Justin and Dan Hawkins of the Darkness Find the Humor in Hard Rock

The experience of locking in with the Hawkins brothers for an hour of conversation is not unlike absorbing their gonzo, wildly effervescent take on classic hard rock. To be sure, Justin, 49, the band’s frontman and de facto lead guitarist, and Dan, 48, who plays guitar, produces, and contributes backing vocals, keep you on your toes.

An instance of deep creative insight will jump-cut to a well-executed crude joke with a set-up involving slide guitar, which Justin taught himself to play during Covid lockdown in standard tuning, “not the G cheating tuning.” Passages of admirable self-reflection are interspersed with a freewheeling riff on Kid Rock and a debate about the finer points of crawling up one’s own arse. It’s kind of a blast.

The sad inability of critics and even audiences to reconcile fantastic hard rock with a sense of humor has dogged the Darkness throughout its existence, to the point where Dan believes the “classic rock community” only really came around to the band after Justin and drummer Rufus Taylor performed in Taylor Hawkins’ all-star tribute in 2022. “Finally, ‘Okay, these guys aren’t actually just fucking around,’” says Dan. Fair enough, but what exactly are they doing?

The Darkness’ new album, Dreams on Toast, their eighth LP overall and sixth since reforming in 2011, is quite possibly their strongest set yet. In its wide-ranging, often surprising charms, it somehow manages to muddy the waters even further while also firming up an ethos—namely, that the Darkness are smart rock and pop mastercraftsmen who contain multitudes. Or, as Dan describes their M.O.: “We can do whatever the fuck we want, whenever we want, and we don’t have to worry about it.” Adds Justin, “The funny thing is what we actually want to do is just write timeless songs.”

Justin Hawkins’ Gear

Guitars

• Atkin JH3001
• Atkin Mindhorn JH3000
• Dan’s red Gibson ES-355
• Dan’s Epiphone Casino (for slide)
• Atkin acoustic
• Brook Tavy acoustic
• Taylor 12-string

Justin and Dan’s Amps

• Ampete amp/cab switcher
• Vox AC30 head
• Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier
• 1959 Marshall plexi Super Lead
• Marshall 1987X
• Friedman Smallbox
• Friedman BE-100 Deluxe
• Marshall cab with Celestion Greenbacks

Effects

• Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive
• SoloDallas Schaffer Replica

Strings & Picks

• Rotosound Roto Yellows .010s
• Dunlop Tortex .73 mm

Dreams on Toast boasts moments of quintessential Darkness—in, say, “Walking Through Fire,” a hooky rock ’n’ roll behemoth that pays plainspoken tribute to the power of … rock ’n’ roll—and gets even more meta with a winky line about wasting time “shooting yet another shitty video.” For those who’ve followed the band from the start, it can evoke the shock of discovering the Darkness on MTV in 2004, when they were an exuberant burst of Queen-inspired virtuosity amidst so much overwrought post-punk and stylized garage rock. (“I fucking hate videos. I don’t even know why we bother,” shrugs Justin, the centerpiece of several of the most memorable rock vids of the 21st century.)

Elsewhere, Dreams on Toast has a knack for subverting expectations. “The Longest Kiss” leans into the progressive-pop facility of Jeff Lynne, Sparks, or Harry Nilsson. “Hot on My Tail” and “Cold Hearted Woman” are deft examples of rootsy pop writing, finding a niche between honky tonk and transatlantic folk. “The Battle for Gadget Land” engages in campy rap-rock, as if satirizing the nu metal that thrived when the Darkness was founded. It also betrays a British punk influence—a vestige, the brothers ponder, of their father’s excellent musical tastes and his decision to play his sons Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Bewilderingly, “Weekend in Rome” features a voice-over by the actor Stephen Dorff.

“The funny thing is what we actually want to do is just write timeless songs.” —Justin Hawkins

The same savvy defines “I Hate Myself,” a punked-up barroom-glam throwback that tackles heartbreak and self-contempt. The song also has a buzzed-about video in which Justin appears, unrecognizable, as a man who wears his grief, vanity, and insecurity on his face as questionable plastic surgery. The clip is startling, cinematic, and willfully not very much fun. Consequently it’s inspired pushback, even within the band. “I think on this record, from the recording to the videos and everything, I think we’re challenging people,” Justin says. “We’re trying to explore genres and visual ideas that we haven’t done before. Like, there’s only two of us on the album cover; me and Dan aren’t even on it.

“It’s like we’re doing everything differently, and in ways that make people go, ‘Well, what the fuck is this?’ I think we’re hopefully positioning ourselves as a band that cares about the art.”

