“Suddenly, all these football players were picking up guitars. It’s not my thing anymore”: Justin Hawkins recalls being “furious” about how Nirvana shook the guitar scene overnight
Nirvana’s rise may have inspired a generation of guitarists, but for The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, the grunge explosion brought unexpected competition that nearly derailed his dreams of a professional music career.
Speaking to Rick Beato in a recent interview, Hawkins reflects on the seismic impact of Nirvana and grunge on young guitarists in the UK.
READ MORE: Justin Hawkins thinks there’s one guitarist who could have rivalled Eddie Van Halen – if only he was born 10 years earlier
“Nirvana was massive. Nirvana was so big when I was like, 13 or 14. I was starting to play guitar, and it was my thing,” he says [via Ultimate Guitar]. “And I was like, ‘Okay, so this is what separates me from [the other kids].’ That’s my sigma, not taking part in the hierarchy. That’s my identity. I’m a fucking guitar player. Everyone else can do their thing, as there was [the guitar] completely defining me.”
But what started as a defining identity soon became a source of frustration.
“I was also into sports. I played football for local teams and other activities, but I didn’t really fit into the football scene. I was a music guy, and then, suddenly, all these other football players were picking up guitars and playing Nirvana-type stuff, and [played] in bands. And I was like, ‘It’s not my thing anymore,’” Hawkins explains.
The guitarist admits that he felt “kind of furious” about how Nirvana and the grunge movement affected his corner of the guitar world. While he loved aspects of grunge and industrial music, Hawkins felt increasingly distanced from the mainstream guitar scene as it became dominated by younger players and nu-metal influences in the late ’90s.
“The guitar scene was definitely dominated by that kind of stuff,” he says. “But at that point in my life, I was kind of like, done. I thought I was too old, because there’d been some bands that came through sort of mid to late ‘90s that were way younger than even I was at that time, and they’re all good looking and doing guitar music.”
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to concentrate on doing music for adverts and television programs and things like that, and my band will be my hobby. And that’s fine.’ I was happy with that.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
