It’s all about the jumpsuits
Thirteen years after their Big Day Out performance, The Darkness return to New Zealand, still without a hint of cool, reports
Ihave only hazy memories of the one and only time I saw The Darkness perform live – which also happens to be the one and only time they’ve ever performed here in New Zealand.
It was Big Day Out 2004 and I’d just finished my last day on the job working for the railways, coming off a graveyard shift that finished at 6am.
I headed home for four hours’ sleep, caught a bus to Mt Smart Stadium – then called Ericsson Stadium, I believe – and arrived just in time to see lead singer Justin Hawkins stride on stage in an open-chested, white jumpsuit David Bowie would have been proud of.
I don’t remember much of their actual set, although I do seem to recall Hawkins changing costume at least once – into another open-chested jumpsuit, of course, its skintight pink-and-white striping turning him into some kind of obscene, adults-only candy cane.
Music-wise, The Darkness would no doubt have played all the hits from their platinum-selling in New Zealand debut album Permission To Land – I Believe In A Thing Called Love, Love Is Only A Feeling, Growing On Me, Get Your Hands Off My Woman – but it’s interesting that what I most remember are Hawkins and his jumpsuits.
Speaking on the phone from London – where he’s just stepped out of the band’s rehearsal room – The Darkness’ bassist Frankie Poullain remembers that Big Day Out show in Auckland 13 years ago too.
‘‘I remember being greeted at the airport by a cavalcade of Hells Angels,’’ he says, thinking back.
‘‘There was a pimped-out hearse – like an open cadillac – and they all kind of rocked up you know? There was about a dozen Hells Angels and they drove us to the Big Day Out site in Auckland. It was a great welcome.’’
The self-described ‘‘elder statesman’’ of the band, Poullain is getting on now – he turns 50 just a few days before The Darkness arrive in the country to play three shows next month – but says that, if anything, touring has got easier, not harder.
‘‘There’s more laughter now, that’s the thing,’’ he explains. ‘‘We’ve got more perspective, and we make each other laugh. And when you can do that, time passes freely and quickly.’’
This seems to me to be a not-soveiled reference to Poullain’s abrupt departure from the band in May 2005 – that old fallback ‘‘musical differences’’ was cited as the reason for it at the time – so I take a punt and asked him what really happened.
‘‘Why did it happen? The No 1 reason why it happened would be misunderstandings,’’ he says, leaving me none the wiser.
Poullain’s explanation of what it took to get the band back together in 2011 is a little more enlightening.
‘‘Just to lose the pride, you know? Pride gets in the way, doesn’t it? It’s a curious beast, isn’t it?’’ he says.
Having released two albums since reforming – 2012’s Hot Cakes and 2015’s Last Of Our Kind, neither of which attained the same success as Permission To Land – The Darkness now consists of original members Poullain and the two Hawkins brothers, Justin and Dan, plus new drummer Rufus Taylor, who joined in 2015.
Taylor certainly has the right pedigree for a band like The Darkness – his father is Roger Taylor, drummer for Queen.
‘‘They used to come to see us play back in the day,’’ says Poullain of Taylor senior and his Queen bandmate, guitarist Brian May.
The rock legends have always been fans of The Darkness it seems, and May even joined them onstage for the final gig of their 2011 comeback tour at the Hammersmith Apollo, tearing through Darkness tunes Bareback and I Believe In A Thing Called Love, as well as a cover of Queen’s own Tie Your Mother Down.
It’s easy to see the influence the iconic British rockers have had on The Darkness – singer Hawkins once famously described his band as being like ‘‘either a really gay AC/DC, or a really straight Queen’’.
And 17 years after first getting together, Poullain says The Darkness still take the same approach to their music – and their image – that they always have.
‘‘We just have a different aesthetic to most other guitar bands,’’ he says. ‘‘These days people tend to – when they pick up a guitar, they tend to take themselves more seriously. Whereas we take ourselves less seriously.
‘‘We egg each other on and we’re not scared of what some people would call bad taste. We’re anti-cool probably.’’
The Darkness’ New Zealand Tour with Push Push is at Auckland’s Powerstation (April 20), Wellington’s Hunter Lounge (April 21), and Christchurch’s The Foundry Bar (April 22). See thedarknesslive.com