15 years ago, Justin and Dan Hawkins of The Darkness swept the board at the BRIT awards. Catapulted onto the world stage, they arced high then crashed back to earth in flames when the band split in 2006. With the band now firmly back together and making joyous, hard-edged rock once again, we join the brothers to hear their advice on how to squeeze top performance from Marshall amps – and learn why they “didn’t come here to ride the teacups…”
It’s a bright morning in West London and Dan and Justin Hawkins, the brothers behind The Darkness’s double-pronged guitar sound, are putting off the inevitable. Before them is a large table laden with hundreds of CDs to sign for fans. It’s a task they’re glad to undertake, but not perhaps the most exciting duty in the diary of a rock star. So they’re happy to chat for a while before getting stuck in and reminiscing about some of the craziest excesses they enjoyed – and sometimes endured – at the height of their fame.
Older and savvier than they were in the delirious days of the early Noughties when their hit single I Believe In A Thing Called Love leaped with ecstatic energy from radios around the world, they’re still as in love with the sound of Marshalls at full tilt as the day they started. Deceptively deft songwriters, Dan and Justin also have a store of hard-won knowledge to share about how to write melodic rock guitar hits. So we put the pens to one side a little longer, grab a coffee and request permission to lounge…
You’ve been a twin-guitar team for nearly two decades now. How do you divide up guitar duties for best effect?
Justin Hawkins: “I don’t do a lot of writing on the guitar. That’s mostly Dan’s department – he does 99 percent of the riffs. We work together on the melodies and I do all the words. And then when it comes to creating solos, we work on those together because there’s often bits where we’re either harmonizing or an approximation of each other’s lines.”
’Lizzy-style harmonized guitar lines are a hallmark part of your sound. What are your tips for nailing them?
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