Dan Hawkins

The riff machine behind The Darkness has always had a Marshall in his engine room. He reveals why his trusty 1987X and his new Studio SV20H give him the best of both worlds…

From the moment they touched down with 2003’s debut album Permission To Land, The Darkness were larger than life. With their huge riffs, monster solos and eye-popping showmanship, Dan and Justin Hawkins were the guitar gods we’d been waiting for – complete with a backline of towering Marshall stacks that went with their classic rock vibe.

As such, show-goers at NAMM 2019 might have been surprised to see Dan demo the new Marshall Studio Vintage 20 head and SV212 cabinet. But as the rhythm man reminds us, this compact valve series is small yet perfectly formed.

What are your memories of demo’ing the Studio at NAMM? “I was a bit nervous about it. I’m a rhythm guitarist, really, and the sort of people that do demonstrations at NAMM, they’re virtuosos, literally going at a million miles an hour. But all my fears sort of melted away when I started playing the Studio. Wow. I couldn’t believe it.

“Before I started, I was thinking to myself, ‘What am I going to do to eke this out for 10 minutes?’ But then, 15 minutes had passed, and I’d forgotten there was anyone else in the room. I was just chugging away, really enjoying it.”

What did you think of the Studio’s performance after you tried it? “It’s just such a complete sound. You know, you have to really crank the big amps. But even at 20 watts, the Studio is perfect. It’s just giving you enough. I wouldn’t call it a quiet amp, by any means. It can stand up to a heavy rock drummer. So it’s great. It’s something I’ve been wishing I had for years, especially in extensive rehearsals, when it’s really fatiguing having your sound attenuated and sounding middly.

“What I like as well is that the Studio has kept its hardness. There’s an aggression in a 100-watt Super Lead, and I’m used to that sound. Whenever I’ve tried anything of a lower wattage, it never quite gives me that response. But they’ve managed to keep that hardness in the Studio amps.”

So you think it sounds like a full-size Marshall stack? “Yeah. I mean, the real thing, you can only really use in certain conditions. So the Studio is a way of having the real thing all the time. I won’t be rehearsing without one of these from now on – to save my ears!”

Where might you use the Studio? “As a rehearsal amp, definitely. But you never know. With our band, one minute

you could be playing to 100,000 people, the next you could be in a tiny club. So I think we’ll carry a Studio amp on tour with us”

How did The Darkness fall for Marshall? “I was a drummer first of all, and my brother was a guitarist, when we were seven and eight or whatever. And his first amp was a Marshall. When The Darkness first got management, my manager very kindly took me down to Denmark Street and said, ‘What do you want?’ And I said, ‘Well, I want a Marshall stack’.

“It was a 1987X 50-watt and a 4x12 with Greenbacks – that was my first-ever Marshall and my main amp for quite some time. Then I got a 100-watt Super Lead as well, because The Verve split up, and we bought a couple of Marshalls from them. I’ve been playing combinations of those two ever since, really.”

Were you aware of the legendary Marshall players who came before you? “I was very aware that AC/DC were a Marshall band. And I was pretty obsessed with Malcolm Young, so I’d study his sound, and it was unmistakably Marshall. You know, when you hit a low E chord hard, there’s just a growl that you only get from a Marshall. It’s kind of like, ‘Grraaahh…!’ ”