Robbie Williams - Back For Good
Attitude Magazine, August 1996
In a brutally honest interview Robbie Williams tell Ben Marshall about his love/hate relationship with Take That, Gary Barlow and how he wants to be "a fucking cool c**t".
I once saw a cow just a few seconds before a farmer fired a bolt into his head. It ambled serenely toward his slaughter, body fattened to beefy perfection, eyes docile and tragically trusting. A moment later it went to cow heaven in a halo of blood and brains. I guess that´s the way Take That looked the day they signed their record deal. Kind of. But if you are to believe Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow probably looked more like the executioner.
Traces of big dumb faith still flashe Robbie´s eyes as he relays his tragi-comic tale. Eight number ones, 15 million record sales and tidal waves of attention don´t wash the trust from a boy´s eyes, and cynicism and life-saving scepticism are things that did not come naturally to Robbie. He had to work at them. He had to learn to be hard the hard way.
We have now spent seven hours together. We have drunk ourselves into a state of glazed immobility and beyond into frenzied animation. Robbie presently trying to explain why he never felt quite comfortable as the most popular member of the most successful British pop act this decade. For Robbie though, a simple explanation will not suffice. Robbie has to illustrate his reasons. He has quite literally to perform them.
"Ya see," he says, "we were a fucking great pop band but then at the end of the day, that is all we were."
He swaggers camply across the room fluttering his eyelashes at an imaginary stadium and shoving his chin forward in a Page Seven Fellah kind of look.
"I mean," he continues, "how seriously can ya take a band when they end the show going like that?"
He drops suddenly to one knee and thrusts a clenched fist into the air. The gesture, so quintessentially Take That, is at once rousingly triumphant and curiously supplicant.
"I mean, I didn´t wanna fucking do that!" He repeats the gesture.
Not for the first time I am aware that I am privy to a spectacle millions have paid to see and I am now being paid to watch. Earlier we bumped into one another in the bogs, and I thought "I´m standing in the bogs near to Robbie Williams. Weird, or what?" I must be one of a very tiny minority of Take That´s 15 million plus fans who have actually seen his dick, albeit peripherally.
Now he´s on one knee doing the thing that made that band Take That. The thing that said Take That. He does it very well. Practice makes perfect and Robbie has spent years practicing this particular move - something he now regards as the showy but inglorious climax to a grim and humiliating pantomine.
"I wanted to do this..." he explains. And just as suddenly he´s transformed himself. Arms behind his back he leans into a phantom microphone and whines a resonantly nasal Oasisism, "Maybeee!" Robbie wanted cred. He wants cred. He wants, he tells me, to be the kind of bloke his mates will call "a fucking cool c**t."
He does Liam very well, injecting into his split-second impersonation all the shambling, magnetic insolence that makes Liam so Liam.
Robbie, as he reminds me several times, is an actor. Acting was how he began and it´s what he used to survive his life with Take That when he became unbearable.
Example. One time in a service station he lip-read a couple of geezers who wanted to "have ´im."
"I´ve seen them get their three mates and I know that it´s going to kick off, I know that I´m in for it. So when I got served I went, "Can I have a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, please, a packet of Silk Cut, a cigarette lighter and lighter fluid?", and I´ve turned round, taken the cap off the top of the can, and I´ve lit the flame on the lighter and walked through five of them."
A DIY flame thrower. You would have used it on them? "I had pushed no intention. The garage would have blown up for a start. But when push comes to shove, maybe I would have..."
Eighteen years ago when Robbie was just four and on holiday in Torremolinos he wandered off from his mother and lost himself in the crowds. She found him hours later singing and dancing in front of a group of sun burnt British tourists. In front of him lay a hat, the buskers begging bowl. Jan Williams didn´t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both.
By the age of eight he was acting in Hans Christian Anderson adaptations and playing the lead in "Fiddler on the Roof." The other kids used to call him "Swellhead". Robbie just loved to perform. He believes he was born to this. He describes himself as a "born Vaudevillain, a born entertainer."
