TAKE THAT relight their fire
From whiskey benders to cups of tea! How Mark, Gary and Howard got their mojo back after 25 years of pop insanity (with a little help from Robbie)
Aquarter of a century ago I sat in a van with five unknown northern English lads in a school car park near Manchester just minutes after they’d performed to a bunch of kids on their lunch break.
An excitable teenager called Robbie did backflips in the playground then grabbed my notepad and pen to practise his autographs, and an intense 19year-old called Gary, looking rather self-conscious with his newly peroxided hair, talked about The Beatles and how doing a tour of local schools might just help them ‘get a leg-up’ into the music industry.
The three others – Mark, Jason and Howard – just smiled, nodded and passed around a bag of crisps. The interview ended when the school caretaker told us all to clear off.
Within a year no-one would tell Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Robbie Williams, Howard Donald or Jason Orange to sling their hook ever again.
By then, as Take That, they had become five of the most famous people on the planet in a multi-million-selling band that would go on to have 56 No.1 singles internationally.
Over the next decade I often ran into them at awards ceremonies or behind roped-off areas of exclusive nightclubs. But
today we are sitting in the bedroom of a house in south London to talk about their new album,
Wonderland, and upcoming tour. It is a cold, wet winter’s day. Only three of the original five remain: Barlow, Donald and Owen.
‘It’s like the ten green bottles song with us now,’ jokes Owen, 45.
‘But none of us is going anywhere,’ Donald adds. ‘I’ve only been trained to do two things – spray a car or be in Take That. I’m sticking with Take That.’
They are older, wiser, more comfortable in their own skin. Hair is flecked with grey, conversation is peppered with talk about golf, school pick-ups and house renovations. Donald, 48, is about to become a father for the fourth time. Everyone is drinking tea or water. Barlow (now star of TV shows from
The X Factor to Let It Shine, which will lead to a West End show featuring Take That’s biggest hits) is lying by my feet on the floor – doctor’s orders for a bad back.
‘It’s sitting hunched over a piano all the time that does it,’ he says. ‘And I’m getting old.’
Over the course of the afternoon they will talk openly for the first time about how Jason Orange’s departure in 2014 almost ended the band for good, how they overcame drugs, depression and failure, and grew from emotionally vacant pop stars into proper men. They confess to still seeing Williams as their greatest competition, and believe both Williams and Orange will return for their 25thanniversary tour.
Originally put together in 1989 by Manchester-based music Svengali Nigel Martin-Smith, Take That gave us multi-million-selling songs such as Back For Good, Relight My Fire, Never Forget and Shine, as well as thrilling doses of high pop drama, mainly from the chaotically entertaining Williams, whose escalating drug abuse and partying ended with him quitting in 1995. He promptly launched a vicious tabloid war against Barlow, whose solo career plummeted as Williams’s star rocketed.
When the four remaining members of the band reunited in 2006, the public response was extraordinary. Their tour sold out in minutes, the first single, Patience, held the UK No.1 spot for four weeks and their comeback album, Beautiful
World, was Britain’s secondbiggest-selling record of the year. Four years later, Williams returned (with hatchet buried) for a tour and album, and told me: ‘All that anger was always more about me and who I was then. I always missed them but I never wanted to admit it. I just wanted them to miss me.’
Robbie’s return was always only temporary but in 2014 Orange jumped ship, leaving the future of the band in jeopardy. Until now, it is not a subject they have ever addressed.
‘When Jay left,’ says Barlow, ‘we were all ready to quit. Game over. We sat in our manager’s house in London and he wrote our statement for the press. For me it was the saddest day in the whole story of the band.
‘He’d had enough. He’d made his decision. Some people can just walk away, some people can’t. When I think about it now, he was the one I thought would never come back in 2006. So we were lucky to have him for eight more years.’
They are, they confess, still unclear as to his reasons. Owen shrugs: ‘When we were making the last album (III, released in 2014) we’d be getting messages saying he didn’t feel well, he couldn’t come to the studio. We knew something was wrong but we were in denial. We all thought, give him a break and he’ll be back, everything will be fine.’
They still talk to Orange every now and again.
‘He’s still part of the band – we keep him in the loop of everything that’s going on,’ says Owen. ‘I still think he’ll be back for the anniversary tour. I’m sure he will. I think Robbie will be back for it too. But then again I’m always the optimist.’
Of all of them, Donald was the most anxious about the split. ‘I’ve always known that basically it had to be Gary’s decision. And I didn’t want to beg him to keep it together. We spoke afterwards and he said exactly what I was thinking. Wait a bit before we make any decision. We spent two days looking at our social media feeds; all the fans were telling us to carry on. In the end that’s what did it. If the fans were happy with three of us, we’d carry on.’
All three band members agree that they didn’t become real friends till several years after Take That’s 1996 breakup, and they didn’t become formed as adults until they sank into personal difficulties.
Speaking about the painful years following the band’s split, Owen says: ‘I had no idea Gary had been struggling. I saw him at his wedding [to former Take That dancer Dawn in 2000] and we talked but I had no clue what he had been going through. He never said anything to me.’
Barlow, 46, nods. ‘And I would never have said anything back then. I would have said: “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” I couldn’t tell the truth about myself. None of us could. We all pretended everything was OK.’
The reality was that Barlow, shunned by the industry that had once feted him, ballooned to 17st, feeding his depression with overeating and marijuana. He would lie on his white baby grand piano and rub his face into its polished wood, trying to get his inspiration back after his solo deal was dropped. Unlike Orange, Barlow could not simply walk away from music, and a decade after they split he realised the only way to relight his pop fire was to get the band back together.
Owen, who also signed a solo deal, admits he didn’t want the success to end either. ‘I still wanted to perform. But I was bloody petrified,’ he says. ‘I remember my first solo showcase at Abbey Road studios. I sat under the stage and drank a bottle of whiskey. I couldn’t go on stage without drinking.
‘And then a few years later I played to a crowd of 50 people in Aberdeen. It wasn’t Take That but I actually loved it. It was more real, more grown-up. You need those knocks to make you a proper person. If it’s all just screaming fans and everyone loves you nothing ever feels real.’
Donald agrees. ‘We all needed that time to grow up, work out who we were. I did make a record but it was just my ego. I scrapped it a few days before it was due to be released, which was probably the best decision I made.’
I remember a decade ago asking Barlow why he didn’t just sit and count all the millions he’d made from Take That, put his feet up and enjoy family life? ‘I’m a musician,’ he said. ‘I want to make music and I need to make music. ’
And it’s a good thing too, as the new album is a triumphant return to the iconic Take That sound, complete with blasting anthems such as new single Giants.
The album’s strength, it turns out, is partly due to Robbie Williams. Despite leaving the band once again three years ago, he was a major part of the record’s progress – albeit in an unconventional manner.
‘We speak all the time,’ says Barlow. ‘And when we started working on Wonderland, Robbie was working on his album. We’d meet up every now and again and have a face-off.
‘We’d play him a track from our album and he’d play us a track from his, and we’d try to one-up each other. We’re very competitive. But it’s good. It gives you an edge. We have a laugh at the same time but it’s serious.’
As ever, the album has a theme – the journey of life and what you learn along the way. It raises the questions: what do they think of the world today? How do they feel about a post-Brexit generation and Donald Trump?
From the carpet, Barlow lets out a groan. ‘We’re musicians,’ he says. ‘Nobody cares what we think. The only thing we’ve ever wanted is to entertain you.’
New single ‘Giants’ is out this Friday, February 17. The new album ‘Wonderland’ will be out soon.
‘I sat under the stage and drank a bottle of whiskey. I couldn’t play live without drinking’