UK glam-rock outfit The Darkness will need a new lead singer, thanks to now-departed, lead-screamer Justin Hawkin’s slight affection for the nose candy. Justin started taking coke at the same time “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” started sweeping nostalgic-for-Def Leppard fans off of their feet in ’02, and the degree of his habit was directly proportional to the angle of their dangle to fame. As the pressures mounted, he turned to the breakfast of champions: coke and vodka. He tells The Sun:
I hit absolute rock bottom. I spent over £150,000 on cocaine in three years ? a frightening amount. I was consuming up to five grams a day which cost me £1,000 a week, sometimes more … I regularly used to stay up for four days at a time on coke and alcohol binges.
That’s $1,857.84 a week, $278,671.26 over three years. The band will carry on, and we wish them luck in finding a suitably spandex-loving, caterwalling lead man who is coke free. Can’t say we fell in love with the second record, but we believe “I Believe” has aged unexpectedly well.
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It HAS aged really well. Still love that song. It’s aged better than Justin no doubt.
He’s always been a one-hit-wonder-wanker. So hopeless he couldn’t even keep thin on a coke and vodka diet!
He should switch to Cocaine: The Beverage.
Justin wrote all the songs, didn’t he? Certainly all the lyrics. Who wants to see The Darkness now?
That first album is great, way better than anyone wanted to give it credit for.
one of the best shows i’ve ever seen (probably because of the coke)
It’s a shame they never got anywhere stateside.
One-hit wonder? Did you actually listen to their first album? There’s not a bad song on it.
These guys were never destined to be in it for the long run, since that would mean either getting serious (which wouldn’t suit them) or churning out albums in the same vein to diminishing returns. But that first album is a great, goofy power-pop album that’s only about a quarter as “hair metal” as some probably would expect (and it’s the better Def Leppard-style hair metal, at that – there’s no Poison or Warrant vibe at all).
end of the darkness, ah well they had a good run. But cocaine addiction how lame
I blame Eric Clapton!!!
These guys were fantastic live- one of the best shows I’ve seen as well.
Their second album sucked- but it’s better to burn out than…well, you know.
Their first album is seriously one of my ten favorite albums of the decade so far. Not a single “non-awesome” song on it. It was a better pop album than Chutes to Narrow. Those who opposed the Darkness really missed out, I think. The second album was ok, but you couldn’t really expect them to do much better than Permission to Land.
Can we go ahead and proclaim this one of the great underappreciated albums?
Hey now, the second album had it’s moments. “Hazel Eyes” is epic!
Fuck me, his dealer was laughing! He was paying like THREE TIMES market price (not to mention the volume discount he should have been getting).
The Sun article is pretty interesting – Dustin said he was doing up to 5 grams of cocaine a day, so how does that figure to $1,857.84 worth of cocaine?
He must have been ripped off a lot ^_____^
Even if the first album was classic and awesome, doens’t change the fact that they are a one HIT wonder.
hold on, math nerds, he said he spent $278,671.26 over THREE years. He also said around (1,000 GBP) $1,853.33 a week. That in no way adds up to $1857 a day.
Who do you think this guy is, Lawrence Taylor? C’mon
holy rock cliche
“Rock Star: The Darkness”, anyone?
This would make a great “Behind the Music” if the band’s shelf life merited itself that hour. Then again, Ratt has one, so what do I know?