In fact in 1974, the year Robbie was born, his father - a publican and amateur song-and-dance man - won the final heats of telly´s top talent show, the now mercifully defunct "New Faces". But Dad´s win was Mum´s loss. The victory went to his head and he all but gave up on the Red Lion to pursue the fame and fortune he now imagined he had a sanctioned right to. As failure followed success the pub lost money and eventually, with dreary inevitability the Williams´lost the pub.
Though Robbie describes his upbringing as "not remotely rock´n roll" his ensuing eyes were marked by the kind of soul-lacerating ironies that would be the envy of any emaciated garret artist.
His mother, forced to move to a nearby council estate managed eventually to recover financially by opening her own dress shop. By the time Robbie came to audition for Take That, she owned three prosperous outlets. A year later they were all gone. Robbie´s success had scuppered his mothers ambitions for independence, just as surely as his fathers failures had ruined her sense of security. The shops became a focal point for every love struck fan and headline hack the North West. Business went from bad to worse to less than zero.
When a while later Robbie bought his mother the house the had always wanted in the area she had always aspired to live in, and topped if off with a brand BMW, he could not be sure if the tears in her eyes were those of gratitude or disappointment. He now concedes it was probably a mixture of both.
A further irony underlies all this. The only reason Robbie joined Take That was to make his mother proud of him and stop her from worrying about him. She is proud of him, by the way. She will never stop worrying about him. Robbie was never any great shakes at school, and the idea of a real job frightened and apalled him. A career in show-biz seemed a logical, if somewhat fanciful solution to the problem that still bugs him now. How to prove he is worthy of the unconditional love offered to him by those he is close to, and how to gain the love and admiration of those he has never loved. The two words he uses most are approval and affirmation. "I need approval," he will say, and then explain. "It´s a way of getting affirmation."
Most of us tend to believe that the best thing about being a pop star, other than the pots of money and swanky hotel suite, is that it obviates the need to even bother trying to be liked. Fame makes people desirable whatever their faults. Rock stars can act up like spoilt children all they want, there are still millions for whom they can do wrong.
For Robbie, though, being liked means being liked because he´s a good bloke, a good talent, an all round good egg. In the first flush of success Robbie was offered sex with the regularity that became monotonous. You get the feeling that much of the time he accepted simply because it could have been impolite to refuse. And when eventually he refused, it was because by then it would have been impolite to accept.
"I accepted a lot of girls when I was with the band. But eventually it gets daft. I realised that all I was doing was having a wank, but I was using a human body to wank into. It´s no fucking way to treat people."
Did you sleep with any men?
"No," he says without the usual sniggers that often make this question so depressing to ask.
"I´ve fancied men," he continues. "I´ve been propositioned by hundreds of men, but I´ve never accepted. I think what I found attractive about it all was the affirmation thing again. I mean if a good looking bloke or a great looking girl comes up to you and starts chatting you up it´s a great compliment."
Take That kind of started as a gay band, didn´t they?
"In the beginning our following was totally gay," he confirms with a vigorous nod of his head.
"Totally gay. At the start, we did gay clubs, and that´s all we did. And it was fucking good groundwork for us. The gay clubs and they gay community embraced us with open arms.
"I think that anything the gay community comes up with will be dismissed at first. Dismiss the music, dismiss the clothes, dismiss everything ´cos it´s gay. And then like, from the period of two to five years later, everyone´s going, "Fucking Hell! I´m mad for for that music! I´m mad for those clothes!" And it´s always the same, the gay community embraced us with open arms and then before you know it, "Fucking hell, Take That, yeah, I´ve always quite liked them." Do you know what I mean? I suppose that was my first taste of fame, the first time I was totally approved of."
Robbie spent the best part of six years waiting for Gary Barlow to approve of him, to affirm him. No such sentiments were forthcoming. Instead he feels, so strongly, that he was treated with squalid disregard, that he seems almost to choke on Barlow´s name as he mentions it. When he talks about Gary and the rest of the band he sounds like me when I talk about my ex-wife. the only difference is that his divorce was a good deal more expensive than mine, and that he could afford his. Just.
