¶ Robbie Williams Rewind Podcast Interview
Robbie Williams Rewind .
Welcome to Robbie Williams Rewind . We are the champions . I'm Matt and I'm Lucy and , along with help from special guests , we take you on an in-depth rewind through the solo career of multi-award winning singer , songwriter and entertainer , robbie Williams singer , songwriter and entertainer Robbie Williams .
Today we're thrilled to be welcoming back one of our previous special guests to the show alongside a brand new one . Welcome back , richard Scott , and hello to his good friend , scott Ralph . Thanks for joining us .
Hello , hi guys .
Thanks for welcoming us to your studio . It feels a lot smaller than it was , but , yeah , it feels a lot smaller than the walls , doesn't it ? So back in August 2022 , we chatted to Rich and his two brothers , calvin Andrews and Danny Spencer , alongside Scott , their Rob Stokey songwriting team that you'll have heard him talk about lots over the years .
Rich , you did say that you'd be up for a sequel episode on the podcast , so here we are .
I'm number three that follows this oh .
I'm three . Okay , we're ready for three .
So before we get into the songs you two have written together with Rob , let's rewind back to your beginnings in music . Scott , we know your brother is renowned music producer and songwriter , mark Ralph , who's worked with Years and Years Clean Bandit Rudimental and tons of other big artists Like Kelvin , danny and Rich . Did you grow up in a musical family too ?
Yeah , I did . It was largely down to my dad's enthusiasm for music . Really , my dad's an artist and he's also a musician and when we were younger he was in bands and we would get to see the bands playing and he would just really encourage us to we start .
I think I started playing guitar when I was about six and mark had already been playing for a couple of years . Um , so I was watching mark and watching my dad and my sister played as well . My mom played a little bit , but , um , uh , it was very much driven , yeah , by my dad . So , yeah , there was and we didn't have a TV .
Oh , my goodness , which is quite a big deal . Yeah , it went wrong and my dad threw it away and we didn't have another one until I was about 13 or 14 . Wow , by which time I was the odd one out at school for not knowing what you know the Dukes ofkes of hazard was , or anything like that .
That's how old I am , and , um , and I'm older , so , uh , so , yeah , so so you know we , you know we , we , me , me and my brother were always in bands and stuff like that , and , and , um , I just ended up , um , going off on a tangent um as I do um and learning other instruments .
So , mark , I was always in Mark's shadow with guitar because he was he was that bit couple years older than me and much better than me . So I ended up my dad said , why don't you play bass and then you can come play , mark , yeah , great idea . I got a vase , you know which was , and we weren't a family with a lot of money , you know .
But we worked out of way , yeah , um , of getting this stuff . So we would , me and my brother and my dad would jam , um , you know , with with my dad was on piano and vocals and whatnot .
And then , you know , not that long after that , I I started , I put my own little drum kit , together with buckets and stuff , and and , uh , my dad said , right , I think we better , we ought to get you a drum kit . You're obviously really into that . It's probably quite annoying as well the sound .
And so it just went from there and yeah it's been very useful . you know , playing lots of different instruments . It's been very useful for us in a production sense Much cheaper , much cheaper . Yeah , exactly , which is the main thing we save money . So , yeah , so that's , yeah , that's that .
so , yes , it was very much a musical and we and there's music in the family going back generations as well um you know , yeah , my on my mom's side and my dad's side , um , my dad's dad was a , he was a pianist and a vocalist , and my mom's , uh , granddad was a professional french horn player and was a band leader and yeah , um , you know , uh , uh , like
a brass band traveling brass band , kind of thing , so yeah , so it's in your dna so it's apparently so . That's what they say , isn't it yeah ?
and who were your musical influences when you were growing up ?
and that was a great yeah that's not , actually not that's actually true , he was , he was he was quite a big one .
Actually , rich was um . But but , before then my dad's taste was so eclectic , so we would literally um be listening to everything from john will , you know , to Black Sabbath and everything in between you know .
So the Beatles , obviously , hendrix , the police , you know , but then also , honestly , there was sort of no boundaries to what we would be listening to , and so I think that was really good . I really that was a great thing of growing up in our house was that there was always , you know , something interesting , something new and interesting going on .
It wasn't just I'm just into this kind of music and that's what we listen to you know . So yeah , yeah , hugely eclectic really yeah .
Yeah , so how many instruments can you play now ?
Right . I thought there was going to be sort of an hour off , because otherwise we was going to list them all . But yeah , I'll few off because yeah , the thing is when you say play as well .
There's some which I'm more you know , I've kind of You're absolutely proficient on , yeah , and then there's others which I'm less proficient on but I really enjoy . I don't fear picking up an instrument . I think the reason a lot of people don't play lots of instruments is because they just sort of feel like they can't and I can't pick that up .
But I've never sort of feared that . I've always enjoyed just going right . Certain instruments appeal to me so I'll pick them up and have a go , but it goes everything .
The exception being the communal nose flute . Correct I hate the communal nose flute .
So drums , bass , guitar , piano , you know , piano , vocals , the Latin percussion stuff . And then you know , throughout the years of working with Rich , the brass instruments have just literally like multiplied like germs . So it started off with the trumpet .
You know , when you know , when you know , many years ago , um , and then when we we got into doing all the swing sort of stuff , we said yeah , it's a little bit limiting trying to do a big band brass thing with the trumpet , the trumpet .
So so we , we moved on to like trombones , french French horns , double B , flat tuba , baritone horn , tenor horn , flugelhorn , flutes , flutes . Yeah , yeah , we did . We've done some flute stuff and I've even done cello on some records . Perhaps not have I ever done it with our projects .
We did . We did some violin on the original version of Morning Sun . Remember , yes , and I yeah .
But I would love to say I must add , I'm not a cellist , I'm not a you know , I'm not a double B flat tuba player , but I play them .
And I think when you're used to doing session musician stuff , where you know what's needed , yeah , and it's great working with Rich , because Rich has really got you know a great producer head , and it's great working with Rich because Rich has really got you know a great producer head . So he'll go I won't think of something .
He'll say , well , can you try it like this , Something I hadn't thought of , and in the end we'll get the sound we want . Yeah , absolutely , that's how it's a lovely sort of symbiotic relationship , you know , and it's fun yeah absolutely , we love it , you know .
Yeah , Of course this is a Robbie Williams podcast . Yes , and Rob's nickname at one point for Scott was where's Prince ?
Where's Prince ? Yeah , so there you go . Yeah , I definitely can't fill those shoes . Well , they're too small for you as well , oh no , I knew that was coming Anyway .
Sorry , oh sorry . You did ask for comedy , didn't you ? Yeah ?
Go for it . What's your favourite instrument ? Favourite instrument do you know what ? Erm I've come . I've reached the stage now where I I don't know what no , I don't know what that is I really really when , when , when I , when I'm really in the zone and I'm really I've got the right song , I really enjoy singing .
I find that to be just the greatest expression , just singing . But drums was definitely you could class as being my first instrument . For many years I taught drums . I did a lot of session drums and that was the thing from about the age of about 10 that I just focused on big time .
But I played the others because I was songwriting as well and doing all that stuff . But drums was a really big thing . But yeah , over the years it's just become blurred . You know it really has . I can't , you know . I just every time I pick up any instrument , I just really enjoy it , yeah .
You know , One of the things I might add in there . And yeah , and if , if mark ever listens to this and we'll actually make sure he does , I think I , I personally think he's a better guitarist than his brother now no way man you can't say that I don't think so , mark .
I'm just letting you know I can say there's an age-old respect for me , with me and my brother and uh , yeah , I don't think so , Mark . I'm just letting you know I can say it . There's an age-old respect for me and my brother and , yeah , I don't feel like I can ever say something like that .
¶ Meeting and Musical Connections
Well , we heard some of your singing earlier on . Yeah , and it was incredible . Really enjoyed that .
Yeah , that's also annoying , isn't it ?
So all these instruments Absolutely Really good , so you two met when Scott was just 11 , I believe , when you played drums in Rich's funk band . So tell us about that . How long did you play together in that band ? Tell us about that time .
Well , we were a little bit older than that , otherwise he'd sound a bit dodgy . I think you were a bit older . A little bit older than that Right , but a little bit older , he was still . He was at school , still technically yeah , but we crazy isn't he , yeah , I think it started off you were on the periphery of it , weren't you ?
Because there was another drummer . I was , and that was your main instrument as you've already explained .
yeah , and he actually taught me drums as well for a bit . Yeah , yeah , he's a great drummer .
And then you did . You come in as percussion later , then do drums , or did you do drums and then progressed ?
to percussion . No , I started with percussion . Yeah , with Laurie , who was on drums at the time .
Yeah .
With him , and then Laurie left and I did drums for a short while , yeah , and then Laurie left and I did drums for a short while . Yeah , and then the band kind of split up , yeah , dissolved .
But yeah , because my drumming wasn't there . But Scott was always there , to be honest , Even when he wasn't playing in the band , because his brother was in the band . Scott was always there , right , yeah Well .
I was a fan of the band before I joined , actually wasn't I ? Yeah , I mean I loved . I was , like Rich said . I was about 15 , 16 when I first met Rich and when my brother first joined the band and I was just blown away .
I really loved the music and I was , and I'd come to the gigs and be the annoying guy at the front , knowing all the songs and then I joined on percussion , which was just amazing . Yeah , but bearing in mind Richard's 26 and I was 16 , to me that was like wow far away adult in the future , you know .
But actually just give me age away . But there we go . I'm sorry , I'm not bothered by any of that .
I'm not bothered by any of that . It's just a number , but the point is yeah , there's 10 years between us .
Yeah yeah , but I don't know what you're like with friends of yours . There's no age thing for me . I haven't got that anymore . You know , when you're 25 and someone's say 50 , you think oh my God . Or even 16 , there Exactly 35 , you think , oh my God , but I've never thought that way .
I've always mixed with older people and younger people been no different to me .
Yeah , yeah . Yeah , it's too serious . That was a serious moment , sorry , tell a joke .
So , scott , can you remember the first time you met calvin and danny ?
um . Yeah , well , you got what you got to remember as well with calvin , danny um , in particular danny um . I'd heard danny on the radio before I met him right , and it was like , yeah , there's these guys from stoke that have got to number three in the charts , and I'm just listening to that . I'm bearing in mind . I was a musician at the time . I was .
That would have been 1997 . I've been about 14 and I was listening on the radio just thinking , wow , people from stoke in the charts doing something really cool , so they were like to . They were distant heroes , you know what I mean .
And then I think the first time I got to know them in any way , shape or form was when an amazing thing happened with my brother , which was he played guitar on Sister Sledge . We Are Family remix that Sure , as Pure Pure did , which was awesome the reason for that ?
because the multi-track came over from . So it wasn't just a copy , it was using the original stuff , and now Roger's guitar was missing from the track . So what are you going to do ? In those days ? There was no . I didn't know this , by the way , that's brilliant .
Did you not know that bit ?
No , that's why he played it because it was missing . No , I didn't realise so of all the things to be missing , it's probably one of the yeah . So literally , calvin they were in Nottingham and Danny , do you think Mark could , because he was a guitarist at the time . Do you think Mark could replay this guitar ?
Because in those days , these days , you could ring up the record company , probably now , and go , oh yeah , I'll get it off , I'll send it to you in a minute . Those days it would physically have to come , so you'd have to wait weeks for it to come over from America . So do you think he can do it ?
