The strictly performance sold out of my head for me,up to that performance the song didn't click with me.

The strictly performance sold out of my head for me,up to that performance the song didn't click with me.

:yahoo: :cheer: :dance:

 

I still don't know how Gary's vocals sounded so good with all that movement. I can barely speak while doing exercise, let alone sing.

I was afraid that, after the Bambi awards performance, this might not be so good, but OOUH sounded even better live than in the official video.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that performance! Definitely helped sell the song to me, and it’s up to #21 on iTunes now too

Alot saying they were mining. I hope it can make the top 100 this week

 

Definitely didn’t sound like they were miming, having listened to OOOH quite a few times now. That’s probably the usual social media crowd who like to cause something from nothing.

Number 18 now on iTunes.

Definitely not miming. It's such an obvious difference between the video and official audio and the live vocals. Gary's voice had nothing of the effects in the studio version and it was pretty obvious Mark was singing live too. I think we all know by now that they can sound really good live even while moving, after all the tours and gigs they've done. I guess some people have nothing better to do than find wrongs even where there are nones.

Big interview in Music Week!

 

http://www.musicweek.com/interviews/read/i...llection/074497

 

It just felt right. Take That’s team talk Odyssey Collection

 

Take That’s Odyssey is anything but your bog standard Greatest Hits album. Instead, it’s an ambitious attempt to reinvent the format, via a non-stop mix of rebooted career highlights, seamlessly mixed by Stuart Price and featuring interview snippets from throughout their career.

 

“That day seems to be over,” says the band’s Gary Barlow. “With everything being available now, the Greatest Hits is already online. And we have such a supportive audience they’ve got everything, in fact they’ve probably got it twice. So just sticking a Greatest Hits out felt really uninspiring.”

 

Instead, Polydor and the band got Stuart Price to reinvigorate the catalogue in a unique way.

 

“It just felt right creatively,” says David Joseph, chairman & CEO of Universal Music UK. “A new take on songs that could have a new meaning today. It was an idea that they then creatively enjoyed and that’s why it worked. We were also mindful that they’d been on a run of very successful studio albums and it just felt like the right moment to have a respectful look at the past. It’s a terrific record.”

 

Neil Rodford, CEO of Take That’s management company YM&U Group, credits Joseph and the band with the vision for what could become a new model for compilations if it becomes successful.

 

“It will be interesting to see the reaction that we get from the audience,” says Rodford. “But that was the vision: to try and augment the back catalogue without messing too much with the original songs. The quality of the songs is what will differentiate them from everybody else.”

 

With sales available with a gig ticket bundle, Polydor co-president Tom March says the album already has tens of thousands of pre-orders and predicts it will be one of the few records this year to debut with 100,000+ sales. He also believes it might help the band crack streaming, with most of their albums to date heavily physical.

 

“The campaign will be full of moments of nostalgia for their fans but will also give them something brand new to love,” says March. “We’re expecting to sell huge amounts of physical records, whilst also reinvigorating their catalogue on streaming services and have fantastic plans in place with all the partners.”

 

The only question that remains is, where can the band go after 30 years at the top?

 

“Their music is going to be part of people’s lives forever,” declares Joseph. “Take That occupy a special place in UK music history. As long as the songs keep coming, there are many chapters left in this story.”

And here’s the next part. Hope you enjoy the read!!

 

Greatest days: How Take That became a touring phenomenon

 

 

Notching up 29 sold-out stadium shows, 1.8 million ticket sales and well over £100m in box office receipts, Take That’s 2011 Progress run with Robbie Williams remains the biggest concert tour the UK has ever seen. But the group’s monstrous live business extends far beyond that zenith, even pre-dating their 2005 revival.

 

“They had the two biggest-selling tours of all-time in the UK,” says their promoter, SJM Concerts MD Simon Moran. “The ’09 Circus tour did over 1.15 million tickets in the UK and then the Progress tour did over 1.8m tickets. I think Ed Sheeran has since overtaken The Circus, so they’ve now got the No.1 and No.3 tours.”

