Monday, 18 July 2011
Where were you, whilst we were getting drunk?
This is an event. One of those “Were You There?” moments. It was one of those. The motorways are jammed. The tubes are stuffed. It may be rush hour in London, but also, there's 72,000 prople heading to Wembley. Those iconic twin barrels demolished, now, replaced by a somewhat identkit arch of tempered steel over a wet, raining London Tuesday.
Last month in Manchester, Take That (and support Pet Shop Boys) brought to Manchester 400 arrests for public disorder : more than any other public event of similar size in Britain ever. More than Oasis at Knebworth. 400 drunk middle aged men and women on a big night out in North England. This is an event : of no small order. For the largely middle-aged crowd, there are memories here. A time for a moment that probably never really existed – where Take That were a credible pop group. At the time they were seen as, at best, a competent pop machine made of cynically constructed personalities, a proto Spice-Boys upon which adolescents and young adults directed their lonely affections. Everyone has to have their own obsession. A lot of people – weeping outside hotels or ringing suicide hotlines – had their own interpretation of it. At the time,. There exists footage of the band inside a minibus singing to their fans – though the fans cannot hear the chorus of the song. “You're In Love With An Image!” they sang.
Here though, and reborn, is the all new, credible, middle aged Take That : now five, who somehow have become the biggest stadiumt our that Britain has ever seen.
Half way through the show, Robbie Williams stares at the screens and reads off statistics. “Oasis? Three Nights. George Michael? ….. One Night. Take That? EIGHT FUCKING NIGHTS!”
This is then, their finest collective moment – their indian summer – their vindication. It is no surprise that Jason Orange smugly gazes over the crowd, barely surpressing an enormous smirk as he sings to his 500,000th person in London in less than a week. This might as well be called the “Told You So” tour. A place that a decade ago seemed unthinkable for the largely anonymous former members.
The tubes are jammed to beyond capacity. The line running Westminster to Wembley terminates early, forcing every visitor to change – thousands of people crammed onto tiny platforms and jammed escalators changing lines at Paddington. Fights almost, as people are lumped on top of people, then the train crawls to the destination. It's embarrassing for London and poorly designed for the visitors. The message is that London Can't Cope With The Olympics. It is the same, and equally crap, on the way back : thousands of Londoners spat out into police cordons, horses, bottlenecks, tubes, forced to change at Baker Street, trudging cramped up and down stairs, jammed into the armpits of rain sodden Londonders.
But first, in front of us, in a soggy Tuesday, Wembley Stadium. The Bowl Of Dreams. Here, history happens : Queen. U2. Oasis. And yes, quite a lot of shows by Bryan Adams. Here, World Cups have been won and lost, marriages made, lovers met, and lovers parted. We've sung in these halls, loved and lost, drunk, and fought. Made love and war.
Tonight, we sing, we dance, we drink Pimms and let go. We can be heroes, just for one day. And everyone knows someone who's seeing Take That this summer. Robbie Williams three nights at Knebworth may have been the biggest event of British pop until that day, but now, its something far bigger. It's the moment where we reconnect, however briefly, with our own youth, and our own ideals. It can never be the same again,only a memory that forges a new memory. Is it better than before? I can never say. It may be a strange place for Pet Shop Boys to perform subserviently to Take That, but, as a 50 minute slice of pop genius, it would be a foolish man who refuses the chance to sing to 3,000,000 British people in one summer. (Simon Le Bon refused, foolish man that he is). As they start, the Pet Shop Boys – the most successful, biggest-selling, and most interesting duo in music history, stage a warmly received reminder of why they are undoubtedly some of Britains most curious artists. Unafraid of popularity, sentimentality, or silliness, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are perhaps the most accessable of artists, using themselves as a blank canvas upon which to project a set of images – in big hats, with boxes and dancers – they open with the number 1 “Heart”. All the big, and expected pop moments are here, interspersed with modern songs - “Love Etc.,” and “Together” from recent years – alongside a short and sharp shock of great popness. “Always On My Mind”, “Left To My Own Devices”, “Go West”, “Suburbia”, “West End Girls”, “Domino Dancing”, “Se A Vida E”, “It's A Sin” - all of these are effortlessly dispatched breathlessly with no short amount of guts and valour. They may be, majoritorily, old songs, but the idea that pop has to be new to be meaningful dispenses with the currency and permanence of the human condition, that we are in essence, always changing – yet unchanging – always the same – yet always different. The stadium as one, even if it may not do so quite so rapturously as it does to Take That, beats to the heart of unashamedly clever, human, living PopArt. The final number is a uncompromising “West End Girls” (arranged as the barely-known 1984 CBS disco classic). A stadium shugs gently and dance into wet lager as the rain lashes down. Britain still dances. We bring our own sunshine.
