Gary Barlow says: As long as our friendship is as close as it is, I think the world is our oyster, I really do. The Thats are back and this time it's permanent. Robbie's in rehab, and Nigel Martin-Smith, the Manchester management maestro, is no longer in charge.
But Gary, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Howard Donald, now a man band, still look, sing and dance like Take That, the boy band that, a decade ago, nursed a generation of girls through puberty. And, as Gary notes, this time they're But there are other irritations. Always the f***ing same, says Gary, as we stand staring at a locked door in San Remo.
We are in a courtyard packed with Italian cops, security, two minibuses and assorted hangers-on. Beyond the gates, the street seethes, mainly with girls. They screamed when our Sorry I upstaged you back there, Mark.
They always do this, says Gary wearily, to give the paps a chance to get At last it opens and, to my utter bewilderment, we are rushed though the lingerie section of a department store. A few customers have the presence of mind to get autographs off Gary and Mark. Why are we here?
Oh, we always go through some weird entrance, says Gary. Usually it's Then we are in some windowless corridors, then a temporary radio studio with a large man with orange trousers and an orange scarf. There is a huge window looking out on a further sea of girls, most of them taking pictures of us Taka Thata!
cries the orange man. The girls scream, the Thats wave. They do the interview, then their song Patience is played over the air and, outside, over the girls.
They all sing along. To my amazement, my eyes moisten at the sheer harmless joy of it all. Finally, we are in a tiny dressing room, about one-fifth of which is filled by Mariah Carey has butterfly accessories and a blue carpet.
The Thats' demands are simpler: fruit, raw vegetables, mineral water, fruit juice and various rolls. Picky Jason doesn't like the look of the sun-dried-tomato fillings, but he zooms in on the bags of freebies, sunglasses and trainers. He puts on Needed them.
He sprawls on the sofa looking self-deprecatingly cool. They are in San Remo to appear at the music festival. This started in 1951 and The Thats are only here to do one song - Shine, their second No 1 since their rebirth - but here amid the Eurotrash glamour, it's a platter that matters.
Anyway, they're loving every minute. After a decade in the post-break-up wilderness, a decade in which the former That Robbie upstaged them all, the Thats are happy again; happy, in fact, beyond their wildest throwing himself into the Thames, Gary was humiliated in America - and that, when re-forming was first floated by Mark, their first thought was it would fail. But it didn't.
Thirty arena and stadium dates last year sold out, their new album, Beautiful World, is their biggest ever in the UK, and the Robbie, however, is still the spectre at the feast. In the decade after the break-up, he shot to the top of the fame mountain while the others slithered to the bottom. He rubbed salt in the wound with some ripe abuse.
They sort of made it up, but not really. Then he went into rehab - with a press Brit awards. I was at the rehearsals and the talk there was that he'd done it deliberately to rain on their parade.
Officially, the Thats don't comment - He has his friends and family, they solemnly told a San Remo press conference - but, unofficially, they find the whole thing creepy, if not One side of me wants to send him best wishes, says Gary. I blame everyone around him. If it was me going into rehab, you'd never know.
I'd be so embarrassed. But this bloody big press release giving all the reasons why? It's a big coincidence, isn't it?
So who knows? Never mind. What the remaining four have achieved is one of the greatest, most irreducibly nice about this band.
This niceness is not an incidental attribute, it is an aesthetic truth, as important as Elvis joining the army or the Beatles seeing the Maharishi. I was, at the Brit awards, overcome by this niceness. After they rehearsed their performance of Patience, I joined them in their dressing room.
Jason, Mark and Howard gathered eagerly around me - this is not something the average, not-nice celeb does. Only Gary seemed to be holding back. Mark was all smiley and pleased to meet me.
This boy has charm squirting out of his ears. Howard was curious but quiet. Jason was the most effusive.
You've written books, yeah? It's good to be written about by somebody that's written books. I couldn't help it.
I glowed. But, before anatomising this niceness further, there is one crucial point to took most of the credit for, and the royalties from, their hits. But on Beautiful World, there is only one writing credit on each track: Take That.
