May 7, 200619 yr Well from today's NOTW it looks like he won't play his own TT card. (as posted in the News thread) From today's News of the World RAV ROBBIE: I WON'T TOUR WITH TAKE THAT He snubs lads - but will gig with Pet Shop Boys Robbie williams has told Take That he's too busy to join their comeback tour-but he WILL take time out to do a gig with the Pet Shop Boys. The Robster had promised to join Howard, Mark, Gary and Jason on stage for at least one of their concerts. but now he has backed out, telling the lads he has too many other projects on the go. However, it seems he has got time for the Pet Shop Boys. I can reveal he is recording a dance album with them and will join them at a hush-hush gig at London's Windmill Theatre tomorrow. A source close to the Pet Shop Boys told me: "Initially Robbie did want to join the TT boys on the tour-he was quite excited about seeing his fans again. "But time just wouldn't allow it because he has so much going on at the moment. "However, when the Pet Shop Boys came along and asked him to join them for their one-off gig, he jumped at the chance. He likes to do quirky things and sees this as being right up his street". Last month it was revealed Robbie would appear with TT at one of their Manchester gigs-although he wanted to keep the exact date under wraps. But as well as his Pet Shop Boys commitments, Robbie is up to his eyes in rehearsing for his world tour later this year as well as preparations for his new single which is out next month. He is also involved in Soccer Aid, which will see him do battle on the pitch with celebs and World Cup legends in aid of UNICEF. His decision to pull out of the tour will be a blow for TT fans who were over the moon that they would get to see the fab 5 back together again. Robbie sensationally quit TT in 1995. Seems we'll have to wait a while longer to see him bury the hatchet with his old pals.
May 7, 200619 yr Author I won't be surprised if he doesn't turn up. Always thought it was a bit unlikely anyway. -_-
May 13, 200619 yr OK, so how deep is your love? The return of Take That with a £3 million recording contract has set a poser for Pete Paphides: why all the hype for them when the E17 boys, for one, can’t get arrested? Whatever else you think about their legacy, you have to admit that the video for Take That’s farewell single in 1996 — a version of the Bee Gees’ How Deep is Your Love — is a work of bonkers, bizarre brilliance. Barry Gibb might have written the song 18 years previously as a treatise on the fragility of human relationships, but by the time the video director Nicholas Brandt got his mitts on it Take That’s rendition of the song took on an eerie allegorical resonance. In the video pop stardom is a merciless dominatrix having her wicked way with four people who had long since come to depend on her. After pulling Howard Donald’s dreads and pronging the neck of a terrified Gary Barlow with a fork, she packs them, still tied up, into a meat wagon and proceeds to taunt them on the edge of a cliff. The symbolism at the heart of this boy band version of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! couldn’t have been clearer. Being in a band such as Take That amounted to a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Even when “liberated†from the shackles of pop stardom, you always, eventually, return to your captor. Hence the lack of surprise at the news this week that Take That’s triumphant reunion tour has been formalised into a fully fledged return: a £3 million deal with Polydor and an album of new material by Christmas. If the relationship between a boy band and the people around them is, by necessity, a dysfunctional one, the one into which Take That re-enter the frame is no less dysfunctional — one defined by two parties’ inability to move on. On one side, four disparate former pop stars whose attempts to establish some kind of creative identity outside the thing that made them famous have come to little. On the other, the fans — the crying girls who jammed the switchboards of specially created helplines after news of Take That’s original split was announced. They’ve been there all along, patiently awaiting their idols’ return, like pop cultural sailors’ wives. This sort of behaviour is not without precedents, of course. Even at his post- Osmonds commercial nadir Donny Osmond could still fill theatres. It’s just that the unprecedented scale of Take That’s reunion seems to have surprised even industry insiders: “It’s easy to be wise after the fact,†says Martin Talbot, the editor of the industry bible Music Week. “But no one really knew that there was this sort of demand out there.