Richard Hawley’s favourite lyric of all time
Rockabilly soul stalwart Richard Hawley has become a much-beloved figure in Sheffield’s rich musical heritage. While the former steel exporter is often associated with post-punk synthesists like Cabaret Voltaire or early Human League, it’s the working-class grit that hoarsed fellow Sheffielder Joe Cocker’s midlands blues that’s provided a guiding light for Hawley’s class-conscious romanticism. Not that Hawley ever sung a song like ‘You Are So Beautiful’, nor would he want to. With a well-known affection for The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, Hawley straddles a curious line of easy-listening and pub croon, a dose of reality gravel that keeps his songs grounded to the earth.
Back in 2006, record and entertainment store HMV began a ‘My Inspiration’ marketing campaign, featuring everyone from Don Letts to Scarlett Johansson revealing lyrics or poetry that inspires them the most. Hawley offered his selection, the last verse from Eddie Cochran’s ’59 hit ‘Somethin’ Else’: “I’ll keep right on dreaming and thinking to myself, when it all comes true man, wow that’s something else”.
Written by Cochran, his brother Bob, and Cochran’s girlfriend Sharon Steeley, ‘Somethin’ Else’ followed an enduring string of rock ‘n’ roll 45s, including ‘C’Mon Everybody’ and ‘Summertime Blues’ that set alight white America. Although tamer than some of his sweaty, frenzied peers like Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis, Cochran’s brief songbook almost deified him among the emerging rockabilly sub-culture, frozen in eternal youth by his fatal car crash in Bath, Somerset, at the tender age of 21.
“I have a mirror so I can check the back of my quiff for insects and bits of leaves. I use Black & White – if it’s good enough for Elvis and Eddie Cochran, it’s good enough for me,” Hawley confessed to The Guardian in ’16. Cochran’s influence on Hawley runs deep, having maintained his ’50s aesthetic with remarkable dedication and often plays the Gretsch guitar associated with Cochran’s era. Hawley even contributed to ’21s Eddie Cochran – A Fast Moving Beat Show: The Tragic Story Of The Final Fatal UK Tour book, plus played at its launch.
However, Hawley’s selection is guided by deeper principles. With ‘Somethin’ Else’s lyrical picture of a young man’s attempt to woo the girl he fancies by flaunting his spruced-up vintage car over the convertible he can’t afford, perhaps it touches on Hawley’s thematic motifs of the dreams and motives of working people.
It’s a subject that hovers all over Hawley’s work, inspiring the ’19 musical Standing At Sky’s Edge, a production at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre featuring several of Hawley’s songs, exploring three generations living in the city’s Park Hill from the post-war settlement, through to its ’80s neoliberal decline and to today’s gentrification threat.
In 2001, when assisting on Pulp’s We Love Life, he accompanied the album’s producer, legendary artist Scott Walker, in a record shop, Hawley picking out a Cochran disc with evident relish. Having been a child star in the ’50s before The Walker Bros and his own heady solo work, Walker took Halwey by the hand, and told him: “I shook Eddie Cochran’s hand and now he’s shaking your hand through me”.
