A LOVE SONG IS LIKE AN ANGEL LANDING ON YOUR SHOULDER

Gary Barlow knows how to write a hit. Here he tells Frances Hardy the muse can strike at any time – even on the hard shoulder of the motorway – and what made him fight back as his career tanked while Robbie’s soared

Gary Barlow has just turned 50. Who’d have thought it? The lead singer of Take That, our best-loved boy band, celebrating his half century. Just his bad luck though that the landmark birthday fell during lockdown. He’d planned a concert at the London Palladium to mark the big day and had intended to give away 2,000 tickets for the shindig to his loyal fans.

‘I had an enormous party planned,’ he tells me. ‘I love the Palladium and luckily a friend of mine – a Mr Lloyd Webber – owns it.’ He beams (Gary is the rock and pop world’s most fearsomely well-connected man). ‘I wanted to live-stream the concert over Youtube and for everyone to be there. I’ve really appreciated having such a loyal audience over the last 30 years. They’ve stuck with me and it didn’t seem right to charge them.

‘I had a lovely company lined up who were going to sponsor it. Seats for free. I had it all in the bag and I was looking forward to lots of competitions on radio stations where people could win them.’

But the pandemic put paid to all that and Gary, perennially upbeat, says he’ll just postpone the big celebration until next January, and meanwhile pretend he’s still 49. And actually, he says, he thoroughly enjoyed his much more low-key day. ‘Loads of my mates did crazy things for their 50th, like taking 30 friends off to Las Vegas for the weekend. I was just at home with my wife and kids.’

Home is a glorious 18th-century former rectory in the Cotswolds which he shares with wife Dawn, 50, and their three children Daniel, 20, Emily, 18, and 12-year-old Daisy. ‘So my birthday was just us, the family having dinner together. There was loads of fuss though, and lots of nice surprises. I had lovely video messages from everyone I wanted to hear from and because I couldn’t do a concert, I did the next best thing. I wrote a silly song, just a bit of fun, about being 50. We did a home-made video of me singing it. Daisy filmed me, Dawn did the costumes and I ordered a black backdrop from the internet.’

The result is witty and intimate, Gary in tuxedo and velvet bow-tie crooning his lighthearted comedy lyric to a lavish big band backing. ‘Fifty years young, not done, 50 years young, and some,’ he sings. ‘Thanks to Boots I’ve got no influenza to fear and thanks to Specsavers all the road ahead’s clear.’

He’s sold over 50m records and has an impressive pedigree as a songwriter, having penned 14 No 1s and won Ivor Novello awards for Best Contemporary Song, Songwriter of the Year and Best Selling Song. His latest album, Music Played By Humans, debuted at the top of the charts.

It’s quite a tally and he makes it all seem effortless. But of course behind every hit song is a blend of alchemy, inspiration and hard graft. How does he do it? Well, he’s letting us in on his secrets in his Songwriting course on the BBC’S e-learning service Maestro. Anyone can subscribe – Daily Mail readers get a discount (see panel below) – and, as Gary points out, you could write the song that changes your life. ‘I can’t sit here and tell you what to do, but what I can tell you is the methods I’ve used to get from A to

B… and in a technical sense how I’ve got from D minor to an F sharp augmented,’ he smiles.

In Gary’s 29-lesson Maestro course he takes us through songwriting, chords, lyrics, melody – and how to create that killer hook. Sitting at the piano, he breaks down some of his greatest compositions – showing how he worked with both major and minor chords in Pray and how the song took on its life; how Greatest Day began with a single note and ended up being a show opener; how, aged 15, he wrote two sections for A Million Love Songs and later brought them together to write his first big hit. And he creates a brand new song from scratch in real time, so we see how a star of this stature actually does it.

‘Songs come in all shapes and sizes,’ he says. ‘That’s part of the thrill for me. You don’t know if a little angel is going to land on your shoulder. You can’t predict what’s going to happen on any day. I’ve never woken up having dreamed a song – I’d love that – but you can’t choose when they’re going to land. You can be driving down the motorway and a song will come to you. I’ll pull over and sing it into my voice recorder, and that’s the starting point. Often it will go off in a whole different direction and the original piece I recorded doesn’t even end up in the song.’

His course is not about teaching creativity – that can’t be learned – but how to craft a song once the idea is sparked. ‘There’s never been a better time to make music, and this is just my way of contributing to that.’

Gary loves talking to other songwriters about the process himself. ‘There are so many ways of writing a song. Everyone does it differently and that’s what’s fascinating.’

So who does he admire? ‘Lots of

‘I thought it was the end, my moment had passed’

them. To go straight to the top, Paul Mccartney, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel… then there are the more modern ones, people like Ed Sheeran and Coldplay. They’re the obvious choices, all brilliant songwriters and artistes.’

I wonder which of the songs he’s written have changed his life, and he says, ‘There are so many.’ A Million Love Songs (the first top ten hit he wrote for Take That) was one. The band began life as a fivesome with Robbie Williams, Jason Orange, Howard Donald and Mark Owen joining Gary, but today it’s the trio of Gary, Howard and Mark. Robbie first left back in 1995 and a year later Take That disbanded before reuniting again in 2006. But towards the end of the 90s, as Robbie’s solo career soared, Gary’s tanked without a record deal. ‘Robbie was ruling the world and I got dropped by my record label,’ he recalls. ‘As far as I was concerned that was the end. I thought my moment had passed. I wasn’t signed to anyone. A career in music qualified me for absolutely nothing in the real world. I thought, “What do I do?” I was 25 and trying to work out what to do with the rest of my life. I didn’t want to write songs any more. I felt battered and bruised, so I went and hid for a few years.’

