Читать книгу Take That – Now and Then: Inside the Biggest Comeback in British Pop History - Martin Roach - Страница 10

Unfortunately, chart matters were only to get worse. In January and February 1992, the band embarked on a gruelling ‘Safe Sex’ tour of predominantly gay and under-18s clubs—complete with the support of The Family Planning Association—as part of their concerted promotion for the second RCA single, ‘Once You’ve Tasted Love’. More gigs were played—sometimes four a day—radio and TV had started picking up on the boys, and with the might of RCA’s press office behind them, all eyes were on a chart position higher than the No. 38 achieved by ‘Promises’. The campaign was assisted—sort of—by the promo video, which, although it didn’t feature naked arses and bondage gear, still had the boys prancing around in a rehearsal studio, wearing the sort of eye-watering, skintight lycra last seen on a Tour de France winner.

In the first week of February, ‘Once You’ve Tasted Love’ fell well short of the Top Forty at No. 47. This was an unmitigated disaster…Take That were a band in crisis. The night they found out, they were on the road and all admitted they cried at the news. There was even talk of splitting up if things didn’t improve.

For Nick Raymonde at RCA, this was a real shocker: ‘I was in a bit of a rarefied balloon because Take That were all over the pop press so you think, They’re huge, I’ll put a record out and it’ll be massive. Everyone was hyping everybody. No one wanted to say, “Hold on a minute, is that record good enough?” I’ve been there so many times, because you get caught up in the hype and no one says, “We’ve made a video, we’ve spent £30,000 making the record, we’ve given them an advance and it’s shit.”’

Yet Nick still buoyed spirits and sat them down to pep-talk them. ‘The band were grafting their tits off, but when they wandered in after the second single had gone in at No. 47, they looked like beaten men. I said, “Look, we are going to do this, we will win, we just have to get the record company on board and all you’ve got to do is tour and tour and tour and tour and tour. I have to make you a hit record.” And that’s exactly what we did.’

To compound their problems, the band had started work on their debut album and it was proving to be a far from straightforward process. The album sessions had started at Southlands Studios in London over the Christmas period and were riddled with complications. Almost an entire album’s worth of tracks had been recorded, but Korda Marshall at RCA wasn’t entirely happy with them. Nick Raymonde and Korda knew they weren’t getting it quite right, as Nick recalls: ‘I listened to the track we had, then sat back with Korda and said, “It’s not really any good, is it?” So it wasn’t really a great place to be.’

Korda told me about the behind-the-scenes issues: ‘At that point I had a band called Londonbeat, a male harmony group, who’d had a couple of big hits most famously with “I’ve Been Thinking About You”. I had a meeting with a producer called Ian Levine to discuss working on Londonbeat with him. It came up in that conversation about what else I was working on and I explained we were in the middle of making this album with Take That and it wasn’t happening at the moment. I said, “We’ve spent a fortune making this album which just doesn’t sound very good, it’s too Pet Shop Boys-sounding.”’

Ian Levine was a maverick music-industry heavyweight with a portfolio of hits and artists as hefty as RCA’s growing Take That overdraft, including work with Erasure, Nina Carroll, The Pasadenas and the Pet Shop Boys (he would later also work with Blue). Ian had been the UK’s top club DJ in the Seventies, famed for his profile and reputation in the Northern Soul scene and later as resident DJ at the legendary Heaven nightclub. To date, along with the eighty hits he has produced or remixed, Ian is also listed as one of the Top Ten Most Influential DJs of All Time by Bill Brewster in his book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. For Take That’s ambitions of getting their debut album right, Ian seemed like he could be a magic bullet.

‘So I had this meeting with Korda,’ Ian explains. ‘I’d been brought in previously to produce The Pasadenas, who looked like they were going to be dropped, and we came up with a hit single—I was told I was being brought in to resurrect their career and yet it actually resurrected my career because I’d had a few years where things hadn’t gone very well and I’d nearly lost my house over one project in particular. So I gave The Pasadenas their biggest hit, “Tribute (Right On)”, which was Top Five for weeks.

‘With that in mind, Korda asked me to come in and talk about Londonbeat. Suddenly, in the middle of the conversation we started talking about Take That and he said, “I’m very frustrated, I’ve put a lot of money into this band”, and Korda was very unhappy with what had been done.