 

The figures are simply awesome: 2006’s The Ultimate Tour netted $29.4m (£22.7m); 2007’s Beautiful World took in $40.4m (£31.1m) and 2009’s The Circus garnered $67.8m (£52.3m), prior to Progress’ colossal $185.2m (£142.7m), which saw it ranked second only to U2’s 360° in Pollstar’s list of 2011’s highest-grossing world tours.

 

Even as a trio, Take That Live (2015) and Wonderland Live (2017) continued to generate immense returns.

 

“The last two tours, in ’15 and ’17, both did half a million tickets in the UK and we’ve already sold 580,000 tickets for [2019],” notes Moran, speaking to Music Week. “It’s going to get over 600,000, which will be bigger than the last two. They are huge numbers.”

 

Hooking up with the band upon their rebirth in the mid-2000s, Moran’s faith in their live potential was unwavering. “They hit the zeitgeist with the fanbase when they first came around,” he reflects. “I saw them twice on two different tours and was amazed at how good the show was and how the songs resonated. They continued to resonate strongly when they went away – the songs stood the test of time.”

 

He continues: “I suspected, and I was right, that there would be a lot of demand to see them tour again. They then had a massive second impact with the new music, which was at least as good and arguably better and more popular than the first time around, certainly in the UK.”

 

The No.1 single Patience and subsequent hits Shine and Rule The World from 2006’s Beautiful World, the band’s first studio LP in 11 years, elevated their comeback from a short-lived nostalgia run to a revitalised, contemporary prospect with staying power.

 

“It gave it huge rocket fuel,” asserts Moran. “The first tour was about the older music and was a huge success, we ended up doing stadiums on that, but then the new music sold massively. Their touring business has just been immense in the last 12 years.”

 

Danny Betesh, MD of fellow Manchester-based promoter Kennedy Street Enterprises, staged all the band’s UK shows in their initial incarnation as well as acting as their international agent.

 

“I first promoted Take That in 1993 – a 21-date arena tour which sold out instantly,” remembers Betesh, who still works with the group to this day. “In 1995 we did 10 days to open Manchester Arena and 10 days at Earls Court before they decided to call it a day in February 1996.

 

“Happily, 10 years later they reformed. SJM took over, but Kennedy Street remained as co-promoter. Simon is a brilliant promoter with incredible judgement and consequently Take That went from strength to strength. The 2011 stadium tour broke all records in the UK with almost two million tickets sold – a record that will probably never be equalled.”

 

Long-time chief collaborator on their cutting-edge concert productions – a hallmark of all Take That shows – is creative director Kim Gavin, who also oversaw the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony. He explains: “We always dive into the album title and what the album is suggesting. Hence, Progress was the evolution of man and where we’re going. It was probably the most expensive show that we’ve ever done, but it was great to do. It’s always nice to have a budget similar to what we had for [London] 2012.”

 

Musical director Mike Stevens has been another mainstay since coming on board as a backing musician in the early ’90s. “We did a week of shows and by the end of it I was the MD,” he laughs.

 

Stevens admits to underestimating the group’s abilities at the start. “They were just a boyband,” he says. “There was nothing that led anyone to believe it was anything more than that.”

 

Gavin’s first impressions were more lasting. “They had a lot of qualities within the group,” he says. “They all had strengths in different places, which collectively was exciting.”

 

“The only thing I can remember is that they had Gary Barlow,” counters Stevens. “He was more of a musician than most boybands had and he could obviously write a song. They also had Robbie, of course, who was about 17 at the time. There was definitely something there with Rob, but you weren’t quite sure if it was genius or insanity to be honest.”

 

Stevens reflects on the circumstances surrounding Williams’ exit from the group in July 1995. “Robbie was all over the place during that period,” he concedes. “The band had a work ethic, whereas Rob was the opposite – he just did his own thing. You could see that he didn’t fit into them and they didn’t fit to him.

 

“He left rehearsals one day around lunchtime and never came back. We were all surprised, but by the same token probably not surprised, because he was obviously the odd one out.”