Half an hour later, a television test card counts down to the moment that Take That appear. For the first twenty five minutes, it's the new “modern” Take That : Gary, Jason, Howard, Mark – performing their new, agenda-setting work from the past few years. The message is that whilst you have to know where you are, where you are is meaningless if you don't remember where you have been. The four open to “Rule The World”, and from there it's a moment of pop thrillness – with “Greatest Day”, “Patience” and “Shine” bringing a stadium together. For a minute we are not white, black, man, woman, old, young, rich poor – we are just humans, being. One nation under a rain mac dancing to modern pop.
What is perhaps, more obvious is that really, bands like Coldplay, and Take That, are close bedfellows : midtempo sweeping anthems covering primal elements of humanity, the Big meaningless Pop Anthem with words that could mean something or anything or nothing, but what means is that we are here and now and this is the onlky time all of us will be here together and now. This is our collective memory. The four sing and smile. Confetti explodes, video screens put forth prescripted music and jokes. We are all united. But musically, and let us not forget, it is bland, commuter rock. There's no edge, no spark, no passion.
Perhaps, most tellingly, during the four piece section, the band lead the crowd into a singalonga of “God Save The Queen” (not, the Sex Pistols version, but the old-fashioned, love-your-oppression-peons National Anthem). It's safe, it's boring, it's corporate. There's no adventure, no risk. Just love your oppression. To a leftie commie pinko liberal like me, it's somewhat offensive. But then again, I suppose, hearing “Meat Is Murder” or “Margaret On The Guillotine”, or “Tramp The Dirt Down”, or Billy Bragg's “Don't Buy The Sun” might be equally unneccessary to some. Even 5 years ago, when Roger Waters was touring “Dark Side Of The Moon” and sang the pointed line 'Don't let the might of the Christian fuck it all up for us and the rest of the world' there were howls of protest from the right wing rich babyboomers in denim. It sticks in the craw, that we are led to an them to celebrate being ruled over by an arbitrarily-chosen selection of rich nincompoops who wear crowns solely through the virtue/fact that they were born from a certain family. I'd quite happily see the Royal Family disbanded, and homeless families placed into empty palaces.
And since Take That started * there * as a bland, silly pop group that specialised in largely anodyne - but brilliantly hummable anthems – and ended * here * as churning out faux-meaningful anthems, perhaps it's no surprise that in the end, all flowers, in time, grow towards the sun, and all bands end up in some way aspiring to creating huge, meaningful choruses that try to unravel the meaning, or lack thereof, of modern life. There's not much difference between Take That, and Coldplay.
In fact, to call Take That artists is frankly bullshit. They're a pop group, who have thrown money at staging companies and other visual designers to create an impersonation of art. Art by people who aren't artists, who think that if they do this they are artists, without necessarily knowing art has more to it than that. Art is just doing. Art must have some level of successful communication of an idea, or an idea within the heart of it, for it to work. All art to be successful must convey something between people. To an extent this is successful art, if what it has to convey is simply dancing and singing. It is simply, bloody good fun.
At the end of this initial section, the half-hour or so of modern pop classics, Take That as was (a four piece) appear to sing “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” on video screens with a giant rabbit in some kind of animated Wizard of Oz. And where do we go from here?
