If Guy had his way Come Undone would not have been on the album, let alone released as a single.

He refused to do any promotion for it!

 

And then complains about ‘being fired’.

 

I keep being surprised that no-one mentions Blasphemy. It’s the last song that Rob and Guy wrote

together and the lyrics are so obviously about them struggling to get along.

Not that Guy seems to have noticed it at the time.

Gosh ! , so much going on . I have to think about all this :P

 

Guy & Rob had to split up/ take a break at some stage or we may never have got that great album Intensive Care .

 

Guy is right about Life Thru a Lens , I love that album . Loved that a piece South Of The Border featured in the Netflix Doc , one of my favourite songs on that album.

Edited November 13, 20231 yr by Sydney11

Different opinions matter -whether RW is happy with what Guy has to say - I don't know, but the story can't all come from one direction.

 

 

 

Totally agree, balance matters , Guy has stayed silent for too long , I was always interested in the hearing his side of what happened & good that they remain friends.

 

 

I love hearing what Guy has to say. This part is interesting:

 

did

There is quite a lot about the fall out in the book 'Feel' and there was far more to it than Come Undone, which for me is still one of his best songs and videos and live parts. Never took drugs but this can relate to so much more. When Rob and Guy met he was for sure his rock in musical reference to find a certain stability. But I can imagine that with time Rob got stronger and he realized that he was second in this partnership like he was in TT with Guy telling him what is good or not in musical taste. Like mentor to pupil where the mentor does not ealize that the pupil grew up.

I also remember that Guy only got the mortgage for his big house back then by RW helping hi,. RW seems a bit of a bi-polar character though and I remember Josie in 'Nobody someday' saying that you make a mistake only once. I loved Intensive Care. Stephan Duffy gave Rob the opportunity to try out anything even instruments he did not play. I would love to have another Rob/Stephan album. I also like the two Australian lads as the style is fresh. Guy seems to have taken a break from RW again or vice versa or with both of them deciding it is time. And reading pats of the interview they must be very good friends or Rob must be in a very good place as some of it - if it happened or was only perceived this way - is not very flattering.

This said, I wonder who is Rob's musical director in the moment.

 

I think Karl Brazil is MD at the moment.

 

I wonder if Rob as ever been assessed for Borderline Personality Disorder?

Being very black and white in relationships - idealising people and then devaluing them - is one of the symptoms.

As is being very emotionally volatile and feeling emotions very intensely.

And it also tends to start improving on its own in middle age, which would track with Rob feeling better in recent years.

 

Yes, I agree Feel is likely to be a much more accurate picture of what went down - if only because Chris Heath was documenting in real time, and not recalling things years after the fact.

 

Robbie Williams rewind podcast had an interview with Chris Briggs recently that was also very interesting on the subject of Guy and Rob. He reckons the EMI deal going through was probably impacting everyone. And he also says that success changed Guy and didn’t really change Rob - who of course had already experienced it as part of Take That.

 

And he definitely points to Guy not being keen on Rob writing with other people and not being very good at producing anything he didn’t write himself. He reckons Rob started to think that was deliberate sabotage but in reality it was just Guy not actually being a very experienced producer of other people’s work.

 

 

One of the problems is that Rob never saw himself with high value. This makes it easy for anyone else to see it the same and worse. I still cringe when he is steadily putting himself down even if it is in a joke. I guess it makes him feel less vulnerable. He is great when he speaks serious about his music. I like Guy and his seemingly very serene way. As collaborateurs I love Stephan Duffy and Trevor Horn. I still think RKTVS is very under valued. And I also like the Aussie boys who have a more modern way.

There’s some terrific stuff on Under the Radar albums that he did with the Aussie boys.

Love Raver!

Robbie Williams rewind podcast had an interview with Chris Briggs recently that was also very interesting on the subject of Guy and Rob. He reckons the EMI deal going through was probably impacting everyone. And he also says that success changed Guy and didn’t really change Rob - who of course had already experienced it as part of Take That.

 

And he definitely points to Guy not being keen on Rob writing with other people and not being very good at producing anything he didn’t write himself. He reckons Rob started to think that was deliberate sabotage but in reality it was just Guy not actually being a very experienced producer of other people’s work.

 

 

Thanks for the heads up on this episode , I have not listened to it but will do so , sounds interesting .

Making my way through the documentary. It all got very uncomfortable in part two , it was interesting to watch the dynamic change between Rob & Guy when things started to go wrong . Guy made a big mistake in what he did in dismissing Rob's ideas/creative input with Come Undone the way he did it, he was very flippant & dismissive about it & Rob did not like that, it was Guy that came undone in the end when hr forgot Rob was the boss. To be fair I have always loved the albums they did together & will never take that away from either of them, everyone makes mistakes & it's great they made up in the end. It was great to see Rob move on to other things & I would have liked to have seen a bit more about him working with Stephen Duffy but I guess that's not what this documentary was about.

