‘I'm just a specky bum from Sheffield who got lucky’

By Daniel Dylan Wray

There are few artists who feel Sheffield in their bones quite as deeply as Richard Hawley. Such is the pronounced, unswerving, romance he holds for the city, that when the 58-year-old goes to sleep, Sheffield plays out like a film in his head. 

He still regularly dreams about stealing birds’ eggs, a memory he can trace back to a childhood activity with his late pal, and Pulp bassist, Steve Mackey. Scattered memories swirl around his sleepy head, as he remembers half-heard voices and snippets of conversations, as fragments of rooms and buildings seep in: from a smoke-filled cafe to a roaring working men’s club via the Aladdin’s cave-like wonder of Bradley's Records or the vivid bubbling globules of blue, green and yellow “chemical horror” that he recalls seeing in the River Don as a child. “I love Sheffield,” he says plainly, as we sit over pints in the Rising Sun in Fulwood. “I think it's beautiful.”