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Take That
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Take That are an English pop group consisting of members Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and, formerly, Robbie Williams. All perform primarily on vocals though each have some instrumental talent/song-writing capability. After seeing major success in the early to mid 1990s as a five person boyband act, a reformed four man version of the band achieved new success in the late 2000s without Williams.
Formed in Manchester in 1990, Take That sold more than 60 million records between 199196.
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Encyclopedia
Take That are an English pop group consisting of members Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and, formerly, Robbie Williams. All perform primarily on vocals though each have some instrumental talent/song-writing capability. After seeing major success in the early to mid 1990s as a five person boyband act, a reformed four man version of the band achieved new success in the late 2000s without Williams.
Formed in Manchester in 1990, Take That sold more than 60 million records between 199196. Take That's dance-oriented pop tunes and soulful ballads dominated the UK charts in the first half of the 1990s, spawning two of the best selling albums of the decade with Everything Changes (which was nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize) and Greatest Hits 1996, and according to Allmusic, "at this time were giant superstars in Europe with the main question about them not being about whether they could get a hit single, but how many and which would make it to number one". The band split up in 1996, but after a 2005 documentary and the release of a greatest hits album, they officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the United Kingdom, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that Take That were set to record their first studio album Beautiful World in over 10 years. The band have now released a second post-reunion studio album entitled The Circus and are preparing to tour again in 2009. The band cite their motivations for coming up with live performances requiring hours of practice and countless dance routines as a result of their love for their loyal fans
History
Early years (19891993)
In 1989, Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group. Having seen the success and fame of what was the nascent concept of Boybands following the meteoric rise of the New Kids On The Block in the United States, he realized there was no such contemporary group in the United Kingdom. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was more mature and teen-oriented than the clean-cut image that the New Kids sported in the media.
Auditions for the group were held throughout Manchester, where Martin-Smith met teenage singer and budding songwriter Gary Barlow (then 18), whom he was immediately impressed with. Barlow had been rejected by major record labels, but had been playing live sets at pubs all round the North of England, and until that time, had won a couple of songwriting competitions, having penned A Million Love Songs at age 15. Others to audition where 17-year old Mark Owen; a former child model, football (soccer) player and trialist, and Owen had been working at Barclays bank as a teller. Vehicle painter, former model and occasional DJ/breakdancer, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition at 21, but he was accepted into the group. Jason Orange (then 18), who was a skilled break-dancer and had appeared on The Hitman and Her. Working as a painter and decorator, Orange passed the audition and joined the project. Finally, Martin-Smith recruited a 15-year old boy named Robbie Williams as the fifth and final member of the group by way of advertising in the local media. According to Williams in Take That: For The Record, it was his mother that signed him up for an interview, and he was selected after an audition. There was also a sixth boy at the auditions, but he was axed early in the day. Contrary to some stories in the 90's the members hadn't met nor founded partnerships(Cutest Rush(Gary&Mark), Streat Beat(Howard&Jason), they where later(such as in Take That For the Record) revealed to be fibs created by Nigel Martin-Smith.
When Take That formed, they were forging a new type of musical path as much as a musical career, as they were largely the pioneers of the new boyband genre outside of the US. They started with more dance oriented melodies to cater to the British dance and disco scene of the late 1980s and the Madchester scene of the early 1990s. In their early years, they were clean-cut and dressed in black leather gear, but at the height of their fame, they were known for a more older, adult feel and image than the New Kids. During their popularity, the band sported body piercings, tattoos, facial hair, and dreadlocks, in Donald's case.
The band's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1970s Tavares hit It Only Takes A Minute, which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. Barlow admitted he felt defeated when having to release a cover version. This success was followed by the track I Found Heaven, then by the first Barlow ballad A Million Love Songs - both top 20 hits. Their cover of the Barry Manilow disco hit Could It Be Magic gave them their biggest hit to date, peaking at number 3 in the UK. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. The band was still however, not widely known outside of the dance circuit, and had not made it into the mainstream music charts.
