I don’t want to be in Jimmy Page’s graveyard!’” UK songwriting icon Richard Hawley cry to Led Zeppelin.
Robert Plant said, ‘We’re going to do Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing it – I don’t want to be in Jimmy Page’s graveyard!’” UK songwriting icon Richard Hawley talks big name jams, guitar shopping – and restoring Scott Walker’s Tele
You’d never hear him say that himself, of course, as there’s a genuine and abiding humility in his approach to music. But the tender, yearning ballad I’ll Never Get Over You is a song that Roy Orbison might easily have penned, while Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow sounds like a lost, lovelorn Eddie Cochrane ballad.
Yet Hawley somehow manages to wear his influences lightly, like a well-fitting jacket that suits him and that he makes his own. And if the past looms large in his work, its main purpose is to highlight the unbroken threads of memory, pride and love that stretch from childhood to the present day and imbue it with meaning.
Hawley acknowledges that songwriters have to have something of the magpie about them, always ready to snatch up a golden phrase and wing home with it, to be tucked away for later use.
He adds that the best songs come from that part of our mind that isn’t caught up in mundane, day-to-day decision-making. Words and phrases overheard by chance can open the taps to a sudden, instinctive flow of inspiration that yields better songs than conscious effort, he argues.