 

However, Stevens believes the writing was on the wall from that point onwards. “They made an attempt to keep going but you could tell that they weren’t comfortable with it and it didn’t feel right,” he remembers. “When [Williams] left, the whole dynamic changed; Gary was thinking about going solo and that was that.”

 

“They always wanted to stop at the top,” adds Gavin. “So it wasn’t a surprise to me when they went, ‘That’s it, we’re done.’ Everything was so fast and furious in those first five years and there was a slight sense of relief from everybody that the fast and furious was going to stop. It was really frantic and I think, at the time, everyone was numb. There wasn’t a lot of emotion about the band splitting up.”

 

Stevens, who toured with the group from 1993 until their 1996 split, continued to work with Barlow during his solo career before picking up where he left off with Take That a decade later.

 

“I remember getting a call from Gary and him saying, ‘We did a documentary and it was suggested we do some gigs off the back of it,’” says Stevens. “He didn’t think it would be much, but it took off in an absolutely incredible way. From eight or 10 shows it turned into something like 35, and at the end of it we were doing Milton Keynes Bowl. It was a complete and absolute surprise to everybody – not least them.”

 

Indeed, in his 2012 MITs Award acceptance speech, Barlow poked fun at an unnamed promoter who turned down the chance to work with the band, minus Robbie Williams. Solo Agency boss John Giddings later owned up to being the man in question, telling the International Festival Forum: “The lawyer for Take That phoned me up and said, ‘They’re reforming, do you want to represent them?’ I said, ‘Is Robbie in the band?’ He said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘No thanks,’ put the phone down and every girl in the office said, ‘You w*n**r!’”

 

“I think John Giddings was one of quite a few people who passed on it,” chuckles Stevens. “But Simon Moran was the guy who went for it and got the benefits. The major difference second time around was that they reinvented themselves – they made completely different music.”

 

The revival succeeded in not only bringing back die-hard devotees, but in hooking fans of all ages. “It’s multi-generational,” affirms Moran of the band’s audience. “It is majority female, but there are a lot of males and couples.”

 

After the record-breaking success of the 2009 Circus Live stadium tour, things came full circle when Williams rejoined the group in 2010.

 

“Progress was the natural place to go after that,” says Stevens. “It was about reconciliation and the enormity of it was hard to comprehend.

 

“It’s funny – it felt a bit weird as a four when Robbie left, but when it was the four of them the second time around it felt right. When Robbie came back it didn’t feel quite like Take That because, for me, Take That was the four of them. But it turned out great and it felt natural in the end.”

 

“It was closure on when he first split,” offers Gavin. “Robbie added that dynamic that we hadn’t seen for a long time.”

 

With Williams returning to his solo career post-Progress, the Take That universe was rocked by the departure of founder member Jason Orange, leaving Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald to continue as a trio. “Jason was a massive loss to the band,” laments Stevens. “I don’t know if any of them knew if it would work, but they found a way and it feels like a three now, like that’s what it should be.”

 

Switching to a three-piece has had additional benefits, points out Kim. “An odd number is always better from a staging and choreographic point of view,” he says. “Someone is always in the middle with three and someone is always in the middle with five, but obviously we all miss Jay. Jay was an interesting character and he was fun to be on the road with.”

 

Take That, whose booking agent is Coda’s Sol Parker, hold the record for the most headline concerts at both the new Wembley Stadium (12) and The O2 (29), where they will play a further eight shows as part of their 2019 Greatest Hits Tour. Commencing at Sheffield’s FlyDSA Arena in April, the UK and Ireland leg will also visit arenas in Glasgow, Manchester, Dublin and Birmingham, and stadiums in Milton Keynes, Southampton, Bristol, Norwich, Middlesbrough, Huddersfield, Liverpool and Cardiff.

 

“It is remarkable that, 30 years on, Take That remain among a handful of the very biggest attractions in the UK,” smiles Kennedy Street’s Betesh. “Their live show is brilliant, but above all they remain modest, down to earth and the nicest people you could wish to meet and work with.”