The boys, having become men, are in this together. This is, in itself, an act of deep niceness. It was Gary's idea and, he says, it lifts a burden from his shoulders.
It's a genuinely co-operative effort. We've got an Take That was put together by Nigel Martin-Smith, an all-purpose Manchester showbiz entrepreneur, in 1990 with the aim of producing a British version of the American boy band New Kids on the Block. He had identified a pop gap obsessed with dance music.
The teens were being left out. they were a brilliant psychological construct. Gary was musically very gifted, potentially what Brian Wilson was to the Beach Boys, and, for his age, hugely experienced.
He had done the clubs and became a maestro of old-school pop. I was 20 going on 50, he says. Jason was a break-dancing painter and decorator, thoughtful, occasionally agonised and always curious to know what he might have missed.
Backstage at San Remo, he asked me about Bob Dylan. The photographer and I ended up singing him Like a Rolling Stone as the That dancers jiggled about, adjusting their silver boob tubes and hot Mark had dreams of pop and football but left school to work in a bank. Along with Robbie, he was the youngest, and, from the start, the two were close friends and all-purpose gofers for the older members.
Howard, vulnerable and quiet, was a YTS-trained vehicle painter. Robbie, the increasingly wild one, was barely out of school when the band was formed. This was, in short, a shrewdly balanced collective of very distinct characters.
But they had three big things in common. Or four, if you accept Gary's interpretation. As one we were so ambitious, so driven to be famous and successful.
It's all we really wanted and we'd do anything to get there. Howard dissents: I never wanted to be famous or a pop star. Maybe it's a confidence thing.
I don't put myself forward. Speaking as a northwesterner myself, their geographical origin is important. Their accents are still total peasoupers.
They never say my , they say mi blurry, ironic wonder is intact. The wonder is, of course, that of the provincial, and nowhere is more pig-headedly provincial than the northwest. Northwesterners can travel the world and remain, in essence, untouched.
The Ironically, the man who offered them the world is even more provincial than the band. All four of them tell me the same thing about Nigel Martin-Smith - road, Nigel tended to stay behind. The second thing they had in common was a strong family instinct.
This is most pronounced in Jason. He was brought up in Wythenshawe among five brothers, a group he clung to after his father left home. Strangely, before the father left, the family became Mormons, another group to cling to.
His father was, says Jason, subsequently excommunicated when he confessed to his affairs. The faith lingered on for a while and, in Jason's case, never vanished completely. Just the idea of God and Jesus?
I'm still questioning religion. Do you believe in God? After a long pause, he responds: I don't want to answer that question.
band. I think I have an insight into male group dynamics because of the way I was raised with my brothers, and I tried to impose that on the lads perhaps too much. In fact, all the boys were looking to belong when they met Nigel.
Whether from strong families like Gary or broken ones like Jason or, like Mark, they had drifted into jobs that did not reflect their deepest interests, they were Which brings me to the third big thing they had in common: Nigel. Gay and utterly focused on his New Kids on the Block formula, for Nigel the Thats were, in Jason's words, his surrogate children . He used to say he was their mother, a role reflected by his insistence on keeping them pure.
they were famous, they would have to assess whether the girls would rush threaten their pubescent fan base. Another interpretation hinted at by the All four of them said they were afraid of Nigel. He intimidated with his next big thing.
Such was his power that the music he was expecting them to make was not an issue, even though, certainly for Jason, Howard and Mark, straight pop was not their thing. They were into dance or the big indie rave I just thought it was an adventure, says hip-hop-loving Howard. I just thought I'd go with the flow, see what happens.
Mark, meanwhile, the smallest That, was simply cowed by the other members of the band. One of the first things I thought was that they were all so healthy. Jason and Howard looked really strong compared to me.
I used to go to a gym and do weights to build my strength up, but physically and talent-wise, I didn't feel like one of the strongest members of the band. Ominously, Jason was the most ambivalent about Nigel. Take That was Nigel and, from the word go, it was difficult between us.
