With Lady’s Bridge (Mute), the follow-up to 2005’s sublime Cole’s Corner, Richard Hawley—Nancy Sinatra collaborator, session supremo and sometime Pulp cohort—has crafted yet another wondrous set of late-night laments. Like its predecessors, the songs are firmly entrenched in one of pop’s most unfashionable eras, that strange grey period directly after rock ’n’ roll’s initial explosion and just prior to the onslaught of the Beatles and the British Invasion. It harkens back to a time when girl groups, Brill Building protégés and smooth crooners ruled the airwaves. Echoes of Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney and Lee Hazlewood abound; it’s all in the sympathetic, tasteful playing of Hawley’s backing band, his own burnished, bruised baritone, the delicate string arrangements, and the little guitar licks that are more James Burton than Jimi Hendrix. It’s the kind of music that soundtracked the Northern English workingmen’s clubs that Hawley played in as a kid, and you can almost smell the acrid fug of cigarette smoke and warm beer. Above all, it’s unashamedly “grown up” music—not in a self-consciously, po-faced way—rather, it’s music that deals with longing and regret, music made by and for people who’ve lived and loved and lost. It’s sentimental, nostalgic and unabashedly romantic—and it’s all the better for it.

MAGNET caught up with Richard Hawley at home in Sheffield.

So, another album and album title that tips a nod to your hometown of Sheffield. What is it about the city you love?
It’s home. I write a lot of songs using Sheffield as a backdrop ’cause it’s real, it’s something I can relate to instead of something that’s just fantasy. Most people walk across Lady’s Bridge or past Cole’s Corner without giving it a second thought, but I love the whole history of the place. My family’s lived ’round here for at least 200 years, so I’m really deeply rooted here.

It’s a pretty tough working-class city—yet you always manage to make it sound impossibly romantic.
Yeah, well, my dad always said I was soft as a bag of tits. [Laughs]

Like most of your material, the album harkens back to a period that’s often overlooked—the late ’50s and early ’60s. What is it about that era you find so appealing?
There’s just something about the whole sound of that era. The concept of production was kinda researched…producers like Norman Petty in Texas and Joe Meek in London with hits like “Telstar.” That was fucking huge. They messed around a lot with sounds and that whole era’s just always intrigued me.

The Joe Meek story’s insane…
Oh yeah, he was so fuckin’ fucked up it was unbelievable! But the music he created out of his little flat on the Holloway Road was just magic. And then he ends up, on Buddy Holly’s birthday, blowing his landlady away. Then he blows his own head off. He was so depressed because he’d been ripped off and loads of his royalties never came through. So he kills himself and the next day, a check arrives on the mat with all his royalties. And he was also gay at a time when it was illegal and meant you were a social pariah.

This era of music and the music you love was very much the soundtrack for generations of working-class Brits—particularly up North—music that was huge in working men’s clubs.
It is very working-class music, yeah. It’s like my Dad said, when Flower Power came along, it never left the Bag O’ Nails Club, let alone London. You just didn’t see it up in Sheffield. People still had short hair and wore suits up until the ’70s.

You played the club circuit as a teenager. Is it safe to say you got a lot of your infamous onstage patter from the clubs? If the music career goes under, you could make a living as a stand-up.
Oh aye, yeah, I got a lot of that from old club comedians. I mean, I do do that but it’s more to relax the audience because, although I do take my music seriously, I’m not up my own arse, you know what I mean? A lot of big artists that I’ve paid to see recently—and I’m naming no names—were just fucking awful. They don’t bother talking to the audience, they hardly say a word. And I’ve always thought if people have paid to see you, and it’s usually hard-earned money, you’ve gotta entertain them.

And that’s an old working-class thing. It’s a generalization, but middle-class art school-type bands have always tended to be about “expressing” themselves with the audience being secondary.
Yeah, well, fuck that. I went to Lynchburg, Tennessee, a while back with Guy Harvey from Elbow, Frank Black—Charlie—and we played with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Spooner Oldham and all those guys, and it was the same thing—such brilliant, humble blokes and they’d played on more number-one records than I probably own.

