Robbie was not happy. He couldn't cope....
"The restrictions were phenomenal," he says. "Now
I think, you dick, why did you stay in the band for so long? Well,
I had no other option. I joined because I left school with no
qualifications and was scared about what my mum would say. I auditioned
for this band just to keep out of trouble."
Why did it take him so long to leave?
"When you've been conditioned from an early age, it stays with you. I'm still not free from the shackles of, Can I di this, Can I do that? When you take the shackles off someone's wrists, their wrists are still bruised."
Are the bruises getting better?
"Yeah," he says. "I've got some ointment."
The ointment started to flow
in the summer of 1995 at the Glastonbury
festival. Robbie, still a member of Take That, turned up with
a blacked-out front tooth and white-blond hair; he signed autographs
"Robbie Williams, nutter" and was photographed holding
cigarette and champagne bottle."Unauthorised TV interviews
and photos were forbidden by our management," he says. "So
at Glastonbury I thought-I'm going to do exactly what I want.
I made sure I got my photo taken, and I did every TV show in the
place. I'd had enough. I planned to leave the band at Christmas.
In fact I was sacked in July."
Sacked for going to a music festival?
"Yeah. Do you reckon I could sue them for unfair dismissal?"
So in July Robbie left Take That and gained a gallon of hipness overnight.
"I've had an exellent reaction from the British public,"
he says. "I think they wanted one of Take That to show that
they cared about reality. In Take That we had to tell so many
lies, it feels good to be myself at last. I'm suddenly signing
boys' names on autographs as well as girls'. It's a real ego thing
for me, because I've always wanted to be respected by my peers.
That never really happened in Take That."
He has moved out of his mum's house in Stoke and down to London.
"I'm finding a little world that's mine, instead of the manufactured
world that Take That created for me. Now I can choose my mates,
instead of having them picked for me."
He has chosen new lads
Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, footballers Phil Babb and Jamie
Redkapp. At last young Robbie is one of the boys. He is so excited
by this, by Oasis and Pulp, by going out drinking and going to
parties, It's as if he had just discovered youth for the first
time. At 22 he is a teenager at last.
He is also excited about being in love
Three months ago he moved in with 29-year-old Jackie Hamilton-Smith. Jackie is Robbie's first proper girlfriend.
"I think I'm-what's the word!-a co-dependent!" he hoots.
"We had three days apart and I couldn't stand it!"
So why did he wait until he was 22?
"I did have a few secret flings, but never a faithful relationship because I was 18, 19, 20, I had girls screaming at me all the time. If I hadn't done something about it I'd have hit myself after I'd left the band."
Yes, the Take Thatters had sex with groupies. As Robbie told The
Face, they had sex "as often as the security guard could
bring the girls up to the room".
But Robbie still isn't happy
Not 100%, anyway.
"I've had nine month of legal stuff, which was very stressful, and I thought I'd feel great after that but I don't. Even on holiday I didn't feel brilliant. I think my ego needs pampering-I need to be on stage again. So I've started writing, and I'm in the studio next week."
What sort of music?
"I don't know yet..."
Robbie is not bitter
about the years he spent in Take That. When he says that his voice was mixed out of one of Take That's singles, that his face was erased from the US Never Forget album sleeve, that the rest of Take That do not speak to him, he looks hurt, not angry.
He is a boy who gets tears in his eyes when he talks about ex-pal Mark Owen; he's a good northern lad who loves football, loves his mum, calls his dad "me muckeer".
"I was walking down the street the other day," he says
with pride, "and this dustbin man drove up, wound down the
window and shouted 'Robbie!' while doing a thumbs-up in the air.
I was dead chuffed. I was like, yes! I'm a man of the people!"
He yawns, he stretches, he pushes away his bowl of lettuce and
shakes hands with the waiters. Robbie Williams, man of the people.
Born-again teenager. Soft lad.
SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, ....1996