†How could they? Nostalgia on such a mass scale is uncharted territory. Take That were the first boy band who quit before their audience showed any interest in outgrowing them. But it might just be that their audience would never have outgrown them. After all, Take That came into popularity during pop-literate times, when broadsheet newspapers didn’t think it beneath themselves to discuss “the phenomenonâ€, and having a favourite band member was an essential for anyone who lingered for a chat by the water cooler. Amazingly, we were subtly buttered up to imagine that the band even had their own “George Michaelâ€. In fact, they did — Robbie Williams — but while Robbie was embarking on his lost weekend, all eyes were on Barlow. It was almost as though Barlow’s innate chunkiness, his inability to dance and his perpetually crossed eyes verified his status as “the talented†one. He wrote one indisputably great song, of course. But such was the yawning disparity between Back for Good and the quality of his other songs that the music industry invented a frankly laughable conspiracy theory to try to explain it — that the Bee Gees secretly wrote it for him in exchange for the cover of How Deep is Your Love. The funny thing about the Take That reunion is that it has triggered no reappraisals of their music. But if they hadn’t been incredibly influential in their way, their reunion would probably attract no greater interest than that of East 17 — who have merely managed to sell out one reunion show, at Shepherds Bush Empire this month. Unlike East 17 though, the sea changes that Take That set into motion are still with us. If Take That ambled into the audition room and proceeded to sing in front of Simon Cowell right now they’d stand every chance of making it through to the final stages of Pop Idol. If Tony Mortimer and his crotch-grabbing, baseball cap-wearing oompa-loompa friend walked into the same room, they’d elicit the sort of corpsing that you see repeated on those “worst of†anthologies. Lest there be any doubt that Take That contrived to remould mainstream pop in their image, you only need to look at the records that fill up the racks beside supermarket checkouts. The generation with which Will Young, Shayne Ward, Ronan Keating, G4, Il Divo and the relentlessly popular Westlife have won favour is the generation whose musical template was laid down by Take That. Market research shows that they’re also the generation on which the profile of Sugababes and Girls Aloud as album acts is dependent. So, while a nation of teenagers attempts to compose Streets-style soliloquys on cheap laptops or master the chords to I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, their older brothers and sisters see nothing wrong in purchasing a bit of good old-fashioned light entertainment. It does mean that Take That will be restricted in terms of the kind of album they have to provide. Officially, the line is that they’ll be writing together for the first time. In all probability, though, there will be a pool team of songwriters on call to ensure that they deliver a solid, adult-orientated collection of songs. One insider says that an “updated Eagles vibe†has been mooted. In a more carefree era, it might not necessarily have been that way. When the Walker Brothers — briefly the Take That of their era — released 1978’s Nite Flights, a mostly solid selection of MOR cuts was augmented by four Scott Walker originals, seemingly forged from the crucible of his own burning depression. When the Byrds reformed for their 1972 reunion, a mostly turgid set of tunes was briefly enlivened by two sublime, melancholy cuts from Gene Clark. After throwing him out in 1966, they were lucky he even deigned to turn up for the sessions. If there’s a Scott Walker/Gene Clark figure in all of this — a talented but commercially unsuccessful artist forced by circumstance to reconvene with his old colleagues — it’s obviously not Gary Barlow. After ten years of minor acting roles, club PAs and DJ slots in dubious nightspots, the simian element of Take That — Howard Donald and Jason Orange — can also be comfortably discounted. Poor Mark Owen, though, must sometimes gaze at Robbie’s success and wonder why he couldn’t have a bit of that. Attempting to resurrect his profile sufficiently to find a label for his second solo album, In Your Own Time, it was Owen who appeared on (and won) Celebrity Big Brother and promptly snagged himself a deal. “It was his best and worst idea,†says Chris Wilkie, a guitarist who worked with him on the record. “Mark had this notion that he wanted to make a record which reflected his love of bands like Talk Talk, Radiohead and Grandaddy. A lot of the songs were brilliant, but obviously it wasn’t something his label felt they could market, so he had to leave them off.