Justin Hawkins thought he was “too old” to be a rock star by the time he reached 18.
The 48-year-old musician is best known as the founder, lead singer, and lead guitarist of the Darkness but didn’t find fame with the ‘One Way Ticket’ rockers until he was 25 and explained how he worked his way up by studying music and getting a job in a studio.
He told Metro newspaper’s SixtySeconds column: “I remember when I got to about 18 and I saw bands like Ash coming up and thinking, ‘Well this is over, I’m already too old!’ But I still wanted to be in music, so I went and studied music technology and got a job in a recording studio.
Then I made a sort of easy-listening cassette of songs that I’d written for my grandfather for a Christmas present. And it got heard by somebody at a publishing company and they thought, ‘Oh, this kind of easy listening stuff is ideal to synchronise with films and TV shows and adverts’ and they
signed me. I did a lot of stuff. I did HSBC, Mars Bars, Audi… and then I did the Ikea advert, which basically paid for our first album and bought me and my brother our first Les Pauls.”
During his heyday, the ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ hitmaker infamously executed headstands on stage whilst clapping his feet but has now come to the conclusion that the stunt doesn’t necessarily have to be a part of the show these days.
He said: “The first time I did that headstand, feet clapping thing on stage I didn’t practise it, I just did it instinctively and it became part of the show. That was 20 years ago and I’ve been doing it ever since. I also went through a long phase of climbing up onto balconies of the theatres and diving off into the audience. But on three different occasions, I’ve broken ribs doing that. I last did it in Australia in August and it was agony. So I’ve come to the realisation that maybe doesn’t have to be part of the show.”