“Robert Plant said, ‘We’re going to do Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing it – I don’t want to be in Jimmy Page’s graveyard!’” UK songwriting icon Richard Hawley talks big name jams, guitar shopping –and restoring Scott Walker's Tele

Portrait of Richard Hawley in sunglasses with his vintage Gretsch guitars.

Reverent references to Duane Eddy, Pops Staples, Scott Walker and other giants of the vinyl era are never far from Richard Hawley’s lips. But with his new album, In This City They Call You Love, Hawley has produced a work that deserves to stand alongside that of the legends he has always admired.

You’d never hear him say that himself, of course, as there’s a genuine and abiding humility in his approach to music. But the tender, yearning ballad I’ll Never Get Over You is a song that Roy Orbison might easily have penned, while Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow sounds like a lost, lovelorn Eddie Cochrane ballad.