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Today I've been sent a scanned copy of an interview with Richard in Spanish newspaper 'El Periódico'. Apparently, it was conducted by someone from that paper, not copied from another one (at least, no translator from English is credited, but one never knows), so I'm copying it here in case you're interested in reading it. My apologies if it's not the best of proses. If any completist is interested in having the scanned original (in Catalan, not in Spanish) just let me know and I'll upload it somewhere (as far as I know it's not in their web site).
By the way, I think one must have a great deal of imagination to write questions like these. I couldn't have come up with something like "epic and exculpatory melodrama" had I been trying for ages!
THE 'CROONER' FROM SHEFFIELD
He was Pulp's guitarist until he decided to bring his own songs to light. After seven albums, he's become an unltrasensitive pop artist, who shines again in "Standing at the Sky's Edge".
Text: Carlos Risco. Photograph: Steve Gullick
Sheffield, the main city of British South Yorkshire, is also the centre of the world for Richard Hawley (1967). Raised into a family of musicians and a guitar player since he was very young, Hawley has accompanyed massive Pulp and has taken part in the success of their more inexperienced neighbours, Arctic Monkeys. But what Hawley does is more than bright pop. His songs, which he zeaously kept for his own use, have appeared, modest, brilliant, unanswerable, in the course of an honest and consistent career. His last three albums established him as an unique, hipersensitive artist, able to move his listeners with beautiful orchestrations and a direct, deep voice, able to whisper in one's ear like a demiurge of the sublime. It is three years since he released 'Truelove's Gutter', his most denominational and brilliant record, and the musician comes back with 'Standing at the Sky's Edge' (Parlophone), in which he sheds his violin and trumpet clothes and produces a rock record full of sincerity. We will be able to see him live in June, at the Primavera Sound in Barcelona.
Q. You're releasing an album which is more rock, more powerful than your previous works. How has Richard Hawley arrived to this new sound?
A. I've been playing the guitar since I was a kid. Therefore, this has been the result of everything I've been doing for a long time. I've still got that elegant sound of my previous albums. Before, I was known as a guitarist, not as a solo artist. And that had made me subjugate the instrument a lot. As well as an instrumentalist, I have also been a secret composer, and for this album I wrote the songs in a very natural way, without playing the guitar so much, so as to let the songs flow. It was all very natural.
Q. Wasn't it a deliberate trip towards a triumph of the guitar?
A. Not at all. As soon as the songs were written and I started rehearsing them with the band, I tried to get the same dramatic atmosphere as in my previous albums, but without an orchestra, only with guitars.
Q. Has the crooner disappeared?
A. I don't know what that means... [laughs] Well, people say I'm a crooner, as if I sang in whispers. I just open my mouth and sing like that.
Q. How do you compose yuor songs?
A. Contrary to all appearances, I don't usually sit with a guitar for hours so as to write a song. They're in my head. I compose them in very long walks with my dog.
Q. On the subject of the single 'Leave Your Body Behind You' and its clear rock sound, has that choice been like dropping a smoke bomb to attract attention?
A. No! [laughs loud]
Q. Distorted guitars, dark passages... What did you have in mind when you chose that production?
A. I wanted a big sound. I wanted to recreate the drama I had already produced before. What I had already done with an orchestra, but more human.
Q. Your previous albums reflected the epic and exculpatory melodrama of a lover who drinks and smokes too much and who apologizes through an infrequent lyricism. What is the inner reflection of this album, its message?
A. Well, I'm not a singer who's trying to put across a message. I've got no message for the listener. I'm not a postman.
Q. You've found your own voice after years of being other people's mercenary guitarist. What do you remember about the process of taking on your own career?
A. Everything arrives in due course. I've always written songs, and being in the background with my guitar was enough for me when I was young. Suddenly, the fact of singing my own songs burst in my life in such a powerful way that I was forced to do it, literally. Anyway, I had no idea whether I'd be successful. I simply did it. In those days, twenty years ago, I'd just married, and I didn't know how I'd be getting on. I made a mistake [laughs].
Q. You're known to be a compulsive collector of guitars. How many have you got?
A. I've lost count. Honest, I don't know.
Q. Have you got a favourite one?
A. Yes, my father gave me a 1963 Gibson 335. A beautiful guitar. But we don't own the guitars, we only have them for some time. Someone else will play them in the future.
Q. Life is borrowed time.
A. [Laughs] Just so.
Q. Which is your great hope?
A. To carry on breathing. I hope to be able to do so for many more years.
THE ART OF MELANCHOLY
Some times, the secrets be carry inside must be taken out in the form of rage. Or of poetic meekness, which was the case of guitar player Richard Hawley before reeling off to the world his extremely delicate works. With 'Lady's Bridge', 'Coles Corner' and 'Truelove's Gutter', Hawley placed Sheffield into the map with his baroque and subtle style, oozing melancholy. Now, with 'Standing at the Sky's Edge', he has achieved the same dramatic atmosphere as in his previous albums, but without an orchestra, only with guitars. An exercise in self-controlled rage which is now a guitar virtuoso's stroke of authority and an avalanche of essential hymns full of poetic violence.
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One, two, three, faw!
Some people cause happiness wherever they go. Others, whenever they go (Oscar Wilde).
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