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14.09.12 Music Week 21
Will you be back on X Factor? Well, music’s stopped working on television apart from talent shows. X Factor is the biggest TV show you can be on in terms of promoting your wares. And I want and need to promote my wares.
They, and other shows, must have asked you to be a judge. Is that not something you fancy? I think it’s a risk I don’t want to take right now. Maybe if I ran out of options it would become something I want to do. Also, why would I want to do someone else’s show? If I did it, I’d want it to be my format, something that I own. Otherwise you’re at the behest of somebody else, you can be chopped and changed within a second… Also, at the moment, I wouldn’t be able to play that game, because I’d just go: ‘You’re shit’. Or, ‘You’re telly-good, but let’s face it, are you gonna sell any records? No you’re not’. Or, ‘You’ve got a great voice but you’re boring’.
You’d be Mr Nasty within two shows. I would. Or I’d be bullshiting, just going... [claps with zero sincerity].
As a youngster though, do you think you’d have gone on the show? Fuck yeah. Auditioning for Take That was the X Factor; it just wasn’t filmed. And there’s plenty to say, not about paying your dues necessarily, but about building your repertoire and shaping who you are, away from the camera. Because there’s a giant leap with X Factor, and
there’s a lot to be said for an interim period between being not known and being known. Take That were in gay clubs up and down the UK, and then under-18 clubs and we did a shitload of groundwork and preparation, which is something these kids just don’t have.
Do you ever think about a Robbie who missed the bus to the audition, never became famous, never left Stoke, and what he would be like? Yeah, I do. Um… I’d be doing something within the media industry, I think. Either that or I’d be selling weed. I genuinely think that, because it’s not in me to work. I would have been looking for an easy way to make some money.
You seem more comfortable with fame as of right now – whereas previously you’ve maybe been dubious about its virtues and merits. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I am, because I’ve stopped fighting against it. It’s won, I’m staying in. That’s it, I’m fucking famous, it’s afforded me an amazing life, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world, and what I’ve done is the equivalent of stretching an elastic band to the moon. It’s fucking amazing. The byproduct of that is some weirdness that I found difficult to deal with. Now I deal with it easily, I just don’t go out. You’ve won, I’m staying in.
Again, you see, it says in Losers, there’s no need to go out on Friday nights anymore and what a blessed relief that is. It could be you! I certainly identified with that… Have you got kids?
“I wouldn’t be able to play that X Factor game, because I’d just go: ‘You’re shit’. Or, ‘You’re telly-good, but let’s face it, are you gonna sell any records? No you’re not’. Or, ‘You’ve got a great voice but you’re boring’”
I have, yes, two daughters. [Robbie then very politely asks me about my family – names, ages, what they’re up to etc. I actually wasn’t going to ask any ‘personal’ questions at all, but after he’s been so nice, it genuinely seems only polite to say…]
And yours is due…? September 28.
Excited? I’m all sorts. I go from, ‘This is a miracle, hallelujah’, to, ‘You fucking bitch, what are you doing wrecking my life?’
Ha, well there’s more of both of those to come, particularly at three in the morning. Right. Great.
There’s always an element of humour with what you do, be it in interviews like
this, or in your lyrics, or even just a wink to the camera. Why is that? Is there a part of you that would hate to be accused of being taken seriously? Absolutely.
Why is that? Um… I don’t know. I’m a kind of vaudevillian character. I was brought up around cabaret. My father’s a comedian, compere, singer, and I spent all my youth following him around different campsites and venues, and there is an innate cheekiness about me, I guess. I also think there’s an innate cheekiness that comes through being born in Stoke on Trent. We are cheeky chappies; if not violent then cheeky, sometimes both. It’s in my character. I can’t allow myself to… I suppose if I hadn’t been in Take That then maybe I would have taken myself a bit more seriously. Maybe if I could lie and create a different character from the person that I’ve been then I’d be taken a bit more seriously, but… I dunno.
ABOVE Let him entertain you: Robbie in a typically maverick live performance in 2003 – or in his words: “My performance as a solo artist is me for two hours going ‘Waaaaahhh!’ Every second of every minute there’s the voice in the head saying, ‘What am I doing? What am I going to do next? Go here, go there. Say this, say that, no don’t say that you
fucking idiot. Sing, you fucker, sing!’.
Is it also a way of swerving judgement? Because if you’re not taking it seriously… Absolutely. ‘I never asked you to take me seriously…’ It’s almost a safety mechanism. But, over two-and-a-half million people turned up for the last solo tour, 60-million-plus albums have been sold; it kind of works. I’ll go with what works.
One final thing: when I look at One Direction, I see, perhaps naively, a group of friends, having fun, and I feel a twinge of envy for how exciting their lives must be and what’s ahead of them. When you look at One Direction do you see and feel something very different and perhaps much darker? I think… God, he’s getting to shag everything that moves. I can’t anymore. I’m not allowed. Fuck. Stop shagging everything! Stop it! She’s fucking beautiful! I really like them. I also think that whenever they
perform it looks like they’ve never met each other, which is slightly weird, but part of the joy of One Direction. It’s like, surely you should sort something out and at least a couple of you should be in unison! It’s like they’ve never done it before! But there’s an energy that comes off them… A few months ago I was looking at houses in Los
Angeles and I looked at this one house; a grand house for a grand family and I went into this room and the girl who lived there had written ‘I love Harry Styles’ on her exercise book, and I thought, wow it’s really translated. It’s massive. When Take That went to America, it was the height of grunge. It was not an opportune time for us. I love One Direction, I love the lads…
So you don’t look at them and think, oof, this is gonna go so wrong… No, not at all. I mean it will be tough, like it is for any band, whether you’re Snow Patrol or One Direction or Oasis. One of them will have a problem with something, another one will have a problem with something else, one of them’s going to rehab, if not two of them, they’re all going to take turns falling out with each other, because five people spending so much time with each other are going to come to blows about something.
But it’s also going to be amazing fun… It’s better than working for a living; miles better than working for a living.
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