Superstardom (19931995)
1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It spawned four UK number one singles - their first number one Pray, Relight My Fire, Babe (beaten to Christmas number one by Mr Blobby), and the title track Everything Changes. The fifth single Love Ain't Here Anymore reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success, but it failed to crack the US market where an exclusive remix Love Ain't Here Anymore (U.S. Version) gained little success. However, by 1994, the band had become radio and television hits across Europe and Asia, where along many other 90s acts like Michael Jackson and Duran Duran, the rise of MTV videos streamed direct to via what was a new form of television called cable TV saw the rise of global touring opportunities because of worldwide audiences as it meant the band reached audiences far and wide. However, it was not till 1995 that the band would do their first World Tour.
It was at this time in 1994 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, Popstars and so on and began becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band also began touring extensively around the continent and had sell out concerts back in England at almost all of their sets from Earl's Court to concerts for Princess Diana, to Berlin and Milan. The band had also developed an astoundingly massive female teenage fanbase at the time, because the band was seen as new and exciting and consisted of five good looking Mancunians who could "dance, smile and sing in harmonies". This led to what was known as the "Take That Phenomenon" around the UK, usually underscored by throngs of teenagers queueing up for long lines wherever the band was rumoured to be. There was mass hysteria everywhere they went, and the band hit the apex of their popularity in the 1990s. During this time, the band performed at numerous music awards shows like the Brit Awards or Top of the Pops, where they were regulars with their five hits in a row in 1994, also winning the 'Best Live Act' award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards.
By the time the band's 1995 album Nobody Else was launched, the release of Sure, their first single from the album, achieved yet another number one on the UK Charts. But it was not until their second release from that album that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, Back for Good, which reached number one in 31 countries around the globe and to date has been covered 89 times the world over. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance whilst at the 1995 Brit Awards, and based on rave reviews and the reception of that performance alone, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced an earlier release date. Never Forget was the final single off the Nobody Else album. The album was also noted for its cover which was a parody of the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve.
Departure of Williams and breakup (19951996)
In July 1995, Robbie Williams left the group and was photographed by the press partying with British band Oasis at Glastonbury. Take That continued to promote the album Nobody Else as a four piece, scoring a further hit single and fan favorite Never Forget (subsequently released as a single in a Jim Steinman remix version) and completing the Nobody Else Tour in July 1995.
On 13 February 1996, Take That announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of The Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love. The single went on to become what was to be the band's final U.K. number one until their 2005 comeback a decade later.
Post breakup
Careers outside Take That (19962005)
Gary Barlow
Barlow recorded a solo album, Open Road (1997). Five singles were released from the album, with the first two Forever Love and Love Won't Wait (written by Madonna) both reaching number 1 on the UK singles chart, but it was the single "So Help Me Girl" that gave Gary Barlow's solo album international stardom. His second album, Twelve Months, Eleven Days, was less successful. Two singles were released: "Stronger", which reached #16, and "For All That You Want", which reached #24. Barlow was then dropped from his label just before he was due to release a third single "Lie To Me". He later set up a studio in his Cheshire home and began writing and producing records for the likes of Atomic Kitten, Donny Osmond, Blue including the UK No.2 hit 'Guilty', Lara Fabian and Delta Goodrem.
Howard Donald
After Take That spilt, Howard did not have a career planned for himself and even considered committing suicide by jumping into the River Thames. Developing his songwriting skills, Donald tried to land himself a solo record deal after the split. Despite completing an album, he gave up his efforts at launching a solo career. After an unreleased album and an unreleased single entitled "Speak Without Words", he returned to his DJ-roots and went on to become a successful DJ playing mostly in the UK and Germany. He is also one of the owners of the production company Sonic Fly.
Jason Orange
Orange briefly ventured into acting with two roles; a DJ drug dealer Brent Moyer in Lynda La Plante's Killer Net (shown on UK Channel 4 and now on DVD) and a theatre role in the play Gob which was performed at the King's Head Theatre, London. He also travelled the world and went back to college to study sociology and psychology.
