Frontman Justin Hawkins of The Darkness says the UK rockers may change the name of the band – with some help from their fans.
“We were toying with changing the name of the band,” Hawkins tells Chris Jericho on the latest edition of his Talk Is Jericho podcast. “It’s a slightly controversial maneuver at this point. But I don’t know, we might have to run a competition on Facebook to change the name though. We thought about doing it for this album, because it does feel like it’s a new, what you might call a return to form, but there’s something different about it now.
"I think maybe it’s because we had a couple of personnel changes in the last year. It’s different and feels like it’s rejuvenated. I mean it obviously would be career suicide to throw everything away, everything that we’ve built up over the years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t be able to rebuild.”
Last fall, The Darkness parted ways with longtime drummer Ed Graham; he was replaced by Emily Dolan Davies for the recording of their fourth album, “Last Of Our Kind”, but she left the lineup prior to the project’s release, and the group brought in Rufus Taylor, son of Queen legend Roger.
Hawkins says they’d consider input from fans if the band were to proceed with a name change.
“I mean every idea you have is either crowd sourced or crowd approved,” he explains. “You need to be addressing what your fans want because at the end of the day that’s what you’ve got. What we’re trying to harvest here is to have our fanbase have a sense of ownership over what we’re doing and if they name the band, that’s even better, isn’t it?
“It’s like when you adopt a homeless puppy, the first thing you do is give it a name. So we’re like the musical equivalent of a homeless puppy.”
The Darkness will begin a month-long North American tour in Pomona, CA on October 9
See also:
VIDEO: The Darkness premiere Last Of Our Kind
The Darkness announce North American tour
The Darkness stream Last Of Our Kind ahead of release
The Darkness unveil first photo of new lineup and announce UK tour
Search The Darkness at hennemusic
