'We didn't leave it right the first time'

Robbie Williams finally rejoined Take That this week, the latest chapter in 15 years of unpredictable reversals of fortune, writes RONAN MCGREEVY

MAYBE IT was an accident, maybe it was part of a grand plan, but when the five members of Take That sat down at a press conference this week Robbie Williams was the man in the middle.

Williams, by his own admission, is not the band’s main man. That honour goes to Gary Barlow, the songwriter behind their enduring appeal, but Williams is back centre-stage in the band he left in acrimony 15 years ago.

Williams was the star of the rather perfunctory press conference that Take That held at the Savoy Hotel in London this week to announce their European tour next summer, including at least one date at Croke Park.

He called himself the “cheeky one”, made silly jokes about Samsung, which is sponsoring the tour, and said a creche for his band mates’ children should reserve a place for him.

He told a reporter who asked if he joined Take That to compensate for his waning solo career to “f**k off”, but he did it in a way that made the assembled media guffaw rather than take umbrage. “He’s back,” said a grinning Mark Owen, responding to Williams’s patter.

Barlow said it was amazing to have Williams back in Take That, and you’d be inclined to take him at his word rather than regard it as a throwaway line: Take That were doing brilliantly without Williams and would have sold out their forthcoming Progress tour in any case.

Williams had been chugging along nicely, too. True, his last two studio albums, Rudeboxand Reality Killed the Video Star, were not the monster successes of old, but, as he pointed out to the reporter who asked if his solo career was on the slide, his latest greatest-hits collection topped the album chart in 14 countries.

The Take That reunion was first announced last July but was consummated for fans only in a blizzard of flashbulbs this week. It is the latest chapter in a story full of reversals of fortune.

Addled by drink and drugs, and tired of the boy-band stuff, Williams left Take That in 1995. His prospects looked bleak, but he went on to become a solo star around the turn of the millennium, leaving his erstwhile bandmates as footnotes in musical history. Or so it seemed.

Take That’s renaissance was every bit as improbable. After re-forming, in 2005, the band’s four other members had two critical and commercially successful albums, followed by hugely ambitious tours. They shed the boy-band shtick and wrote songs with depth and heart. This was all supposed to be someone else’s dream.

A decade and a half after walking out on the band, Williams walked back into a studio in Los Angeles in July to record what will become Take That's new album, Progress, which is due out next month. "I was scared about being around the guys, because they had been back together for three or four years. I felt a bit awkward socially. A lot of water had gone under the bridge, and I had said quite a few things that were nasty," Williams says.

“I didn’t know how I would be received or whether people were harbouring any grudges, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I went. It became very apparent very quickly that everybody was there for the right reasons: everybody wanted to love each other, get along and tie this thing up in a bow, because we didn’t leave it right the first time. Going into a studio, the process sorted itself out remarkably quickly.”

Williams, no songwriting slouch himself, says that his contributions to Progress will be obvious but that Barlow remains the main creative talent.

“It is definitely a collaborative album; we have all contributed. I think when people hear it they’ll know which bits I’ve done. It was 98 per cent harmonious,” he says. “Gary Barlow is one of the best songwriters of all time. The way he crafts songs, he writes hits on purpose. If I do it, it is a fluke. The guy just turns them out and turns them out. I’m in awe of his talent.”

Williams is looking forward to sharing dressing rooms and a stage with Take That. He has long complained about the pressures of being a solo star, especially given his well-documented mental frailties. Indeed, his critics say he writes about nothing else and that there is a streak of solipsism in his lyrics.

He cancelled a leg of his 2006 world tour and has not performed live since, a situation that he traces back to his self-confessed lethargic concert in front of 78,000 fans at Croke Park in June 2006, when he promised to play a free show to make up for his poor performance.

“I felt shocking, and I thought that, if I feel shocking, surely it is coming out to the audience. I know what it is now, but it was terrifying at the time,” he says.

“I had something that made me lethargic; the thought of getting up in front of 75,000 fans petrified me. It was nothing life-threatening but enough to put me on my arse. I had stage fright. It is sorted now.

“Things are rocking, the missus is wonderful” – in August he married the American actor Ayda Field – “my life is really good. I absolutely can’t wait to see other people do things on stage, so I can have a look at the audience. When you are a solo performer you don’t really take anything in.”