By 2005, The Darkness were too big to ignore. They had a worldwide smash in 2003 with the evergreen I Believe In A Thing Called Love, and won three BRIT Awards (Best Group, Best Rock Group and Best Album) the following year. Classic Rock was initially reluctant to engage with the excitement, suspicious of the band's much-vaunted sense of humour, but that all changed after Editor At Large Geoff Barton paid them a visit.
Summoned to the country residence of Dan Hawkins, guitarist with The Darkness, Classic Rock expected to be greeted on the doorstep by a man wearing a silver sequinned catsuit, and restraining a pet panther on a leash. But the reality was substantially different. We knock on the door of Dan’s Norfolk farmhouse and it opens to reveal… a scruffy roadie eating a bacon sarnie.