POP
And, in a flash of smoke, a burst of light, and an explosion the fact that Robbie Williams is here – a fact that was at least briefly forgotten in the bland pantomime of staging. But this pop. The stadium goes from quite happy to suddenly a roar of combined, synchronised estrogen.
OHMYFUCKINGGODITSROBBIEWILLIAMS!
Of a sort. Making no mistake, Robbie is – was huge. At a certain point in any career, everyone becomes defined by themselves, by their public image, and how they present and see themselves : this is who I am, and without an enormous amount of money, it simply isn't possible to redefine or change how you or other people see you.
And, after 2006's underperforming “Rudebox”, and 2009's equally quiet “Reality Killed The Video Star” - both of which were not toured, and punctuated by enormous gaps in silence – Robbie Williams, for whatever reason, peaked at a weekend in Stevenage in August 2003, and could never come back to that. The eye of the nation has moved on somewhere else, and Robbie will come back occasionally, though, the question is, does he want to? Here, Robbie resurfaces to be a part time pop star : a solo set of thirty or so minutes sees a determindedly retrospective and brief pop romp through some of the finest pop material of the past twenty years. Whilst one can argue, and rightly so, that Robbie is bland, and nowhere near as clever or as brilliant as he wishes – and sometimes thinks – he is, it is worth remembering that in the hands of a dull, margin-obsessed label, Robbie would be a peddler of endless Soft Girl ballads and dull toetappers that would populate Radio 2 to please driving housewives and forgotten in a decade as That Bloke From That Band. And when he appears in a puff of smoke, the whole of Wembley Stadium goes from a level of happy pop euphoria to some kind of intense hit. “Let Me Entertain You”is obvious : and one of the finest intros to any show I've seen. (For my sins, I've seen Robbie live quite a lot of times). The His set is a short, leave-them-panting greatest hits - “Feel”, “Come Undone”, “Rock DJ”, “Angels” and so forth – are thrown out with a passion. Afterwards, there's moments where you might enquire as to the absence of certain songs – but at the time, it's pop crack, hit after hit after hit, punctuated with Williams trademark cocky crisis-of-confidence banter and “please-love-me” puppy dog eyes. The short set allows Williams to cynically restate his pop currency after absence, and also to please the expectations of getting the best of both worlds.
As Robbie set ends, with him flying over the crowd on some kind of trapeze device as the crowd sings “Angels”, there's a tedious couple of minutes as Everything Is Put In Place. I've never understood these moments, where a crowd waits. And waits. And waits. As nothing very much happens. But really what happens is that where we can't see, a millionaire is changing into some new trousers and a new jacket. In the meantime, an army of dancers float around a wall about 200 yards away, and someone bangs on a drum, and I'm getting bored.
Do I have time for a toilet break? Every show needs to have a toilet break. A moment of tedium and boredom. Else, its just a Michael Bay film thrown at my eyes and ears. Take That sing their 'comeback' single “The Flood” - if you must, the kind of meaningless meaningful arms aloft anthem that surely Coldplay have trademarked as their own - “standing on the edge of forever, something something whatever” - before abseiling down the stage, and, as the chorus hits, flashpots go off, smoke goes everywhere, and blinds fall to reveal a crouched, huge, robot man. In some ways this figure is bound, trapped behind bars, crouching in an enormous thirty foot set of wire lattice. Since the tours theme is “Progress”, and the album artwork is a fairly obvious remix of the traditional rise of man from crouching caveman to standing homo sapiens – the theme is of human evolution – you can see that Take That are presenting themselves as running from boys to men – or perhaps, if you want to think of it another way, that – since the set that the crouching robot is in, that the 'adult' Take That is them crippled or crouching by expectations and events of their childhood, and later on, that – when extended to the full form and they play the older songs – that their true maturity comes in the folly of youth.