I'd never met a man like him in my life. Young and - apart from Gary's many clubland gigs and Jason's dancing, which inexperienced, they adopted the pop identity offered by Nigel. But for two The boys had a whale of a time building local fan bases, careering round the windows.
It was exhausting. We were absolutely f***ed, says Howard, We were doing four 35-minute shows a day. It was more than we do in concerts now.
Those two years made them professionals, but, more importantly, it cemented the time we broke through, we were comfortable with who we were. But their first three singles did almost nothing, and the big labels remained uninterested. All the songs had been written by Gary.
Nigel had not intended I gave him a demo tape, says Gary, and I could tell by the way he took it off me that he wasn't really interested in the idea of original songs. He just put it to one side on his desk. That incident signals an important Gary characteristic: he is very observant, a gift honed by his apprenticeship seducing initially bored and sceptical club audiences.
He And so, for the fourth single, they recorded, at Nigel's insistence, a cover. It was It Only Takes a Minute, a 1970s hit by the US soul band Tavares. Gary was not too upset by this - he had, he admits, huge self-confidence and a they all knew it was their last chance.
It came out in 1992 and it was a hit. From then until Robbie left in July 1995, the Thats found themselves cruising Beatles. Their success was generic - sex, some drugs and lots of rock'n'roll - but for one important aspect.
They never stopped being loved, being seen as nice and unthreatening. There was no Sgt Pepper, Beach Boys' Pet Sounds difficult, alienating parts of their initial fan base. Certainly, they swung away from being a covers band to being performers of Barlow songs, but they always remained pure popsters, living, as David Beckham would put it, the dream.
In Gary's autobiography, My Take, he recounts a pop epiphany when they befriend Elton John and see his house - a palace of treasures, a monument to all that pop longevity had to offer. As we pulled through the gates, wrote Gary, it was as if someone had put a huge bolt of electricity through me. He had hundreds and hundreds of gold discs, while at this point we had two.
This kind of longevity was what they had in mind. Apart from Howard, all of them seemed to think their life at the top could go on for ever. In fact, this was always impossible.
Five unformed boys were not going to become men provincial svengali. Nigel had seen this from the beginning. One day, he told them, you'll hate me.
Robbie's erratic behaviour was the first sign. He was turning up drunk at morning rehearsals. This alarmed Jason in particular as, at one point in their act, Robbie cradled his foot and flung him into the air.
A less-than-focused Robbie could break his neck. More poignantly, Robbie burst the bubble of the boys' belonging. He brought along a band of friends he called the Diamond Dogs.
Tensions mounted and, finally, Jason confronted him, demanding he get back into line. He still feels guilty, but Gary insists he shouldn't. If it hadn't been him, it would have been one of us.
Robbie stormed out. They expected him to come back. But it was a single image of dislocation, of a bubble burst, that convinced them he'd gone for good.
Yates. All the boys mention this moment. Once the strangers were let in, says Gary, having their say, we knew that was it, we knew he was gone.
But the four of them toured on. Then Nigel made a fatal mistake. He gave them four weeks off over Christmas.
It was their longest holiday and it gave Gary time to think. If Robbie was going it alone, so could he. He came back to tell the boys and, in February 1996, Take That announced their dissolution.
hell. Gary, expected by everyone to be the solo star, endured a long, Davis which did not earn him a single clap. He put on four stone and became the first Fat That until his level-headed and very northwestern wife, Dawn, made him see a doctor.
Howard contemplated suicide and then his own solo career, which fizzled. He returned to being a DJ. Mark, always the most popular with the girls, had more success with two No 3 singles, but then a poor album showing led to him being dropped by his record company.
In 2002 he won Celebrity Big Brother, an achievement that, if anything, only highlighted how much he had lost. Jason took the break-up with the most equanimity, retreating, initially, to the Lake District. He tried acting but found he could not stand the auditions.
He then took college courses and travelled the world, seeking, as ever, to remedy the defects in his education. He is a man with a perhaps excessive sense of respect. Is it okay if I call you Bryan?
he asks. What else are you going to call me? Mr Appleyard - you're older and you've written books.