 

Stevens likens his role in the past three decades to being part of a Hollywood movie. “It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride for all of us, working on such fantastic live shows and also the fact that it’s a bit of a family thing because we’ve been doing it for so long.,” he says. “There had been previous reformations that hadn’t hit home quite like theirs did and I think the reason is because it was more of a reinvention than a reformation. This band was about reinventing themselves and that’s what made them unique”

 

After three decades in the game, the band’s place in British music history is long assured, but there is plenty of gas left in the tank yet.

 

“Their legacy is to always push music concerts to the limit,” says Gavin. “They have always broken new ground with their shows.”

 

“They’re such good people to work with, so appreciative and so great at their job,” sums up Moran. “They create an ongoing legacy and they’re continuing to enhance it. They are peerless in the UK.”

It was an energetic performance on Strictly Come Dancing and Gary, Mark and Howard really appeared to have enjoyed performing it.

Please God, let it be true that their pre-orders are THAT good. 100.000 sales for the opening week would be amazing.

Please God, let it be true that their pre-orders are THAT good. 100.000 sales for the opening week would be amazing.

 

I certainly hope 100k is in target

Third and final interview; this time with the guys:

 

Bravo three zero: Take That on their three decades in pop

 

It’s 1989 and the young Howard Donald is worried. He should be happy, because his place in a hot new boyband has just been confirmed by the group’s manager, Nigel Martin-Smith. But, after a chat with his mother, Donald is suddenly having second thoughts.

 

“My Mum was so disappointed,” he laughs, nearly 30 years on from the successful audition that saw a grand total of six wannabes turn up. “She was angry with me for the fact that I had to leave my job, getting £130-a-week as a vehicle painter. She was losing out on her £25-a-week upkeep for the house, so she was disappointed. At the time, I was questioning it, thinking, ‘Maybe she’s right here, because I don’t really know where this is going to go’.”

 

Still, given that that boyband turned out to be Take That, it seemed to turn out OK, Music Week suggests.

 

“Yeah,” deadpans Donald. “I pay her £30 a week now so she’s quids in!”

 

It has been a long, strange trip between then and now, but Donald and his remaining bandmates – Gary Barlow and Mark Owen – seem to have made it through remarkably unscathed. Two former members – Robbie Williams and Jason Orange – have fallen by the wayside along the way (Williams twice, in fact) but remain members of the extended Take That family (Williams is likely to join them for one TV appearance during the campaign), and have been involved in compiling the new Greatest Hits album. Odyssey is released via Polydor on November 23 and is expected to be one of the blockbusters of the Q4 season.

 

The trio here today, sat joshing with each other in a Universal Music studio after a morning of trying on “silly clothes” for their forthcoming campaign of TV appearances (a BBC Special, Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, no mucking about), are relaxed in each other’s company and clearly still enjoying every minute of being in Britain’s biggest “boy” band.

 

Your correspondent last encountered them in their Phase One heyday, at the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party, where their every move was soundtracked by a crescendo of teenage screams. Yet, having split in 1996 in the wake of Williams’ departure the previous year, they defied all logic by returning in 2005, without Williams, and somehow ending up bigger than ever.

 

David Joseph, chairman & CEO of Universal Music UK, was key to that comeback in his role as co-president of Polydor, having previously worked with the band when head of artist development at RCA.

 

“We’re here to back artists we believe in,” says Joseph. “Myself, Colin [barlow, then Polydor co-president] and Lucian [Grainge, then Universal UK boss] backed them. Polydor believed in them. The only thing that may sound strange in hindsight was that we didn’t hear any music before the deal. The story was enough. We trusted them. It was instinctive and they delivered.”