†After my conversation with Wilkie four MP3s landed in my inbox, all of them featuring Owen performances that remain unreleased. The Talk Talk references are just about borne out, albeit augmented by flashes of the La’s and Bee Gees’ pop-baroque years. We Could Rule in particular is the sort of song that the whole world has been begging Richard Ashcroft to make — but, crucially, no one can imagine Mark Owen making. It might seem a little unnecessary to sympathise with Take That’s diminutive heartthrob when he has probably just landed the biggest pay cheque of his life. But his attempts to assert himself as an artistic entity highlights the very point made by that video. Martin Talbot is swift to add, however, that for the reconvened Take That this may represent the chance to right a few of the wrongs that lingered from their earlier incarnation. The Take That of 2006, he says, will enjoy considerably greater bargaining power than the callow ingénues who auditioned first time round. “Pop acts don’t tend to be in a position to negotiate the best deals,†Talbot says. “ It’s not like you are Chris Martin or Bono and you’re bringing something specific to the job of lead singer. When you’re just one of five successful applicants, you’re not bringing a huge amount to the party. “But once you’ve had the kind of success that Take That had, then you’re no longer interchangeable with all the other people who turned up to the audition. Having worked a lot harder the first time around for an arguably smaller return, it would be cruel to begrudge them their moment of payback.†Source: www.timesonline.co.uk
May 13, 200619 yr Can't I make up with you? I CAN reveal the feud between ROBBIE WILLIAMS and GARY BARLOW is finally over — after a staggering 11 years. The original TAKE THAT line-up had an old boys’ reunion at a secret party on Tuesday. And it is good news for the reformed band’s fans who want to see Robbie appearing on stage with his old mates during their tour. http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e272/handsomeman/c33b18c4.jpg Friends again ... Robbie and Gary And it is good news for the reformed band’s fans who want to see Robbie appearing on stage with his old mates during their tour. Robbie invited MARK OWEN, HOWARD DONALD, JASON ORANGE and Gary to meet him at the swanky Conrad hotel in Chelsea Harbour, West London, next to his luxury pad. He had Been Expecting the boys at the hotel bar shortly after their sell-out gig at Wembley Arena. But they got held up after fans hounded them for autographs after the concert and didn’t turn up until 12.45am. As the quartet stepped off the blacked-out tour bus the whole of Take That — who had a 1993 hit with Why Can’t I Wake Up With You — had their first emotional reunion since splitting in 1995. Robbie held out a huge olive branch to his old foe by giving him a massive hug. Gary told me at the Newcastle gig that the Rock DJ would appear on stage for more than one date during the band’s tour. This reunion was the first chance all the lads could get to talk over the plans for Robbie’s comeback. A source told me: “Robbie looked a bit nervous waiting for the boys. “He was sat on his own at the bar in a black hoody. “The bus pulled up outside the doors and the boys ran into the hotel one by one through the foyer and into the bar. “When Gary went through Robbie stood up and they both hugged and laughed. Gary said, ‘How are you? It’s been a while . . . ’ “Over the past 11 years they have hardly spoken to each other and since the band got back together last November their only means of communication was through Mark. “They looked quite emotional. They haven’t all been in a room all together for almost 11 years — it was like old times.†After their brief hellos the boys disappeared into a private room in the hotel to chat about the gig. And I reckon they had a lot to discuss with Robbie’s “surprise†appearance coming up. JORDAN and PETER ANDRE had been sat in the bar watching the reunion unfold. And Gary’s wife Dawn — who is a dancer on the tour — invited them to join the exclusive bash. A source said: “All the old crew mates joined them for the mini celebration. “It was like they were easing Robbie back into to the gang for when he goes on stage with them.†So Robbie, any Regrets? Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,4-2006210673,,00.html
