Robbie Williams reveals that his time in Take That became a power struggle and compares it to Lord of The Flies before he quit with “a boot full of champagne and a pocket full of cocaine”.
The Rock DJ singer was embroiled in a nasty feud with Gary Barlow over who sang lead vocals on the bands songs, something which had been brewing since the groups beginning. “It’s a 32-year musical odyssey,” he told the audience at London’s O2. “The highest of highs, the lowest of lows. The drugs, the sex, the scandal... the meat pies.”
He jokes of the group’s formation in 1990: “The Berlin Wall had just come down, Margaret Thatcher had just resigned, and Nelson Mandela had taken his first steps to freedom... but a more seismic event was about to happen, with four men from in and around Manchester and a guy from Stoke-on-Trent.”
The 48-year-old musician told the audience that partying with Oasis at Glastonbury in 1995 was the “start of his new life”. He reminisced on stage about the memory of partying with Oasis at the festival shortly after he made the decision to leave Take That.
Discussing his decision to quit the group in 1995, he laments: “I started getting ideas about writing my own songs. One thing led to another and I made the cardinal mistake of breaking the rules. They couldn’t contain me anymore.
“I set off with a boot full of champagne and a pocket full of cocaine, ready to get insane in the membrane and I went to Glastonbury to begin what I didn’t know was to be the start of my new life. I left with a rucksack full of bitterness, anger and resentment.
He later added: “Take That became a painful, distant memory. Until they came back and were much bigger than they were back then! They came back and they were bigger than they were! And I was happy for them, and I thought, ‘F*** it, if you can beat them join them.'”
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