"I never fucking liked them," he says drawing heavily on his umpteenth cigarette. And you really get the feeling he´s biting his tongue when he says he feels his former partners were "selfish, stupid and greedy."
"I definitely felt manipulated from the off. I definitely did. And from Day One I felt I was being deliberately ostracised. Well, when you walk into an audition, you sit down, and you see a guy with spiky hair, looking really fucking dated in these horrible tracksuit bottoms and shitty trainers, and a briefcase, and music score sheets..."
He shakes his head with obvious disgust.
"And this bloke," he continues, "this clueless wanker says, "I write the songs because I´m Gary Barlow." And he´s a lot older than you. And the other guy´s Howard - that doesn´t say much at all. And the other guy´s Jason Orange - that says a lot, too much in fact. And the other guy´s Mark and he´s just nice at heart. And finally there´s Nigel Martin-Smith (Take That´s manager) and I don´t even have words for that c**t. Anyway, they´re all from a different area from you, a good 50 miles away in fact, and there´s a sort of generation gap, and in area gap, but most importantly there´s a personality gap. The way you see me is the way I am. I´m very gregarious by nature and I don´t think they liked it. And it was a struggle. I used to go and cry a lot to me Mam. I couldn´t understand, I kept thinking to myself, "I get on with everybody, why am I not getting on with four of these people?
"I´m fucked up from a lot of the conditioning, the controlling , but I´ve forgotten a shitload of what went on. All I can remember is that Nigel didn´t like me from the start. It was as if he was saying to the other boys, "Don´t you hate Robbie? Go on, kick him out."
Why do you think Gary and the rest of the chaps disliked you?
"Because I´ve never had to vie for attention. And they always had to. They didn´t like me because I was liked. There was a lot of jealousy and envy there. I disliked them because, to me at least, they seemed - with the exception with little Mark - selfish, arrogant and thick."
Is there a kind of Blur/Oasis thing going on between you and Gary? Would it mean anything to you if you arrived at Number One before him? "Yes, it would. But I´m not concerned about him. I know what Gary´s capable of. Gary Barlow is in entertainment. If there was a big press battle and a big marketing battle, then I´d be glad to win it, but I´m not after him. I´m after Noel, George Michael. I´m on about the big shots. I´m not talking about Gary."
From the audition onwards Robbie reckons he made efforts to deliberately split his own personality. He would act a part of Robbie to save himself from himself. Robbie, he tells me, is "a character that (he´s) worked for six years."
This process of self invention is of course not unique to him. Even the most minor celeb has, necessarily, to create an alter ego behind which to hide. In fact it may well be that the desire for another more popular self is precisely what turns a person into a performer. What is always alarming about this is how easy the other self can subsume the original. Watching Kenneth Williams as a child I always used to wonder when and how he stopped being Kenneth Williams, when he called time-out on the innuendos and weirdly protracted vowels. You wonder the same thing of Madonna and the painfully studied thing that is Morissey.
Now I wonder it of Robbie. Which Robbie am I talking to now?
"I´m not bullshitting you, if that´s what you mean," he replies.
"But then none of it is bullshit," he continues. "See when you get into creating a persona for yourself you have to be totally wholehearted. And yeah, I agree sometimes you can lose track of who you were before. What I was before I was in Take That was a 15-year-old schoolboy. And that does seem very unreal now. It´s like it happened to another person, or something. Like it was my younger brother, know what I mean?"
But that´s the past, what about the present?
He takes a long swig of lager.
"I think I´ve got a handle of it. I am always trying to find the dividing line between the two. But it´s not easy, 'cos they are me. I mean I think I really would be fucked up if I could just say, "This is where the first me ends and the second me begins."
Which of persona do your prefer? Which is the most seductive?