 

 

 

Why You Should Watch ‘Robbie Williams’ on Netflix - by David Phillips November 10, 2023

 

 

Imagine being so huge that you could sell out just about every stadium in the world, save one country. That is the story of Robbie Williams, who at one time was arguably the most successful recording artist alive, but could not get more than the faintest of acknowledgements in America. For a comparable, picture a world where George Michael was every bit the international sensation that he was, but never had a single top 40 hit in the USA. Or, maybe to put it another way, think of Oasis minus a ‘Wonderwall.’

 

Williams got his first taste of success in the Brit boy band Take That, who were wildly successful in Europe and scraped the top ten in America with the single ‘Back for Good.’ Williams was only 16 at the time, and his four other band mates were in their early twenties. As Williams points out in the series, the difference between being 16 and in your twenties is “massive.” Despite the group’s success, Williams became a bit of a problem child—drinking and drugging way too much, while also wanting to take more of the spotlight from Gary Barlow, Take That’s lead songwriter and (at the time) most famous member. Their split was acrimonious, and Williams’ bad behaviour before and after is at times uncomfortable to watch, even for him.

 

The framework of the series is built around Williams watching old videos of himself (thousands of hours were recorded) and essentially narrating his story. When we meet present day Williams, he is gray, disheveled, and has a passing resemblance to David Johansen. He’s a man with a huge house who finds it hard to get out of bed. When Williams reveals that he’s almost 50, I gasped. He looks much older.

 

A point that caught up to me later in the show when Williams, nearing the apex of his youthful fame, states that “I’m 24.” As he spoke those two words, I noticed lines on his face that no one prior to the age of 35 should have. He looks like the oldest 24-year-old to ever walk the earth.

 

But why? Over the four episodes of Robbie Williams we discover a man with deep insecurity, anxiety, and depression. A man with a penchant for self-loathing that was exacerbated by the cruelty of the British tabloids. For all of Williams’ success, he couldn’t look out from the stage of the huge arenas he filled and take in the adoration of 90,000 fans and place their affection over the contempt of the UK rags. As Williams’ incisively says at one point, “I believed my own press. Unfortunately, my press is the British press.”

 

It’s not like Williams was unsuccessful or didn’t receive a fair number of good reviews (especially for a pop star). As the runt of the boy band litter, he quickly overshadowed his former bandmates when his power ballad ‘Angels’ soared into the top three of the UK charts. It’s a stunner of a tune that in a backward way became his biggest hit in the USA when Jessica Simpson covered the tune (in typically soporific fashion) and took it into the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.

 

On the verge of being dropped by his label, ‘Angels’ saved Williams’ career. I remain mystified why his version didn’t blow up here. While in the wrong hands (see Simpson’s version, or better yet, don’t), the song becomes overly sentimental tripe, Williams always had an edge in his voice that could either be cheeky or in the case of ‘Angels,’ remarkably vulnerable. He could make the lyrics matter.

 

After taking off like a rocket in Europe, Williams’ tried to conquer America, but never came close. His brilliant first single in the States, ‘Millennium,’ only scraped the Hot 100, and ‘Angels’ fell short too. Both songs deserved better. ‘Millennium,’ which sounded like the best James Bond theme that wasn’t a James Bond theme (in large part due to its liberal cribbing of the melody from You Only Live Twice) is an absolute stunner of a cut, but could gain little purchase here.

Still, Williams and his songwriting partner Guy Chambers couldn’t miss in Europe. Hit after hit after hit just kept coming out of them. How big was Williams? Well, he sold 75 million records, held the Guinness Book World Record for most concert tickets sold in a day (a whopping 1.6 million back in 2006), and even though he’s taken extended periods off, he is currently sitting on a net worth of $300 million. Not bad for a guy almost no one has heard of on this side of the Atlantic.

 

All of his success is made all the more impressive when you see how self-destructive he was. Aside from the boozing and the drugs, he often ruined professional (Take That and Chambers) relationships and personal ones (Nicole Appleton from the girl group All Saints and Geri Halliwell of The Spice Girls) by being so insecure as to be paranoid, and a nearly impossible person. Yet somehow, despite all his foibles, he couldn’t get in his own way in such a fatal manner as to ruin his career.

 

How did he avoid this? Well, by being really damn good. Everyone’s mileage may vary when it comes to pop stars, but there can be no denying that Williams has a distinctive voice, clever lyrics, and has created song after song with huge earworm-inducing hooks.

 

That’s one reason why you should watch Robbie Williams. Because you can catch up on nearly twenty years of should have been big hits. The other is how willing Williams is to take accountability for his behavior and how well director Joe Pearlman reveals his subject, even to the point of great discomfort.

 

Sure, we’ve all seen plenty of “perils of fame” documentaries, but this series really gets down to the bone of a boy who caught lightning in a bottle, couldn’t deal with it, but couldn’t stop it either. Not until he effectively quit the business after he married actress Ayda Field and settled down with four kids in a Los Angeles mansion–about as far away from Britain as he could get.

