Chesney Hawkes: 'By the mid-1990s I just wanted to be in Radiohead'

Through the first half of the 1990s it was a giddy ride but when success faded he took off to Los Angeles to live with his American wife Kristina and their three children.

Now, after 12 years in the States, Hawkes is back home in England where he’s relaunched his career with the well-received album Living Arrows. “For this album, I wanted to make sure I gave it my all as far as it goes with promotion and just do a proper campaign,” says the 54-year-old by way of explanation for his family’s return to Surrey. “I really haven’t done that with my last few albums, I’ve just put them out, but with this one I really wanted to make a splash so I knew I had to be back in the UK for that.”

The album has a strikingly contemporary sound – something Hawkes attributes to his friend Jake Gosling. “He’s an A-list producer now, he discovered Ed Sheeran, but he’s an old friend of mine since we were kids. We were having a beer and he said, ‘We should do something for you’ and I said, yeah, I’d love to, so we got together and started writing and he was the one who started bringing in this more contemporary feel, 808 drums and pushing me into doing more contemporary sounds, production techniques and things like that and I think that really worked. The songs themselves you can just pick up a guitar and play them, they are still classic songwriting like I’ve always done my whole life, but there is a contemporary edge to these songs.”

The album continues Hawkes’ working relationship with another old friend, 80s pop star Nik Kershaw, who wrote The One and Only. “We’re old mates and we’ve had little breaks where we’ve not done any writing, just lots of drinking, but he’s always had at least a couple of songs on every one of my albums and I’ve even had a couple of songs on his albums, which is amazing,” Hawkes says.

On this album they co-wrote three songs together including 13, a deeply personal song for Hawkes which relates an incident of sexual assault he suffered aged 13. “I remember going to Nik’s house the night before our session and we sat up and had a bottle of wine and I don’t know why but I hadn’t really told anyone about that situation and I just spilled it out to him and there were tears. The next day we were driving to the studio and he said, ‘You know we’re only writing about one subject, don’t you?’ and I was, like, you’re probably right… He just left me at the back of the studio, we were playing some chords and I was writing and writing and writing. It almost vomited out that song.

“When I started bringing those songs to Jake I didn’t think that we were going to record them because I felt uncomfortable, it’s painful, it’s hard to put stuff like that out, but Jake said, ‘This is going on the album for sure’ and then it was like opening the flood gates. All my songs were like therapy.”

The son of 1960s hitmaker Chip Hawkes, bassist and co-lead vocalist of the Tremeloes, and actress Carol Dilworth, Hawkes yearned to become a musician from his early teens. “I guess environment probably helped me find that as a potential forward motion with my career,” he says. “My dad’s friends were all musicians, and some of them famous musicians, from bands like Herman’s Hermits and the Searchers and Marmalade, so I think that it did sway all of us. My brother (Jodie) is a drummer, my sister (Keely) is a singer now as well, it’s just part of our blood, and I never had any other back-up plan. Because my mum and dad are so liberal and rock ’n’ roll, it was just, ‘Yeah, of course, go and be a rock ’n’ roller, it’s the family business’.”

At 19 Hawkes became a star – “Younger than all of my kids now, which feels weird,” notes the father-of-three – but that came with attendant pressures.

“It was a wild ride that I have very fond memories of, and then difficult memories as well,” he says. “It was hard at times because when you’re a solo artist and you have overnight monumental success like that, I didn’t realise it at the time but (to) the record company I was obviously a commodity and they just wanted to utilise me​​​​​​​, so they’d fly me to seven countries in one day and that was difficult. ​​​​​​​I remember fainting in Japan during a bunch of interviews one day​​​​​​​ – that side of it wasn’t fun, but the actual ride was a young boy’s dream​​​​​​​, and of course I had my bro with me and the band​​​​​​​, travelling around the world, doing our thing, that part of it was fun.”

By his mid-twenties he found himself without a record contract when his second album flopped and feared that The One and Only had come to define him in many people’s eyes. “So much so that I kind of quit and stopped,” he says. “I didn’t quit music ​​​​​​​but I didn’t want it to go out in my name probably from ’94 to the early 2000s. I never played The One and Only or anything like that, I very much rebelled against that pop persona in that whole time​​​​​​​, and when people asked for The One and Only I was like, b***er off​​​​​​​, I’m doing new stuff now. I just wanted to be in Radiohead, really, so I was turning my guitar up to 11 and shoegazing​​​​​​​.

“But time changes everything. I came to see that The One and Only grew wings and went off to connect with all sorts of people and that stuff was nothing to do with me. So when I started to get gigs offers in universities in the early 2000s I was a bit nervous because I thought people would’ve forgotten who I was and The One and Only was so long ago but they hadn’t forgotten and it was amazing, and here I am 35 years later and still talking about it.”

Nine months after release of Living Arrows Hawkes is heading out on a UK tour, which next week will bring him to Leeds and Barnsley. “I keep hearing about both of those as really great venues, so I’m really looking forward to that,” he says of the Brudenell Social Club and ​Birdwell Venue. ​”I’m excited to get out on the road and play these songs. The album came out about eight months ago and had great reviews but it’s had time to really percolate a little bit now and I feel like there’s going to be people knowing some of the songs​ and that’s going to be really great. I can’t wait to have people sing along to them.”

Chesney Hawkes plays at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on March 12 and​ Birdwell Venue, Barnsley on March 15. ​https://chesneyhawkes.com/