‘I was well aware of Take That because I was in admiration of what their press officer Carolyn Norman had done with them, which was take a group who hadn’t made a hit and somehow plaster them over every single magazine going regardless—everyone was talking about them. However, the general feeling that I’d heard in the industry about Take That, the word on the street if you like, was that here was a group surrounded by a lot of hype, a lot of publicity but with crap material. At the end of the day, no matter how much money you spend on an act, if the songs aren’t there you’re not going to make it…and the songs weren’t there.’

The band themselves have said they were ‘becoming the most famous group in Britain for not having a hit’. The problem for Korda was that his budgets were already shot: ‘There was no money left to make the album again, so the irony of this story was that we gave Ian Levine a royalty as well as a small fee. Normally he was charging about ?5K a song, but because RCA didn’t have any spare cash for the projects I agreed to give him a really big royalty. So when Take That went on to sell millions it was a great deal for him. He said to me, “Korda, next time you want something doing, don’t pay me any advances, just give me a really big royalty again! That’s the best thing you ever made me do.”’

Ian had grand dreams for the band but had to be very creative with such a limited budget: ‘The most we could squeeze together for recording was twenty grand, with which I had to cut five tracks, including flying in Billy Griffin [former lead singer with The Miracles] from Los Angeles to get the right sound I wanted for the vocals. I had an expensive studio in Chiswick and I had to use live musicians like a sax player and a guitar player. It was all very expensive. It cost me much more than that twenty grand to make, but I had to make a decision—RCA couldn’t come up with any more money and I wanted to do it. Fortunately, in the end I did very well out of it because of my royalty being increased.’

Once the new sessions had been set up, Ian was in his element: ‘We went in and the first meeting with the group was down at the studio. Jason wasn’t involved in any of the studio recordings but he came down on the first day to meet me, so we had all five of them there. We all went out to a restaurant called New Orleans, one of those Tex Mex places that do charcoal-grilled hamburgers and food like that. It’s even done out like Bourbon Street in New Orleans with big awnings and all that stuff. I remember we went in their car—it was a big, dark blue Previa people-carrier. They had no money for a road manager so Gary had been doing a lot of the driving up and down the country for all these under-18 gigs. I sat in the front seat with Gary.

‘When we had this dinner, they were the nicest guys I’d ever met and I thought at the time, If we give them a hit they won’t change at all: they were genuine and humble. Gary and Robbie were saying things like, “Ian, we are really pleased to be working with you, we know what you’ve done in the past.”’

Ian says Take That were pretty typical of a boy band in the studio: ‘They all knuckled down eventually, but they’d muck about and were always laughing and joking. Gary was very serious about knuckling down, he was very responsible—when they came back later in the year to redo some stuff, Gary had really got his act together and did loads of backing vocals. I think he’s very talented and I liked him very much.’

Korda thought bringing in a veteran such as Billy Griffin was a great idea: ‘The process wasn’t about bringing in someone to sing the songs for them, it was about bringing in a great vocalist from America to help the boys learn about breathing and vocal techniques and add some of the harmonies and melodies, give the bv’s [backing vocals] some strength and colour.’

Korda had his own thoughts about where the band’s vocals could go: ‘Robbie was a cheeky chappy naturally, but there was something about him. He was always one of the strongest voices and I remember saying to Ian that we shouldn’t just focus on Gary, we should try and bring some of the others out. It was evident that Robbie could actually sing. Mark could sing too. They could all sing backing vocals and hold a tune, but they weren’t great singers at that point because they hadn’t had any experience of learning how to sing properly in a studio. I signed them because they were great dancers, had good complexions and a couple of hit songs and I thought I could work the vocals out.’

While Gary Barlow was the creative hub of Take That, Ian Levine saw something in Robbie that he wanted to explore. ‘They were messing around in the studio and I heard Robbie’s voice and I said, “Robbie, you should be singing some lead.” He just said, “Don’t be daft.” At that point he saw himself as the clown in the group, just dancing around and mucking about, having fun. I thought his voice was better than Gary’s, to be honest.

