The singer-songwriter talks about growing up with Thatcherism, his hit musical about his Sheffield hometown, and how music helps to heal grief
Richard Hawley: ‘The hammer blow for Thatcher’s Britain fell hardest here in Sheffield, because she had to smash the unions. And I think people were just lost’ In 2012, Richard Hawley was in Germany backstage with his band after the final night of a tour with Nancy Sinatra when the theatre producer Rupert Lord came to see him with an offer. “He said, ‘Your songs would make a wonderful musical.’” Hawley’s reaction? “Honestly, we just pissed ourselves laughing.
Still, in a post-industrial, post-austerity, cost-of-living landscape, it has found resonance beyond its locale. “It’s universal,” he says. “I think we’ve touched a nerve.” Hawley remains more working men’s club than West End, perhaps the only mainstream songwriter who could end up in the elite world of the latter while writing a song inspired by the former: rumbling new track “Two for His Heels” is a phrase taken from hearing some older gentlemen playing cards in his local. “Jock in the pub next door will be playing cribbage and you’ll always hear him say, ‘One for the Jacks and two for his heel!’ To me that’s surrealist poetry. I’ve taken it out of context.
He therefore finds parts of the musical hard to watch. “Because it’s so near the knuckle to what happened to my family. Poverty got so bad in the 80s. I knew great men who just fell apart in front of me. I’m admitting this to myself, which I guess I’ve never said, but it’s still raw. It doesn’t diminish with time. I wish it would. It just doesn’t.”His political views are therefore deeply entrenched. “I’d rather shit in my own hands and clap than vote Tory.
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