So that's , when he got in his car and went over , did he take his ? Did he have a strat ? I think ?
he took what ? Did he hire one , yeah , no , I think did he have a strat . He had a telecaster . Yeah , no , he's done on a strat .
He probably didn't have a strat , so he went over and you , you know if you listen . I mean I'm joking about the Mark and the thing . They're both great guitars , but tell the difference on that record . I mean it's much down to Danny's engineering to get the exact sound , do ?
you know what the interesting thing was . That was a turning point in Mark's career . Yeah , it was because he had the choice at that point of either going to university to do an engineering degree or be a full time musician and go for that road .
And he said when he went and did that session , he said it was the weirdest thing because he'd always we'd been playing in you know , like semi-professionally sort of bands , you know , and um and not you know not experience that level where you've got to get it exactly right . And so he went and he said , he said it was amazing .
He said danny just kept saying again , again , did it , did it again again , and it kept on going . He said I couldn't believe it . A 40th take . He kept . I thought I thought all of them were great , you know . And he realised he said no , it's that specific and that's what Mark's like as a producer now , like you can't get anything past him at all .
I do a lot of brass and stuff for him and if I've done something like tweaked a little bit , he'll go . Yeah , you do that again , he knows , you know .
And he said when I did that take and then basically we were listening to the radio on Sunday , the charts and watching it climb the charts and it got to number five and Mark's first PPL check from that was about I hope I'm not disclosing somewhere , shouldn't he ?
it was about two grand , wasn't it ?
no , it was about three and a half grand . Did he tell you two grand ?
Yeah , anyway . So yeah , never got my call .
So it was about three and a half grand and I was . Mark was 19 , I was 17 . And I was , my jaw was dropped . It's like , wow , you can play something and earn three and a half grand for , like you know , a session . And Mark was like the same , wow , this is what I'm doing doing .
And then , about you know , maybe a year or so later , we went down to london and he's been there ever since and , just you know , from very small beginnings he's worked his way up to what he's doing now . But yeah , that , so that's very interesting . That was a that was down to mark's .
Mark's turning point was down to , uh , rich dan and kel's , what they were doing , do you know ?
what I mean , since we're very intertwined , very linked families .
Really , my first meeting was Kel , which is brilliant . We were doing it was a Max the Sax gig . I was there as a fan right , watching everyone and really getting into it , having a few drinks . I was only like 16 or something or 17 probably drinking bass or something at the time , too much off said drink .
Kelvin was doing a DJ set afterwards and I was like man , your dj set's amazing . This is brilliant . Really good to meet . You put my hand over to shake his hand , stepped on the power connection , switched the whole thing off and unfortunately , cal was like he was a bit flustered , but he saw the funny side of it . That was my first meeting with carl .
Yeah , yeah , there's a slight uh , uh , other story , I don't know . You know the story um . So your brother was doing the sound for the brand new heavies I do , I know this one and uh yeah , because he gave his , got his free tickets , which ?
was great .
Me and his buzz load of us went up to see him . Mark's doing the sound and I kept getting him drinks . So he's behind this huge desk , my new heavies are on stage , yeah , and I'm getting these drinks . And he said , oh , watch it , because I think they're watching me , you know , because I'm doing the sound , I'm in charge , here . Yeah , I said no problem .
So he was chatting away to me like that and he must have touched this button which had got another programmed mix and when he touched it , the whole , all the sound went off . On stage , the Brand New Revis gets on playing and you can see Mark going , but I didn't realise what he'd done .
Obviously it was just a switch to switch it back again , like a comparison , like if you're doing two mixes and you can get one and it sounds like before and he kind of does that with the faders and but you can see this bloke . He must have thought he's going to , he's going to pull me up here because I've been drinking all this beer and he's been .
But yeah , another sound off in a very crucial moment . Yeah , wow , so those are your foundational runs in the family .
DNA . Your , you know , had a lot to do with where mark went . Yeah , um , so you went your separate ways , but stayed in touch . Yeah and scott , you set up your own studio , worked as a session musician for many years . Any highlights from that period ? Um , highlights how was it being a session musician ? It was .
It was great there's , there's one , there's one uh thing that sticks in my mind um , if you're talking about being a session musician , which was , um , I'm a massive fan of this guy called roy ayers , right , who's like like a american jazz funk sort of vibes player .
Yeah , in fact , so much so I used to play his music in bands and all sorts and I got the opportunity to play drums for him . Oh , I was just like wow . But I had to turn it down because literally the gig date was the same date as the expected birthday of my youngest son . I was like Roy , sorry , I can't make it Cry , cry .
Because your brother played guitar for him , didn't he ?
Yeah , Mark played guitar for him Exactly . He probably still does if he comes over .
We quite like the nepotism thing . Yeah , yeah , yeah , but why not ? Yeah , exactly , probably still does if he comes over . We quite like the nepotism thing . Yeah , yeah , but why not ? Yeah ?
absolutely well . That's , you know , a lot of the stuff you know I've done again , worked a lot with Mark over the years and he's he's been , you know , he's branched out and gone down to London and then a lot of more opportunities have kind of come out
¶ From Trumpet to Songwriting
. There's another funny one as well , which is this was through Mark as well which was I started playing the trumpet when I was about 21 . So I remember , when I was 21 , and no sooner had I started playing it , that Mark said oh , scott , you play trumpet . Great , he said I've been asked .
I've got to interrupt you two seconds . You know Mark's quite his cool reputation is going out the window , right ? Oh yeah , he's got . Yeah , it's out the window . I'm quite happy to assist in that process .
So basically , yeah . So he said , great , I'm doing the music for the Last Blind Date series . Do you fancy doing the trumpet on it ? I was like , yes , get in . So I went down and the same trumpet I'm playing now was me on the Last .
Blind Date series .
So that's another funny , funny , I like that one but yeah , that's a good claim to fame it's not the coolest claim to fame , but yeah and on that note , full circle , we went round to Cilla's house because we were going to do a track with her just quickly , and I thought it was a weird little little circle of things of all the people we could have .
Well , she died shortly after that .
Literally . Yeah , it was a couple of weeks before she died , wasn't it ? And we were going to do one of the songs .
Getting a reputation for killing people off .
I've heard Blind Date's coming back , so maybe they'll ask you back to do Well you know they knock at my ask you back to do .
Well , you know . I'll be ready with the same trumpet .
Yeah , yeah , yeah so what brought you two back together ? Why did it take 20 years , apparently ?
so , uh , we'll bring Mark up briefly again . He was having a sort of Facebook reunion at the time , so he's back up from London and he sort of let it out there . I think he might have rang me and said are you coming out for a beer ? Because I'm coming up ? And so , yeah , fine , I think Marie was going to come out .
She was quite , she was a bit ill , so she didn't . It wasn't an excuse , she genuinely was ill . So anyway . So off , I toddled to Newcastle , new Newcastle-Under-Lyme that is not on time and there's a lot of people there , so it wasn't really going to talk to Mark much . And then there's a guy standing there .
Obviously I know who it was , so we just started chatting . We ended up having our own kind of conversation , our own reunion for lots of . I started talking about the fact that you know I'd been doing doing some stuff with Robbie Williams , but the main thing was he started on about computers and using logic , which is what we still use .
I said , well , I've got a problem with my computer . He said I can fix that for you if you want . So that was the start of it . I pursued him like nothing because I couldn't . I'm so glad you did . I was just being lazy .
Oh yeah , yeah , rich , yeah , of course . Yeah , didn't we talk about it the other night ?
I pursued him to get this thing , because it was . You know , if your computer goes off , have you got it ? You've got nothing , so anyway , we got together . We did fix it . I'm sure we did . Yeah , we did .
Yeah we fixed it .
And in the process he came to the little studio and I said to him at one point oh no , that's it . I said can you play a bit of stuff on your studio ? Can you play a little bit of stuff on , you know , a bit of bass on one of the tracks ? Yeah , I'll do that , yeah , yeah , yeah . So we kind of started that way . There was no other intention .
Yeah , it was just literally to put . There was a track he'd done and it was a bit Beatles-y and I said well , you could probably do some real drums on that .
You know a bit of a .
Ringo vibe .
So we had a day in the studio in Scott's studio .
Put the drums down . I don't know why you get this from me , but we love a laugh . We've got the same sense of humour really Well , he's actually not mine , but we I just said at the end of the session it's been great today . He says , yeah , he has . I said tell you , what do you fancy writing some songs with me ?
And he went and his words were I 150% , want to write some songs with you , and that was the start . So then you came round here and I got the starting points of Morning Sun and a few other things , but particularly that that I thought was a good idea at the time . So I sat and played the chords and I said what do you think ? He said I love it .
I said I think it might have been a Friday . Wow .
Your memory's ridiculous . Yeah , I've got a good memory . I remember that from the last episode there was a Friday .
Just a little bit what I remember distinctly was that you went , went away with how I could , how I'd give you the chord pattern , because I wouldn't know what chords I was playing . I just said it's these , wrote the notes down or something . I gave you the .
You know how do you rate the morning , sun , the , whatever , yeah , the line a couple of other bits . maybe that's where it ended . So we knew the vibe , we knew the sort of feel , what was kind of going for the title to a degree , if that's what we stayed with .
And on the Monday I went round to the studio and he'd done the rest of the lyrics and written the middle eight . And he said to me and I hated writing lyrics at the time so this was absolute godsend I said to him . He said to me what do you think ? And I remember him being on that little piano up the corner and it was just placed on there .
I went over , I walked over and I looked at him . I probably didn't read him that much , I just kind of looked at him and thought there's loads of lyrics there . Ace , I've got to great , he says . She said shall we record it ? Then I went yeah , and so we started to record it . Um , lovely process it was . It was great , great .
One of the funny things that happened halfway through that was we realized the mic we were recording the brass into wasn't on it was recording on a mic over the drums in the other room in the other room , but it sounded great , so we stuck with that be , precise with mics and stuff it was . We got this sound because it was recording from a distance .
Yeah , that's right . Sounded like a distant brass band .
And that's how we started to write together . So that was the first song we wrote together . Yeah , oh , there's the beeper again , the famous beeper , perfectly on time . Yeah .
Even though it's not that time . So you set up Dolph Dogg Productions together . Yeah , so you set up Dolph Dogg Productions together . Yeah . What were the first songs you wrote or produced together ? Was it Morning Sun ?
Morning Sun was the first one . If you're going to count it , it was pre the name but that's what it was , yeah and then , because I mean , up to a point , obviously , I was writing songs with Calvin and Danny and it kind of went not sideways , the words not looking I . I didn't do a lot in the first when I decided that's what I was going to do .
It was a let's go for it , this is the chance . I was 40 at the time , so I thought , if you're gonna have a chance , let's do it . And now , of course , you're teaming up with scott . It was a really great thing , because in my mind it was not going to be let's write songs for robbie williams . It was none of that and it never is really .
But you can imagine that's where we would aim stuff these days . It's well , I'm messing about just writing stuff that could be done by anybody . Let's aim it where it might land , because there's no point otherwise . But the point is we didn't start that way and um , so we just wrote that song .
Uh , yes , it sort of sounded like it would naturally apply itself to him , but it wasn't . I don't think that was it . You know , it was played to him . He loved it . But then we moved on to . Well , we got the , we got the invite , both of us , to go to LA at that point . So it obviously lit that fire .
