Quoted from:
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au'May 25, 2006
Robbie Williams is coming to town and if you don't like it - best keep quiet, writes Cameron Adams
RUSSELL Crowe picks up a phone - and blasts them. Courtney Love poops in a box and sticks it in the post.
Robbie Williams has his own way of dealing with journalists who slate him - luring them into a trap for face to face combat.
Williams coaxed a selection of his harshest critics (he voraciously reads his own press and reviews) into an ambush in London last year, disguised as a pre-release listening session for his Intensive Care album.
There was a surprise guest in the room: Robbie Williams.
He wasn't there to be interviewed. He was asking the questions. And he'd done his homework. Williams had printed out the most poisonous reviews of his music written by the very journalists in the room, quoted their venom back at them and then asked them to defend themselves.
One journalist later used the anecdote in an article pointing out how vain and self-deluded Williams was to "awkwardly" fling their words back at them.
"It wasn't awkward to me, it was fantastic," Williams says, still beaming with glee at the memory. "Since then the way they've justified the meeting was to talk about it being embarrassing for me. But they shat themselves. They well and truly sat there with their eyes facing the floor twiddling their thumbs nervously. As embarrassing as they say it was for me and how I had a lack of self-awareness and what a bad idea it was, I f---ing loved to watch them squirm, it was great.
"The thing is, when I was in that room with them, not one of them stood up for what they said. Every single one backed down, said I was right, and agreed with me. Which of course they didn't write about later."
Williams has no regrets about the repercussions of naming and shaming music journalists; indeed he is one of a handful of artists who are virtually critic proof.
"The thing is, if you're a bloke and someone said something bad about you at the pub or your workplace you'd go and find them and talk to them about it," Williams says. "I'd never had the chance to put a face to a name with these journalists.
"The opportunity arose that five of these names would be in the same room to listen to my album. I took that opportunity to have a word to them."
Has he ever thought of the more extreme Russell or Courtney options?
"I've thought of that. That's for the future."
While Robbie Williams is selective about interviews these days because, well, he can be, he gives good quotes. Excellent quotes, in fact. And he likes a chat, staying on this phone call for over an hour, shooing off managers and, unlike many pop stars, never once declaring anything off limits.
"I'm probably one of the only artists who prefers promo to touring," Williams says. "I find it very entertaining. It's interesting to know what I think, because I never tell myself. It's interesting for me anyway."
Surely interview days where you talk about yourself endlessly must be like therapy?
"Probably, but I'm kind of used to therapy." Williams' therapy days, fuelled by spending most of his 20s taking whatever he could swallow or snort, are well documented. As are his stints in rehab.
However, his self-destructive days seem over. These days he lets other people slag off Robbie Williams.
"I'm not as negative these days," he says. "I used to stand on stage at the beginning of my solo career and think 'What have you (expletives) come to see this (expletive) for?'. And I was the (expletive). Even though I was in Take That and I'm Robbie Williams I had my own sixth form indie rules in my head, I didn't live up to them. Now I've got rid of those rules and embraced, I was going to say the lower echelons of popular culture, but I've embraced who I am and what I'm capable of and what I'm not. I can see a song for it being a song now, instead of an affront to somebody's sensibilities. Being Robbie Williams that's very handy."
However Williams admits he isn't beyond Googling his own name.
"I know people will think 'Check out the ego on Robbie Williams, going online to see what people said about him'. But it's never anything nice. Google my name and 90 per cent of what's written is untrue, the rest is just nasty. So when I'm at the computer it's not me going 'Look at me! My public adore me!' I'm on there going 'Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!' "
Williams set himself a test when he released Tripping, the lead single from Intensive Care. It was the first single where he'd written the bulk of the music himself, not just the lyrics.
However, most reviewers hailed the influence his new songwriting partner Stephen Duffy had on him.
"It's f---ing great because it doesn't particularly sound like any other Robbie Williams song. It would be even greater if people said 'Robbie wrote the bulk of this song' - it'd mean more to me. But people think 'Oh Stephen Duffy's doing it now Guy Chambers has left'. They think I'm some kind of puppet, which unless they get in the studio with me and see what I do I guess I'd think the same of Robbie Williams.