And yet, ironically, by 2005 they all seemed to have achieved some sort of stability. Three of them have children, not Jason - I don't think I'm grown up enough. Getting there.
Gary was having some success as a producer and had acquired and moving from his massive house near Chester to London. Then came the ITV documentary For the Record. This was a substantial and highly together.
And, slightly drunk at the time, that is what they decided to do. Good ideas, says Howard, come to you when you're pissed. But Jason had a condition: no Nigel.
I had a lot of power taken away. I lost myself in a way. That battle to keep us as a brotherhood, I lost that battle.
I'm on my way to winning it this time. That's why I'm so pleased. hierarchies with Nigel at the top, Gary beneath him and the remaining three Wild, as an amiable and hard-working fixer.
They were stunned by the response to their return. The packed stadiums and hit songs returned as if they had never gone away. East 17 and All Saints have tried this and, so far, failed.
What is it about the Thats? The boys don't really know. Indeed, they genuinely were expecting to do no obscurity.
Instead they have a three-album deal with Polydor - not BMG, the distinctly relaxed. And they're not for the time being intending to touch America with its musically homogenising demands, which drove Gary to compulsive eating. They are their own men, not boys, and they're going to do When I press them to tell me what's so special about them, they talk about just a pop unit.
They're right on both counts, but there has to be something before they go on to do Shine. It's their niceness, of course. They are unbelievably easy to be with and, on stage, that makes them seem approachable, even touchable.
When I saw them rehearse Patience at the Brits - in front of, I was solemnly told, a screen made of Swarovski crystals - I saw something else. They were better than before, much better, in control, a An hour or so after the octopus, I give up thinking. There are few things that TV and pop.
They are the worst at doing what we do better than anybody. Backstage I watch this in dismay as the Thats bounce nervously on their toes, Mark inhales Olbas Oil to clear his nose, and their dancers adjust the silver helmets that have been added to their costumes. Then they go on and wow us all with Shine.
They are just so damned good at doing pop. Their act No question, the Thats are back because they're nice and they put on a superb show with Gary on piano, Mark singing the lead, Jason break-dancing and Howard inward and understated as ever. It is what it is, says Gary with So get well soon, Robbie, but, as the band they really wanted to be once sang, let it be.
Let the rest of us take that and party. As we can all see, Take That, especially Gary, still need to use Rob's name to get in the news! Just goes to show what a lie it is that they dont need him!
!! They should be glad of the comeback they did and forget about Rob since its obvious that he doesnt NEED them!
!!
Well done Rehab Robbie, you're still our number oneand always will be and i guess that goes for most of your fans :)
Barlows little splat about the rehab atatement is nothing more than childish! A celebrity of Robbie's magnatude can not simply slip in rehab unobserved, people find out and then the paps have a field day. An official statement had to be made.
But it didn't give all the reasons why it was fustratingly sparse in its information. Grow up Gary, you've been given a second change enjoy it while its here and remember that a very large proportion of your fans are, always have been and always will be Robbie fans and your comments will serve nothing more than to alienate them from you!
!! Got anything
nice to say about Robbie?
?? I doubt it!
Boy bands or man bands...
who cares? Give me Oh and one more thing, I see you still don't mind
cashing in on Robbie's name either..
..no matter A nice article, and a nice band.
However, I don't know what Gary means about a 'press release giving reasons' why Robbie went into rehab. Of all the many reports on this, none suggest that anything was said except that he was in rehab for prescription pill dependency - they all say 'no further comment was made'. Any discussion of hi 'reasons' seems to have been pure press speculation.
So, I think that's a little unfair on Rob. But hugs to the lot of them!
Very nice...
just like them. :)
take that still are the best band in the world.
A really good read - Profound and warm-hearted, although by a male author!
Mena Haas, Stuttgart, Germany
thank you so much for this great interview, one of the best I've read since the reunion!
I completely agree, Incredible insight. Fantastic article! Thank you and Take That forever!
!!
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