LOW PINT FOR ROBBIE
■ How one-time chubby dancer found success after Take That boot and wild 90s hedonism ■ Party trick was downing five Guinesses in a row as he enjoyed madcap nights in Ireland
ROBBIE Williams was headed for oblivion after he left Take That before some savvy pop intervention mentored him to superstardom and playing to 120,000 in the Phoenix Park at the height of his powers.
He infamously had a ‘lost year’ following his split from Take That in 1995 when he dieted on Guinness and kebabs, often forgetting the kebabs.
His party trick was knocking back five Guinnesses in a row and he once drank 25 pints of the black stuff in a day.
Robbie loved to party anywhere he went and his visits to Ireland were no exception: “It was the best of times and the worst of times,” he said.
“Ireland especially was a Mecca for hedonism, so I’ve been carried out of there twice: at least two times I went on the piss in Ireland and woke up in London.”
Robbie recalled partying too hard at Bono’s Dalkey home and ending up confusing a window for a painting.
“There was a great time when I was here in Bono’s house, it was late and I was elsewhere looking at one of Bono’s paintings and I was like ‘Bono, this is one of the best paintings I’ve ever seen’” he said.
Window
“And Bono replied ‘Robbie, that’s the window’.”
Just a few years later, in his iconic pomp, Robbie would play two massive gigs in Ireland — Slane in 1999 and Phoenix Park in 2004.
The outspoken singer went on to say that people in Ireland have a fonder appreciation for him than in other countries.
“People seem to have taken me to their heart in Ireland more than most, maybe it’s because I’m f**king great!” he said.
But, immediately after the Take
That split, Robbie just wanted to party.
He would turn up at the opening of an envelope and became known as the biggest “ligger” in town. And he was snorting enough cocaine to keep the Colombian economy afloat.
One record company executive recalled the 1996 vintage Robbie Williams:
“He was just a fat schizo — a f**ked up boy.”
Nobody gave Robbie much chance of being the most successful solo member of Take That. Everyone assumed it was going to be Gary Barlow, who the group had been built around and who had written the songs and sang lead vocals on most of them.
But something unexpected happened when Robbie left the band. The sex appeal went with him. The youngest female fans might fantasise about their favourite — usually cuddly Mark Owen — but it was never a heavy sexual thing. The older girls would, nine times out of ten, pick Robbie for a romp.
Luck
And his luck changed. A knight in shining armour arrived to rescue him from limbo in the shape of a hugely successful maverick executive at record company EMI/Chrysalis called Jean-Francois Cécillon, known throughout the record business as JF.
He saw something in Robbie and fought for him — as did the record company A&R scout Chris Briggs who observed sensitively: “There’s a difference between a prat acting like a rock
star and a talented, sensitive person going into meltdown.”
Robbie, as his real friends know, can be extremely sensitive and vulnerable,
EMI handed him a €1,122,563 contract to make three albums. It was a huge gamble but at last Robbie was on his way. Until now, his very enthusiastic embrace of sex, drugs and rock‘n’roll had been missing one vital ingredient – the actual rock‘n’roll.
He also added another important element to Team Robbie — new management.
Tim Clark and David Enthoven would skilfully move their new client to the centre of pop music.
Enthoven, a witty and urbane old
Harrovian, tried to show Robbie that there was a better place, free from hangers-on who just wanted to be his friend because of what they would get out of it.
Demons
Enthoven had faced his own demons in the mid-Eighties during spells in rehab and was not judgemental, never blaming Robbie for temporary relapses.
He would be a father-figure in Robbie’s life for 20 years until his death in 2016, aged 72.
One of the first tasks of his new team was to add a musical collaborator.
Robbie met Guy Chambers, who had been a member of the short-lived Nineties band The Lemon Trees, at the Capital Radio RoadShow.
The last piece of the Robbie Williams jigsaw brought Steve Power, a friend of Guy’s, into the mix as co-producer.
Where Guy arranged, Steve mixed. Together the three men set about recording Robbie’s first album Life Thru A Lens.
Robbie famously spent most of the time lying underneath the mixing desk sipping cans of Guinness.
The album was released in September 1997 and made a disappointing start, selling just 33,000 copies in the first week, less than a tenth of the sales racked up by Gary Barlow’s own solo record, Open Road.
It was an open secret in industry circles that his record company was considering dropping him.
Angels
But then at EMI’s 1997 autumn sales conference, Robbie pulled himself together and sang a couple of the album’s tracks for a disinterested media.
And then he sang Angels. A former executive recalled the moment: “We were about to drop him. But everyone was saying ‘Oh My God! Angels is such a hit’.”
If ever one song transformed a career, then Angels did it for Robbie Williams. It’s an uplifting song about guardian spirits and personal rescue and, as such, rather aptly rescued Robbie’s career.
Angels never made number one but sold more than a million records and was voted Best Single of the last 25 years at the 2005 Brit Awards. That was just one of a record 18 Brit Awards he has won.
Life Thru A Lens re-entered the chart and went to number one, subsequently selling more than two million copies.
He has had 13 number one albums in the UK, tying the record as a solo artist with Elvis. When his new compilation album XXV, inevitably reaches number one Robbie Williams will hold the record by himself – truly he’s the one!