Like the Funk Brothers in Standing In The Shadows Of Motown.
Yeah, clock in, clock out and they’ve played on six number-ones before dinner. [Laughs] Anyway, this is my job and I love it. My granddad always said to me, “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Which is not entirely true, ’cause I do graft like a fucker but I enjoy it. Most of the kids I went to school with are either dead, in nick, drug addicts, pissed out of their heads all the time, in terrible marriages or they’re in bands [laughs]—so they’ve probably got all of them problems.

Looking back on the ’90s…
I’d rather not…

…you were with the Britpop also-rans the Longpigs. Any reflections on that period?
I try to think about that period as little as possible, to be honest. That was the point that I learned what not to do rather than what to do. There was no flux holding us together … I’d started a family with my wife and we’d just had our first child and suddenly I’m off on tour in the States for nine months without seeing them. And I dived headlong into booze and drugs. I don’t really want to complain about it, but it was a really rough time. Just being away from home and slowly going mental. But then, if I hadn’t been through that extreme, I probably wouldn’t have been able to appreciate Sheffield and my family in the way I do now.

And then along came Jarvis Cocker and Pulp…
I started working with Pulp around Christmas ’97. I’d just got back from touring America and I was a gibbering fool, literally. I felt like an egg that had been fried for far too long. And Jarvis and Steve (Mackey, Pulp bassist) rang me up and asked me to come out and tour the world with (Pulp’s 1998 album) This is Hardcore. They wanted a guitar player they knew and who could play. I know my way ’round a fretboard and I’ve known Steve Mackey since we were four. So it seemed logical. To be honest, I was only supposed to tour with them for nine months and I ended up sticking with them for seven years.

For someone who was going “mental with drink and drugs” and the pressures of the road, surely going on a world tour with This is Hardcore-era Pulp was a less than smart move?
Nah, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, I suppose all the traveling was, but at least my wife knew I was with friends, not drug-crazed nutters. Pulp was still passionate about what they were doing, they weren’t especially jaded.

But wasn’t Jarvis having a hard time back then?
Yeah, sure, but with me playing with them—it was a mutual thing. I was really enthusiastic and keen to do a good job and I came into what at the time was their massive fame and me and Jarvis really cemented our relationship. I knew what a horrendous time he was having with it all—like he’d wished all the fame upon himself so he couldn’t blame anyone else and he wasn’t quite sure if he’d made the right decision. It’s that old cliché, “Be careful what you wish for.” And I don’t think things were going too great in his personal life. But we got on great and I think I helped him through that period. We were good for each other and we still are. He’s a good bloke is Jarv. He’s genuine. There’s nothing unpleasant about the man. I mean, I wouldn’t stay friends with someone if they’re a cunt!

I interviewed him recently, and he told me you had some great stories that your dad had told you.
Oh god yeah, my dad had loads of amazing stories. He’d played in the Batley Social Club in Sheffield and he’d backed all these great guys back in the early ’60s, so he had stories about Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters—fuckin’ hell man, there were stories that’d make your hair curl!

Do tell…
My dad had played with Sonny Boy Williamson back in, oh, ’61 or ’62—he’d backed all those guys plus Otis Spann, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Like, my dad used to work with Joe Cocker, did you know that? Well he did. They used to fit radiators for the Gas Board. Anyway—he was playing with Sonny Boy Williamson and they were doing a sound check. In them days, that consisted of putting a couple of amps on beer crates, tapping the mic to see if it worked and then hit the bar. That was it. Anyway, my dad couldn’t find Sonny Boy and he walks into the dressing room and Sonny’s got his dick out, pissing into the sink onto his harmonicas. And my dad’s like, “Fucking hell, sorry mate.” He doesn’t say anything about it until after the gig and they’re sitting around having a few whiskies and he plucked up the courage to say, “Sonny Boy, why were you pissing on your harmonicas?”

And Sonny Boy says, “Well, they’re new, boy. Just breakin’ the reeds in!” [Laughs]

And the other one was, after the gig, Sonny Boy had been to some local booze shop and he’d bought all these little quart bottles of whisky—one for the bass player, one for the drummer, one for the rhythm guitarist and one for the lead guitarist. So anyway, he gives them all whisky as presents and my old man’s like, “Fuckin’ hell, this is great, Sonny Boy Williamson just bought me whisky!”

And then Sonny Boy reaches down into this big bag and pulls out a big fucking huge bottle of whisky, gets his cock out, wipes it slowly round the rim of the bottle, grins and says, “Now you got your shit and I got mine!”