Sean Smith - Gary: The Definitive Biography of Gary Barlow

GARY

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GARY

Sean Smith

London . New York . Sydney . Toronto . New Delhi

A CBS COMPANY

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright 2013 by Sean Smith

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of Sean Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray's Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47110-221-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47110-224-0

Typeset in the UK by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To Little Bee

Contents

Introduction:
Gary's Farewell

Halton Royal British Legion Club, Runcorn, 25 June 1989

It may have been his last night at the club but some things never change. At 8p.m. sharp, Gary Barlow strode on to the stage and played the national anthem. Everyone stood up respectfully as they always did. Some of them sang. Then it was eyes down for three-quarters of an hour of bingo with popular compre Chris Harrison calling the numbers. Every few minutes there were excited shouts of line or house when one of the members had won. Their numbers had to be checked out loud before a new game could start and eyes were firmly down again.

There was a big crowd in and all the tables were taken because Gary was playing solo for the first time in the four years he had been the resident organist at the club. Backstage in his dressing room he had made last checks so that everything would run smoothly. He had prepared all the backing tracks in his bedroom at the family bungalow in Frodsham and had rehearsed patiently and methodically until he knew all the material inside out. He didn't suffer from nerves, or at least he didn't let them show. Chris recalls, I've never seen any nerves. I have got to say that was one thing that amazed me about him.

When he had started playing at the club, aged fourteen, Gary wasn't too bothered about style. He used to wear bits of his navy school uniform on stage. For this big night, however, he looked like a fully fledged eighties pop star a cross between Nik Kershaw and Simon Le Bon in a bright white shirt with large black stars splattered all over it, black baggy trousers and a fashionable eighties mullet. He was a non-smoker then, and looked fit and healthy and not like a teenager who spent most of his time playing smoky clubs or shut away in his bedroom.

From the very first minute of the opening number, Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel, two of Gary's qualities were obvious: first, he had a very clear vocal style with just a light vibrato; secondly, he had natural rhythm and moved easily around the stage with some fancy footwork. He may not have had the dance training of his future bandmates in Take That but he clearly didn't have the two left feet hinted at by the pop columns. This wasn't an ordinary performance: it was a one-man tour de force.

Gary's mate Neil Oldfield was off to the side sorting out the sound. Neil, also a talented musician, would later play guitar on the Take That albums. The regulars loved their Gary and he was clearly going to show them what they had been missing during all those nights when he had merely backed some mediocre singers and comedians. It wasn't the usual elderly crowd on a Sunday night but a lively 300-strong audience, ranging in age from those not long out of school to their grandparents. They pushed their bingo cards to one side of the polished wooden tables and settled into the red banquettes to give Gary their undivided attention.

After Michael Jackson, Gary went straight into five songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber, beginning with Love Changes Everything from Aspects of Love and ending with The Phantom Of The Opera. The movement from song to song was completely seamless, with pure and precise vocals punctuated by nimble breaks on the keyboard.

It was fifteen years before The X Factor would begin on television but if there had been judges rating Gary's performance, their remarks would have been all too familiar: There were no tuning issues, You smashed it, You made the songs your own, You could win this competition.

There's no denying that this was a very middle-of-the-road segment of the performance, and there was a hint of a teenage Michael Ball about his vocal delivery, but it was what the audience wanted. They lapped it up. Next he introduced Neil, a great friend of mine, on to the stage to accompany him on electric guitar. Gary sang The Power Of Love, the Jennifer Rush classic, with no earpiece, no whinging about noise and no nonsense. It was quite beautiful and, yes, Louis Walsh, he might well have won The X Factor with this one song. The big last note he completely nailed.

The audience knew Gary, so good-natured banter came easily. He then launched into a fifties and sixties medley. It was a triumph to remember the running order, as songs slipped from one into the next, let alone the lyrics. He sped through twelve songs, using all his own backing tracks, which he had adapted to his key. It was Gary's own version of a Jive Bunny collection. Songs like Be My Baby by The Ronettes and Neil Sedaka's Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen had been hits long before he was born. He ended with Sailing, the Rod Stewart classic that was released in 1975, when Gary was four.

As the final chorus finished, Chris Harrison strolled on stage in a casual shirt and white jeans, sporting the sort of Freddie Mercury moustache that was fashionable then. Chris had become one of Gary's closest friends despite a twenty-year age gap and their last number together was a poignant farewell Somewhere Out There, originally a Grammy Award-winner for Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram. In the best showbiz tradition, they pretended it was a spur of the moment duet and not something they had been practising that afternoon at Gary's home. The teenager hadn't mastered falsetto yet, so Chris sang the higher harmonies, while Gary, clutching the mic in his left hand, would pick out a melody on the keyboard with his right. They sang the last line with their arms around each other's shoulders like two old soldiers enjoying a chorus of Auld Lang Syne.

At the end of the song, Gary said, Stay here, Chris, and went to the back of the stage to fetch a gift. This was something they hadn't rehearsed and Chris was completely taken aback when Gary presented him with a framed photograph of the two of them on a January visit to Aber Falls, a tourist favourite in North Wales. Chris was genuinely moved when Gary said, Thanks very much, mate. The picture still has pride of place in his house.

Gary wasn't one to get oversentimental, so it was back to business, informing the audience that they could buy a tape of the songs he was performing for 3. It was an idea that would prove to be quite a money-spinner as he performed more gigs around the working men's clubs in the Northwest. He lightened the mood by announcing, It's awfully weird thinking I won't be coming back next week. I'll have to go up Mecca for bingo now, before launching into a big ballad, One Moment In Time by Whitney Houston.