Chesney Talks
It was 1991. The allies drove the Iraqis from Kuwait, the USSR broke up, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and the first Oxford Student rolled off the presses. Yet all these events pale into insignificance compared to those of March that year - when Chesney Hawkes was to bomb onto the scene with the melodic masterpiece that was, and is, 'The One and Only'.
Perhaps the song was a reaction by the silver-tongued songster to the reunification of Germany five months earlier, perhaps it was an attempt by Nik Kershaw (the 1980s icon who actually wrote it) to make some cash. We don't know.
But with five weeks at Number One, 16 weeks on the chart and thousands of hairbrushes all over the land well and truly sung into, in 1991 there really was nobody we'd rather have been than the mullet-topped crooner with THAT mole.
Yet, as with any 'one-hit-wonder', the 19-year-old Chesney Lee Hawkes from Berkshire soon entered his 16th minute of fame. He had been a player in the crowd scene - a flicker on the big screen, as it were. Now it was time to release the album, and more singles that were never going to do as well as the first.
But the thoughts of that young man, in that dodgy leather jacket, certainly could not have included predictions of a student revival ten years later - a revival that would prompt what he had failed to achieve the first time round: Chesney the brand.
Now earning the obscene amount of £3,000 for hour-long sets at balls, bops and student events UK-wide, the 33-year-old king of 'ironic' pop was in Oxford last Wednesday night to play the Zoo night at Park End. It was an honour and a privilege to shake the hand of and interview the man who brought us that bop-tastic ballad we all know and love.
Leather jacket now lost in the sands of time, the 21st-century Chesney is a walking advertisement for French Connection, although the dodgy, over-long 'blonde' hair is still very much there. He's a well-travelled family man with a model wife and two young children helping him shake off his quasi-'bad boy' image fostered over a decade ago.
"I'm just back from a song-writing break in the Pyrénées actually," bespeaks the living legend, who now writes for such chart-stoppers as Hear'Say. He leans back on the leather-backed chair in the hotel in which he's staying.
We spend a moment casting our minds back to 1991. I was learning times tables, Chesney was only interested in the number one and appearing on Going Live!
Upon beginning his career as an actor in the film Buddy's Song - alongside The Who frontman Roger Daltrey and Michael Elphick, of Withnail and I fame - Chesney was cast as the young boy Buddy Clark who claws his way up the treacherous ladder of the pop world with the help of his dodgy father (Daltrey). The spin-off was 'The One and Only'.
"I would say it was the best time of my life, but it was a crazy time. But now I have a love/hate relationship with that song to be honest. I loved playing it, but it became an albatross. People called me a one-hit-wonder. It is what it is - a huge success on one song which became very hard to follow.
"Unfortunately I think that Pop Idol has not helped the music business these days. People just want to be famous. It's got to be about something else - about passion. About playing a guitar until your fingers bleed."
Subsequent songs and an album followed, but Chesney and his mates were soon to cut their losses and head west to California to try to make it there.
Living above a brothel and with a clapped-out van to get the quality quartet around the City of Angels, it was a hand-to-mouth existence, but Chesney was never to forget who he really was. No one could be himself like he could; for this job, he was the best man.
"Yeah, four of us were living in a two-bedroom apartment. We lived above a brothel. It was a harsh living but I can honestly say it was one of the best times of my life." Chesney refuses to be drawn on whether he ever visited downstairs, but that's just rock 'n' roll I expect.
Back in the UK, and having not played the song for seven years, a phone call out of the blue from an events manager who had tracked him down signalled the start of the rollercoaster retro revival for Chesney and the gang.
"I was asked to play a couple of gigs at Nottingham and somewhere in the Midlands I think. We weren't being offered very much money but I thought 'Why not?' and went up there with the band."
The revival had begun, and Chesney and his three band mates now play about one gig a week. He loves Oxford and says it's "brilliant" to be an honorary member of JCRs the city over.
But how does Chesney cope with his newly-found fame, along with knickers and, once, even a pantomime horse's head thrown on stage (presumably not by a Sicilian Widow Twanky) - plus the huge pay-packets? Has he become a self-indulgent, extravagant diva, J-Lo style?
"It's not so much extravagant as demanding. We don't ask for goat's milk or anything. The boys in the band will just ask for beer, but a lot of it. We always have a bottle of JD in the dressing room, and we have a shot before going on stage. We call it the FA cup.
"But I can't help but keep my two feet on the ground with two little kids," says Chesney, who cites Coldplay, Elvis Costello and The Kinks as his musical influences.
Yes, Chesney may be an ironic hero. Yes, one fears this irony may be lost on him. He may have had a few more high hopes and aspirations, maybe a few years above his station - but there is no doubt he has tried to walk with dignity and pride. He was, and remains, a gentleman, an Oxford icon - and, of course, the one and only.
18th Nov 2004