The Heavy Entertainer

I’ve just read Chris Heath’s Reveal, a fly-on-the-wall biography of singer Robbie Williams during the years between 2011 and 2016. The author is clearly a friend of the artist, entrusted with access to friends, family and colleagues, yet expected to be truthful in the recounting and honest with his own opinions regarding whatever is happening at the time.

It’s a fascinating read, really well-written, though it helps that I’ve been a huge RW fan for years. The man is a complicated set of individuals for sure, but he is also uncannily self-aware. This makes him alternately brilliant, frustrating, scattered, single-minded, hilarious, enraged, thoughtful, reckless, remorseful, insecure, and astonishingly adept at channelling his inner neuroses into charismatic swagger on stage. He’s quick with a story (sometimes unwisely), but he is unfailingly honest. And people don’t know how to react when a public figure is so relentlessly, well, public. So you either love him or you hate him; it seems there’s no middle ground, and the man himself seems prone to one or the other extreme on any given day.

I don’t remember where I first heard of him; I think it was when his single Millenium was released in the 1990s. Back when MuchMusic actually played music videos, his clip for Feel appeared in the Daily Top 10 for weeks. What a wonderful, powerful song. When something so magical hits me, I tend to get obsessive about the artist. I loved it then and I love it now, though he has released countless tunes in its wake that are equally compelling in a variety of ways.

The guy can sing anything. His two swing albums are maybe my favourites, but there are no throwaways on The Heavy Entertainment Show—I guess you can call it a pop album, but there’s rock and soul on it as well. It’s loaded with irony, sarcasm, sincerity, love, hope, humour, catchy riffs, rhythmic hooks, and asks the question: why should he go away? A lot of people really dislike him, and yes, he’s courted animosity in the past, but really, is it fair to decry a talent so epic in scope? Only if one envies it, methinks.

It’s remarkable to me, reading this book and listening to these albums, that the man at the forefront is so different from the man behind the music. I recognize humility in so much of what he does, yet there are moments during his show when he struts as cockily as they come. And that’s the other remarkable thing: he hasn’t cracked America. He lives in LA, but I don’t think he’s toured the States. Truly, I haven’t investigated that far, but Chris Heath also wrote a book in 2004 called Feel which allegedly chronicles RW’s pursuit of fame in the promised land and it is most definitely next on my reading list.

One final note. The UK press seem to loathe him for being consistently successful (we can’t count Rudebox, and he doesn’t, either), as if pop stars are by law restricted to a limited shelf life. I am less inclined to consider Robbie Williams a pop star than he is an entertainer of the old school variety. He gives it everything he’s got and takes nothing for granted.

Good on you, Rob. And thank you.

On Dallas Road

Dallas Road (the big house with the flat roof is Chez Ru)

"On Dallas Road"

What is it about the struggle of the sea,

The lust of a spirit longing to take shape
And dashing itself upon the rocks in its
Frustration, bursting into a thousand
Fragments of sun-dazzled spray,
That makes us laugh like children
As we dance out of its way
Then back again,
Daring it to touch our toes,
To try again to capture what we are
Water with substance
Spirit with flesh
Saying, “Catch me if you can”?

This morning I spent some time sunning on a log at the beach. The sun was still rising and the water was as tranquil as the Pacific ever gets. I lay on a big chunk of driftwood and listened to it gently washing ashore, sucking back pebbles on its retreat, and as the chatter began to fall out of my head, I was reminded of this poem.

I wrote it 20 years ago this July. That day, the water was livelier and Ter had ventured onto a concrete finger, whereupon the surf crashed near her toes and sprayed up into her face. She laughed like a little girl – I remember that very well – and when we got home, I dashed out a poem to try and capture the moment.

Today's walk was an attempt to be here now. No past, no future. Just the present, the gift that is now. At the end of a week where gratitude came solely in the form of “that could have been so much worse”, Ter put up the reminder on our refrigerator: “Just for today, be present in the moment.”

She then went to work. I dusted the furniture and ate my granola in front of the “big” computer, watching a couple of video links people had sent to me. One was just silly. The other led me to a Robbie Williams (I loooove Robbie Williams) tune called “Candy”, which has such an infectious hook that I looped it all the way to the beach and will likely buy the album ’cause it made me so happy. I had a brief moment of panic when I decided to lie down on the log where I was sitting (how was I going to get upright again?), but once I was down, the sun was so warm and the breeze was so sweet and the water was like music that I could have lain there indefinitely. But then the poem came back to me, so I hauled myself up and hiked back to compose this post.

Now I’m going to make gluten-free scones, then brew some Whiskey White and see if Jake wants to talk to me.

The past is past, so let it go. The future is yet to come, so don’t bother about it. Just be here now.

With love,