Justin Hawkins

Hawkins fully developed his love of rock music while playing with the now defunct heavy metal band The Commander (Justin "Turbo" Hawkins, Rico Musson, Shaggy Forley, David "Growy" Owens, Jim Lee & Richard "Beaky" Bedford). They are affectionately credited on The Darkness' debut album Permission to Land - (your wish is my Commander).
He is known for wearing catsuits, and his flamboyance and exaggeration. He considered himself a lead guitarist until Dan saw him performing an interpretative mime to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in The Swan public house, in Beccles, on 31 December, 1999 whereupon they realized his potential as a frontman.
In 2005, Justin set up a solo project, called British Whale. His debut single, "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us", a cover of the 1974 hit by Sparks, was released on August 15th and reached #6 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2006 Hawkins released a second single, available only to download, an unofficial World Cup anthem called "England".
In October 2006, Hawkins left The Darkness and he was replaced on lead vocals by bassist Richie Edwards..

Justin sung backing vocals on Def Leppard's cover of The Sweet's song Hell Raiser for their 2006 covers album Yeah! (album).
In early 2007, he became one of six acts competing to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest competition in Helsinki in a duet with singer Beverlei Brown. He entered Making Your Mind Up with Beverlei Brown singing a song entitled "They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To" but did not win the competition.
On March 16, 2007, he appeared on the Comic Relief evening during the half-hour Top Gear of the Pops programme. This saw him performing Billy Ocean's 'Red Lights Spell Danger' with the three Top Gear presenters-not one of his better ideas as he was the only one from the quartet who can sing!!
Later that month, on March 29th, Justin created a new MySpace profile featuring songs which will be included on his upcoming solo album entitled Panther. The songs are titled "You Can't Hurt Me Anymore", "I've Met Jesus" and "Whichever". On May 12th, Justin added a further song to his Myspace profile; "Gay In The 80's", to appear on the same album as the three aforementioned songs.

Hawkins also announced that he had been participating in the recording of two Magnet Watch albums entitled Nude Horizon and Party Party Time Time.

In August 2006 it was reported (and later confirmed by The Darkness' management) that Justin Hawkins had been admitted to The Priory, a rehabilitation clinic. On October 11, 2006 Hawkins revealed spending £150,000 in three years on cocaine after cracking the charts in 2003 with their single I Believe in a Thing Called Love. When he realised he was no longer in control of himself due to drugs and alcohol, he joined a one month addiction-treatment in The Priory.

Incensed by the fact that someone had the temerity to flog an advance copy of the The Darknes's second album, One Way Ticket to Hell ... And Back, on Ebay Australia, Justin blew £350 - not on skag, poetic subject of that song, but on buying this copy of his new album for some 35 times its cover price, to prevent it being leaked before release.

In best rock hard-man tradition, Hawkins has threatened to go after the culprit personally: "It's encoded so we'll have a name and a number - we'll know which disc it is, who distributed it and who they distributed it to. And that person is going to go down," he told the BBC.

Whoever the guilty party was - speculation so far is that it's either a journalist or some kind of industry insider - it seems pretty certain that they're going to get caught.

Justin is nothing if not forthright and certainly a good old-fashioned Through and Through British Eccentric, whatever he decides to do, he does with a passion and conviction that is truly staggering to behold.
God Bless Yer Justin and we look forward to your next Project with all-consuming interest. (and trepidation!!)