Yeah , so we then we wrote a couple more which was won't do that to you , yeah , to take out to LA with us when we went out . Yeah , yeah , yeah , because once we got the nod , you were away on holiday and I rang you and said you when you come back . You know the one song we've done so far .
Bearing in mind . It was incredible really , because it was probably within the space of about three or four months , if that Like if that we've done that and then we didn't . So I take that tribute . But yeah , sorry , and we you know .
And then next minute it's like right , you're going out to Rob's house and you're going to go right with him , and it was towards that moment . To me that was just like can you imagine ?
it's been two years since .
I've been there . It's hard to imagine it was it was absolutely insane .
It was absolutely insane and it's such a privilege and it was unbelievable . Still , it always is .
Always is yeah yeah , so it was two years since I'd been there .
Yes .
So I was quite happy that I got the invite to go back , which , if you , haven't heard about that on our last episode , Rich tells the story .
many stories about visiting Rob , so go back to that episode .
Sorry .
Rich .
No , that's okay . Just plugging your last episode . But we arrived there and there was a party going on up the road , wasn't there , yeah ? So we immediately dumped the suitcase .
He's ripped up there and Rob said to him how are ?
you doing lads it was all normal to us , wasn't it ? Yeah , it was all normal . It's not that environment , of course . Not that there's any problem with that , you know . But we , you know , we were suddenly faced with , uh , saying you know what's going on , lads , what's what's happening , you know ? And then he's saying we're going on a trip to .
It was just a . He brings the best out in me , you know . I hope I do the same for him , and I think that Rob recognised that as well . That was a really pivotal . It was weird . You can't write these scripts . I think it would be interesting to see .
Well , I always think that great music often comes from combinations Lennon and McCartney . You know , bernie Taupin and Elton John . You know there's usually two people's complementary things .
Skills , yeah , that basically , if you work together properly and more push in the same direction and have a laugh along the way , great things happen you know , and certainly that was the case with us and still is , you know .
To be fair , just to briefly answer your question , because I know you asked the question and I went off on a tangent , as usual . You know , we , we then obviously did concentrate on writing stuff for rob um , um , you know it's very difficult to push into other arenas . Uh , very , people are very protective of their artists and uh , it's hard .
So I think for me , a long time ago I realized , well , we've got a huge opportunity . Why think about anything else ? You know , why worry about I should be writing with somebody else or being more successful ? So , in effect , it kind of made its own direction For me personally I'm not saying that's for everybody yeah , yeah , absolutely yeah .
So we did work with Lana Del Rey I think I played that track earlier . Yeah , we worked with lord alray I think I played that track earlier . We worked with beverly knight . Um , we worked with , uh , trying to think who else ?
Uh , jeremy caldry , alvin stardust , various people , engelbert yeah , lots of people , but you know none of them is well engelbert in his day , but none of them as big as robbie williams . And certainly I've said it , I'll say it , I'll say it again I love the bloke .
I think it isn't about him doing our music , it's nothing to do with that , it's just I wouldn't want to be in a caustic situation . It's just a joy to do that . So again , why would I subject myself to problem situations where I'm trying to haul myself into a situation I don't really want to be in ? So I'd rather just do that ? It's easy .
It's like an easy chair , isn't it ?
So , Scott , what was it like the first time you turned up at Rob's house ? How did that feel .
Oh man I still think about that sometimes that moment . It was just . I mean , you know , obviously , to Rob , he's been in that life since he was 15 , 16 , he's been in that life since he was 15 , 16 , in terms of , you know , the pop star-y sort of life .
¶ Robbie Williams Collaboration and Reflection
You know , for me to walk into a house that's down a private drive in Beverly Hills , get out of a limo , you know , was just , it was like a bizarre dream . And then Robbie Williams come to say you know , obviously I'll learn very quickly .
You don't call him Robbie no it's Rob um he told you that , yeah , yeah , yeah , and I was like I thought I was gonna be sent home um and , uh , you know , and it was done to see this guy , um , who had just what followed his career on tv and it was just , it was absolutely surreal it really was , but in a brilliant , brilliant way .
Way , you know , because I knew that we were there to do the thing that I'd worked all my life to do . Do you know what I mean ? Which is music and songwriting . And to me , when you know , I wasn't planted into something that was alien to me , it was like we're here , we're going to write music .
You know , nervous about it , of course , because it's letterwise . You know you're pushing right up there , but it was it was just To be fair . I don't want to .
I don't want to . I just want to add to that at the end that you're there because of what you've already done Absolutely , if you've created something that he's gone . Okay , these guys have done . You know , I didn't realise that . You know , so you're there on your own merits .
How long you can prolong that for is another yeah yeah but it was , yeah , incredible and he was so welcoming and just made us feel really at home , you know .
So it was brilliant , yeah , yeah , really good . It takes a piss out of me a lot , and me it's a term of endearment , isn't it ?
sorry it's a term of endearment . Yeah , oh , absolutely , I don't take it any other way . I don't take it any other way , it's just it's brilliant .
I'm just mindful of what I might do next , that I might just pick up on and go . We had a few ones you were at the Brits .
You funny way , you know the thing with it is he's a bit like I think he's a bit like a stand-up comedian , very quick witty . There's no point trying to like , you know it's not as good as me of course not .
He does notice the smallest details .
Yeah , I remember when we've met him .
Yeah because I had some new white trainers on immediately he was like new white pumps , then matt yeah , yeah oh , like your shirt . Where did you get your shirt from , you know ?
just notice these little details . Well , totally Christmas 2008 , I'd been shopping , went down to the local shopping centre it was Fashion Square at the time in LA and I bought some jeans because I thought , well , in America the jeans are cheap .
I was like yeah , yeah , you've got your Christmas jeans on , have you ?
Thanks a lot , rob does like his clothes .
I think he notices them .
We went to the Adidas shop , didn't we ? We all had new trainers . And I went back and Rob said Scott's got trainers of the day Trainers of the day . Yeah , Trainers of the day he was like , yeah , these are all the latest trainers weren't they .
Trainers of the day . Yeah , That'd feel good .
Hi , I'm Robbie Williams and you're listening to Robbie Williams Rewind with the Champions .
So , Scott , were you a fan rob um and his music before you started working with ?
um , do you know what I didn't really sort of ? I've never really particularly been a fan , apart from one or two . I was a bit of a fan of stevie wonder . For quite a long time I was a fan of jimmy hendrix , right apart from that I didn't really be . I didn't really have because I was always deep into the music side of things .
From the other side of that , I didn't sort of get into sort of fandom particularly , but I do remember hearing Angels . I'd never particularly noticed too much of one , I'd gone . And then I heard Angels . I thought that's really good . Wow , this guy .
You watched him go through take that and you knew about him obviously being a local lad as well , and then I thought , wow , and then rock dj came out . I thought that's really good , you know , and then started , then my ears started pricking up and it was like , wow , this guy's , and then you just watch his career .
Then you see the , you know , the , the , my way and all that stuff in there , and it was just like , and then you suddenly start taking notice and I wouldn't describe myself as a fan , but I was definitely hugely interested in what he was doing and admired it . You know , I thought he just crossed a bridge , hadn't he ?
To where from take that into his solo career and just , and it really , really worked .
Well , I think we're both fans of the man . Oh yes , that's a privilege 100 .
Yeah , yeah , I understand so obviously you met him , knowing that you were going to be writing with him . Did you feel kind of pressure because of that ? Was it just very natural ?
gosh , yeah , how did you feel ? Um , I felt , um , I felt nervous . I did feel nervous about the prospect of .
I really wanted to do it full of ideas , full of energy and enthusiasm , as we were , but the the , you know the actual um thing of right , let's sit down and write a track with this huge star you know , I mean where the likes of guy chambers and people like that we're in this , that same seat . You know what I mean .
Where the likes of Guy Chambers and people like that were in this , that same seat you know , it was like wow , that's quite daunting . Do you know what I mean ?
that's a big , would you agree ? Yeah , a little . We were prepared , as we ever did whenever we went to LA . Yeah , totally just a quick one . Before the night or the week before we were going . We knew we were going and the week before my computer again went , my computer went we started to write we won't do that to you and it went and we we got .
I can't remember all the details , which is unusual for me , but we hadn't got a computer , we couldn't do it and we're trying to . It was the 94 . So there's a guy named Mick . I won't say what you call him otherwise , but Mick as in he's got another nickname .
Mick Jones .
Yeah , yeah , dancing Mick , we call him he got an Apple with Logic on it , so he came round to the house . the night before we were going and we were basically bunking down on this . Otherwise we wouldn't have to take it with us .
We were trying to take these tracks out with us , the ideas we'd got so far , and if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have had that , but we were kind of prepared . So the other plus was pressure in one respect because of where you're going and what you're expected to perhaps do . But we did take stuff with us to be able to soften that a little bit .
We'll wait till like week two when we've got to write something brand new . By that time you've settled in a little bit .
It's a bit easier , right ? Yeah , so Morning Sun . Was that the first song that you played to him when you got to LA ?
well , you already had it you sent it to him .
You sent that to him . That had been wired over .
That's why we were there , because he kind of went .
That was the calling card wasn't it yeah , I mean we haven't said it yet , but what we did say on the last episode , but what an incredible song by the way I mean just thank you . It's one of those that just takes your breath away when you hear it . It's just something magical about that song . We really love it and to hear it .
To hear him singing entry .
Oh yeah , that was great lovely yeah , we thought of you and we saw that and it was like wow , that was an honour , wasn't it ?
yeah , that really was yeah , I think with Morning Sun as well , because again I think it might be a little bit of the history of Peter's novel . I don't think it's anything in particular , it's just the way things pan out , but pan out , but could have been so much more as a from a success point of view , a known .
If I , if I say to people , yeah , we wrote a song called morning sun , the , the non-fans might not know it yeah and I know the fans know it , but , um , you know it from a , an outside of . You know people who know robbie williams and you know his music because it's on the radio and stuff , rather than buying his music .
Would have been nice to have that as a reference . Oh , you know Morning Sun . Yeah , yeah , I've heard that . Yeah , I mean , I don't care that much but , I , feel that would have been nice , Because if you say , well , have you written anything ? I know I said there's a track called Morning Sun .
I don't know that , you know it's a bit odd , but having you know and then heard it through its process , with Trevor Horn produced it and stuff like that , but now you listen to the actual recording , the finished recording , you know I think it's an absolute joy to be a part of it .
I don't care what came out of my head originally , to be part of it and go , wow , that was us , we did that really . So if I never did anything else , that would be it for me .
And how did it feel when it was released as a single and it was on the official sport ? It was the official sport relief single in 2010 .
There's a little story behind that .
Go
¶ Music Writing and UFO Spotting Memories
on , tell us .
Again , we were thrust into this world . That was like it wasn't our Stoke-on-Trent everyday world , which involved getting on a 12-seater plane you know driving onto LAX airport .
Yeah , you know , driving onto LAX airport . Yeah , it's not LAX , it's Bad Eyes , was it ? Yeah , bad Eyes . Yeah , oh right , wow again memory man .
I rely on him , so but instead we've got our passports ready and we drove straight onto there you need a passport .
You fly internally . We didn't know that , did we ? No , we didn't . Yeah , we didn't know . Yeah , exactly again , not our world tom onto a private jet .
Yeah , yeah , so sitting there with a glass of champagne . Am I okay saying this yeah , yeah , sitting there with a glass of champagne , and uh , and rob just basically suggests how about we put um , it wasn't that one actually run about .
