‘I’m very happy with where I am’: the one and only Chesney Hawkes

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He spent five weeks at No 1 in 1991, then dropped out of sight, but his hit song never left us. The singer talks about feeling washed up at 23, gigging at Butlin’s – and why he feels so lucky

. For Hawkes, there is a vindication of sorts in this, not to mention some employment, and it has been a long time coming.

I noticed that his follow-up singles didn’t sell as well, after which he disappeared, but I wasn’t concerned. After all, he had been No 1 in the UK for five weeks. Surely he was just living off his riches somewhere. “It was like losing a family: the record company girls who feel like sisters, because they travel around with you a lot; the people involved in the promotions. I was 18 when I met them all, so I was really taken aback when I suddenly couldn’t get any of these people on the phone. It was a big learning curve for me when I realised: ‘Oh, OK, none of that was real and I’m a washed-up pop star at 23,’” he says. With friends, he formed bands “and gave them names like Ebb and Fly.

Somehow, despite this double whammy of rock excess and religious nuttiness, Hawkes remained a gentle, level-headed kid who just wanted to make music. But that dream went sour when he was barely in his 20s. “Piers Morgan and [the entertainment journalist] Rick Sky – you know those guys? They picked on me a lot. It was a daily thing. At the time I was like: ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ but I was still really young then and you realise later that stuff went in,” he says.

I’m not bitter, but I do sometimes have a pang and think: what if my career had carried on a little longer?

 

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