Justin Hawkins says The Darkness are "doing all the heavy lifting" to save rock and roll.
The ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ rockers will release their sixth studio album ‘Easter Is Cancelled’ on October 4 and while opening track ‘Rock And Roll Deserves To Die’ paints a grim picture of the state of the genre, the singer doesn’t think all is lost if other bands do their bit for the cause.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "We’re not saying that we’re saving it, I think we’re saying that someone needs to.
"We’ve done our bit, we’ve presented the world with another album filled with brilliant uplifting music, and the time has come for somebody else to do that too!
"Saving rock and roll is no longer one band’s job – we need a movement! We’re doing all the heavy lifting here, we can’t be expected to repeatedly drag rock and roll out of the mire or release it from the shackles on the train track."
The 44-year-old musician – who completes the lineup alongside brother Dan Hawkins, Frankie Poullain and Rufus ‘Tiger’ Taylor’ also questioned why other genre don’t get spoken about in quite the same way.
He added: "It always makes me laugh because I think, why is rock and roll the genre that needs to be saved?
"You never hear about saving hip hop, or – I’m trying to think of some other genres that I enjoy listening to. Jazz, or flamenco. That never happens."
On the idea of the group trying their hand at a flamenco album as part of a one band crusade, he laughed: "That’s what The Darkness should do – explore other genre and save them."
It’s been 16 years since The Darkness first burst onto the scene with their classic debut record ‘Permission To Land’, and the frontman thinks there was something special about that period as they honed their craft in front of live audiences.
He explained: "Those songs, I don’t know. That album, all the material on it is road tested, we’d played every song on that album a thousand times before we recorded it because those were the songs we had when we were coming up.
"We had a focus group of our entire fanbase for the first album. As they grew, we could feel our way through a collection of songs that made a great album. We don’t have that luxury anymore, we have to try and guess!"
For the album’s 10th anniversary, the group played the 10 tracks in their entirety around the country, and Justin admitted he’d be open to a similar celebration for 2005 sophomore effort ‘One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back’ next year.
He said: "Yeah, definitely a temptation. We did that before for ‘Permission To Land’, and that was a really good fun tour.
"It was like an outreach tour, we did hidden parts of the country we hadn’t had a chance to do before. I’d love to do that, that’d be great."
Justin Hawkins: The Darkness can’t save rock and roll alone