Mark Owen
Owen has released three solo albums to date - Green Man, In Your Own Time and How the Mighty Fall. He had three top 5 singles from these albums; Child, Clementine and Four Minute Warning. He has toured extensively in Europe and the UK, and visited Japan in early 2006, where he has secured a publishing deal. Mark Owen also won Celebrity Big Brother in 2002. Mark's third album How The Mighty Fall was released under his own label Sedna Records.
Robbie Williams
Following his departure from the band, Robbie became an international superstar, having several smash hit albums and singles including Angels, Millenium, Rock DJ, She's The One, Supreme and duets with Kylie Minogue Kids, and cover version of Something Stupid (by Frank Sinatra) with Nicole Kidman.
He has since collected numerous awards including the Best British Male Solo Artist in Britain in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003 , and saw his song Angels win the best song of the last 25 years in 2005 . He has won the most BRIT Awards and ECHO Awards in music history seeing 10 Brit Awards as a solo artist. He won MTV European Music Awards for "Best Solo Artist" in 1998, 2001 and 2005 and "Best Song" in 2000 ("Rock DJ"), and on 11 November 2004 he was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame for his outstanding contribution to British music and integral part of British music culture, and was there announced as The Artist of the 1990s.
Gary vs Robbie
Following the break up, Gary and Robbie both launched solo careers. Media hype at the time saw a battle emerge as to who would be more successful in the end.
Gary's album was the first to gain success as he gained two Number 1 spots in the UK single charts with Forever Love and Love Won't Wait. Whilst Robbie released singles Freedom (cover version of George Michael's original) South of The Border and Lazy Days, none of them prevailed as high as Gary in the charts. Robbie was becoming publicly despised following his excessive drinking and drug taking, but his single "Angels" became a worldwide smash hit, whilst Gary's second album failed to break into the Top 20 UK album charts. Following the success of Angels, Robbie was becoming a powerful influence in the music industry's press, and proceeded to profusely publicly humiliate Gary both as a person and a musician , playing a major part in Gary shutting himself off from the public eye for nearly 8 years after being dropped by his records label in 1999. . Robbie went onto become a worldwide international superstar, having several more hit singles and Number 1 albums. Gary remained away from the public eye.
In 2005, ITV produced the documentary Take That - For The Record seeing all five original members of the band reflecting on the bands history, rise to fame, success and lows. Both Robbie and Gary reflected on their media hyped battle. Robbie apologised to Gary (via his interview) for his comments about him as a musician and called him, "An amazing songwriter and singer". Gary described the media hype as a "Good old fashioned fight that everyone loves to see" and one that "Only has one winner in the end," but admitted he wished he had Robbie's career status after departing the industry. The documentary ended with Robbie confessing he would swap all of his career success for Gary's happy family life.
In 2007, Robbie and Gary met for the first time since 1996 to resolve their differences, but it remains unclear as to whether they will ever perform together again.
Reunion
The Ultimate Tour and Beautiful World (20052007)
On 14 November 2005, Never Forget - The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also made the top end of the UK charts. The new song Today I've Lost You (recorded in September 2005) was originally written as the follow up to Back for Good but was never recorded. On 16 November2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary TAKE THAT: For The Record, in which they aired their views over the split and what they had been up to during the last 10 years. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post Robbie Williams line-up were going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song Relight My Fire; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on Relight My Fire and Never Forget. The American girl-band Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg.
On 9 May 2006, Take That came back to the recorded music scene after more than ten years, signed to a music deal with Polydor Records in a deal reportedly worth £3,000,000. After a month on sale the band's comeback album Beautiful World sold over 2.7 million copies in the U.K. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Gary Barlow, all songs are co-written by the band members. The come-back single Patience was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November (Bonfire Night). On 26 November Patience hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry making it the group's 9th No.1. The video for Shine, the follow-up to Patience was premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007.