 

And they’ve been delivering ever since. Take That’s figures before the split were impressive. Their sales since the comeback have been ridiculous. Beautiful World (2006) sold 2,879,729, according to the Official Charts Company. The Circus (2008) has moved 2,227,839. 2010’s Progress, when Williams briefly returned, became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century at the time and has sold 2,389,490. Orange then left the group, with the remaining trio scoring additional hits with 2014’s III (562,010) and last year’s Wonderland (220,946), while their live business remains off the charts, with over 30 arena/stadium dates lined up for 2019.

 

“If you look at their ticket sales in comparison with their peers, it’s unparalleled,” says Neil Rodford, CEO of Take That’s management company YM&U Group. “The audience is very engaged and, if you look at the span of people that are going, generations come in, whether it be mums and daughters, dads and daughters, or grandparents even. There aren’t many artists that have that span and what keeps people coming is the quality of the music.”

 

Odyssey showcases Take That’s iron grip on contemporary British pop songwriting over three decades, from the early pop pep of It Only Takes A Minute to the older-but-wiser balladry of Patience and beyond. And Joseph heralds “the songs, the chemistry between them and the extraordinary live shows” as the reasons for their enduring success.

 

“Then add the band as relatable people and their story with many twists and turns, ups and downs, fallouts and reunions – but ultimately one of togetherness,” he says. “And the way they’ve kept their fans so close as part of the journey. But it’s nothing without the music. The songs drive the story.”

 

“They’ve always had incredible songs, written by themselves,” concurs Polydor co-president Tom March. “They have a phenomenal drive and work ethic, and an incredible connection to their fans. They went away at a time when their fans weren’t ready for them to go away and their return was just nothing short of spectacular, so everything their fans have done, they’ve done with a Take That song playing in the background.”

 

Odyssey sees the band revisit those songs – lead writer Barlow is published by Sony/ATV – with 30 years of hits mixed together with interludes and snippets of interviews by superstar producer Stuart Price. Every song has had a spring clean, some get a complete overhaul. Boyz II Men enhance Love Ain’t Here Anymore (“They basically gave us a lesson in how to sing,” chortles Donald) while Barry Gibb duets on the band’s original swansong, How Deep Is Your Love? (“We said, ‘Thanks for lending us this song, we’d like it to give it you back now’,” grins Owen).

 

Barlow also describes Odyssey as the end of a chapter in the band’s history, but there will be no need for tears this time around, as the band seem likely to continue for as long as their fans want them to.

 

In the meantime, though, it’s time for Barlow, Owen and Donald to sit down with Music Week and talk us through a career that has seen them end up with jelly on their nether regions, but rarely with egg on their faces…

 

When you first got together, did you think you’d still be here 30 years later?

 

Gary Barlow: “No. I don’t think you can think like that. It’s not fun looking that far forward either. There were points where it felt like we were getting nowhere. We were just fighting for a place in the industry. When we first started, doing the under-18s tours and club tours, pop wasn’t back but it was on its way back. They’d had three or four years of faceless dance acts and the pop magazines were crying out for a band with a face. There were four or five of us and we were the only ones who broke through.”

 

You did plenty of covers. But how important has writing your own songs been for your longevity?

 

GB: “Very, especially as audiences get older, that becomes more important. They want to be spoken to by you, not through someone who’s been flown in from Sweden. Luckily, we built that into our being the first time round so our fans were used to it and they just wanted more when we came back. Which was great, because we all started to write the second time around.”

 

Do you endorse the trend for multiple songwriters?

 

GB: “That’s a new way of working. But it doesn’t matter how you crack it, as long as you crack it.”

 

Nowadays, boybands are launched by major labels or huge TV shows. But joining Take That must have been quite a leap of faith for you all…

 

GB: “Nigel was very blasé in the way he sold us the idea, it was like we’d already made it. He talked about it in a way that suggested failure was not an option. He told us what was going to happen and f*** me, it happened. All of it! Even all the downsides he told us would come with it. He had this vision and it was absolutely spot on. That’s what made us all go, ‘I want to do this’ because he was telling us what it should be and how it should look.”

 

Howard Donald: “Although he did tell us that a couple of plays on Radio 1 would get us to No.1. We were all waiting in the van when the charts were on, thinking, ‘f***ing hell, we’ve made it here, we’re going to be No.1’. We got all the way to No.1 and it was someone else and we heard we’d gone in at No.96!”

