ROBBIE WILLIAMS - BIOGRAPHY


There’s only one Robbie Williams. Top entertainer. Top bloke. Class clown. Class act.

A man so maddeningly cool he can hold a stadium audience in the palm of his hand while scratching his tackle with the other.

And Robbie Williams is not just our most gifted and celebrated star - he is arguably the most lavishly talented performer ever to hail from Stoke-on-Trent.
But, as true artists often are, Robbie is a complex and quixotic soul. Despite astounding record sales, unfailingly incendiary live shows and rabid worldwide acclaim, he has spent his share of time shrouded in confusion and cloaked in darkness.
That was then?

Robbie Williams is back with a new album, ‘Sing When You’re Winning’, and this time he’s on top of his game and, perhaps more importantly, totally naked.
“In the past,” he admits, “it’s been difficult for me to talk about things I believe in and not dress it up it in irony in case someone takes the piss out of me. I think I’ve got to the point where I’m prepared be sincere.”
It’s been a head-spinning, accolade-strewn twelve months for Robbie Williams. Rarely off the radio or out of the papers, he’s collected armfuls of awards for his superb songwriting, his gobsmacking gigs and for simply being himself. And that’s quite an achievement.

On August 28th 1999, Robbie took on the biggest challenge of his career when he headlined at Slane Castle in Dublin. The 80,000 tickets had sold out five weeks in advance. Expectations could not have been higher. But ever the consummate showman, Robbie delivered. More than that. He pushed the envelope through God’s own letterbox. For every one of those people - and the 50 thousand who watched the simultaneous webcast - it was an experience they will never forget.

For Robbie Williams it was an experience he will never remember.
“The whole show was just a big black-out for me,” he laughs. “I remember walking up to the stage, moving like I couldn’t control my own limbs, but from the moment I saw the crowd, I cannot recall a thing. Apparently it was very bouncy.”
Indeed, the image of the entire audience pogo-ing as one - led by Robbie the crazed choreographer up on the stage - is one that will remain in the mind forever.
Yet amid the madness and media mayhem of last year, he somehow found time to conceive, write and record his third solo album. And it’s quite a piece of work.
‘Sing When You’re Winning’ is a fearless leap forward for Robbie as a lyricist, a singer and an artist. The 12 songs, co-written once again with musical mastermind Guy Chambers, are both immediate and mysterious, unashamedly populist yet beguilingly intelligent.
As with Robbie’s two previous multi-platinum solo albums, ‘Life Thru a Lens’ and ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, stylistic barriers have been nimbly vaulted and the musical rulebook casually discarded. Guitar-fuelled rock anthems sit happily alongside country love songs while super sexy funk nestles cheek-by-jowl with the classic balladry that has become synonymous with the name Robbie Williams.
Like Angels before it, ‘Better Man’ is a song so simple and emotionally direct it will break your heart then fill you with hope.
“I was in the South of France, as I do now because I’ve sold some records,” recalls Robbie. “And I was heart-broken - nothing to do with relationships - but I was thinking, ‘Well, you’ve got it, son. You’ve sold eight million albums, made money, you’re more famous than anyone would want to be and it’s not doing it, is it?’ So I’m sat outside with my guitar and I thought, ‘I’ll just pray to John Lennon and if he’s listening then maybe he’ll give me something’. Now that can be taken as raging arrogance or plain loony but I started strumming these chords which became the verse and the whole thing was written in an hour. And I mean that song. It’s me being honest. Not ironic or smart-arse, it’s just me.”
‘Better Man’ is about a search for self and the promise of redemption and it is probably the best song Robbie Williams has written.
But there is stiff competition on ‘Sing When You’re Winning’. There’s the bionic rocker ‘Forever Texas’ and Kids, a powerhouse, Who-indebted duet with Kylie Minogue.
Influences are worn proudly: ‘Let Love Be Your Energy’ could be Lenny Kravitz doing Marilyn Manson while the first single ‘Rock DJ’ is a huge Daft Punk-meets-Parliament party stomper inspired in-part by the late Ian Dury.
Of course, there are tender moments too. ‘If It’s Hurting You’ is a gentle lament underscored by sad curlicues of pedal steel guitar. It is a song written about Robbie’s painful break-up with former fiancée Nicole Appleton, as is the touchingly poetic meditation ‘The Beach’.
“I saw Nicky recently,” says Robbie, “and it was great because we did that thing for a year where you’d bump into each other and you’d be, ‘I’m really happy and doing absolutely fine without you. Look! I’m telling jokes and laughing and I’m just so relaxed in company and at ease in any social situation! And I’m walking like John Travolta in Grease!’ It was good to meet up and go, ‘You alright?’ ‘No. You alright?’ ‘No.’ It was such a relief to stop pretending you were fine without each other. It felt good.”
These are good times for Robbie. He looks great - imagine if James Dean had joined The Clash - he’s writing like a dream and America is beckoning. But, more crucially these days, Robbie Williams looks life square in the eye, confident within himself and finally prepared to deal head-on with the national institution he has become.
“I don’t want to be unfamous now,” Robbie says. “I wouldn’t change this for the world - it’s my job. I’ve been dealt a fantastic deal and I’ve just got to learn how to handle it. But you’re not given the tools to learn how to cope with fame. There’s no evening classes in being famous, there’s no celebrity support group you can go to. Actually there are,” he grins. “They’re called awards ceremonies.”
The man beyond the boy band. Award magnet. Incendiary entertainer.

There’s only one Robbie Williams.

‘Sing When You’re Winning’ is produced by Guy Chambers and Steve Power.