The former Take That singer says he has finally come to terms with his true status and accepts that he isn’t the rocker he once tried to be.
Robbie Williams says he now sees himself as a “cringe” cabaret artist as he prepares to play a show in Scotland.
The former Take That singer says he has finally come to terms with his true status and accepts that he isn’t the rocker he once tried to be.
Williams, 51, is planning a solo comeback and admits he has settled for being a cabaret act after seeing a gap in the market.
Speaking exclusively to the Record, Williams said: “I’m going backwards in time to Tommy Cooper and Morecambe & Wise, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin with a sweary twist. That’s how I see myself now.
“Whereas before, I wanted to be rock ’n’ roll and high octane, I’m Robbie from a boy band and I can now be this guy, the creature that I always really meant to be.”
Williams says people can expect pangs of nostalgia at his show at Edinburgh’s Scottish Gas Murrayfield stadium on May 31.
“I’m embracing parts of showbusiness that people don’t embrace these days,” he said.
“I want to be cabaret, world-class cabaret but with an edge, sweary cabaret I suppose.
“I think that it’s cringe for a lot of people and not necessarily a high art form but some of the best people in the world have been cabaret. Count Basie, Liza Minnelli, Tom Jones.
“That’s where I’m trying to propel myself and give myself purpose, to embrace this tour and get through it.
“I want to be the best entertainer there is. I don’t see anybody trying to carve that lane out for themselves so that’s what I’m trying to do.
“Music is healing as namaste as that sounds and nostalgia is also healing. Come and relive those moments that they lived with me in the past. It’ll do them good and it’ll do me good too. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Williams, who Noel Gallagher once cruelly nicknamed “the fat dancer from Take That” says he had to overcome addiction and mental health issues in order to come to terms with his true calling – having initially tried to turn his back on his boy band roots when he quit the Take That in 1995.
“I don’t think I was ever truly allowed to and in the way I didn’t take myself seriously and I didn’t ask anybody else to take me seriously and they didn’t,” he said.
“That was probably problematic in my soul space at some point, but it isn’t now.”
Of his mental health issues, he added: “I tried to talk about it at a time when mental health wasn’t talked about.
“Also, I was in a period of great success, and anything other than feeling honoured and grateful for your place in life at the time was deemed to be poor form.
“So whenever I mooted the fact that, ‘Hey, I’m not well here’, I was kicked in the head, metaphorically.
“Now I’m at the other end, I’m at a different end of the arc. I’m talking about what was, and it seems to be embraced.
“I’m not that guy that is going through the sluggish, hellish waters of mental illness. I’ve overcome and endured and come out of the other side. So I’m being applauded for what I used to be derided for, saying.”
The singer, who is married to Ayda Field with whom he has four children, Theodora, 11, Charlton, nine, Colette, five, and Beau, three, said: “The problem with any great movement with social stuff is that it gets hijacked by bad actors and narcissists and victims.
“So we have to be on guard for that too because I was just talking with a friend today about the best way to bring up kids and the best way to be a child.
“Is it the parent that rides them too hard and is absent, or is it the helicopter parent that we now have that has created people that can’t have adversity, that don’t want to work, that don’t want to endure, and don’t think that they have to.”
He added: “I’m a bit of both. I feel guilty for being absent a lot and then I feel guilty about being tough on one of my kids because when I was his age I was terrified of both my mom and my dad and he’s just not terrified of me at all. And I just can’t get it. I just don’t get it.
“So, it’s interesting to be well aware of people’s sensitivities and the emotional impact you can have on children because of the impact that they had on me, whilst also at the same time repeating a lot of the same problems that my parents did. I have more sympathy and more empathy for them.”
He added: “I also now realise how hard it is to be a full time parent and to be committed to the cause.
“There’s a lot of me that needs to be creative and to be isolated. And that’s not what a parent does.
“A parent, the one that I needed, gave themselves to me 100% but I’m finding out that that is impossible.”
Williams also revealed he now feels “love” for Oasis rocker Liam Gallagher after a long-standing feud between the pair.
He said: “He reached out when there was an article about both parents being ill and it was very sweet of him. And I guess that all you want from people is for them to say a nice thing to you and then you’re like, ‘Oh, love you again’. That’s it. I’m a very simple person and I guess my needs are quite easily met, but if you don’t meet them, I want to kill you.”
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