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Baker's Dozen

Growing On Me: Justin Hawkins Of The Darkness' Favourite LPs
Valerie Siebert , March 26th, 2013 10:57

The Darkness frontman rifles through his racks and decides on the 13 long-players closest to his heart

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AC/DC - Powerage
I think that most people got into AC/DC because of Back In Black and that happened to me as well, but I really wanted to explore the Bon years because Highway To Hell was a great album too. So I wanted to go back from there. I loved all of it actually. I was completely obsessed with AC/DC for a long time in fact, but the one album that really for me was head and shoulders above the rest was Powerage. It’s got songs like ‘Down Payment Blues’ and songs that people would say, ”Oh that’s my favourite AC/DC song”, because they’re trying to be cool and try and talk about their poverty and their roots and that sort of stuff, but it shows that it has a deeper poetry to it – the fact that people want to think of Powerage that way. For me it’s also got the best Angus solo of all of them. It’s on ‘Up To My Neck In You’. It goes on for ages and it’s essentially the same solo twice, but played a bit harder the second time around. It’s really good: him using proper dynamics. He has a lot of phrases that he often goes to, but it’s just the way he uses them on that solo that makes it really special.

I’m definitely a Bon enthusiast. I went to Fremantle near Perth in Australia to visit his grave. I’d never been to visit any famous graves before, and we only did it because we were in Australia and had the day off, but you have an expectation of what you’re going to see tribute-wise from other people that had gone to visit it. And there was one guy had written something that had really stayed with me. You can imagine that it’s sort of like a pilgrimage out of town – there’s nothing really around the graveyard. And there’s a bench on the concrete and you can just imagine this guy there with a Sharpie going, “hmmm, now what can I say that really sums up my feelings at this point?” And he had just put: “Love your work Bon.” Ha ha, it was really powerful.