May 13, 200619 yr TAKE THAT’s phenomenal comeback has really paid off – they have landed a £3million record deal. the Sun. In a frenzy not seen since the band’s Nineties heyday, labels had been fighting to sign GARY BARLOW, MARK OWEN, HOWARD DONALD and JASON ORANGE. Sony BMG, who own their back catalogue, were keen to win them over. But they have signed with Polydor — home to GIRLS ALOUD, SCISSOR SISTERS, KAISER CHIEFS and EMINEM. Polydor boss David Joseph, who used to work with them in the old days when he was with Sony BMG, is believed to have swung the deal. The lads will release at least one new album of new tunes — with others to follow if that one goes well. A source told me: “There was massive record company interest in signing Take That on to a new deal to carry them through the next few years. “Two things contributed to the frenzy. First, their current tour proved there is still a big fan base. But it was a collection of new songs which gave Polydor the confidence to commit to the future. “All four of them have been writing together this time around — not just leaving it to Gary. They have finished five songs and will go back in the studio as soon as the tour is finished.†If a year ago I’d predicted this would happen, no one would have believed me. But since the boys announced their current arena tour it seems we just can’t get enough of them. Tickets sold out within hours and they had to add a string of new dates. This latest deal means the music industry believes they can attract new fans. And a CD release will give them the excuse to mount another tour. Former manager NIGEL MARTIN-SMITH believes Take That could now be on the road for years. He told me: “I can’t believe what a success the comeback has been. I thought they would do the tour and that would be it. But now they could tour every year and pack stadiums.†Gary is keen to push for a Christmas No1. And the way things are going you wouldn’t bet against it.
May 13, 200619 yr Take That, Wembley Arena, London By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney Published: May 11 2006 17:56 May 11 2006 17:56 http://www.fans-supreme.de/coppermine/albums/album05/normal_Karo.jpg Take That without Robbie Williams are like England without Wayne Rooney. No cracked metatarsals in this case, though. Robbie's absence from his former boybands reunion tour reflects the brutal fact that he is vastly more famous than his ex-colleagues, whose post-Take That careers in comparison have been abject failures. Remember Mark Owen solo album? Or Gary Barlow's bid to become the new Elton John? Ten years ago when they split up Take That were the most successful British band since the Beatles, so there was something poignant about seeing them hit the nostalgia circuit. When Barlow sang Take me back to where I need to be, you could imagine a decade worth of frustration roiling beneath the vapid ballad he was crooning. That said, none of the boys (they may be in their mid-30s but boys they remain) looked too tormented. Barlow, the leader, resembled an ageing midfield footballer with his stocky build and receding spiky hair; the other three, the prettier ones, looked like George Best in the early 1970s. Dance moves were executed with aplomb, to screams from the thousands of youngish women in the audience reliving their teen-pop crushes. There were slick routines, including a deliriously preposterous tango number and a brilliant Beatles medley (honestly!), alongside upbeat disco tracks and terrible, energy-sapping ballads. A hologram showing Robbie Williams singing the intro to Could It Be Magic was the sole visible reminder of their ex- bandmate, a Banquo-like presence that left one wondering why he alone survived the bands break-up. The others are likeable and personable, crucial attributes for a boyband. But likeability gets you only so far. To go further you need charisma, which Take That minus Robbie, for all the fun and escapism of their live show, singularly lack.
