Ride Around Steel Town With Richard Hawley & Roddy Doyle
The Commitments author interviews Sheffield’s bruised romantic for MOJO. Plus watch the singer exclusively performing live in his local pub.
RICHARD HAWLEY HAS invited MOJO – in the person of acclaimed Irish writer Roddy Doyle – into his intimate “corner” of Sheffield this month.
Not only is the singer-songwriter interviewed by the novelist in our new issue, (December 15 / #265), on sale from Tuesday, October 27, but we also have an exclusive session recorded in his local pub which you can watch below.
Speaking to Doyle – who as a fan of the Sheffield singer-songwriter volunteered to make his debut as a MOJO journalist for our exclusive interview – Hawley explains why his locality has been so important to him.
Responding to The Commitments author’s suggestion he would be a different writer had he not grew up in Dublin, Hawley admits he would have been nothing without his home city.
“I definitely would not be a writer at all if I was a travelling man,” he declares, before observing that while he writes about his locality, listeners have taken his observations and applied it to their own neighbourhoods.
“With Coles Corner I decided to document something that was a tradition – ‘I’ll meet you at Coles Corner.’ I figured out that everywhere in the world has its own clock tower or village green, its own Coles Corner, where people agree to meet – different religions, illicit love affairs,” he explains. “You frame it in Sheffield but, by being colloquial, it becomes more universal. The song is about the human experience we all feel.”
Watch Hawley performing What Love Means from recent album Hollow Meadows, and judge his claims to universality for yourself...
For more, including details of Hawley’s current UK tour, visit Richardhawley.co.uk/live.
ORDER A COPY OF MOJO NOW FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW
PHOTO: Tom Sheehan