Fraternal Dynamics  

Following 2021’s Motorheart, which was built piecemeal in the throes of the pandemic, Dreams on Toast is a welcome return to (literal) face-to-face collaboration. “Pretty much everything on the album was written on an acoustic, me facing Justin,” Dan says. “Holding my gaze,” adds Justin, with a straight face.

“We have quite a lot of success when I’ve just got an acoustic and I’m thrashing away,” Dan posits, though “thrashing away” isn’t quite fair. In fact, the through line tying Dreams on Toast to landmark Darkness singles like “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End),” or “Love Is Only a Feeling” is the precision of the craft—the sheer perfection of the sonics and the shape of each song, the seamlessness with which an intro becomes a verse and then a bridge before an earworm chorus breaks down the door. Track after track.

“I think we’ve always been good at arranging,” Dan says. “Sorry to blow our own trumpets, but I think that comes from Justin and my musical upbringing.” To wit: Fleetwood Mac’s pop-rock masterpiece Rumours was on heavy rotation at home. At the outset of his career, after he’d been a drummer and a bass player, Dan only “started playing guitar properly as a session player,” he says. “And that kind of taught me a lot about placing things, when to do things and when not to.

“The only reason I can play guitar is because I wanted to work out how songs were written,” he adds later. At one point during the chat, Justin mentions his experience writing and producing music for commercial clients—something he and his brother continue to partake in, in specific under-the-radar situations. He maintains that work doesn’t inform the Darkness too much, though he does allow that it furthers their understanding of the architecture of songs. “We learn about how they’re built,” he says, “what’s happening underneath the bonnet.”

In the end, Dan explains, the band doesn’t chase down a song in the studio until it’s been properly worked out. “Because there’s no point, is there?” Justin says. A delightful exchange about turds, and the pursuit of polishing them, ensues.

“The only reason I can play guitar is because I wanted to work out how songs were written.” —Dan Hawkins

Dan Hawkins’ Gear

Guitars

• 2000 Gibson Les Paul Standard
• Gibson ES-355

Effects

• Ibanez TS9 and TS808 Tube Screamers
• SoloDallas Schaffer Replica
• Keeley Caverns
• Keeley Katana Boost

Strings & Picks

• Rotosound Roto Greys .011s
• Dunlop Nylon .73 mm

Dreams on Toast features the band’s current lineup with the rhythm tandem of Rufus Taylor, the son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor, and bassist Frankie Poullain. It was produced by Dan, who helms his well-appointed Hawkland Studios in Sussex, England.

Unprompted, he shows us around via Zoom, and in his lighthearted practicality, you get a sense of the study in contrast that the Hawkins brothers have presented since they were boys in the English seaside town of Lowestoft. (For an intimate look at their relationship and the band’s hard-won return, check out the 2023 documentary, Welcome to the Darkness, which will be available on platforms in the States starting in mid April.) The conventional wisdom dictates that Justin is the YouTube personality, the opinionated fount of charisma, falsetto, and unforgettable guitar leads, and Dan is the engine room, the pragmatist and a rhythm ace in the mold of his hero Malcolm Young. It’s definitely not that cut-and-dried; Dan, despite his modesty, can put together a great solo, too, and they’re both affable and entertaining, with the pluck to have forged ahead through physical and personal challenges. But it’s true enough.

“I’ve been in my studio for eight hours a day working on my guitar rig for this next tour,” Dan says, feigning salty exasperation. “I’ve spent so much money.” Enter Justin: “And I learned how to go snowboarding.” Dan is interested in the guitar for “what it is capable of sonically, not necessarily emotionally,” he says. “I imagine that’s like the opposite of how I see it,” his brother replies. “That’s why it works!” says Dan.

“As soon as the amp question comes up … I don’t even know what my settings are,” Justin admits. “I’m more concerned about guitars, and I think Dan’s more concerned about amps.”

Visiting Tonehenge

Actually, Justin’s response to the amp question is terrific: “You could just send him a picture of the Tonehenge,” he says to his brother, referring to a mouth-watering monument of heads and cabs in Dan’s studio. Dan goes on to explain his wall of sound and how he uses an Ampete switcher to explore various combinations. On Dreams on Toast, he says, we’re hearing plenty of Marshall and Friedman—which “take care of the EL34 stuff”—as well as a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier and a handwired Vox AC30 head that “played a major role.” Dan doesn’t feel compelled to “pull out loads of weird combos,” he says, because “we’ve got a big sound that we need to portray pretty much straight away.” Mission complete.