The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single Patience won the Best British Single category. The third single taken from Beautiful World was I'd Wait For Life, released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. However the single only reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart, falling out of the top 40 the following week. This is thought to be due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single.
During 2007, Take That also wrote a song for the motion picure Stardust titled Rule the World which reached number 2 in the UK charts and went on to be the 5th biggest selling single of 2007. Meanwhile Beautiful World the album was the fourth biggest selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations for the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single (Shine), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, taking home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards.
The Circus (2008present)
The first single "Greatest Day" from the album The Circus made its radio premiere on October 13, 2008 and it was released 24th November. It debuted at Number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 30th November 2008. An album launch Party for The Circus was held in Paris on the 2nd December. The Circus was released in the UK on 1st December 2008, also debuting at Number 1 and remaining there for 2 weeks (to date). On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering England, Scotland and Wales. Tickets for the tour went on sale at 09:00 BST on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". They have broken the record for most sold tickets for this tour. They broke Michael Jackson's record after 22 years and have sold over 1 million tickets for their 'Circus' tour.
On 22 May 2008 two of the Take Take That members, Gary Barlow and Howard Donald, attended the 2008 Ivor Novello awards where Take That won the award for 'Most Performed Work' with their single Shine. Take That won the Sony Ericsson 'Tour Of The Year' award at the Vodafone music awards on 18th September 2008.They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off their new album, 'The Circus'. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On November 22 2008, Take That appeared on TV show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencers fee. The band were voted the 'Greatest Boyband Of All Time' on Onepoll.com , reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the Pop arena, even after two decades.
Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come To Town, a variety show where they performed some of their biggest hits and it also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008, on ITV1.
A few days later, on December 11 and December 12, several media reports suggested that Robbie Williams had admitted he would love to be reunited with his former bandmates. It was also reported that Jason Orange had confirmed that Williams' return was closer than it had ever been, but the band was split on whether or not he should return. It is unknown how legitimate these reports are and whether or not Williams will in fact return to the Take That fold..
They were nominated for one Brit Award in the category "Best Group" and sang Greatest Day at the 2009 Brit Award ceremony.
The second single, "Up All Night" from the album The Circus was released on 2nd March 2009, and peaked at a quite disappointing #14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" will be released as the second single instead.
Ongoing Legacy
Take That's music was notable for the band's writing of their own tracks as compared to many other ensuing boybands. Through Gary Barlow, the band were known for their catchy melodies that crossed genres and catered to many musical tastes spanning emotional Ballads, to Hi-NRG, Pop, Soul and Dance, thus contributing to their wide fan base who whilst consisting mainly of teenage women and teenyboppers includes famous singers like Elton John and other acts, who respect the band's work ethic and strong performance ethic (Barlow sang backup on John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight"). It was their live acts that really got them renown for their characterisation as top performers, and was what would distinguish them from the later emergent boybands. By strong live performances and grandiose dance sets that involved large scale thematic shows at sold out stadiums that were "theatrical affairs that featured fire, elaborate costumes, and complicated dance routines", Take That were arguably one of Europe's biggest live acts of the 1990s. Their success caused other pop managers and labels to create other mid 1990s boybands like Boyzone, East 17, 911, and later, 5ive, as well as to try the successful formula with women, as the Spice Girls did when they hired Simon Fuller as their manager in 1995.
In Other Media
Take That wrote and recorded the theme song Rule the World for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in August 2007.
In April 2006, Gary Barlow and EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget , a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. The musical toured in 2007 and 2008 and opened at the Savoy Theatre, London, in May 2008. Take That later posted a statement on their website distancing themselves from it.
Discography
UK No. 1 Singles
Pray (July 1993)
Relight My Fire (October 1993)
Babe (December 1993)
Everything Changes (April 1994)
Sure (October 1994)
Back For Good (April 1995)
Never Forget (August 1995)
How Deep is your Love (March 1996)
Patience (December 2006)
Shine (March 2007)
Greatest Day (December 2008)
External links
- - Official Take That Website (Polydor)
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