With me? No? Didn't think so. It could be just be a cool robot that stands up and lights up. Anthony Gormley should sue : the illuminated panels and lights are nothing so much as a giant, mobile Angel Of The Norf cast in pop. After the obligatory set of “new stuff” - all from the quite good 'Progress' album – it's back to the old stuff with “It Only Takes A Minute”, “Everything Changes”, “Babe”, “Back For Good”, “Pray” - all performed in a jokey / half can't-be-bothered fashion that is clearly both rehearsed and somewhat dismissive of the bands immense body of work Blokes – thirty something – stand on their mates shoulders awash with booze and shout along to songs in a way that would NEVER have happened fifteen years ago. Besides, Oasis don't tour anymore : what you going to do? And Robbie's the bloke loads of middle aged men – myself included – wouldn't mind being. If Liam Gallagher invited you for a pint, would you? I wouldn't. But if one of Take That did, you might get the feeling they you should. After all, these are just ordinary blokes who've made a mostly average talent go a very long way and somehow formed themselves into the artists many of us wish we were. There's no exceptional talent here – though Robbie would, I'm fairly sure, have made something of his life, even if only as a middle-selling, mildly interesting singer/songwriter beloved, perhaps, as a niche talent. With Robbie in the fold, they've become something far more interesting that mediocre singers with aspirations to be taken seriously. (And if you doubt me, watch the “Look Back, Don't Stare” documentary, that shows their sometimes thin voices straining against the limits of nature).
Then again, the band are raring through Only-on-the-reissued-double-CD-version-of-the-album-you-already-own track “Love, Love” as the Antony Gormley robot-man tracks down the ego ramp and stands up some sixty foot high through the stadium. Stadium rock. It rocks. It's big, ballsy. Probably the most egocentric presentation I've seen, and one that – probably – tops U2's The Claw , in terms of sheer spectacle. Then there is a interpretative dance off between human chess pieces that can only be resolved by Jason Orange doing a walk off vs The Chess Pieces. Zoolander would be proud. It sounds wank. It is. But at the time, fired up on lager, rain, and silly pop music, it's daft, unselfconscious fun.
It is not long until the band wrap up with another anthem. This time “Never Forget”. A song that perhaps, more than almost any other song, sums up the passage of time and the imperceptable process of aging – a wrinkle here, a grey hair there – in such small lines as “Soon. This will all be someone else's dreams.”
Right now, we are living the days of our lives. We might look back upon these years as perhaps our glory days. But we make these days glorious ourselves.
And then, it's encore time. The band perform, united, Robbie's solo number “No Regrets” : the most obvious song about the feud between Robbie and Gary Barlow. After that it's an adrenalised romp through 'Relight My Fire'. I'd forgotten how good that one was. The evening ends with “Three Simple Words” : the kind of generic album closer stadium pop thrives on, with words that sort-of make sense and drive towards a single meaning that points to romance, the great opiate of the masses. The band walk through the crowd, pressing flesh – curing leprosy – Mein Fuhrer! I Can Walk! - that kind of thing. The stadium starts to empty. By the time it ends, the 60 Foot Robot Man stands outstretched as a huge piece of modern art, illuminated by floodlights, reflecting the stadium, 72,000 people streaming to exists, standing crammed onto platforms, as Police Horses break the lines and others cram behind, people, people, seas of flesh, the contents of a town the size of Maidstone or Dover, every night through these walls. The biggest stadium tour the UK has seen. More nights here than Michael Jackson's enormous 1988 run. Over these eight nights, Take That performed to 600,000 people in one city alone. For London, one person in ten came through these turnstiles.
Take That are this generations Beatles – from a workplace gang to a family – but growing old with a grace, almost. The cues of age and the quandry of time is tackled perhaps simply through living through time, and not screwing up. Their songs mean everything and nothing, and perhaps, in themselves only exist as aide memoirs, cues for us to unlock a meaning as such in whatever form in our own minds, and we dance, and we sing, and all of us find something. Even if it is just a tune you can yell to. Soon, all this will be someone else's dreams.
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