What do you do if you’re a superstar who has pulled well over a million people to a stadium tour? If you’re as contrary as Robbie Williams, you play a gig in a shoebox. This late-night show at the 600-capacity Dingwalls, the smallest venue of his career to date, is a rum event. It was originally a launch evening for a new album, Britpop, now postponed to February. Williams makes no bones about why. “It’s because of Taylor Swift,” he admits, in a week where her new album The Life of a Showgirl is outselling the rest of the UK Top 20 put together. “I could pretend it’s not, but it is. It’s selfish. I want a 16th No 1 album.”
Bounding on stage just as the pubs are closing, a grinning Williams clearly relishes the intimate environment. “I’m not doing all that stadium bravado and pointing,” he vows, launching into a full, stripped-down run-through of his 1997 debut album, Life Thru a Lens, with lengthy between-song reminisces of the circumstances of its making.
These are characteristically candid. His heart firmly on his brawny, tattooed arm, Williams recalls quitting Take That to find himself £300,000 in debt: “I took EMI’s money to the Groucho Club and did loads of cocaine. Oh, and I was about to get dropped. Then this happened.” Cue a heartfelt Angels, the ubiquitous national anthem of the 90s.
This clear-eyed look back at a highly confused time is captivating because Williams, all nods, winks and twitches, is a ferociously skilled entertainer. Closeup, his star wattage is blinding. And this quirky, vibrant intensity doesn’t drop as he segues into playing the imminent Britpop – on first hearing, a rocky, hefty affair – in full.
Our host mock-worries that one track, Spies, may be too indebted to Oasis’s Champagne Supernova: “But don’t have a brass neck and sue me, Noel! Not after everything you’ve nicked!” He plays a jaunty number called Morrissey, co-written with Gary Barlow, about the “isolated, deserted and friendless” former Smiths singer. “It’s weird as fuck, innit?” he admits at the end, not incorrectly.
Williams announces that he is to play more of these intimate shows – billed as Long 90s – in February. “I knew this would be an incredibly special gig,” he smiles, as he tips us out into the street at 1am. It’s impossible to disagree.