 

When you see Williams as a young man returning to London on his triumphant ‘Close Encounters’ tour in 2006, he’s practically a shell of a man. He performs an entire set at Leeds under the weight of a panic attack, and barely makes it through the second night as well. In the moments you watch him perform, you can see the terror in his eyes, but you also see him not quit when every fiber of his being is begging him too. It’s really dramatic stuff, and in some not entirely healthy way, admirable too. “The show must go on” as they say.

 

As the series comes to a close, we see an older, wiser Williams looking to reintroduce himself to the world stage after more than four years away. As he is packing and getting ready to leave his house, his wife and four children surround him. His very young son comes to give him a hug. Williams asks him, “Who loves you?” The boy cheekily replies, “Mummy!” Williams then asks, “Who else loves you?” The boy responds, “Daddy!”

 

Williams responds, “Yeah, I do.” Said with a slight pregnant pause and the sort of soberness that only a man who has seen some shit, and is about to go back into the thing that caused him to see that shit, can say. In exposing himself in the manner that this series has, he makes himself, maybe for the first time, easy to root for.

 

I know I am, and I think if you watch Robbie Williams you will too.

 

https://www.awardsdaily.com/2023/11/10/why-...ams-on-netflix/

Edited November 14, 20231 yr by Sydney11

There’s some terrific stuff on Under the Radar albums that he did with the Aussie boys.

Love Raver!

 

Oh my goodness -that first UTR album is absolutely brilliant.

 

Raver is amazing.

 

I love All Climb On too and The Pilot B-)

Making my way through the documentary. It all got very uncomfortable in part two , it was interesting to watch the dynamic change between Rob & Guy when things started to go wrong . Guy made a big mistake in what he did in dismissing Rob's ideas/creative input with Come Undone the way he did it, he was very flippant & dismissive about it & Rob did not like that, it was Guy that came undone in the end when hr forgot Rob was the boss. To be fair I have always loved the albums they did together & will never take that away from either of them, everyone makes mistakes & it's great they made up in the end. It was great to see Rob move on to other things & I would have liked to have seen a bit more about him working with Stephen Duffy but I guess that's not what this documentary was about.

 

The narrative of the documentary wanted to show that RW slit with Guy and then had the "disastrous" Rudebox album and a fall from grace.

 

They missed out Intensive Care was in between and one of his biggest selling albums. It didn't fit the story.

 

I also felt that they tried to make a very happy ending which is great for the documentary but a little bit unrealistic -but we know by Rob's Insta's that he is still feeling vulnerable with his mental health all the time. But i guess that doesn't fit the brief either.

I like that awards daily interview as it's written over the pond by someone who wouldn't havr grown up with RW.

 

I especially like this bit -for all his vulnerability -RW has a back bone of steel and never gives up - I admire that about him very much.

 

He is always trying to overcome his difficulties :

 

 

 

When you see Williams as a young man returning to London on his triumphant ‘Close Encounters’ tour in 2006, he’s practically a shell of a man. He performs an entire set at Leeds under the weight of a panic attack, and barely makes it through the second night as well. In the moments you watch him perform, you can see the terror in his eyes, but you also see him not quit when every fiber of his being is begging him too. It’s really dramatic stuff, and in some not entirely healthy way, admirable too. “The show must go on” as they say.

What did everyone think of the bit at Leeds where he asks the Doctor for a steroid injection and Josie (and Jonny) are trying to stop him having it?

 

They try very hard but he's not going to listen. :(

Live at Knebworth is now also live on Netflix! I have never watched it on TV so I'm looking forward watching it now. I'm also wondering how they achieved that PG 7+ rating :D

 

We know now -they cut a two hour gig to one hour and took out all the swearing :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Tess -you'll be sad -I heard Me and My monkey didn't make the final cut -_-

I love the awards daily article.

 

Leeds was the moment I became a fan when I saw it on television. So his horror moments have been still performing so great that I was hooked and I have never been a fan of someone befoe.

 

And for everyone who has not seen Knebworth try to get the DVD (I don't know if you can download it entirely)

What did everyone think of the bit at Leeds where he asks the Doctor for a steroid injection and Josie (and Jonny) are trying to stop him having it?

 

They try very hard but he's not going to listen. :(

 

 

It was the attitude of the doctor I was astounded at, he seemed to think it was hilarious . Overall I do not know how Robbie got through that tour, he sure has some willpower & for those around him it must have been really hard to watch & scary for all of them.

We know now -they cut a two hour gig to one hour and took out all the swearing :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Tess -you'll be sad -I heard Me and My monkey didn't make the final cut -_-

 

I don't believe it, how could they do that , Me & My Monkey is one of the hi-lights of that show , I am so disappointed -_-

 

I don't believe it, how could they do that , Me & My Monkey is one of the hi-lights of that show , I am so disappointed -_-

 

 

 

Thinking about it the reason they may have excluded M&MM from the Netflix version was the terrible event that happened in 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel where a lot of people lost their lives in that mass shooting , they probably considered it inappropriate