Robbie's return

Quoted from: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk

'By Nick Duerden, Evening Standard
7 October 2005

For his reintroduction into public life, after almost a year of self-imposed exile, Robbie Williams chose to perform in front of a television audience of two billion, and had got it into his head that, perhaps more than anybody else on the bill at Live 8, something extra special was expected of him. Freddie Mercury had stolen the show 20 years before at Live Aid; now it was Robbie's turn.

'I was scared, really f***ing scared that my evil twin wouldn't show up and save the day,' he says. 'He's the one who inhabits my body when I'm on stage. If he doesn't turn up, then it's me up there alone, and that wouldn't have been good for anyone.'
When David Beckham went up on stage to introduce him, the England skipper was white with fear. This, apparently, was good. 'I did take a certain sadistic pleasure in the fact that he was shitting it,' says Robbie, 'because if the captain of England was nervous, then it was OK for me to be.'

To his immeasurable relief, the evil twin did show up, and the day was saved. 'It took about 10 seconds to realise that he was with me, and so I got happy and confident, and it became a total joy.'

Three years since re-signing to EMI for a reported £80 million, and one since a greatest hits, Robbie is back with a new album. It might be his most accomplished yet. Intensive Care is so titled because he has never exerted more effort over a bunch of songs.

It was co-written and produced by Stephen Duffy (ex Duran Duran), whose collaboration on 2004's single Radio proved so successful that his temporary status as the new Guy Chambers (Robbie's former writing partner) became permanent. Robbie, says Duffy, is "a musical genius".

Though not as self-lacerating as his earlier work, Intensive Care (out on 24 October) is imbued with melancholy. Eighteen months ago, the singer turned 30 and was plunged into a pit of nostalgia. He would repeatedly play his favourite Eighties songs - by Prefab Sprout, the Dream Academy and the Human League - and revel in the heartbreak. He'd spend hours on Friends Reunited looking up old mates.

'I absolutely f***ing loved my school days. Not the lessons, of course, but the friends I'd made. I thought we'd be inseparable for ever, but then at 16 I joined Take That and when I went back home a year later, they'd changed, I'd changed, and we'd drifted apart. That devastated me.

'I'm over it now,' he adds suddenly. 'It's out of my system. I mean, look what I've achieved since.' Momentarily, his pale green eyes sparkle. 'I'm happy now, I really am. Happier, I think, than I've ever been.'

Robbie has been clean and sober since 2001 and, for the past three years, living in the Hollywood Hills. He may be single, but the place is never empty. When I visit him, a month after Live 8, his friend Jonathan Wilkes and wife have been holidaying here for five weeks. There is also his PA, Josie, who runs every element of his life, his manager David Enthoven, a cook, housekeeper and security guard.

At 2pm, Robbie is just waking up. A nocturnal creature, he normally doesn't retire until four or five in the morning. He comes ambling down his Gone With the Wind staircase dressed only in Calvin Klein boxers and tattoos, yawns mightily and gives me a firm handshake. 'Fancy a game of Scrabble?' he asks.

Pulling on black linen trousers, he leads me into the garden where his three dogs chew on punctured footballs. Since he turned his back on the hedonistic joys of drink and drugs, Robbie has pursued more modest pastimes. He likes to watch films, play cards and is a demon at backgammon. He's developed a taste for Scrabble, which he pursues with a voracious competitiveness, comprehensively beating me.

Later, we leave the house (something Robbie hasn't done, he claims, in over a month), have coffee at a Beverly Hills Starbucks, before catching Batman Begins at a multiplex. During four hours of public exposure, Robbie isn't recognised once, something that would be unimaginable back home. In California, he can do pretty much whatever he wants, anonymously.

'I've had relationships with all kinds of girls here - none of them famous - and they've lasted from one night to five months, and it never gets reported.' He smiles. 'I feel really smug in getting one over on the bastards [paparazzi]. Here, I can try and meet my Special Someone without the tabloids f***ing it up.'

Robbie stresses that life is good now and that he thrives on being able to be a pop star at work and an ordinary Joe at home. 'If I really wanted to break America, I could. That is a fact. Over the past seven years, I have spent less than two months doing promotion here, and you and I know that that is not enough to make an impact. On an emotional level, success in America would be terrible for me. I really, seriously, never want to be famous here.'

To this end, he will promote Intensive Care over the next 12 months in practically every territory except America.

While his achievements in his homeland may be reflected in huge sales and mainstream popularity, the chip on his shoulder is kept firmly in place by a media that will always consider him the 'fat dancer from Take That'. Robbie remains convinced that many of his peers are similarly disdainful.

When Coldplay were in LA, he invited them over for tea. The three members who weren't Chris Martin were not the problem; Chris Martin was. Robbie felt him to be aloof and rather snidey. 'He's also a bit mad isn't he?" He spins a forefinger in concentric circles by his temple. "I'd listen to him talk and just think, 'Eh?''

In his home studio, where he has framed photos of U2 and Richard and Judy, Robbie tells me that his time away from the spotlight has given him a false sense of security. He'd even go as far as to suggest that he feels healthy, which is far from usual for him.

'Well, I'm still doing things that are bad for me, but only in moderation. I still ingest things, mentally and physically that I shouldn't. Part of me still wants to have it large, and so I'm trying to extend the rules of my newly-found sobriety as much as I can.'

He thinks he is addicted to antidepressants - 'You can't have everything, can you?' - but they've given him a long-sought equilibrium and made him more confident. He remains incapable of being alone, though. Solitude, for Robbie, is a terrifying concept. 'I used to think that I was a freak for feeling this way. But apparently lots of people do. People say you've got to be OK with your own company, but tell me why?'

A few weeks ago, he attended a party that was different from the usual LA bashes by being particularly nice. Later he found out why: it was a Scientology party. He liked it. If he is invited to one again, he'll go.

'I feel I'm in a spiritual lull, and so I wouldn't rule anything out. Scientology, Buddhism, Kabbalah ... if it makes people's lives feel better, and easier, why not? I'm vaguely interested in it, but I'm more likely to try and conjure the spirit of Horus' - a mythological Egyptian deity; Robbie has recently become interested in magic and the occult - "than knocking about with Tom Cruise and John Travolta, OK?"

And why magic? "Everybody wants special powers, don't they?" he says. "And I'm still a little boy who wants to be special."

The full version of this interview appears in the current issue of GQ, out now '