape, it found resonance beyond its location. “It’s universal,” he says. “I think I hit a nerve.”

It opened at the Sheffield Crucible in 2019 to rave reviews, has since moved to London’s National Theatre, and is currently in the West End at the Gillian Lynne Theater until August. It won a number of awards: Hawley, along with orchestrator Tom Deering, won an Olivier for Best Original Score. When I bring up his rambling, catchy, sweary acceptance speech – interrupted on TV as he paid tribute to Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, “my oldest friend”, who had died not long before – he laughs his heart out surprisingly shrill. “It reflected how we all felt, because we crashed the West End. We don’t belong there.”

Hawley remains a more hard-working men’s club than the West End, perhaps the only mainstream songwriter who could reach the elite world of the latter while writing a song inspired by the former: new track “Two for His Heels” is a catchphrase from hearing. some older gentlemen playing cards in his place. “The jock in the pub next door will be playing cribbage and you’ll always hear him say, ‘One for Jacks and two for his heel!’ To me this is surrealist poetry. I took it out of context. I like doing this.”

Hawley is on a video call from home; has the screen off after a particularly rough night with his band and members of the Arctic Monkeys. “It’s me and the dogs laying on the bed and you don’t want to see that, mate.” Nothing unusual there—Hawley likes to drink—but this was an emotional occasion to toast the life of Duane Eddy, the legendary American guitarist and Hawley’s influence, collaborator and friend, who died the day before at the age of for 86 years. “It was sad. but a wonderful night. I got very close, a nice, nice man. I feel a little sad, but that’s normal. I go with what I feel.”

It was, unfortunately, appropriate: for In this town they call you love, his excellent, trademark set of richly textured, atmospheric pre-Beatles rock and balladry – “I’m not going to make a throat-singing Finnish hip-hop record” – is somewhat overshadowed by death. “We have suffered quite a lot of loss of life.” In the demo-ed songs and parts recorded organically from the garden of Disgracelands, Hawley plays guitars given to him by Eddy (“too precious to take out the house”) and the family of the late Scott Walker, as well as instruments that belonged to his father, who he died in 2007.

It’s in the songs, too: The lushly orchestrated ‘Heavy Rain,’ he says, ‘was inspired by how I felt after Steve left us. And there’s a lot of that (on the album). But to move on, you have to make peace with it. And I think my healing process is to gently and respectfully put it into song. I think it’s healthy. This record is me at peace.”

Before going solo in 2001, Hawley played with two bands, Treebound Story and Britpop outsiders Longpigs, and was rescued from a spiraling drug addiction by becoming a touring member of Pulp in 1998. But he had played with his father and uncles since the age of 12 at weddings and in pubs; during his summer vacations at age 14, he toured Europe with his uncle Chuck. “It was very hard. He lied to my mother and told her that we were playing in nice theaters. I just remember some pretty scary places where Russian sailors pissed their minds on vodka and Polish sailors fighting in the streets. It was crazy.”

Had things been different, a life in the mine “would have been a distinct possibility. Growing up in Sheffield at the time, your choice was extremely limited.” But that was unimportant: instead, he saw how the dismantling of the mining industry during the strikes devastated his town and his family. “It was wild. Thatcher’s hammer blow to Britain fell hardest here, because she had to break the unions. And I think people were just lost.”

He tells me a characteristic story about his stepfather, Stuart, a miner present at the Battle of Orgreave who lost his existence and his sense of purpose. “And he couldn’t forget it. And he certainly couldn’t forgive. It was something that took to the grave, that anger. It was a life that was not lost, it was stolen. And for profit.”

Therefore, he finds parts of the musical hard to follow. “Because it’s so close to what happened to my family. Poverty got so bad in the 80s. I met great people who just collapsed in front of me. I admit this to myself, which I don’t think I’ve ever said, but it’s still raw. It does not diminish with time. I wish. It just isn’t.”

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Therefore, his political views are deeply rooted. “I’d rather poop in my hands and clap than vote Tory. I think I’ve become the laughing stock of the whole world. We’re talking about men losing their pride – but I think we have as a nation.”

As a Labor voter, his hope is that they will win power and “save the NHS” – “it’s a beacon in the darkness and these bastards have crippled it on purpose” – and turn the country into “something that works for everyone and not for six or seven multibillionaires. I’m not a communist, but I believe that decisions should be made for the benefit of the majority. That makes perfect sense to me.”

Hawley says he’s tried writing political songs, but always comes back to the personal. “Those involved in the consequences of stupid politicians affecting what are often called ‘ordinary people’. But there is nothing ordinary about humans.” Community, friends, family; is the focus of Hawley’s world. He has been with his wife Helen, a psychiatric nurse, for 33 years. “A miracle. He needs a medal the size of a dustbin lid.”

And yet, loneliness is a constant theme of his work. New songs ‘Prism in Jeans’ and ‘Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow’ are just the latest to draw from a sad sense of isolation. “Well, happy songs are generally shit,” he says with a laugh. But he admits: “I have this loneliness that I can’t hide. I can’t shake it either. And I do not know why. But it’s there.” He says it could be the 10 years he spent on the dole from the age of 16, “kind of a wasted youth”.

“But maybe it comes from seeing what happened to all these men,” he says. “It was like living through a war. A cultural one, but also a physical one. It is not very comfortable in my psyche. But if I knew the specific answer, I wouldn’t need to write those songs. I’d probably work in the chippy down the road. Loneliness is coming!”

His voice quiets down. “It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, that something that could be so negative ended up being my fortune?”

“In This City They Call You Love” is out now.

Standing At the Sky’s Edge runs at London’s Gillian Lynne Theater until August 3.

Richard Hawley is touring the UK from June 2 (richardhawley.co.uk)