Won't do that as a first single and uh , I think we're gonna do that , as we first single don't bear right .
we'd been there , our minds were just Three days , four days oh right , we were going right okay . My head had exploded .
It was just like what You've got to sit there with a glass of champagne on this plane and he turned around to me and says you've changed .
you have Just trying to be cool , you know , leaning to the side slightly .
Kind of going oh yeah , okay yeah you're thinking science games .
Yeah , maybe that is a good idea . Yeah , yeah , yeah .
Wow , you know it was just it's hard to explain . Of course you're disappointed when it doesn't happen . Sometimes you don't want to hear it because then you know it's possibly disappointing .
But yeah . But , like you said , morning Sun did come out .
Yeah did come out as a thing , and you know how did you feel about that when you were , when you were . I'm asking you a question again just to remind you .
Did you know ? There was an amazing moment when I was walking down the aisles at B&Q ?
a Morning Sun cover version came on .
Cover version oh , you mean like a piece out , because they don't have to pay PPL . You went to B&Q .
You were in the range with me ? No , but I happened to be at B&Q , that included .
Yeah , of course , but no , I was on my own in B&Q buying some timber and literally it came on , I was just like that is and it just stopped .
it's like this is crazy . Yeah , so you know you've made it when your song's been covered , and it's been covered . Yeah , playing and being covered . Yeah , no , we were in the range .
Yeah that's another one , wow . Well , yeah , that was . That was amazing . You know it sounds like a small thing , but really , you know , we used to , we both . Oh no , you weren't . You didn't work at Shoe City , did you ? No ? When I was about 16 , I worked at a place called Shoe City .
Yeah , I worked next door at Copyright you were next door at Copyright , yeah , and you probably had similar songs and we used to call these songs Shoe City Class classics because it was somebody doing a terrible cover of like prince or something like that you know you're like , oh , do I have to listen to this ?
again , just be on a continual loop I remember that from working in a supermarket in my early years ? Yeah , but I was so proud to actually have one .
Yeah , you know our intellectual property being uh exploited in such a way so I worked at uh copyright , as I've just said , and you were Virtually next door , maybe one shop between . So At the back of the shop Is where I got . That . See where that table's made Out of .
There that's an old telly stand that someone brought back to Apollo and I was , oh , I like that , and I made a table out of it and the thing you're sitting on Is a seat from Shoe City , from the same place . So that's still from your sitting on this , from Shoe City .
I probably sat on that in Shoe City listening to Shoe City Classics .
How brilliant . And your feet measured . Yeah , yeah , exactly .
Someone else's feet . It is comfy . Yeah , it's very nice .
So random . I love it .
A song we discussed last time when we were together was Decepticon , which I absolutely it . Yeah , a song we discussed last time when we were together was Decepticon , which I absolutely love . Yeah , you all wrote it together while you were searching for UFOs at Trout Lake , scott . What are your memories of that time , looking for UFOs and writing music ?
The guys have already told us a few stories , but I'd love to hear your perspective .
So do you remember I said there was surreal when we first got out of the limo ?
¶ Unusual Experiences in Oregon
This was next level surreal .
Can you just not skip the bit out about getting off the plane and the bloke standing with black suits on and the umbrellas on the rainy runway with the black car like the CIA was ? That was a weird thing . They were like whoa , whoa , whoa , what's going on here ? And they drove us off on like a convoy off the airport .
It's hard to explain that bit , but you carry on .
That was when we landed in .
Portland , oregon , sounds like a scene from Men in Black .
It was . It was like a scene from Men in Black . That's exactly what it looked like Whiskey sir . It was like what .
And so , yeah , we go to this place , which was insanely beautiful , wasn't it ? Like a like close encounters , wild , you know , white white rivers and all that sort of you know white water rivers and , um , yeah , it was just incredible .
Um , completely different from beverly hills , about as different as you could get you know in every other aspect , but you know it was . It was lovely because , um , you know , we got the chance to just , you know , you had so much time in a day , so we wrote there and we recorded there .
Yeah .
And we had daily general meetings to keep each other centralised you know , because it was so surreal . Yeah , you know so . We just looked up to the sport , yeah , the Robbie Williams connection , if you like , yeah , and then being in the middle of surreal , yeah , you know so we just looked up to each other , not only the first part .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , the Robbie Williams connection , if you like , yeah yeah . And then being in the middle of nowhere , yeah , watching , looking for UFOs . There was no internet . Yeah , your brain went slightly skewed Is this happening ? So we used to go off into the middle of a field and just chat . So we could just we could be overheard .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , to reassure each other .
Yeah , well , he was doing more assuring for me , because there's all the pressures , but yeah , it was , you know , without him there , I think I'd have gone absolutely crazy it was nothing to do with rob . No , no , rob was amazing , yeah , just so .
So it must have been for you as well , because totally was , totally , it was , you know , in an incredible way , but it was , yeah , it was just like wow , yeah , really , really surreal in in every aspect . But yeah , that was where , um , we , we , we did write decepticon , yeah , and that was a lovely process , wasn't it ?
You know , with , uh , in that sort of like , almost like an aircraft hangar sort of place , wasn't it ?
yeah , like talk about the scouts you mentioned , it was like a village hall with Bunty hanging up and a stage at one end . Yeah , yeah , with a stage and a ping pong table and a table table . And was it a pool table as well ?
yeah , it was like a youth club and there was a pool table as well ?
yeah , there was a pool table . Yes , there was In the middle of nowhere and at night you could hear I assume were wolves howling . Yeah , outside toilets , homemade buildings , yeah yeah , painted bright pink in the inside , yeah , yeah , and there were all . There was like four of us in one room . Was it me , you , calvin and Danny ? Me you , calvin , dan ?
On Rewa one was it was BU , calvin and Danny . BU Calvin and Danny . So two bunk beds , bunk beds .
Yeah , yeah , we were on the bunk beds yeah , and Calvin and Danny were in the bed . Yeah for waking up and just seeing Danny and his kegs thinking what is this happening ?
you know these are what we say about elements that you know . I know we do my brothers and you kind of , but you get . You don't want to see your brother in his pants , do you ? If you'd have told me when .
I was 14 , see that guy on the radio there . You're going to be lying in a bunk bed staring at him and his kegs at Chout Lake and I said , go away .
That's nonsense . That's the story where we walked down to the town to try and get a drink , relieve the pressure again of being in a strange place , not any other kind of pressure . So so we started to walk and this Honda comes past .
Beep , beep beep , beep Old . When he says Honda , he means like a 1970s old Honda .
Yeah , Beep , beep . And there's Robbie Williams out the window going . Oh lads say oi , oi .
Wake up wake up . You know he's out .
Yeah , but you know that's everyone is really relaxing , but for us we were thinking hang on , we better be writing songs here , because we're only out here for two weeks and working keeps us doing something , you know , but I don't know whether you mentioned this in the last one , but this is another thing that sticks in my mind , which was in this place for some
reason at one part , perhaps for when loads of people come to stay , there was loads piles of mattresses , and of course we need to record vocals , so we'll make a vocal booth out of mattresses , which is what we did , and it was great . It was like we're quite inventive .
So we , we put , you know , two together and then one over the top , like a you know , and all the way around the side of these slightly shabby mattresses and then a little mattress mattress yeah , mattress door on it .
And then there's Rob sitting in amongst all these mattresses doing a vocal take we were like this is bonkers , yeah , but good sounding there it was great , yeah , yeah , yeah .
We also wrote a soda pop there , by the way , didn't we ? Oh , yeah , yes , we did . Of course we did so it was good for creativity then , I think it was when we , when then we could apply ourselves . We were that pent up about kind of standing around doing nothing .
Sometimes when we felt we wanted to utilise the time , we kind of go right go , but it was , it was good yeah , amazing .
Wow , did you see a UFO ?
no , oh , I mean we saw a few odd lights in the sky , to be fair , saw one . We said why is that going so fast ? But do you remember ?
that one if you're facing that mountain .
Yes , there was a few lights going off on the mountain , there was something above here .
that lit up and then turned and went and I went , I stood there and I lit no drink at this point so he's not going to blame me anything other than sleep deprivation maybe . But I kind of went does anybody else see that ? And everybody went what , what , and I thought I've just seen something light up and then fly off .
So I don't know what that was , so the classification of that could be yes unidentified flying object so , actually , I'll change my answer yes , he did yeah change my answer .
Yes , he did . Yeah , so you wrote you co-wrote um won't do that , but it originally had quite a different vibe on the version until trevor horn changed it .
Yes , it did . It had a kind of a bit more of , I would say , wings , kind of mccartney vibe to it massively . So yeah , I mean , we're massive fans of that vibe aren't we yeah , yeah .
And then you know , trevor Horne just took it in his direction and made it a little bit more , I would say slightly more Northern Soul kind of vibe to it but I think he straightened it up and I think I think when we wrote it , I think you , you almost want the push and pull with the kind of yeah , you want that kind of I don't know , it's push and pull
, yeah , pushing up the stabs and stuff and all that . Whereas it was very straight . You know what I mean . It was kind of just doing that and I felt we use an expression called demo head , which , of course , if you write it and you do it , you're so used to hearing .
It's very hard to take in something else you know , but I think I'm still of the same opinion today . So I do believe something that was harking to the original feel would would have been better for me . Uh , now I could have . You know , I've often changed my mind , I'm actually . No , you know , we just listened to . You got old and I like what we did .
It's the song's the same . Really nothing else but the , the , the production and the uh arrangement of the of the new version was mind-blowing .
So , yeah , yeah , yeah exactly so you attended the brits in 2010 with rob , when he got his outstanding contribution to music award and sung a medley of his hits , including some from reality killed the video star .
How exciting was that , oh man well , the weirdest thing was right we would class each other as mr and mr . Nobody um , you know , as in in relation to the people that were there .
Of course , you know , um , and we're walking through and and , like we're , we're heading for table one , like liam gallagher's on table seven , you know , and can you imagine how weird we were feeling at this point .
We walked down the black . We were late , but we walked down the red carpet with Girls Aloud . We all walked in .
Lady Gaga , phil Collins , you know , and we were like yeah , yeah , sorry , lads , where are ?
you going ? Oh right , okay , oh God , phil Collins , you know , and we're like yeah , yeah , table one , Sorry , lads .
Where are you going Up in the air ? Oh right , okay , it was bonkers , wasn't it ?
It was bonkers , and then we of course , absolutely
¶ Drinking, Music, and Meaning
bonkers . I think what was quite funny you nervously drink .
I'm going to accuse you of that boy because I'm a better drinker , guilty as charged , and that's not a criticism I did . You're sitting there , you're thinking . The problem is there's a cocktail of drinks there as well . There's champagne , there's everything you can think of . So you're just going quick , have another drink have another drink , are you alright ?
yeah , yeah , yeah , 10 minutes . You're just doing that , aren't you ? I think you had to stop me After party , yeah , after party .
Stop , there's glass on the floor .
Yeah , serious , andy Serkis was at Rob's after party . Oh yeah , and he's that drunk , he's going , it's gone .
Gollum's here . We're dancing with Gollum , which is great , and we were dancing with Gollum . Oh , that's brilliant , you know which was amazing .
And then you were hugging , trevor , hugging . And then you were hugging Trevor Hall going . Oh , I love you . So it was a .
And then someone was getting drunk .