May 13, 200619 yr From Music Week OnLine : Polydor is aiming to release new Take That material by Christmas, with a single to precede the album release in October. The label, which emerged victorious in the fight to sign the group, is currently finalising a top US producer to produce the album and the group will head to LA to begin recording after their current live dates are complete. Polydor co-managing director Colin Barlow believes there is strong potential to reach both existing fans and extending to a new audience. “The important thing with this album is to ensure we really push the envelope and making a great record that really captures the moment. This is a brilliant second opportunity for them and they know that.†The deal with Polydor incorporates a new studio album and the DVD release of their comeback tour, which will come to a end this month. Barlow says releases beyond that are an option. “We’re all mature enough to be able to look each other in the eye and say ‘look, this could be the start of something,’ but it really depends on how the market reacts to this record.â€
May 13, 200619 yr Thanks for all those articles Scotty. I was no fan of Take That in the 90s, but bought a concert ticket on a whim - and last Tuesday night at Wembley converted me. Great entertainment :) I'm curious to hear this new album :)
May 13, 200619 yr Author You were at a TT gig Dory? :cheer: Brilliant! You'll need to do a full review for us with all the gossip. :)
May 13, 200619 yr Full review - It was brill :D You can take a look at my photos/videos here.. http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/AhlS/TakeThat_9May06/ Edited May 13, 200619 yr by Dory
May 13, 200619 yr One of my F-friends was there and she was sooooooooo enthusiastic!!!!!!!! Here's her review: amazing!!!! even gary was good and... TT ROCKED!!!! they had this little skit where some bloke in white overalls came on, and it showed TT as coming off a production line and being manufactured. and a loudspeaker said that the nasty evil manager made lots of mean rules and it listed 10 including acting gay, not having sex and their were a couple of cheeky references to robbie (lying about their background, not breaking the rules and overindulging etc!) they were amazing though, loads of dancing, and they totally took the piss out of gary's dancing (which was good!) they said all boy band members must dance, and mark, jason and howard all did some break dancing whilst gary stood in the background then some blokes carried gary forward where he did a silly old man dance. they came out on a huge stage above the audience...and then they came into the audience to get back on the main stage - all the way from the middle of the arena to the stage and in relight my fire they had fire throwers and stuff....and it poured with rain for back for good. i have to say it was the gig of the year - sung my heart out, and the lads were so excited - they couldn't stop grinning and waving at everyone! even gary has grown up - his kids were there watching (they are soooo pretty) but he was a nice bloke - they all were best warm up gig for robbie ever!!!
May 13, 200619 yr Author Thanks for sharing the photos/videos Dory. Good to see the Robbie hologram vid. Thanks for the review Twinkle. :cheer:
May 27, 200619 yr LULU TRIES TO REUNITE ROBBIE WITH TAKE THAT Geschrieben von Entertain_Me Freitag, 26 Mai 2006 Sixties singer LULU is convinced she can convince ROBBIE WILLIAMS to reunite with his former band TAKE THAT. The 90s boyband have had to embark on a reunion tour without the chart-topper, who refuses to join GARY BARLOW, MARK OWEN, JASON ORANGE and HOWARD DONALD. But Lulu, who collaborated with the band on hit RELIGHT MY FIRE and is joining them on the stadium leg of the tour, thinks she has the negotiating skills to bring Williams onboard. She says, "I've seen the show and they don't need Robbie but it would be terrific to have him there. I'm going to be mediator because I think I can convince him."
July 21, 201014 yr Yes he even said that they want Robbie to record a new album with them. :rolleyes: Rob and Gary writing a song together. I would pay to see that :lol: Sorry DeNiro ... just had to bring this up! :rofl: :rofl: How do you want to pay out? Seriously ... all the pictures I'm seeing lately actually seem quite ... nice! Norma
July 21, 201014 yr Sorry DeNiro ... just had to bring this up! :rofl: :rofl: How do you want to pay out? Seriously ... all the pictures I'm seeing lately actually seem quite ... nice! Norma :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: In my defence this is a thread over 4 years old - no-one expected this to happen back then - the notion itself was laughable. It still is quite laughable, even though it's actually happened if you ask me :lol: But yes you are right - they all seem very happy in their boat rowing around - it's all a bit of fun afteral - nothing to be taken in any way seriouslyl. :drink:
July 22, 201014 yr :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: In my defence this is a thread over 4 years old - no-one expected this to happen back then - the notion itself was laughable. It still is quite laughable, even though it's actually happened if you ask me :lol: But yes you are right - they all seem very happy in their boat rowing around - it's all a bit of fun afteral - nothing to be taken in any way seriouslyl. :drink: The thing is! Although I used the word 'nice' ... 'nice' is probably one of my most hated words! It's just one of those words that is ... just a bit yuk! You can't win with a miserable old git like me can you? :lol: Norma
