Chris Heath - Reveal: Robbie Williams

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Text copyright by Robert Williams and Chris Heath, 2017

Picture credits: Gwen Field.

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Blink Publishing is an imprint of the Bonnier Publishing Group www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk

This is a book about Robbie Williams. Its an intimate and close-up account of his life as he has lived it, and of the things that he has done, and of what he has thought along the way. Because of who he is, and how he is, and how frank and open he instinctively prefers to be, it describes moments and shares information that you might not normally expect in a book with a photograph of a modern-day celebrity on its cover. Some of these will be silly, some heartrending, some funny, some unpleasant, some uncomfortably honest or disconcertingly blunt, some tender and uplifting, some ludicrously self-obsessed, some touchingly generous and open-hearted, some dispiriting, some life-affirming, some infuriating, and some transcendentally joyous.

Before anything else, heres a story about a song that he recently tried to write. It may seem, to begin with, quite a dark story, because it is one in which he is unsparing about his frustrations and his shortcomings and his failures, as he himself briefly recaps his own life story in a most brutal and bleak way. It serves as a good introduction to one side of who he is, and to the churning cauldron of doubts and obstacles that can fill his head.

But its also a story in which, by following and facing these fears, somehow he will discover something magical. It spoils nothing to come in this book if I point out, at the very start, that this will be happening, in small ways and large, over and over again. There are no happy endings in lives that are still being lived, because we all remain vulnerable to capricious fortune and our own frailties. But if on one level this book is the ongoing chronicle of a troubled mans quest for the rich life the world already assumes he has, then even if this account dwells at least as much on the struggles as the triumphs, that shouldnt cloud the news that for the most part these days his quest is going extraordinarily well.

June 2016

He explains his life into the microphone. One version of it, anyway:

So I wasnt going to get married, I wasnt going to have kids, it was my life to fuck up. And I was doing an excellent job of it. And I was never going to sell out because I never bought in, and I never feel comfortable in my own skin. And I was never going to get rid of the anxiety. Fuck, Ive got so much anxiety.

Today Rob is at RAK Studios in London with the songwriter Johnny McDaid. It can be an intimate process, songwriting, often with far more time spent exchanging experiences and thoughts than actually crafting lyrics or melodies. Johnny has suggested that they see what happens if Rob just speaks, over some music, some of the pitilessly truthful stuff hes been sharing. No one need ever hear it. Rob has agreed to try.

I know when youre younger you think things must get better, because when youre young, youre immortal, this shit just looks forever, right? But Ive done a bit of time on the planet, and it doesnt disappear. I walked through the horizon and Im still right here.

Part of Robs current anxiety, an anxiety that has been building and building, is about his forthcoming album. He has written so many new songs even hes not quite sure how many; maybe 60, maybe 70, maybe 80 but hes still looking for something he cant quite find. Not just something thats good, not just something that feels special and that feels true, but something that feels undeniable. Something that feels like a hit.

Im jealous and petty and insecure, and oversensitive, undereducated. I think my success is a glitch in the matrix. And, oh yeah, it hurts way more than it should do when you call me fat talentless embarrassing.

It doesnt seem very likely at all that this song will turn out to be what hes looking for. But hes doing it anyway.

As hell put it later, I was trying to be honest.

Because maybe youre saying what I think about myself. And I wouldnt treat anybody the way I treat me. I can name all my faults so easily. And trying to stay positive is so hard. There is no escape.

Over the years, he has written a fair few songs that have been pitiless and unflinching about the man singing them. He throws himself under the bus, notes Johnny, before anybody else gets a chance to. But although self-laceration has been one of Robs richest subjects, it has usually been a little more heavily disguised than this, or dressed up in metaphor, or camouflaged by humour, or presented in a weird type of sardonic bombast all of his own where Rob has a way of making self-criticism sound like boasting.

But this is more like an unadorned transcription of his bleakest thoughts.

I have self-medicated with drugs, drink, women, TV, the internet, cigarettes. Is it unshakeable DNA that has me rooted to the spot, or am I my forefathers forefather?

Only at the very end of this dark soliloquy is there a tiny moment of uplift, a very slight triumph-through-adversity my-power-comes-from-myweakness twist:

Well, actually, my vulnerability has been my strength. Ive achieved what Ive achieved because of it. And I did it all because I thought I couldnt.

After all that unremitting flagellation, its not much.

Still, whats been created today is quite an achievement: a distilled three-minute autobiography eloquently told through his doubts and fears and insecurities. They call the song I Am Me, after another section that repeats: Wherever I am, thats where Ill beI am me. It obviously isnt anything like the kind of special, universal hit single Rob was after, but sometimes creativity resists being harnessed and commanded to head off in a particular direction.

That other search will have to continue.

Rob is always writing songs.

He knows some people probably assume that hes the kind of pop star who is eternally sauntering around doing pop star things, and that every now and again some new songs are gathered together for him maybe with a little bit of input from the star, maybe not and a record is made. There are plenty of pop stars like that in the modern era, and for some of them this kind of arrangement works wonderfully well.