I'm a professional drinker , so I was yeah yeah , yeah . It's a nervous situation to be in . You can understand if you're not . It was an amazing time . It was amazing . Actually to answer that question a little bit , hearing Morning Sun being played in that situation well , you know you could be At that moment .
But hearing Morning Sun being played in that situation , oh man . Well , you know you could be at that moment . You could be blamed not for getting carried away with yourself oh absolutely . But at the same time it's just an amazing thing .
It's just to be honest , it , just all that stuff now just feels like a dream .
It feels like we dreamt it .
It's dead strange , isn't it ? It is dead strange , dead strange . But so I'm I agree with rich so grateful , yeah , for everything that's gone on and everyone that facilitated it , you know , of course , including uh , and most of all , rob himself . Do you know what I mean ? It's just been so gracious , hasn't he ? And so , yeah , sort of um .
You know what I mean .
He's just been so gracious , hasn't he ? And so sort of enabling and kind within it all so brilliant .
But generally he's not doing us favours . No , I think he likes us , no , no , he might watch this and say that's wrong . But I think he likes us . Therefore I know in my heart he does . But at the same time I know we've kind he does but you know at the same time I know it's we've kind of said this in a way but we're there on our own merits .
Yes , as long as we do get bandied with the guys . Well , some people say of course we come from Stoke , rob comes from Stoke .
I didn't know Rob before this happened , but people go oh yeah , oh yeah , oh yeah , oh yeah , mates , are you yeah good . You know well , we are now . We are now yeah yeah .
So you know , yeah , absolutely rich , and that's that's important point really , which is that it was literally well started with with , with Marnie's son , didn't it ?
Yeah , ballet it's music while we're sitting at the brits . Yeah , that was important cool for the ego anyway so um soda pop .
Rob has said that he's not actually really sure what it's about . Can you tell us what it's about ?
uh , I would say I would . I would say , um , I don't know what's in his head , but I would say it's about bloody nothing it's about . It's about , I mean , I remember you coming up with a line you know I've got massive hands . It's like I mean , not that I've got a problem with that , you know .
You know it doesn't mean he's , you know , but I like stuff like that more so now . But I've got massive hands , I've got two feet all that fine feet . Yeah yeah , and I think it's kind of a nonsense song . Well , that's okay .
Yes .
I don't really need it to be about anything . Hopefully he doesn't .
I think a lot of music gets digested in the way that people digest it and a lot of the time , the meaning of a song people don't even think about . They just go . I love that song and they sing along with it because it's music , isn't it , you know ? And I think that that would be a classic example of that .
It's a lot of people really enjoy that song , but they don't need to necessarily . It doesn't necessarily have to mean something , and it probably does mean something to someone . They go I know what you're talking about . Yeah , massive hands , tiny feet , you know , and that's fine , that's great because you get , you get a message .
It was like the um , uh , the morning , I mean , I'd say , you know , the morning , sunday , the village drunk . Remember that story ? Yeah , yeah , you know .
And , and the village drunk was actually about , there's a place around here called wolstanton , um , and in wolstanton , very sadly , there sadly , there was a guy that was an alcoholic and was homeless and blah , blah , blah , and so that was why the Village Drunk was included into that song . The Village Drunk sadly passed away .
They found him outside the doctor's surgery and the sad story I never knew his name . I was intending to go and speak to him at some point . Never got the chance because he died . Then the song came out and then there was loads of people going how dare he talk about Michael Jackson in that way ? And it's like it wasn't about Michael Jackson Never was no .
No , never was .
But then you discovered that the village drunk hadn't actually died . He hadn't died . I bumped into him .
I was like hang on a minute , is that you ?
Yeah , died I bumped into him .
I was like hang on a minute , is that you ? You know ?
yeah , so exactly the story goes on and I did say hello to him . Did you find out his name ?
no , I did . You know I might have done , but I haven't got a memory like this so it's quite a long time ago , gary was it .
No , don't say gary , that's another story yeah , yeah , yeah , sorry it all right , yeah , and then there was something else on there you originally put in the line . I know we're going back to Morning Sun again , but you put the line Morning . What was it , Mrs Millwood ? Mrs Millwood .
Yeah , yes , it was me next to a neighbour at the time .
Yes , exactly , and he changed it to Mr McCarron would , didn't he he ?
did first of all , mr .
McCarron Ward yes , not Mr McCarron . Would Mr McCarron ? Would Mr McCarron Would like , would do something ? He'd ?
take the same old . But he changed that . Yeah , yes , exactly . But then it got changed again by Don Black , I don't know exactly . So after a while you lose track of who's done what yeah , yeah .
But yeah , it's funny that you write these things . As I say , you write them and then you get changed , and that's , if you're going to be precious about it , which you will never am . Yeah , I'm not a yes man , as I said as well . But at the same time , you know it's , it's about that they're the artists like there's so much mystery shrouded in his lyrics .
Oh yeah .
What was he talking about then ? He's never told anyone and possibly doesn't even remember or know . I mean , I'm just I'm surmising there , but you know . Sorry , bob , but but do you know what I mean ? And cause he's like I'm not sure what I was . You know , but yeah , no , yeah , bob , I think music is music , isn't it ?
And I quite like that element Are we drawn to the tunes . Yeah .
And then if we're interested , we take them and start to think about the lyrics maybe ?
Yeah , that's true , we sing . We sing a lot we sing the staple , the vicar and all that kind of stuff . You know the .
Phoenix Knights thing . As humans , we always want to apply meaning to everything , don't we ? And I think you're right , no , you don't . We're kind of programmed to say what's the meaning of that ? Why is there a story there ? But it's nice sometimes just to not have that , and then your own interpretation is what really matters .
I think more important I think it's I write something , you write something and someone goes . Well , that changed my life that way , not saying anyone's ever said that to me , but you hear these stories of that nature and I think if it's good for them and they can do that , that's great . Yeah , exactly yeah .
Hi , I'm Robbie Williams and you're listening to Robbie Williams Rewind with the Champions .
And so , moving on to Michael Bublé , he's sung a song that you've written .
Did you meet him ? We did .
Oh , how was it to have him singing your song ? Well , we sat down .
¶ Swing Songs With Rob and Calvin
I mean , the first part of that story was we got a load of swing stuff we'd written for that swing album and we played it a little bit in the background earlier , but we a lot of it didn't get used , most of it didn't get used .
And then we were having a meet literally having a meeting , literally having a meeting about what we're going to do with all these swing songs . I don't know what we're going to do but we're talking , I got an email from Rob saying I'm in the studio with I've got Frank Sinatra's mic . I'm in Capitol Studios in LA .
I've got Frank Sinatra's mic , michael Bublé I don't know nothing about it at this point Michael Bublé's got Dean Martin's mic , soda Pop number one smash , and I'm like we sat there and I went listen to you know it was quite mind-blowing , you know to have him sing the song , because you know if you're going to write a swing song now , right now and said I
know Rob did it as well , but Michael Bubble is going to sing it . Then you , you , you know you've made it I don't say you made , but from a , from an achievement point of view michael buble sang one of your songs .
I don't think about it that way , but yeah , true , we're finished , we don't need to my favorite moment of that was when we got the thing back from capital the first recording of it back and we heard him do that scat over it oh yeah , it's just like oh my word , so he'd apparently just done it in one take oh and he's like that is incredible .
I mean he's got one of those voices that sounds like it's tuned .
Yes , but that's how he sounds .
And the other thing is because going back to the lyrics for a second , because obviously we had certain lyrics . You the original Soda Pop . But we've got it somewhere and of course the lyrics came back . They were both singing we're on G6 jets and I was like what's a G6 jet ? What does that mean ? I have no idea where they took the lyrics at that point .
So again , it's probably a nonsense . It's just a fight of fancy , I suppose bit of fun . So other swing songs you've written with Rob include On the Fence .
It's a fight of fancy , I suppose . Bit of fun . Bit of fun actually . So other swing songs you've written with Rob include On the Fence and Booty Cool for Under Radar . Can you tell us about those ?
Yeah On the Fence . We wrote as a contributory thing to that album . So it kind of got a lot of it got left For whatever . Whether it got left for whatever , whether it was politics , whatever the reason these swing songs weren't used , but so that kind of hung around . The other one , booty Cool .
We went out to LA in 2015 and a little funny story that we were me and him were in bed together- Like Morkham and Wise . It was literally like Morkham and Wise . You know these old things , yeah , yeah , do you know these old comedy things like the ? Christmas special . Yeah , yeah , the very old things .
And someone would knock on the door like as if it was someone's house .
Yeah .
So there's a knock on the door , robbie Williams pops his head through the door . Rob pops his head through the door and says , all right , l come write a swing song with us . And we was lying in bed like together , like yeah , okay . So anyway , we went into the studio and and we just started to jam something .
Yeah that's right started singing a few things started writing lyrics , and that's what booty call organic vibe . We loved it at the time we did something like late night trying to throw brass on it and make it sound quite good .
And then what happened was he wanted to put it on one of the under the radar things , so I had to eke it up to make it sound as good as I could . So it was kind of not re-recorded , but certainly pumped with whatever adrenaline and steroids we could find lying around this very small studio , because that's where it was done , really , yeah .
So yeah , so that was written just as a as a session in in , in , in LA . So check you out .
Yeah Sessions in LA . I've got all big Eddie . After that I've changed in the last five minutes .
A track that isn't talked about much , that isn't even available on streaming services anymore . Is you got old ? You mentioned it earlier on , sung with johnny wilkes . You wrote that together with calvin and rob . Can you explain the origins of that song ? Why isn't it available anymore ? It's got hilarious lyrics .
We love it I'm really proud of the lyrics on that . I've even said that to you the other day . Um , there's a lot of me dad's humor in there , things like , um , where you say to me when were you wearing them ? Teeth in for the dog ? You used to say she'd have a drink and the joke was , he said her teeth would go big .
So you say you're wearing them , teeth in for the dog and this thing stick with you .
So that ended up being a lyric uh you know , the thing about you know , wash your hair , you find it all the sink and , yeah , I loved writing that , yeah , yeah , I'll tell you the beginnings of that and this is going to be slightly not graphic , but I want you to not really have an imagination at this point , but the tune came to me sitting on the loo .
Oh yeah , as a lot of students do , to be fair . Uh , and I just went to the studio that morning I said to , said , scott , I want to do something where it's kind of you do this , you do that and you got old , and that's basically .
And he's like , yeah , let's do it , and that's that's where it started , right , yeah , um , of course we never , with that particular we would . We were never in the same room as as rob when he did his changes to the track . So from the writing point of view , that's obviously his business .
Whatever he wants to sing , as we've said before , but he kept a lot of ours , which I was really chuffed about because I was really proud of the lyrics . I thought it's proper comedy . It makes me laugh when I was doing it now .
So , yeah , I loved writing that song , I loved coming up with the idea , I loved creating it and I loved , I like , I like the Johnny Wilkes and Rob version . Yeah , I think I got to the point . Really , he left some of the things out , changed some of the things .
I thought , well , actually that was quite funny , I could have kept that in , but yeah , you know it's I did . I love that song .
I still love it yeah , but we enjoyed your version of it . Thank you very much you played it just before the show , so thank you for that , and then , yeah , it's Christmas is another swing track .
You wrote with Kelvin and Rob . Was it Rob's idea to be Grinch , like ?