Guitar-wise, the big takeaway on Dreams on Toast is that we’re hearing less Les Paul than we might be used to on a Darkness record. Dan continues to swear by his 2000 Les Paul Standard, whose high-output 498 humbucker has had a huge impact on the consistency of his sound. “It’s only in recent years that I realized you could actually pull the volume back” and achieve the tone of “a really nice old Les Paul,” he says. His strings have thinned out to .011–.052 after he’d bloodied his fingers one too many times using .013–.054 sets with a wound G.

For his part, Justin has largely moved away from the white Les Paul Customs that became an indelible part of his image long ago, settling into a fruitful partnership with the English brand Atkin, whose esteemed reputation for handcrafted acoustics shouldn’t overwhelm its versatile lineup of electrics. “I know I’ve sort of become synonymous with the white Les Paul, and that’s good; I think every generation should have a white Les Paul player,” he says cheekily. “But maybe my time is gone now. Maybe it’s somebody else’s turn.”

Justin enjoys his Atkin signature models: the Frankenstrat-indebted JH3001 and the JH3000 Mindhorn, an offset with two humbuckers and an LP-style bridge. “I’ve always loved Strats,” he says, beginning to describe his concept for the JH3001. “I’ve always enjoyed the tonal variety, and the way they play is interesting.” But signature instruments are opportunities to correct annoyances and combine archetypes, and so it goes with the 3001.

He wanted a floating, Floyd Rose-style bridge, which would allow him to do dive bombs “and all the things I’ve been teaching myself to do,” he says. (Those shred moves impress as smartly deployed accents to tracks like “Rock and Roll Party Cowboy.”) Justin had long been frustrated with the standard pickup-selector location on Strats and “wanted the electronics to resemble more closely what the Les Pauls do.” A 3-way toggle for two handwound humbuckers can be found on the upper horn, and the wiring is visible via a transparent Perspex pickguard—an homage, perhaps, to Justin’s lovingly remembered Dan Armstrong acrylic guitar (for which he had only the Country Bass pickup). The JH3001, Justin says, is a “FrankenPaul, if you will,” or, as Dan recommends, a “Lesocaster.” The Mindhorn, whose offset body might strike you as a meld of Firebird and Fender, offers Justin the reliability of a Tune-o-matic-type bridge; on other offsets he’s played, like a Jaguar, he’d pick so hard the strings would pop out of their saddles. “Also, the selector’s in the right place for me,” he says.

He also leans on his brother’s collection. One of his go-to instruments for his flourishing slide skills is Dan’s old Epiphone Casino. And Justin explains that Dan’s red Gibson ES-355 was the axe of choice for two of his hardest-hitting solos on the record: the twinned-up lines of “The Longest Kiss” and the breakaway Angus-isms of “I Hate Myself.”

“We’ve got a big sound that we need to portray pretty much straight away.” —Dan Hawkins

Solo Break

Which brings us to the choreographed majesty of Justin’s solos across the Darkness catalog—masterpieces in miniature, as hooky and bulletproof as the songs they complement. Justin expounds on his process: “When I’m trying to build a solo, we normally just run the track and I have a go. And usually, I’m going 100 miles an hour, finding phrases and trying to modify them so they don’t sound like where I’ve nicked them from. But the most important thing is that you can sing along to it, so it becomes a countermelody.” He thinks technical dazzle can work beautifully in a solo, but only when it’s held in judicious balance among less-showy principles. “The thing that sets the great guitarists apart from the other ones is the expression,” he says. “I’m talking about dynamics and vibrato.”

His lodestars of lead playing include Mark Knopfler, whose “Tunnel of Love” solo “shows you an infinite number of harmonic choices” atop a straightforward chord sequence. “It’s full of ideas,” he says. “None of it’s showing off; it’s all logic.” Other favorites are similarly thoughtful rockers, among them Brian May and Jeff Beck.

He digs EVH too, though those concepts came later. “There was a guitar teacher in Lowestoft that would teach everybody how to do that—the tapping and all the things that Eddie Van Halen invented,” he recalls. “I didn’t go to that guitar teacher. I was more interested in blues playing, really, and that kind of expression. It wasn’t until later that I thought, ‘Ah, fuck, I kind of wish I’d learned that properly.’ Because now I’m asking my guitar tech how to do it.”

His brother’s lead playing is an inspiration as well, in its ability to surprise and draw contours that Justin simply would not. “He makes interesting choices,” Justin says, “and then I always scratch my head and go, ‘Wow, I would never have thought to play that note.’ So I try and sometimes I think, ‘What would Dan do?’”

YouTube It

Watch the Darkness rip a trio of exuberant rock ’n’ roll romps to a massive festival audience.