‘They were all very wet behind the ears but Robbie was the most inexperienced. I wanted him to sing lead regardless. He had a fantastic-sounding voice, he just hadn’t learned how to sing in the studio. He could sing a song perfectly with no music playing, but when the music came on he couldn’t pitch in tune and would end up singing in a different key. But I took a lot of care because I thought he was worth nurturing, I thought he was a raw talent. He was very appreciative of that. Months later, we had a press conference for the launch of the album Take That and Party, and were upstairs in the private bar. Robbie was quite near me and one of the newspapermen who was in my earshot asked Robbie what made him start singing lead. He put his arm around me and said, “Come here, big fella,” then said, “I owe it all to this guy, Ian Levine. He’s the one who persuaded me to sing lead.” He was actually very acknowledging of the fact publicly to the press in 1992.

‘I am proud of picking him out at that raw level when he couldn’t even sing in tune—that vindicates certain things to me. Sometimes, if you ever doubt your own abilities, which you do when you have a bad period, things like that help. How many people can do that? It’s like picking The X Factor winner out of 75,000 people.’

One controversial choice for the album was a cover of the song made famous by Barry Manilow, called ‘Could It Be Magic?’. There’s a fine balance between the camp chic of Manilow and the undoubted quality and professionalism of his song writing, and covering his music is a high-risk business. Interestingly though, Ian Levine was coming from an altogether different angle for this idea: ‘I’d never heard Barry Manilow’s original, I only knew of the 1976 disco version by Donna Summer, which big gay clubs in America treated as an anthem. When I was working at Heaven as a DJ, we would always put that record on at the big party nights. It was revered by everyone, it was a godlike record.’

Nick recalls that ‘Korda recognised that there was a need to have one absolute dead-certain record that was going to nail it.’ Korda recalls the tension this suggestion created: ‘I like to sign an act if they’ve got the songs. I make a big deal of that. So when I said we are going to do a Barry Manilow cover, some people at RCA looked at me as if to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”’

‘I cut the original Take That version,’ explains Ian, ‘and the first mix was directly influenced by the Donna Summer arrangement.’ With Ian’s brilliant high-energy disco-style version on the vinyl album, Nick Raymonde also contacted the Italian producers the Rapino Brothers about remixing a version as a club promo. ‘They had recently done “Love Me the Right Way” for Kym Mazelle and that had been a big hit.’

‘What I wanted to do,’ Nick told me, ‘was bend the perception of Take That a little, from being a pop group into being a band that had maybe something else attached to them. Even later, when they were having hits, still radio wouldn’t play them so we had to say, “Look, they’re not crap, they’re actually quite cool, they’ve got an Italian hardcore house remix and look at the video, it’s quite cool…” We were constantly trying to invent new ways of presenting the group.’

Speaking to me from their Italian studio in early 2006, Charlie of the Rapino Brothers revealed more: ‘We were having problems finding the right way forward, we were struggling for about four days. We were always fighting, shouting in Italian and the band would just sit there on the sofa watching this Italian comedy. Then Marco fell asleep for half an hour and then said “Let’s do it like Freedom by Wham!, so it sounds like that.”’

Marco remembers the record label’s reaction. ‘When we delivered it we were told they said, “I can’t believe those two Italian bastards have delivered a worldwide smash!”’ This track was originally planned as a club promo entitled ‘The Rapino Brothers featuring Take That’ but then it was made into a seven-inch and people loved it. Charlie says, ‘Gary Barlow was on tour when he heard it and he said when he heard the mix, he went nuts!’ This was eventually the version of the song that won the Brits’ Best Single of 1992 with the production credit of the Rapino Brothers/I. Levine/Billy Griffin. (Oddly, the band was not invited to perform at the ceremony that year, quite a snub given their profile.)

Stephen Budd, who manages the two Italians, remembers those times with relish: ‘I got this call from Nigel Martin-Smith and he said, “What have you done? I’ve got them in the studio with those Italians and they’ve got soft-core mags! Tell them not to bring those magazines into the studio ever again!” Also, what was amazing was that when they were working with us there were these code words. We were issued a list of code words to tell us which day and which studio they would be at and we were not supposed to talk to each other unless we used these code words—the problem being that if the fans found out about it there’d be two thousand girls outside the studio. Robbie used to go to the Rapinos’ house but they were always well-behaved in front of Nigel. The only scandals were with the Rapino Brothers themselves.’