"It's nearly impossible for humans, I'm the same, to enjoy somebody else's success," Williams continues. "There's always got to be a problem or a catch. 'Well, he's gay isn't he', 'he's just a puppet'. People always say to me 'Do they let you go on holiday a lot? Do they choose your producer for you?' I just wonder who 'they' are. I can't blame people for doing it, I'm the same kind of person. I catch myself doing it, but when there's someone enjoying success, an actor or a musician, I always look for the catch myself. Their success exposes my inadequacies."
Those famous inadequacies kicked into overdrive when Williams was asked to play Live 8 in Hyde Park last July.
He hadn't played live since his Australian tour of 2003.
"I was very scared all the other bands who were on were either on tour or in the middle of working. I wasn't. Also there were a lot of people there who might not be Robbie Williams fans. As much as people love me there's a tremendous amount of people who really f---ing hate me. This was all going through my mind."
He admits he was desperately nervous backstage, and asked friend David Beckham to introduce him as a safety net.
"When I stepped on stage the audience did the rest. It was a magic moment for me and for my career, it was incredible."
He also got to hang with Madonna backstage.
"She was in the caravan next to me. I thought 'There's Madonna, I wonder how she is?' I didn't think 'F--! There's Madonna'. I don't think that about pop stars any more. I only think that about footballers. I get starstruck with footballers. I went and said hello to Madonna. She was lovely. It was a really nice moment in pop."
The next Williams album may even out-pop Madonna. He's moving in a new territory – dance. Williams is working with dance producers William Orbit, Mark Ronson and Pet Shop Boys on a "secret" dance album due as early as September.
"We've done two songs with Robbie," Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant says.
One is a new song, one is an "obscure" cover.
"It sounds like Robbie Williams with the Pet Shop Boys behind him," Tennant reveals. "It sounds really good. We haven't really written with anyone before. I've not heard anything else on the album, but he told us it's an 'electronic/dance' album."
However Williams is quick to note he won't alienate fans.
"Fortunately for me and my record company I have populist tastes. I want to make records with big choruses. I want to make anthems. I'm obviously not shy to want to be in the pop charts. I find it fascinating when bands claim to not make music for the pop charts, to not make music for people to buy. That's great, just f---ing play it to yourself you silly (expletive).
"But I also want to branch out and do something else, see if I enjoy that. The Pet Shop Boys get to write with Liza Minelli, Dusty Springfield, Kylie Minogue, as it stands I've done eight Robbie Williams albums."
With the pop charts comes fame. Paparazzi photographers are an abnormally normal part of the life of Robbie Williams.
In his biography Feel, Williams revealed what most people suspected, he and former girlfriend Rachel Hunter did a deal with paparazzi for staged "candid" photos of them together.
"I don't think it was a mistake, necessarily," Williams says. "It was intended to be a bit of fun to mix everyone up, it just backfired. The upshot was the money received from (selling) those pictures I didn't touch. A lot went to charity, and four of my friends got new Jaguars. As embarrassing as the episode was, there was no paparazzi bothering us for two months after it. It worked out well for me."
He freely admits he now lives in LA to remain anonymous and has long given up trying to break into the US market.
The night before we speak a British tabloid has printed a picture of Williams' new London flat, and the address. And a photo of his mum's flat, which is on the ground floor.
"There's someone in jail for sending me letter bombs," Williams says. "There's quite a few mad people out there and a few of them want to kill me. It's just not worth it being in London."
The one thing missing in his charmed life is love. He's constantly linked with women, and was recently rumoured to have had a secret affair with Naomi Campbell.
"She's so beautiful, it'd be great if it was true," Williams says. "I wouldn't mind admitting it. I've never slept with Naomi Campbell. I've never kissed her, as much as I would have liked it to happen."
Intensive Care is out now through EMI. Robbie Williams will play Suncorp Stadium on December 13. Tickets go on sale through Ticketek next Tuesday, June 6. There will be a limit of six tickets per customer.'
'Stars of pop and TV will join legends of international football on Saturday for the eagerly anticipated Soccer Aid charity match.
