Thirty-five years after The One and Only became one of the defining hits of the 90s, Chesney Hawkes is still standing – he’s creative, very personable and unapologetically true to himself. Ahead of his Smash It To Pieces tour – which arrives in Bath in March – he talks to Melissa Blease about survival, songwriting as therapy, growing older disgracefully and why there has always been far more to him than a floppy haircut and a catchy chorus.
What were you doing 35 years ago today? Whatever it was, you were probably doing it against an aural backdrop of one of the biggest chart hits of the 1990s: Chesney Hawkes’ The One and Only.
Even if you were born after 1991, you know how it goes: “I am the one and only; nobody I’d rather be. I am the one and only; you can’t take that away from me…” That song, it seems, never went away. And you might not realise it, but neither did the singer himself.
“Generally people only know me for that one song, and I totally get that – it was such a massive success at the time, it was everywhere!” says Chesney, talking to me from his home in Surrey during preparations for his Smash It To Pieces tour which lands at Komedia Bath on Thursday 5 March. “But we Brits are a cynical bunch; there’s that whole culture of ‘build ‘em up, knock ‘em down’ to deal with. If you were an artist who was viewed as ‘commercial’, back then, you immediately lost the whole cool NME crowd, and suddenly it was like, ‘ha ha, you listen to Chesney Hawkes’. I was a floppy-haired pop star, and you couldn’t be a floppy-haired pop star if you wanted to be a respected musician.”
My upbringing was very rock ’n’ roll,”…My dad Chip was in 60s band The Tremeloes and my mum Carol was a Golden Shot TV hostess
But there was always way more to Chesney Hawkes than floppy hair, a cheeky grin and clean-cut teen idol good looks – and his new album not only attests to that but may also seriously challenge the perceptions of the ‘whole cool NME crowd’ of days gone by.
Living Arrows (released by HGLA Ltd towards the end of last year) takes us, over 12 songs/40 minutes, on a candid voyage through Chesney’s joy and heartache, trauma and survival, strength and vulnerability and more on a tide of poignant lyrics, sparkling power pop hooks, and full-on grunge plummets. It is, quite simply, an inspired, mature and highly impactful work of art.
“It was quite the journey for sure!” says Chesney. “I can’t write a song without it meaning something to me, something from the heart. I didn’t think that I was actually going to put some of the songs on the album out there, but I blame my producer Jake Gosling for that! Jake discovered Ed Sheeran, and he’s worked with people like One Direction, Tina Turner, Harry Styles and Sam Smith. I’ve known him since I was a kid and we’ve written together over the years, for other people. Then one day he said, let’s do something for you! So I started bringing him some songs. Some of them, I’d say, I think this is too heavy going but I’d just like you to hear it, you know? And he was like, are you f*g kidding me? This is going on the album! He kind of pushed me to go in the very honest direction that the album takes, and I’m so glad that he did. Putting the songs out there has helped me deal with certain things that have happened to me in my life; as I say, quite the journey!”
The process sounds like it might not have been plain sailing, emotionally. Are we on cathartic territory here?
“For sure!” Chesney concurs. “I started looking back at certain experiences I’d had and I ended up using my songwriting as a kind of therapy, which actually felt really good even though it was quite painful at times. There’s a song on the album called Loud, for example, about losing my best friend Vic. I’ve had messages from people all over the country saying thank you for this song, you’ve really helped me. That’s been like a big hug from the general public, for me – and I’m with them in that hug, I’m not alone in my grief and loss either. But the whole album is all just kind of where I’ve been, and where I am right now, and I really wanted to show people that you can have fun getting older too! It doesn’t have to be like, oh I’m getting so old, I have to stop doing stuff. It’s like, you can still really enjoy life, and you can still do stupid things like get naked and dance around in a stately mansion!”
Ah, getting naked: Chesney fans may well recall that he declared himself to be “a bit of a nudist” when he popped up in the Celebrity Big Brother house last year. We didn’t discuss this, erm, personal penchant during our interview, but even if we take both that revelation and his 1990s pin-up superstardom out of Chesney’s life story so far, he certainly has much more to share than one might have expected.
You know those times when you blithely – and probably rather judgmentally – think you know all there is to know about a certain person only to find out you knew hardly anything at all? This interview was one of those experiences, for me.
“My upbringing was very rock ’n’ roll,” Chesney – who was born in Windsor in 1971 – recalls. “My dad Chip was in 60s band The Tremeloes and my mum Carol was a Golden Shot TV hostess, amongst other things. Their friends were all 1960s superstars like Gerry Marsden, and Marmalade, and The Searchers – they were always in our house. There’d be those classic musical jams, and dad would throw these parties, and there were always sleeping musicians lying around in the morning. My brother and sister and I would be going out to school and we’d have to step over Herman’s Hermits and clear up the beer cans to get our cornflakes – that was normal life, for us. There were guitars propped up in every corner, and my dad owned John Lennon’s piano – the Hawkes kids were never going to be accountants, put it that way!”
Having navigated through his rock ’n’ roll childhood and his teen idol limelight, Chesney met his wife Kristina (Krissy) in a London pub in 1995 …and was instantly smitten when she ordered a pint of lager. They married in 1997 and had three children in the UK before moving to LA circa 2014. Now, however, they’re back in Surrey. “Krissy is American so we have a natural affinity with the States, but I think we came back at the right time to be honest,” says Chesney; “there’s not much of that country left right now! And it’s amazing to be back in the UK; this is home, for me. I was back here literally every month during our 12 years in LA, but it was way too much travel and way too much time away from my family. So we brought everyone back here: family, dogs, studio, lock, stock and barrel!”
Do the Hawkes clan version 2.0 live the rock ’n’ roll life that dad did?
“Well my youngest son Indi (Indiana) is my lead guitar player, if that counts!”, says Chesney. “He’s on the road with me now, and he’s already done two West End runs at the age of 20 so he’s obviously on a trajectory. He has that passion that I had as a kid where you almost sleep with your guitar and music is your waking thought at 4am, and I really appreciate that. If he showed that passion for accountancy I’d encourage him in that direction, but he has this passion for music, which I totally understand. And I couldn’t be that dad who says you shouldn’t do it, it’s too difficult, go back to school; how can I do that when it’s in me too? But my daughter Jesse has just finished a degree in animal behaviour; her passion is conservation, and her hero is David Attenborough; wherever my children want to go in life, I will encourage them – because I can!!”
Ah, Mr Hawkes: you’re in a good place, aren’t you?
“I very much am,” he says. “Embrace this life: that’s my philosophy. It can be short, and every day is a bonus. Like, I got up this morning – and I don’t want to sound all woo-woo here – but I actually said to myself, it’s going to be a great day. What’s the alternative? It’s beautiful, just getting up! I love my family, and my dogs, and my work – I’ve got all that right in front of me, and I’m going to make the most of it.”
A certain earworm returns to me again as the one and only Chesney Hawkes and I end our chat and he goes off to take his mum and dad out for breakfast. “High hopes and aspirations, ideas above my station maybe. But all this time I’ve tried to walk with dignity and pride…” And who would want to take any of that away from Chesney Hawkes??
Chesney Hawkes’ Smash It To Pieces tour, 5 March at Komedia.
For tickets and more details visit: komediabath.co.uk