 

But wasn’t it good that you didn’t make it overnight?

 

GB: “It was definitely a good thing as a writer. I was writing Barry Manilow songs at the time, I wasn’t writing pop music. Going in these nightclubs and listening to the music they were playing, my ear was starting to change and I realised, ‘I’m out of date, I’ve been playing working men’s clubs for too long’. Meanwhile, what people do on Twitter and Instagram now, we were doing with a wooden box on the side of the stage that said, ‘Put your flyer with your name and address in here’. We’d take the box back to Nigel’s office and his secretary would dial in all the numbers and we’d mailshot them when we were gigging.”

 

You actually worked harder than any guitar band…

 

GB: “We did. Three or four gigs a night; under-18s at 6pm, over-18s at 8pm, gay club about 11pm, schools through the day. If they’d have us on, we’d just turn up.”

 

HD: “We’d play schools in our leather gear and the kids would be like, ‘What the f*** is this?’”

 

Mark Owen: “I remember when we went to America and we were in Long Island to do gigs. We had our suitcase with our leather gear and we realised it was completely the wrong place to be doing this. So Howard would beatbox, Rob would rap and we’d breakdance and then go. We didn’t even play a track!”

 

GB: “The way we were trying to do performances led to the gigs being like a show rather than a concert. It wasn’t enough to just stand and sing, we had to wow the crowd.”

 

MO: “That was from looking at things like Madonna and Michael Jackson. In our heads that’s who we were competing against, in Hull!”

 

How did someone persuade you to smear each other with jelly for the Do What You Like video?

 

GB: “Well, it moved into that. It was meant to just be us performing the dance routine! But then, as the day went by, people just wanted to get crazy. And this is the thing with us, if someone does something, someone will try and upstage it. So all of a sudden you’re looking round and going, ‘Why has everyone got nothing on? Where the f***’s this food come from?’ That’s the trouble.”

 

HD: “I thought we were supposed to eat it. Nigel’s going, ‘No, you dickhead, you’re supposed to be putting it on each other!’”

 

GB: “You’ve got to remind yourselves of the time. Nigel had said to us, ‘Listen, it’s going to be great publicity when this video gets banned because it’s too naughty or raunchy or whatever’. But I don’t think anyone noticed…”

 

HD: “But I do believe that’s part of our DNA. It was part of our experience and growth and [finding out] what to do and what not to do. I don’t think I’d have it any other way, I wouldn’t change anything from the ’90s.”

 

You became massive on Everything Changes. What was it like being in the middle of all that hysteria?

 

GB: “It was mega! It was bloody brilliant! Did I like it? The quick answer is yes. For five people who’d been thrown together, we were very like-minded in our ambitiousness. We were very professional. We’d turn up in Japan and do 15 hours straight interviews and never complain. We had that work ethic. We wanted to make it. Even when I see Rob now, he’s always kept that, he still works hard. So the bigger we were getting, it wasn’t by accident, we were aiming for it, so it felt amazing.”

 

And then Back For Good and the Nobody Else album broke you out of the teen scene…

 

GB: “I felt like I’d been programming drum machines and listening to what the new beat was [for ages] and I wanted to write songs again, but now with a knowledge of how to modernise that old-fashioned kid. I remember physically getting the piano and putting it back in the studio. It was also the first time I’d really asserted myself. We’d always gone along with the label and they wanted to go with Sure first, but we just knew. Don’t lead up to it, just f***ing go with it. Nigel backed me up completely and then we got the BRITs performance. They didn’t want us on, but they heard the song and said, ‘We’re going to give you a slot’. And that was pretty much it…”

 

How frustrating was it to then break up just as you were making headway internationally?

 

MO: “To be honest, it was a good time. As a band, we’d probably gone as far as we could go anyway. It was a shame that we didn’t finish as a five but, even if Rob had stayed, we were probably not far away from realising that we’d reached our full potential. It didn’t end in the perfect way but it had to come to an end.”

