Permission to Land

Permission to Land came out in Britain on 7 July 2003 on Must… Destroy!! and Atlantic. The American release followed on 16 September, and Warner Music Japan issued it on 16 October (WPCR-11715) with "The Best of Me" and "Makin' Out" added. Talking to HitQuarters in 2005, the A&R man Nick Raphael recalled that only two labels had shown any interest in the band and that the business did not take them seriously; it was Atlantic that signed them. It was produced, recorded and mixed by Dan Hawkins's best friend Pedro Ferreira. As Dan told Classic Rock in 2013, they started cheaply in a production room of their own at a studio in Willesden, north London, had only four or five songs done after six months, and finished the record in seven days at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire. The opening "Black Shuck" retells the East Anglian legend of a black hellhound that burst into the church at Blythburgh in 1577, and "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", by Dan's account, came from trying to write the stupidest song ever. Bruce Brand drew the sleeve to the band's brief for a 1970s look in the manner of ELO, as Louder recounts. On the day of release the band played at HMV on Oxford Street in London to 1,500 people, NME reported. The album entered the UK chart at number two, went to number one in September and stayed there four weeks, and the BPI certified it four times platinum. Supporting Robbie Williams for three nights at Knebworth that August put them in the tabloids and brought in a far wider audience, as the drummer Ed Graham remembered. The singles were "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" (number 43), "Growing on Me" (11), "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (2) and "Love Is Only a Feeling" (5). In the United States it entered the Billboard 200 in January 2004 and peaked at number 36. At the BRIT Awards in February 2004 the band won British Album, British Group and British Rock Act. A twentieth-anniversary edition, Permission to Land... Again, followed in 2023. The running order here is the original's as printed.