— By Jon Wiederhorn
While other pasty-faced English musicians are writing reflective, wispy songs that tug at the heartstrings, East Anglia, England's the Darkness are pounding out flamboyant, dramatic glam rock that has more of an effect on the funny bone.
Their frontman, Justin Hawkins, sings in a quivering falsetto, wears a cat suit in concert and writes lyrics like, "Get your hands off of my woman, mother----er," and "I wanna kiss you every minute, every hour, every day/ You got me in a spin, but everything is A-OK." And Hawkins and his bandmates strike enough classic and cliché heavy metal poses to make Mötley Crüe look like Oasis. In short, the Darkness are the best rock parody since Tenacious D. Only, the bandmembers don't get the joke.
"We're not a 'parody' of anything. Don't use that word," Justin's brother and guitarist Dan Hawkins said without a hint of a smile. "We're fun, but we're a real band."
The Darkness' insistence that they're not a spoof actually makes them more Spinal Tap than anything. In the film "This Is Spinal Tap," the fictional band had no idea how absurd or funny it really was, and fancied itself a monumental rock force. The Darkness are pretty much the same. "We're the fresh new sound of rock music," Justin said. "Our show is supposed to be a euphoric occasion when we all rise and say, 'Yes. Now, this is rock, and I like it a lot. Bring me more of it and make it loud.' "
If these guys are getting one over on us, they're doing a brilliant job at keeping a straight face. Justin accepts that his band makes people smile, and even acknowledges that some of its exploits are kinda silly. But that's where he and his mates draw the line.
"Perhaps silliness is similar to beauty in that it is in the eyes, the ears or the nose of the beholder," he opined.
"Yeah," bassist Frankie Poullain agreed. "Some people may think what we do is cheesy, but one man's cheese is another man's meat."
The Darkness' debut album, Permission to Land, is packed with guitar-blaring anthems that bring to mind the Sweet, early Def Leppard and latter-day Slade, and Justin's ear-shattering vocals are part King Diamond, part Queensrÿche. Though visually, the band has more in common with Queen and Quiet Riot. In other words, the Darkness are all about celebration and sensory overload.
"I demand a level of showmanship from the music I like," Justin said. "There ain't no other bands that do the bombastic rock that we do."
The seeds of Darkness were planted in the '80s when the Hawkins brothers were growing up in a working-class household in England. Their mother was a '60s scenester who used to hang out with the Rolling Stones and exposed her kids to music from an early age.
"I think my parents envisioned us being like the Jackson 5 or something," Justin said. Our sister would have been our synthesizer player had it not been for the fact that she had no interest in music whatsoever."
In their teens, the Hawkinses started jamming with drummer Ed Graham, but after they finished secondary school, Dan joined another group, which featured Poullain. For a while, Justin and Graham played in the synth pop band Empire, but after it broke up, Justin convinced his brother and Poullain to bail and join him and Graham in their new band, the Darkness.
"Frankie used to say, 'All music comes from the darkness,' " Justin recalled, "and 'The part of you that has a need to express something is caused by a cavity or void or chasm that's dark.' "
"I blame it on my French blood," Poullain said. "I often come up with platitudes at strange moments."
The band played its first show in 1999. At the time, the Darkness were hardly the media darlings they are now. In fact, they were universally ignored, a condition that led to their current sound. "We were allowed to develop by ourselves into what we've come without any pressure," Justin said. "By ignoring us, the music industry let us create our own monster."
In August 2002, the band self-released its first single, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." Six months later, the members' second single, "Get Your Hands Off of My Woman," climbed to #6 on the U.K. charts. Suddenly, the Darkness were being touted as the saviors of rock by the British music industry, and a bidding war ensued.
"I think it had something to do with us being all over the press every week, and being the best band in the country," Justin smirked. "That made them sit up and go, 'Well, maybe we should take a chance on these guys, now that we've ignored them for four years.' "
As invigorating as their soaring music is, the Darkness' appeal has as much to do with their bombastic stage show, and their over-the-top presentation wouldn't be the same without Justin's infamous cat suit, an article of clothing that's always symbolized rock's glorious indulgence.
"The Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones would show up at discos in cat suits, and my mom used to describe them with great accuracy," Justin said. "So this seductive image of him undoing his pink cat suit on the dancefloor was something I've always identified with."
As the Darkness cultivated their image, Justin saw his opportunity to look like a legend. At first, his excursions with spandex were kind of grisly. He called a dance wear company and asked them to design a custom leotard, but since he had a limited budget, they used thin, inexpensive lycra. "Every man and his dog could see exactly what I was wearing underneath, which was usually nothing," he said. "People didn't really know where to look when I wore it, so I had to put it on the back burner for a while."
Even when Justin was able to scrape together enough money for proper cat suit, there was a learning curve he had to navigate. At first he had trouble nailing the timing, and once he needed help from audience members to remove the outer layers of his costume. Another gaffe was far more embarrassing.
"We were on Welsh TV and I did a headstand with a split," he recalled. "The back of the outfit split open and one of my testicles fell out to the horror of that sweet nation, that will probably never forgive us."
The Darkness may not think they're comical, but even if that's how they're universally perceived, they're having the last laugh. At a time when English bands often have trouble translating to American audiences, the Darkness are doing just fine. Their shows have been eagerly attended, radio is hopping onboard and their label actually moved the release date of their album forward due to popular demand. The band has already shot videos for three songs and the one for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" debuts at video outlets this week.
"It's time for the good times to emerge from the musical spectrum," Justin said. "It's time for us to say, 'I ain't gonna lay there in the shadows anymore, I'm gonna stand up and smile, cause I'm happy.' This isn't the sound of wind — it's the sound of jubilation."
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