– I experienced something very special in Norway: Being able to sit on the sofa in a TV talk show. It has never happened to me anywhere else, says singer Richard Hawley, from Sheffield, England, about his appearance on “Først og sist” with Fredrik Skavlan in December 2005. – I sat there with the foreign minister, (Jonas Gahr Støre at the time, our note) and Bob Geldof. It was totally fucking surreal. And I got to sing “Coles Corner” with a full orchestra, he says of the melancholic ballad about the city’s glowing lights, happy voices and music: “I’m going downtown where there’s people/my loneliness hangs in the air”.
Hawley was introduced by the presenter as “a bit of a secret” this evening, but had just released the album ‘Coles Corner’ to rave reviews. “Richard Hawley is an incorrigible romantic with both a lyrical and melodic sense of the old days (…) Hawley is melancholic, but never melodramatic. Lovely songs such as the title cut, or the low-key “Hotel Room” in a laid-back waltz rhythm, make “Coles Corner” a good meeting place for this autumn,” wrote Dagsavisen’s reviewer Marie Aubert. The album came in 7th place on the Kritikertoppen, 67 Norwegian reviewers’ joint list of the best records this year.
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“Coles Corner” also took Richard Hawley high up on the sales charts in Norway, and made him a friend of Norway for a few years – with performances at the Norwegian Wood festival and Oslo Spektrum – the latter admittedly as a warm-up for Madrugada. – Madrugada yes, they were good to me. It was a shame to hear about their guitarist who died, he says of Robert Burås.
“I’m Looking For Someone To Find Me” from the next album was written on the way over the mountain from Oslo to Bergen, in a band bus with chains in a snowstorm.
Richard Hawley was high on straw in these years, and not just in Norway. “Coles Corner” was nominated for the British Mercury Prize for the best album of the year. When Arctic Monkeys, also from Sheffield, were announced as winners, they went on stage and said “someone needs to call 999. Richard Hawley has been robbed”. On the group’s single “Black Treacle” from 2012, the B-side “You And I” is credited to Richard Hawley & The Death Ramps.
“Coles Corner” was the third in a series of albums with atmospheric songs that looked back to the time before rock’n’roll. Hawley was one crooner with subdued songs and often luxurious arrangements. He does not want to admit that many of the songs may sound nostalgic.
– Such songs go through all eras. You even hear them in groups like The Doors and Velvet Underground, everyone needs to calm it down now and then. But I don’t think of music like that. I’m a songwriter, with no grand plan. I just go for the best songs.
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Many of Richard Hawley’s other albums are also named after places in Sheffield: “Lowedges”, “Lady’s Bridge”, “Hollow Meadows” It is said that out-of-town fans like to visit these places to take pictures. Even “Truelove’s Gutter” was the nickname of an area once upon a time. His latest is called “In This City They Call You Love”, and again refers to the city where it is supposedly most common to add “love” at the end of all conversations.
– The custom comes from Sheffield. It’s fun getting on the bus when there’s a burly, tattooed driver sitting there calling you “love”. The word is so disarming and friendly. I think it is important in a world where there is otherwise so much hate speech from all ideological sides, political or religious. A city where everyone calls each other “love”, I think it’s beautiful.
Hawley arrives in Oslo a week after another of Sheffield’s big names, The Human League. We have already mentioned Arctic Monkeys, and will soon come to Pulp. Sheffield’s most powerful voice, Joe Cocker, was Richard Hawley’s godfather, since in his youth Cocker fitted radiators for the gas works with his father. Is there something that all the artists from Sheffield have in common?
– No matter what kind of musical style they have, the songs of all these have been very down-to-earth, says Richard Hawley.
– Although Sheffield is one of the UK’s largest cities, we who live there call it the largest village. A post-industrial city, but still very green. The center is the same dirt as everywhere else, with Burger King and all the same chains, but here there are so many trees and rivers, and a peaceful calm. In other cities, you have to make an appointment to meet nature. Here it is difficult to avoid.
This is also why the city leaves its mark on many of Hawley’s songs: – I write about what I can. I don’t know what it’s like to live in Oslo, Berlin or Johannesburg. I use the authentic rather than the imaginary, from my own point of view rather than being influenced by places I have no real concept of.
Richard Hawley was for a while the guitarist in Pulp. During the recording of the album “We Love Life” in 2001, he befriended producer Scott Walker, one of the most legendary voices in pop history.
– The fact that we became such good friends was mostly about the fact that we enjoyed drinking Guinness and playing darts together. We had a similar background, we had played a lot in small clubs and in the studio for other singers. He had a great sense of humor, completely different from what you would think from listening to his records, says Hawley.
In 2017, the BBC honored Scott Walker by presenting a large orchestral concert of his songs at The Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, with four vocalists: Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp, John Grant (who sang in Oslo last week) – and Susanne Sundfør.
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– Susanne was fantastic. The best of us all that night. Scott was a masculine singer, but she gave the songs a female perspective that was particularly interesting, Hawley thinks. He was the only one of the four vocalists who knew that Scott Walker was also in the hall himself.
– Just before the concert I received a text message that simply said “I’m here”. How could you do something like that, I thought, so I didn’t tell the others. But he greeted everyone afterwards, before the two of us moved on, drinking more Guinness and playing more darts.
Scott Walker died in 2019. Some time afterwards, Hawley received a call from his daughter, who told him that Walker had wanted him to have one of the guitars he left behind. He was allowed to choose for himself, and took out a Fender Telecaster.
– This happened a few days after we had started making the new album, so now I play it on several of the songs. But for me this is actually quite sad. I’d rather have Scott here than his guitar.
Richard Hawley’s impressions of daily life in Sheffield have also been turned into a musical. “Standing at The Sky’s Edge” is based on a number of his old songs, and some newly written ones. It tells the story of three families over 60 years in the Park Hill Estate council housing estate in Sheffield. After the premiere in its hometown, the show went on to London’s West End, where it received the award for best new musical last year. The songs have also been released on a separate album with the actors.
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A couple of days after I spoke to Richard Hawley, Emma Steinbakken’s new Christmas album, “Emma’s Christmas”, came down the pipe. And there, along with songs such as “Stjernesludd”, “Himmel på jord” and “Når himmelen fallen down” comes “Coles Corner” again. Which is not an explicit Christmas carol, but which becomes one when it is heard at this time of year.
I make a phone call to Emma Steinbakken, who tells me that the recording of the album began by listening to a playlist in which she, manager Guttorm Raa and producer Carl-Victor Guttormsen had all entered favorites that could be relevant. “Coles Corner” was the manager’s suggestion.
– I didn’t have a relationship with it before, but I thought it was so nice. Even though it’s not exactly about Christmas, I experience it that way, with the loneliness that many also feel around this time, says Emma Steinbakken. Richard Hawley himself had not heard the new version of his song when we spoke.
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