Charlie agrees: ‘The band turned up with bodyguards at the studio some days when there were no fans around and we were like, “What do you need bodyguards for?” and we later realised it was probably to protect Take That from us!’

Stephen Budd loved the result: ‘We were in the Roundhouse for the seven-inch version of “Could it Be Magic” and Nick Raymonde came in and listened to it and we all had that moment when you know without a shadow of a doubt we had a monster smash record—that very rarely happens, it was a big moment. Nothing was going to stop it being a huge hit, clear as daylight.’

The fans weren’t the only ones who loved the song: ‘We then took a call from Barry Manilow,’ recalls Stephen Budd, ‘he said, “I’ve heard this arrangement and it’s the best I have heard of one of my songs that I didn’t do, so could you come over and meet us at Wembley Arena?” So we did and met him and he did the actual arrangement live on stage, which was a nice moment.’

The use of two versions of the song did cause controversy behind the scenes, but Ian Levine’s scintillating mix was available on the vinyl while the Rapino version was on the CD format. For Take That fans interested in seeing one song treated in equally fascinating ways, both tracks are vital.

***

As far as the public were concerned, Take That was still a fledgling boy band with only one chart hit to their name and no album to speak of. After the disastrous chart placing for ‘Once You’ve Tasted Love’ there was enormous pressure on the next single—the band’s fourth. In the post-millennial climate, a boy band with a seven-figure investment behind them would probably not reach their fourth single with statistics as poor as Take That’s were at this stage. Korda Marshall and Nick Raymonde’s belief in the band remained strong, but the lack of a chart success was heaping pressure on the balance sheets at RCA. Ultimately, it cost Korda his job.

‘After those first two RCA singles had stiffed,’ says Korda, ‘there was a lot of pressure on me because of the lack of success and the un-recouped debit balance that was on my head. If you included the spiralling album costs, RCA had spent a million quid on Take That and they weren’t even going in the Top Forty. To make matters worse, I’d also signed a band called M People that had also stiffed at that point. So here I was, I was carrying the can of a million quid on one band and 1.2 million on the other. That’s the nature of pop bands, it’s like rolling two dice and trying to get a double six. A new MD came in to the company, looked at what was going on and said “There’s nothing really here”, so I was dismissed.’ The debut album was still to be completed at this point.

Less than two months after Korda stopped working at RCA, Take That released their third single on the label, a cover of Tavares’ disco classic ‘It Only Takes a Minute Girl’, which, to everyone’s delight, flew into the Top Ten at No. 7 on its June 1992 release, spending a full two months in the lists. The excellent video featured some incredible dancing from Howard and Jason—a frequently missed or underrated aspect of the band’s success.

The record company and band mustered up huge PR opportunities, dozens of signings, meet-and-greets, store appearances, club shows and PAs, everything anyone could think of to work the record. There was also a very clever strategy of data collection, which might sound like some business buffoonery to the average pop fan but was actually a very astute piece of marketing on RCA’s part, as Nick Raymonde explains: ‘I’d got one shot left after the first two singles had stiffed. So I went in to see Hugh Goldsmith [Head of Marketing at RCA], and said, “I need you to come and see Take That. Come with me because it’s only if you see them, then do the maths like I did, that you will understand the potential and, hopefully, think of the missing link that will stop the next single failing.”

‘We drove up to Warrington to see them at a club PA and he just watched the show, turned to me and said, “Yeah, I get it. I totally understand what we need to do.”’ Hugh suggested they ask fans to fill in forms each and every single time the band played, so that they had the addresses and details of what they knew to be a large fan base. This might be standard procedure now, but back in 1991 it was innovative stuff. And it was all done manually, as e-mail was not yet commonplace. Within five weeks, RCA had over 10,000 girls’ names on a list. So when the song was released, the fans knew about it and…bingo.

The track was recorded with producer Nigel Wright at his home, which had a studio and swimming pool, so it was an enjoyable experience. The choice of song was also a masterstroke, giving the band huge visibility overnight. Given that the previous two singles had only spent five weeks in the charts put together, this was massive progress, but most importantly it put Take That in the Top Ten and onto the nation’s television sets. Take That had finally