I'll just answer this quickly , you can add what you're thinking after . Sorry , so again . Excuse me , the idea sorry , the idea was was exactly what you hear , so obviously a thought train of thought which was yeah , yeah , it's Christmas . You know it's like an anti-Christmas song yeah but like you say Grinch-like , I think we may .
On the original demo we maintained that Grinch-like thing right to the end . My final line in that song when I did the vocal was we did the Salvation Army bit at the end and it was like , yeah , it's Christmas .
It still kept that sort of vibe at the end of the song but when we recorded it in LA with Rob he kind of softened it and said it was a bit like the bad things are gone . I don't know whether he reached his conclusion , but the bad things are gone and he was like , yeah , but it's Christmas , so we accept it was nice .
His version was nicer at the end he changed it to that , his vocal style was changed to that , whereas I think we kept the Grinch thing going . What do you ? What do you ?
Yeah , that's I fully agree .
Yeah , yes .
You just tell me to shut up . You know what ?
I'm like , if I start rattling , but yeah , I think that again , I love writing that , written in , I would say , 2011, . We wrote that . And then , of course , he never saw the light of day until he mentioned about doing a Christmas album . Well , it came out . You know , it came out in 2019 , but it was 2017 when he said so we do something .
So , 2018 , I embarked on trying to write some more stuff , yeah .
Yeah , sorry , no , you're all right . Yeah , you're not really Grinchers , are you ? You're not Grinchers at Christmas . No not at all , not really , no . No , I didn't get the feeling .
No . The nice thing is about Escapism and writing a song like that is , that you can be like an actor and be the Grinch . I don't feel that way . I mean you can have the odd arguments and say , uh , yeah , yeah , my , my , I .
I said like the laugh of my auntie once and uh , she used to come around on sunday or christmas , whatever , and I , she was named kate , and I , my dad , used to say , I said to her when I saw her , I said I thought your name was bloody k , because every time you come around the corner of the car you say he's bloody gay .
But you know certain people , you know you might not want them there at Christmas , you're trying to have a relaxing time and stuff . You know that's , but I don't say anything with Grinch . Are you a Grinch ? No , I'm not a Grinch .
No , I'm not a Grinch , no , no , I mean , it gets on my nerves a little bit when Christmas in September .
But apart from that , no , I'm all right with it .
¶ Creative Process and Musical Development
So , Rich , can you tell us a little bit about the writing and recording of Coco's Christmas Lullaby ? And it's a Wonderful Life .
Yeah , absolutely , I pieced together because I wasn't kind of working with you at that point . Yeah , yeah , I pieced together . I don't know if you're aware of Charlie Brown's Christmas . Do you know that soundtrack , Charlie Brown's Christmas at that point ? Yeah , yeah , but a piece together , I don't know . Are you aware of Charlie Brown's Christmas ?
Do you know that that soundtrack , charlie Brown's Christmas ?
no , not really check it out .
It's the . I can't remember . My brother was here . He tells exactly what the name is . It's a jazz trio that did the soundtrack to the Christmas film yes . Charlie Brown's Christmas . Now that music is , it's like the goosebumps for me and they're saying , you know , like some of the classic things , but playing in a jazz style .
And I , what I did and I've done it a few times is I pieced together what instruments I could hear on on the actual track . So I , I kind of played with the piano sound and some of the double bass and it's almost like a jazz thing going on . And I and I just said we've got this and I want to do something like that to calve .
I started playing it and I started to sing and anyway , that's , he's like . He sat , sort of sat there , went wow , and we just I pieced the sounds together first , yeah , and then tried to play something with the sound .
So yeah , so uh , when , um , I went down to rob's house in wiltshire , originally with a bunch of ideas , including the ones you know , rudolph , and stuff like that , I played into it and he just sat there , stunned , genuinely . I've never seen him like that before . He just sat there and was like wow , and I was like it's a good thing , yeah , wow .
Yeah you know what I mean .
Yeah , yeah , it's a good thing . So , all these things I was playing to him , I was getting a great reaction and I think he felt so strongly about the , the , the kind of way the lyrics were the ones we'd written anyway , that he felt he wanted to sway more towards .
So he had his , what he wanted to write on it , and at the same time he just he said to us literally do you mind if I call it Coco's Christmas Lullaby ? And we went well , why not ? You know , it's nice to have it dedicated .
Yeah , it's lovely .
I love that the version that they did was so true to the original , in fact , the use of my production . We've had that conversation , but they kept it . I like that . I feel that's like a nod to any ability I might have , that . You know , they do they use the same vibe or same vibes in some cases . Yeah , yeah , but yeah , I absolutely love that .
But that's where it started with trying to make something that sounded a bit like Charlie Brown's Christmas soundtrack . Right , if you check that out , you'll know exactly yeah , sounded a bit like Charlie Brown's Christmas soundtrack , right ?
If you check that out , you'll know exactly .
Yeah , okay .
And then we've discussed Home Again before , but let's reiterate how great that song is and how it should have been on the main album Under the Radar . We know there's an extra chorus on that song , so why wasn't that included in the final version , do you think ?
I'll keep rattling to you no , no , go on no please . So are you referring to on the demo ? there's an extra yes yeah , so originally we did it and played it to you , didn't we ? We played it to you and it got like a train at the beginning and it was a bit more traditional sounding with acoustic guitars and stuff like that .
And you know , I don't know I loved it . We put cellos on it and when I did , when I started to do the electronic type version of it , I don't know , I felt I didn't want to just keep singing songs . I wanted to get a bit of this .
I wanted it to almost like transform itself into this like interesting sounding electronic sounding track , and I enjoyed that as much as the song . So it was good to do that . So that's the reason I left it off . I just thought it could have been just too much songy song . I love the way it kind of suddenly goes and it doesn't last long , does it ? Once ?
It goes into that ? It does that kind of big rising string line and then he kind of just goes away . So I think it leaves you wanting more .
Yes , it does .
So the more you'll never have .
Super Tony is one of our favourites . It's pretty different to all the other songs he's recorded . Calvin explained how it developed from watching a Phoenix Knights Peter Kay sketch from the line Too Far , Tony . So go back listeners , go back to that episode if you want to hear that story . Scott , did you enjoy writing that one ? It ?
was great fun . That was one of the ones where we were all gathered around a piano , wasn't it ?
Right , do you ?
remember .
Yeah , think in the bathroom have you got pianos in bathrooms ?
yeah , oh okay , in fact I'll say Guy bought you this piano . I was going to say it was Guy's Christmas present .
I think was it after Angels had gone in at number one or something but it was in the bathroom .
Yeah , fair enough . So it was like I'll just say you don't have to have brakes on the right , so I'll just nip in trap one . Yeah , exactly In the bathroom in Romper .
So yeah , so it was lovely . It was a really great one of those sessions . That was just a really good fun and really kind of everything flowed really quickly .
What session was that ? Was that the first time you went to LA ? I think it was .
Might have been . Yeah , I think it was . No , it was it was You're right .
So once you kind of got the I don't know , let's call them the main tracks out of the way . You started to have a little bit of fun and doing some dance things . That's kind of how that came about . I think Rob said I want to do something .
I think that was his expression A bit sort of blurry yeah , kind of vibe , yeah yeah .
It's a bit like something out of a musical , I think .
Maybe actually , yeah , yeah , yeah .
So yeah , like from Bugsy Malone or something , yeah , yeah .
So that just came out organically .
Then just playing on piano yes , and then Danny cleared off with it and all these glass smashes went on it and it was like tills going off .
Yeah tills and stuff . Danny's magic went all over it . It was brilliant .
Yeah , it sounds great .
It was fun , it was great fun yeah . And we haven't discussed Undercill yet from Under the Radar 3 . It's quite sort of dancey .
I didn't realise that would come out .
That's exactly what I'm thinking . Well , thought of Under the Radar 3 , under the Radar 3 yeah , wow , I'll have to have a listen to that , so I think .
I redid it for that yeah , amazing yeah underkill .
¶ Collaborative Music Creation Process
Now I , I thought that was going to be like a main track track when we first came up with it . Um , we've done it . We did another track called and we'll play to you at some point called , uh , cut up the dog . Okay , so the experiment was we we create . I had this idea . I mean , listen to some j dill stuff .
J dill the rapper , yeah , uh , was it your rapper singer ? I don't know , but it was a j dilla track where it was like , it sounded like to me , like it was like like going like across an album with it with a , with a , with a needle and everything being in the about the same tempo and in the same key so you can immediately go .
Complete change in sound and feel . But it all kind of fitted together . So what we did ?
We sat in a studio and we we made sort of two bar one bar tracks , so like get an electric piano and go , do , do , do , do , do , do , and then we'd put that in and then we'd do something in the same key on a , like a , with a rock guitar going , okay , in the same tempo .
So we put them all together and I randomly cut up all the bits so it kind of goes , but it's a continuous thing .
Yeah .
So a really weird sound and we started to write this track . Uh , underkill over it . Uh , in the meantime we kept the basis that to do this daft dog . Um , uh , we're going to do an EP . It never came out yeah , with jazz stuff on it and stuff like that , but that's how it started . There's weird sound .
And then we straightened it up by Scott putting on a bass that tied everything together . So on its own it was weird . it was like as if the needle's dropping randomly on it and that's how that started sort of glued it together a bit . The lyrics were written . That was the first time I really got into lyrics . I got so into lyrics at that point .
That was the changing point for me . I started to write these lyrics and I love writing it . I got so into lyrics at that point . That was the changing point for me . I started to write these lyrics and I love writing it and I've loved writing lyrics ever since . And then he was doing the Take that . It was 2011 . He was doing Take that in gigs Progress .
It was Progress . Yeah Well , you'd know I wouldn't , but I remember it was 2011 .
And he was up in Manchester and he came down to the studio in Burslem our studio in Burslem to do the recording and that's where he , you know , the night before he was singing to 60,000 people and he came to our little studio in Burslem and put the vocals down on , is that when he ?
put his dogs with him , His dogs yeah , that's when we stood on the corner looking up and people would drive by and say it's . Robbie Williams yeah yeah , looking at the pub , his dad's old pub , the .
Red Lion , oh , the Red Lion , yeah .
Yeah , and just pointing to all that , to hide it and like bits of bobs and burslems and stuff like that , yeah , love that , I love that , but yeah it was a great little thing .
Yeah , yeah , it was it was quite a while ago then , yeah . Yeah , it is I didn't realise it was that old .
Yeah , when was that track ?
Well , Under the Radar 3 must have been 2018 , I think Is it .
These things don't go away , do they ? It's nice that they drop the organ of the answer , isn't it ? Yeah , it is .
Yeah indeed , we know that you've got lots of unreleased songs that you've written with Rob . Can you tell us about any of those ?
So yeah , he has played some of them on Instagram . Played one or two of them .
He's played wonderful rock and roll outrageous on Instagram Live , so maybe you could do any of those . Ring a bell for you . Do you remember those ? Absolutely ?
yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , I might go to enough for rock and roll . Well , that's a great one , because that whether we bored you .
I bored you with that story before , but your dad used to , because your dad was a musician , as you've already said earlier . He used to say it's near enough for rock did he say near enough for rock and roll . My dad used to say it's near enough for jazz . Yeah , so perhaps my dad was slightly more sophisticated . That's what it is .
No , no , it's exactly what it is , yeah .