But Take That reformed again in 2006 and Robbie rejoined in 2010, setting Gary on the path to his current global success. In the thick of all the hoopla that surrounded the band’s relaunch, Gary was approached by Buckingham Palace: they wanted him to organise the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2012.

‘I really wanted to do it, I knew I could do it well and I had a vision of it being outside. But it couldn’t have come at a busier time for us. Robbie had joined the band again, it was full-on; everyone wanted us on their show.’

But he set to it and roped in an array of rock royalty mates, Sirs Tom Jones, Cliff Richard and Elton John among them, for the royal extravaganza outside the palace. In the runup, Her Majesty was often there at briefings. ‘I’d go in with all the bullet points but you could guarantee she’d ask me something I didn’t have an answer to,’ he says. ‘I thought I knew everything, even the number of railings we’d need for a crowd of 12,000, and the Queen asked, “How long will it all take to dismantle the next morning?” ‘I had to think on my feet. I said, “By about 6am, Ma’am.” And luckily I was about right. It was all cleared away by 7am. But it just goes to show how sharp she is. She was thinking ahead to the parade the next day. So I always had to be super-prepared.’ Today he’s sitting in his home recording studio wearing a beanie hat and tracksuit top – he’ll be doing his daily workout after our chat – looking lean and fit, his beard flecked with grey. Outside a shimmering of snow covers the grass, and Gary’s just been for a walk with his dogs Cookie and Hugo. Robbie Williams, meanwhile, is holed up with his wife and family in a villa in the Caribbean, having tested positive for Covid. ‘I try to avoid the news but I did hear he had it and I got in touch,’ says Gary. ‘He said it was a very mild case and I don’t feel too sorry for him quarantining in the sunshine in St Barts!’ He laughs.

Gary’s lockdowns have been home-based but productive. Aside from a week’s family holiday on Lake Como to celebrate Dawn’s 50th when restrictions were lifted last summer, they’ve been at home. ‘There’s nowhere else I want to be, which is lucky because we’re not allowed to go anywhere!’ he says. ‘I know there’s so much sadness and I feel sorry for people in difficult circumstances, but I enjoy the silence. Not travelling. Not having my suitcase always packed. I’ve had so much time with my kids and that’s lovely too. ‘Emily’s into cooking and baking. Daisy does ballet online but really misses her friends. They have these Netflix parties where they all watch films at the same time. Imagine if this had happened in the 90s when they couldn’t do all that.’ During successive lockdowns his

Crooner Sessions – video duets recorded remotely with friends – have notched up 94 million views. He’s roped in a diverse array of stars – Brian May, Katherine Jenkins and Gregory Porter to name a few – and I wonder if anyone has turned him down.

He thinks for a moment. ‘On the first series I contacted Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who was in lockdown in LA. He said, “I’m a bit overwhelmed. I’ll come back to you.” To me that was a no. I was doing the sessions five days a week for seven or eight weeks, and at the end of the last lockdown I was panicking a bit because I had nothing. But then I got a message from Chris. “I’ll do this.” I was very touched by that. I wanted something big to finish with and there he was. We sang A Million Love Songs.’

In an industry where many relationships fall prey to the pressures imposed by celebrity, Gary and Dawn have remained steadfast, married for 21 years. They met in 1995 when she was a dancer on a Take That tour and have been together ever since. ‘When you’re young there’s a period when the whole focus is on kids, kids, kids. But we’ve reached that phase in our marriage where we were – before lockdown – going out for a drink and dinner once a week on a Friday. Very simple. Nothing crazy. Just having that time together; sometimes going off for a five-day break, just the two of us.

‘We’ve been rediscovering our relationship with each other and it’s been good. We’ve got friends who’re divorced but we’re having a great time. Having brought up three children we love just being with each other.’

His life is reflected in his songs and he wrote Forever Love – one of his solo chart-toppers – for Dawn when they first met. ‘I told her it was for her,’ he says, ‘But then it went to No 1 in the charts and she said, “But I thought you said it was just for me?”’

Now he’s 50 he’s comfortably settling into the gentle pleasures that come with maturity. He doesn’t object when people refer to Take That as a boyband. ‘In fact I love it because it makes me feel young!’ he says. And when I ask him the perennial question – will the band ever re-form with Robbie in the line-up? – he groans. ‘Oh, that question haunts me! I always say, “I hope so, in my lifetime.” So that gives us about 25 years, doesn’t it?’

Gary admits he’s already settling into the gentle pleasures of middle age. He listens to Classic FM for goodness sake! ‘I like it because my mind switches off and I can just enjoy it. When I’m listening to pop music it’s hard not to dissect it and try to understand it. I enjoy a walk with my earphones in, just listening to a bit of Beethoven. It’s a getting old thing, isn’t it?’ he says smiling.

‘Robbie’s all right, it was only a very mild case’

BY NEALE HAYNES PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR weekend