In 2005, the irreverent glam-rock band The Darkness were on the verge of releasing One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back, the follow-up to their No 1 debut Permission to Land. The band were unlikely superstars, riding the wake of the smash hit single “I Believe In a Thing Called Love”, with its falsetto earworm of a tune, and dazzling in their sequin-laden neo-glam style against the backdrop of a chart scene otherwise dominated by sleek American RnB and selfconscious adolescent nu-metal. It was the all-important second album moment, at a time when CDs were still a thing, charts still mattered, and music leaks were a big deal that could cost you a lot of revenue. So when a copy of One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back turned up on eBay before the record had even been released, the band’s flamboyant frontman Justin Hawkins bid on it and won. It cost him £350.
“Sometimes you gotta take matters into your own hands,” he says with a shrug. He wanted to know who the leaker was, and went full Columbo on it. It turned out – and here’s where I shift a little uncomfortably in my seat – to be a copy that had been sent to a journalist. “They’d reviewed the album and slagged it off, but it was still sealed! So they hadn’t listened to the record. You can’t slate an album without listening to it, then sell the f***ing copy before it’s even out!”