I always feel like I have a superiority to myself when we're together , but I don't like to say it . But importantly , I think what Scott was saying from a lyric point of view , it kind of made more sense to be near enough for rock and roll . Yeah , yeah , that's how exactly it came about .
We were in a shop in a friend of ours worked in a shop and they got these Fender guitars , fender acoustic cutaways and they were made in China . And you picked it up and you started playing it and he's like , actually this is great , this is great 125 quid . It's ridiculous . And I kept thinking , oh , you know .
And I kept thinking , oh you know , these days , all the because we're from Stoke , it was all the mugs and cars and best guitars all made in China . But they play near enough for rock and roll .
It was just it almost wrote itself , because it's like it's not cheap and nasty anymore they're actually quite good for the money , you know they're making better mugs than the Stoke-on-Trent people .
Is that the advertising campaign ?
they're actually quite good , it's the old film with what's his name in Dudley Moore yeah , it is back in the end . He says boxy but good Volvo's boxy but good , but yeah it was just he literally wrote that himself . But the groove on that way one day I keep , I keep getting the , the vibe that's going to come out at some point .
So uh , yeah , love that one . What ? was the other one , sorry , outrageous outrageous , yeah , yeah it was . It was it was written for . Uh , the idea was written when we went out to la in 2015 , so it was like the pre-empting of that writing session . So take some stuff with us . And that was one that , again , I'd put a load of sounds together .
I said to Kel what do you think of this ? And I played him some track and he said , well , I'm not sure , it's a little bit kind of what I was playing . It was a little bit . He didn't feel any kind of . So I said , okay , we'll scrap that . But we kept all the sounds and started to come up with that .
And at that , but kept all the sounds and started to come up with that , uh , and at the time , and with rock and roll , kind of very influenced by prince . I love that . It's almost like we've said this before . It's almost like prince is a musical genre . It's you've got jazz , you've got rock .
Prince is like his own sound and I feel feel you are able to do that , because it's like we're playing some Prince music .
Yeah .
We're playing some jazz music . So you know , the same kind of drum machines , the same , well , the same drum machine , in fact Linn drum .
Yeah .
How geeky . Everyone's so interested in the Linn drum so we arrived at his house and it was Thanksgiving Day . We'd been into the studio to listen to the kind of things we'd got and he just absolutely was all over outrageous . So much so that we went downstairs . He put it on in this middle of a party , in front of everybody .
He went listen to this , everybody , I put it on and we all go . They're all going wow , Is this you ?
And he said well , it will be all kind of thing .
It was weird , but yeah , it was written for that and again , I think it's just . I personally think it's quite outstanding . I love it . Yeah , rob , if you're listening , don't put it on under the radar .
Put it on a proper album put it on over the radar , over the radar , yeah , while in the radar . Put it on a proper album . Put it on over the radar , over the radar , yeah , while in the radar , on everyone's radar and then what about ?
Wonderful ?
Rich , you're deferring to my memory again , aren't ?
you . Yes , I am go again again .
Wonderful . I'll tell you the only , the only story that I came up with , a tune and we kind of we both it's been a little bit of an impasse . Yeah , musically , in a situation where we're , it's a nice word impasse yeah yeah , and you did question why we were doing swing music .
Yeah , yeah , wow . I wish I hadn't tapped into your memory . Now Don't want to put that one back .
There's nothing wrong with that . We've done a lot of work towards the swing album . Not everything got used and I was there still going ? Oh , I'm enthusiastic about swing . Let's do some more . Don't know what we're going to do with it , but there we go .
So I understand the frustration , and it's not like I'm not trying to bring it up for that reason but I'm saying that so I laboured the thing with that . I kept going with it even after we weren't doing anything with it together . So when we were due to go out to LA , the nod was given to me that he perhaps wants to write some swing stuff .
I thought , oh crap , what have I got ? Oh , I remembered this tune I got . So he said about swing music . When we got there and I said I've got a bit of a swing tune , do you want to hear me ? So I put it on and all it got on is piano , a bit of bass that we rattled together and some of the guitar before .
We didn't want to do it , but I I then said this is it so I've got ? So there's no vocal . So I just said I'm going to sing it . I just went , you know , started to sing it and he he looks at me like , as he's done on only a very rare occasion kind of went um back on time again . He said , um , can you , uh , can you sing that ? Again ?
I went , yeah , okay . So I put it back on and sang it again . He said that it's just you were there , obviously . Yeah , yeah , yeah that's absolutely amazing , I can't believe it , you know , kind of thing .
And so we then embarked on writing the lyrics , because there was no lyrics apart from the line was how do you do all those wonderful things that you do , which ?
I loved it because it was kind of it was like a big , it sounded like an old song , yeah , it does that kind of lyric , not lyric , but the title being how do you do all those wonderful things ? You might not call the song this . You might not call the song . You want to call it the short word . Yeah , yeah , like he's called it wonderful .
Yeah , that's how it started and again , I do think that's going to see the light of day . I really do , and hopefully in a really strong way . Not to it's hard sometimes to see songs .
I want them to be out there , I want people to enjoy the music , but it's hard to see something you know has got more legs than just something that someone might put on In a way it's sort of going to waste , if you like .
But I think it's a much stronger song than that and I do believe if he does do a new Swing album then that's going to play a part , I believe . I hope Touch wood Please .
Well , there's a couple that you mentioned on our last interview . I'm just wondering uh , bionic and La Nina Susha .
Yeah , what do you remember ? Those ? Who do you remember ?
I do remember them , but I don't know .
Bionic you didn't do .
No , no , that was for my session in 2006 .
Yes , yeah , yeah , yeah , Uh , I like Bionic . I think it's really really . Have you heard it ?
Yes , I have . Yeah , you know what I'm talking about . Yeah , right , sorry , I can't remember , I don't know . Bionic , I think Calvin .
I think Calvin brought it up , didn't he ?
Yes , yes , he did .
It's just one of those things when you put it on you think , ooh , ooh , ooh , what's this Asusha was ?
was that again ? Was that not a session ? That was earlier session .
Yeah , yeah , before I was on the scene yes , it was because it was the girl he was seeing that later sold the story to the son . Yeah , yeah , she was actually doing a bit of a vocal on it when I say vocal , a shout on it .
And he asked about it because he for some other project album that he maybe is closer to the you know , so maybe it gets included in that . Because I sent off a new version of it which he realistically kind of went oh , you've made it a bit soft . I went alright , have the original back then .
Don't let me put you off so he may seem the lighter day , but yeah , kind of an
¶ Funny Memories With Matt Lucas
odd track , that one .
I think , kind of very odd sounding dirty punky vibe , punky vibe punky electronic yeah , interesting it is left of centre so have you got any funny moments or memories that you'd be happy to share ? I mean , you've shared quite a few already , sharing a bed in Rob's LA house . Any other moments that you'd like to share , that you'd be happy to share .
I'd be happy to share them anyway .
We've literally probably got thousands and thousands of funny moments what are your faves ?
yeah ?
I think , as we kind of alluded to earlier , we kept to the saying in a situation where you know , I think if you're left to your own thoughts and you're trying to make conclusions of things , you become unstuck a little bit . So we , you become unstuck a little bit . So we were constantly helping each other . From what do you think At ?
least you've actually got another opinion . Danny and Kelvy were kind of doing their thing as much as we were doing our thing and we were staying at the top of Kind of counsel each other , don't you ? We were staying at the top of Rob's house in the flat there it was like a living room , kitchen , bedroom , bathroom , so flat there , like a flat thing was .
It's like a living room , kitchen , yeah , bedroom , bathroom . So it's like a little little self-contained flat anyway yeah , we got the nod that matt lucas was coming around to the house oh yeah , as you do as you get that kind of yeah and uh .
We discussed oh wow , you know we love a little britain at the time , you know yeah well , my first question was who's Matt Lucas ?
yeah , yeah , I was like I don't know who , matt Lucas is George . Doves .
Oh , yeah , yeah so we genuinely discussed this and said if we see well , if we see him , you know he's going to come around and state Rob's , if we see him , we're going to go and normally famous people , as you probably were , kind of introduce hi , I'm Matt , yeah , so Kind of interesting . Hi , I'm Matt , yeah . So we knew that might happen .
So we made the plan to say if he does that . I'm going to go yeah .
I know he's probably never heard that before .
No , no , no , no yeah , he's like , oh , not that again . Well , the day came when he was supposed to turn up , but he never came Right .
So we were sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea . On another day , two days later maybe we walk into the hallway and Maraid Rob's housekeeper at the time said oh , there was Matt Lucas , right in front of us in the hallway . So he went hi , I'm Matt and she's going . Oh , this is Richard , this is Scott .
And he said , hi , I'm Matt and we's going oh , this is Richard , this is Scott , and he said hi , I'm Matt , and we went alright nice to meet you so we ran upstairs , we ran upstairs , to the little place we ran upstairs like kids smart Lucas , smart Lucas , wow , yeah .
So we immediately got YouTube and started to watch some things , and he got one when he was doing the George Dawes one , when he stood in the george doors thing when he'd you know , do it like a song .
Anyway , I invented the tree , yeah that's what he yeah , yeah so we listened up .
We were killing ourselves laughing . Went down to the studio , started to do some work in a mort's mat again . So he walks up and he said , um , started to chat to us I'm doing some , would you like to write some songs ? We like , yeah , we'll have some songs about lucas as well . What's Matt again ?
So he walks up and he said started to chat to us I'm doing some , would you like to write some songs ? We're like yeah , we'll write some songs about Lucas as well . He loved Morning Sun at the time that it was being released . He's saying I can't wait to hit the light of day and it's great . What a great song . Lad's brilliant .
And we were like you know . And then he I said oh yeah , what was that thing we saw a bit ago ? Scott Was the one I said was it lesbians ? Oh , yeah , yeah , yeah , that's it . We'd literally just heard it two minutes earlier upstairs Probably never heard it before , and he said , oh yeah , that's it . Starts to perform it in front of us .
A little private performance . I've got another one for you . He did that one in 1942 .
performance he did that one in 1942 , I invented the shoe and he did this thing and it again an absolutely surreal moment . It goes on . We watched the pilot . He'd done it in the middle of LA , watched it in Rob's bedroom with him , so we're sitting watching this thing and he's in it . This is weird we're in the room with him .
He's in it and he stayed in that white room in the front . We'd have this big laugh . I had to give that room up for him .
I was in the white room . Oh , were you yeah .
And he stayed in this white room . Not the rest of the house was white , but this one room was white and there was a leather wrestling . You know , you see those like a leather man , the man oh , I know the martial arts . One human weight it's got the weight of a man like that .
So this joke had been going on all day where we'd take it round the front and things like that . I didn't do that . You'd ring the doorbell and run off and then you'd open the front door and it just goes full body weight and he did that on you , didn't he ?
yeah , go , I did so , scott . I've rearranged my room . Do you want to come just watch ? See what you think I'm thinking ? Gullible , interesting , yeah , what have you done ? Now the door , this freaking great big dummy , falls straight on me and everyone's laughing so , yeah , we decide to put this leather man in .
After this , we put it in matt lucas's bed . I better mind it's a black leather man . Sounds great . Yeah , in a white room . You're going to spot it , aren't you ? You're going to walk in the room and spot it . So he went into the room and we all sat outside like this , waiting , waiting , waiting this is going to be brilliant he'd have a bat an eyelid .
I think he knew we were playing a trick on him . He's like , yeah , this one before . Yeah , the old martial arts dummy trick .