 

GB: “I was knackered. I felt like we hadn’t stopped for a day over six years. I was just exhausted. It felt like a great time to press pause, definitely.”

 

Devastated fans had hotlines. But how did you feel?

 

MO: “I called that hotline many a time. I still do…”

 

HD: “It was definitely hard. You don’t think, ‘Perhaps we’ll reform in 2006’. That was the last thing on my mind, I was just thinking, ‘What am I going to do now? Being recognised so much, how am I going to go back to vehicle painting?’ It was really tough.”

 

Did you have any idea just how big the comeback would be?

 

GB: “No! It was a five-day gig. Five days of promotion for the TV documentary [iTV’s Take That: For The Record], that’s what we were coming back for. And we all said, ‘That’s alright. Five days will be fine’.

 

HD: “We’d never really said, ‘Listen mate, good luck with your life, I’m here if you need me’. We got off a plane, got in cars and drove home and avoided talking about it being the end. So, initially when we all came back, it was for us all to see how life had been and probably to say goodbye.”

 

MO: “We always say we came back for closure…”

 

GB: “…And we’re still looking for it!”

 

What do you put the astounding comeback success down to?

 

GB: “It’s been like our whole career: a number of moves have got us to where we’re at. But if you wanted one thing, it’s us, it’s the people. It’s not a clever marketing move. It’s how we came back and saw the opportunity and went for it as a team. Thank God we got a supportive team around us. Old friends – David Joseph, Colin [barlow] who I got to know in the nine years off, we had a great team of people who just went, ‘We’re not going to tell you what to do but, when you decide, we’re here and we’re going to back you’. They were behind us.”

 

Even since then the business has completely changed. How do you stay on top of things like streaming?

 

GB: “I don’t know if we have. I don’t think we ever take notice of it to be honest. The whole thing about how people are ingesting music or whatever, I don’t even think about it. I don’t sit and write a song thinking about Spotify. What we do is the same, how we then get it out there, well, these guys [the label] know all the best ways, so then you take it into consideration. But when you’re playing you don’t even think about it. You just try and write a great song.”

 

So where do you go next?

 

MO: “It’s been a wondrous journey. But we’re not looking beyond [this] really at this stage.”

 

GB: “That’s not because there isn’t a beyond, there obviously is at some point.”

 

MO: “But it’s hard to see beyond a big tour so we’re trying to live more where we are. It would be really nice for the five of us to do something again in the future. Even though there are three of us in this room, there’s always five of us really.”

 

GB: “This is our escape, this is where we come and have a laugh and be stupid and feel like we’re 17 again. That friendship has been the thing. If we weren’t friends this would be hell. We’re family now.”

The indication is there this is not the end but we may have a long wait for new material.

I also like the point about the addressing in confidence that the album can obtain opening sales of 100,000 plus.

If this does happen it would be a great result for them.

It would be welcoming to see a progression in sales from the last 2 albums, realistically, double platinum isnt an out of this world ask and i would be happy if it happens.

The Odyssey version of How Deep is Your Love has just been released on iTunes and Spotify.

 

I LOVE it. What a great vocal!

Argh can't listen to it right now, can't wait!

Argh can't listen to it right now, can't wait!

Here it is: https://www.deezer.com/us/playlist/5125469704

 

Not particularly mad about Barry Gibb's voice - I know it's not to everyone's tastes, you either like it or hate it -, but Gary's deep register...... :wub: .....be still my heart :heart: :heart: :heart:

I think I'm one of the fortunate ones on this forum....I already have 3 songs on this album I like: Pray, OOUH - which is GREAT for dancing -, and now HDIYL. At least 2 more tracks to love and I won't regret spending my money on this album. My hope is for the new tracks and for the interludes.

Oh wow, it's beautiful!

I'm a big fan of their original cover. I like it even more than Bee Gees one.

 

The new version is not for me.

Gary’s voice and the harmonies are fantastic - love this!!