"In a way I like both because I know each one impresses people. I know it´s the insecurity thing again. If I´m Rob, Robbie Williams who used to be in Take That, everyone gets on with me. I´m a laugh, it´s great and that impresses people because and they meet me I´m funny cocky affable Rob. On the other hand when I´m down the pub and being thoughtful and I´m chatting like this, that also impresses people. Do you know what I´m saying?"
How natural is it, this switching between the two?
"Completely natural," he replies unhesitatingly. Weird.
He shakes his head. "Not really. Bingo, it just happens! It is wild. I mean, fuck, everybody does a bit of it, don´t they? I´ve just had to get better at it than most. Like I was with Vic Reeves the other week, we went to the races. Now, with him, he´s my hero, it´s nice being with him at any time. But he´s two people too. He has to be. On the other hand, he´s the zany comedian, on the other he´s a family man with the farm. Anyway, I´m out with him and I´ve got Vic the regular bloke and all of a sudden this guy comes up to him and says, "Vic! When´s your new show coming on?" And Vic just changes. His whole body can voice change. He goes "Hey, it´ll be on in a couple of months." He can turn it on immediately. That´s what I do."
And you do it to be liked, to affirmed.
"Exactly," says Robbie.
All the pop stars, perhaps artists, do what they do because deep down the love that satisfies most of us, the love of one or two, leaves them feeling cold and incomplete. Robbie most certainly feels incomplete. OK, so pop people are a miscellaneous bunch, but they are united by this: a craving for applause. They are rabid attention seekers. People who, in most cases, have never had any self-confidence and so instead set their stone in swagger. What is odd though, is that Robbie unlike so many of his peers was a popular child and a sensationally popular adult. Mum loved him, Dad loved him, then the whole world loved him.
Mostly, in my experience, people get into pop because they were unhappy or lonely or unpopular. Morissey was all three to the power of ten and then some. Robbie is at least one and perhaps two of these things. It´s remarkable how few pop stars´ biographies reveal them as well-rounded individuals. They were never popular enough, clever enough or good enough at sport. The balanced all-rounder that gets cool school reports and is a big hit with the girls does not, typically, look forward to playing Madison Square Gardens.
Robbie´s here because like the rest of them he feared something that might have been in doubt. Since he first played the Artful Dodger he´s been thinking, one day I´ll be popular. One day I´ll be as big as the biggest, and be driven around in a big car, and everybody will cheer. One day, God help me, I´ll be really, really loved. One day soon I won´t have to share that car with people that despise me. One day I´ll have the whole fucking car to myself.
I think he has what it takes. I think he´ll get his car. He has a gambling streak, a very vivid sense of exhibitionism and a bit of good old fashioned buccaneering bravado. He sounds like a pop star. He sounds like a rock star. Now all he has to do is to make a record that sounds like a rock rocord.
"I´m at school, then I´m not. Then I´m a popstar. Then I´m a huge popstar, which is the most unfriendly, unreal environment you can imagine. You´re adored by millions and millions, and surrounded by sycophants, all of whom want to lend you advice. And you take it all on board, then you loose yourself. So of course, I lost myself. You´re a popstar, you´re not a real person. You start to think, what the fuck am I?"
What now then? "This will probably look bigheaded on paper but it´s all about me now, and I like that. I want something that´s sole for me, I want individual affirmation. Does that soudn cuntish?"
I shake my head. He pauses.
"It´s quite funny. I´ll tell you a little story. This is never said in a bigheaded way, the way I say it. It´s always to friends, it´s always funny. When I´m at the Top of the Pops, or the other week when I did the football thing, and I´m in the dressing room and I´ll turn round to me mates and go "I´m just going outside for an adulation top-up, I´ll be back in a second." But, the thing is, it´s half joke, half truth. Some days more half truth than half joke."
He laughs to himself.
"I never wanted to be singer, never wanted to be a pop star. I can always remember Tight Fit being on Top of the Pops. "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sings tonight...." and my Mum says to me, "don´t you ever want to do that son?" and i went "nah!".
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