The old martial arts dummy trick but yeah , I mean surreal moments by a long shot . Yeah , absolutely . Hi , I'm Robbie Williams and you're listening to Robbie Williams Rewind with the Champions .
Scott , anything stick out for you ? Erm , I'm just trying to think .
Erm , I've got another one of you obviously go the champions , scott , anything stick out for you . Um , I'm just trying to think I've got another one if you want me to go .
Yeah , Are you on about the one where I went out into ? Oh , go on . There's a couple of Garth moments , there's one which are quite funny . Right intriguing , Was there was it the one where go on ? Was it the one where ?
Go on you . Well , I won't tell the story , you just join in when you I don't know which one it'll be .
So you go on . You say which one are you on about ? You'll remember it better than I will and probably have better comedy timing with it .
Well , we arrived one time it was the morning after we'd arrived , so it was the first morning Go in the kitchen , had a cup of tea , so Went outside Because he's got loads of dogs . He's like the Lord mind the dog crap . Yeah , yeah . I don't think you managed to do that . That was okay . I wanted to . You negotiated that .
Yeah , so we went out onto the lawn , it overlooked part of LA , so it was like mountains and lots of houses . You could see Right up there Beverly Hills , right on the hill . Yeah , oh , wow . This is fantastic , you know , wow , this is amazing . What on earth are we doing here ? Sat down on this sun lounge with a cup of tea , lean back and went .
I've chucked the tea right over his head .
Literally the whole thing went . That was my first venture into Rob's garden .
So he's there , covered in tea , covered in tea , rich , covered in tea . Yeah , he's like , yeah , covered in tea . What were Covenant in red ? Yeah , covenant in red . What was the one you're thinking of ? The ?
swimming pool one . Do you remember that ? No , of course the shoot , do you remember ? So he had a chef at the time , a really lovely guy called Graham , scottish guy , and Graham would always say come on , lads . He's like , use the pool , it's not an ornament .
And of course you go to someone's house at first , you don't want to just get straight in your clothes you jump in the pool .
Do you know what I ?
Mean you feel a bit self conscious , you're trying to be polite you're trying to be exactly that because , same as us , I really don't use a phone , so no one's been in the pool , you know , have they because it's like you just don't want the pool already , you know what I mean yeah so , uh , so anyway , a couple of couple of friends had turned up to see us
I don't know this
story . You were there , you were on the balcony watching me , um , laughing , and so so , um , they were kind of goes anyone ? Does anyone uh , maria , I think it was anyone want to go in the pool anyone ? And I'm like do you know , I really do want to go in the pool ? Yeah , that'd be great .
And he got this shoot and everything that went down to it and it's like that looks like fun . Yeah , you know , I really do want to go in the pool . Yeah , that'd be great . And he'd got this shoot and everything that went down to it and he's like that looks like fun . You know I'm in if everyone else is .
Looked like everyone else was going to be in , hadn't he ? Anyway , you remember this now , I know , go on , listen . So , murray's like no problem , go get your shorts on . So I went and got my shorts on and whatnot , towel and everything , and no one else came . It was just me and everyone's on the . Do you remember this now ?
I think we've talked to you .
It was when a couple of friends I remember Steve and . I think he came . Our friends came over , oh , Steve right , yeah , yeah . And they were all on the balcony . Just watching you , just watching me , and my mum goes go on , go on , then go on the shoot and I just like a kid gosh . I feel so stupid on my own .
The only one hee down the shoot , splash nice one and back inside .
I think .
I think go on everyone was just on the mark and you're like , yeah , nice one . So yeah , that was . That was a slightly humiliating experience , to say the least .
I think it's important what we were saying earlier , that you know you don't want to . You never go to people's houses and I mean , don't take this wrong , you can do what you want to do , but the point is you don't . You just don't do it . Naturally , you walk that way you're kind of reserved a little bit .
But there's you like . There's me on the chute , brilliant , with everyone laughing at me , yeah , so anyway , because I had to switch it on and everything didn't I . Oh , he stood for you . No , they had to go .
The chute has water , obviously water , otherwise you wouldn't go anywhere you'd just stop so switch on the chute because the thing's just for me Like oh , brilliant .
Anyway , yeah so that's , that was quite . That was quite a funny one .
You obviously felt more than yeah , yeah , yeah , I mean no , you know no one was bothered , it was just a funny thing .
Yeah , you know yeah so if you could rewind back to one moment in your career and relive it , what would it be ?
I , I , really , I really enjoyed the writing sessions . Um , as much as it's lovely when something sees the light of day , the sad thing about that is you know you're suddenly up for criticism . I've done things and you don't want to read that someone thinks your song is crap , basically , uh , so you haven't got that , have you ?
You haven't got that in it within that environment . You've got plaudits in a small way , but they're all going wow , well done , that's a great song , love that thanks , thanks , I'll do , I'll go home . now , when it comes out to the light of day , and especially in this modern age , you've got people waiting over the keyboard going , oh , something's come out .
That's criticising , so I don't enjoy that side of it , but I do enjoy the writing .
¶ Reflections on Creativity and Collaboration
I enjoyed being in LA and I know that sounds a bit like well , why wouldn't ?
you enjoy being out .
But we were working . We weren't really the US authorities , we were staying with a friend .
That's another funny story .
Slight tangent , Go on go on , I know what you're going to say .
Yeah , this was funny actually . So when we first got there , speaking of working in LA , we didn't work .
We didn't speak .
We weren't paid anyway . So we got there and in , you know , obviously you get to America and like the police and the authorities are way more serious . Yes , they make our police like lovely teddy bears , you know . And we got there and there's this big guy .
I went through which went through get your ass in there and he's like sitting there like this and he goes next . You know , he sort of don't even look at you . He's like oh , welcome to America , and where are you staying ? He says where are you staying ? What are you doing ? And he said I'm edgy again . Don't say it we've got it all .
We're staying with a friend got it all sorted yeah what's your ? Yeah , his address you're doing , you're doing business in my country , my country . He said no , sir , I'm fine sir , no work said so is that when you're leaving , great accent isn't ?
it is that when you're leaving South African .
Yeah , yeah , south African , so he said is that when you're leaving yeah , yes , we'll leave then that's when we're going . You make damn sure you do . It's like this here , it's like that . And then he says give me the address of your friend , right ? So we're like Clarendon Drive . You know he goes , his face completely changes .
Because you know where it was Is your friend Michael Jackson .
Have a nice day . Is your friend Michael Jackson . Have a nice day . It was amazing . I completely changed we were laughing our heads off . We were like that's good , he's all friendly now you just said yes and walked through . Yeah , he is anyway yeah , so , yeah , anyway , sorry . So you were explaining about where you would like to relive .
Well , yeah , I think it is those . I enjoyed those moments . I enjoyed the creativity in the environment . It was , yeah , and I talked about pressure early , but it's not normal pressure , it's a different kind of pressure . Yeah , and I feel that I quite enjoy that kind of pressure . Yeah , it was nice .
Yeah , it was nice , it was nice really I enjoyed it .
I enjoyed that part of my life and I'm still doing it now . In fact , I do find , though and this is the honest truth there's a lot of inconvenience about flying out to LA Ten-hour flight and then you're driven to his house and then you've unpacked your stuff and then maybe a day and a half later , you can get something done .
If it's in this country , you can just go there , do two days with , come on the train and get back again .
So I'll actually , yeah , I enjoy , I enjoy that kind of convenience more , but I would I think I'd go back to that creative time and , yeah , that was great , I enjoyed that yeah , for me slightly boring answer , but I wouldn't actually be anywhere else .
Again , I don't feel the desire to be yeah I see it for what it is . I'm more interested in moving forward it is . It is a slightly boring answer and people have probably said this before , but but I really do .
Well , I think , oh , is that right ?
well , I think , back to think okay well I think I think back to things that have places that I've been and I'm really grateful for them . I'm really , I'm really interested to to , you know , reflect on them . We talk about them all the time me and rich and I really enjoy that , but no , I don't .
I I feel very odd about being somewhere in the past yeah you know I'm excited about the future yeah yeah , I really am , and I love you know doing this now you know , and what projects we've got going on at the moment I'm dead excited about them you know . So yeah , that's my answer you made me feel stupid .
That's why I wanted you to go first .
I was answering the question about if you could relive something of the past .
Stay in the present . Michael , yeah , you're right .
Buddy . Borey , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah yeah , so some questions that we asked rich last time we'd like to ask you as well , scott , which you can change your answers if you'd like to . Uh , from last time . Not that we can remember what they were , but you know . Uh , so what's the best thing about working with Rob ? First to Scott .
Best thing about working with Rob . I think I'm most impressed by Rob's creativity . Seriously , you know , when we sit and have a session with him , the way that he analyses things , him , the way that he analyzes things and the way that his idea generation is just really inspiring and interesting to me . Um , he's got a different way of thinking about things .
He says things you don't expect . Um , you know which is ? It's brilliant .
I love that yeah , you know um yeah cool over to you . In a way , he's probably stolen my answer , because it sounds like something I could have said before that , uh , yeah , he doesn't get the credit .
The so I do enjoy that side because yeah because ultimately , he's the , he's the conduit to which any ideas I'm or you might have , yeah , see the light of day . Yeah , and and and I think his take on it is very important I'm sometimes ultimately shocked by how he changes stuff . How he changes stuff for the better .
You know , I feel I'm kind of a musical person . Uh , I think music , I think that's what I do . I don't do anything else really that well , uh , anyway , yeah , but the point , the point I'm making , I'm making is . It's hard to get in the head of other people . When it actually manifests itself , I can say that word .
But when it comes out of the other person and they take what you've done and do something different , when you think , wow , you know , and as I've said before , he doesn't get credit for doing that he ends up with well , you know , he's not a puppy by any stretch , certainly in this modern you . Well , you know , he's like some kind of .
He's not a puppet , is he by any stretch ? Certainly in this modern . You might have accused somebody of that being in Take that or in those early days . But you know , there was always obviously something there brewing away .
He wouldn't be the person he was , but I find it's that expansion of our ideas , or the ability to actually maybe listen to something we've done and say , actually , why would I change that ? That's amazing and that's a real compliment . That's a huge strength . Some other people wouldn't have that , they'd have to go . Well , I've got to change it .
I've got to put my own thing on it , even if it's not a good idea , and I think he learned that lesson . He learned that lesson as he's gone on , but he's got the strength to be able to go . No , that's not , let's do that , and I think that's important great and Scott coming to you first .
What's the song you're most proud of ?
the song I'm most proud of today , today , to be honest , morning song . Yeah , you know , it really is .
I mean , I thought that was a magic moment , that where that we um shared and and it was it just happened to be the first one that we ever wrote um in that sense together , you know , but um , yeah , really , really proud of that track in so many ways , you know yeah .
I could have said Morning Sun , I love Morning Sun , and it's you've just given that one , so I know . But all I was going to say was I'm the same one . No , no , I'm also going to . At the same time , I'm going to steal . I'm going to steal .
Something that you've just said and this is pretty , I'm not being candid about it is that we've got stuff that , as you're aware of , hasn't seen the light of day yet , and stuff we're doing now . Yeah , and our ability has got stronger , I believe . Yeah yeah . And I think I can't wait , in a way , to inflict these new things on them .
Good word inflict . Yeah , I love this , I think there's again swing , music-wise .
Maybe I'm speaking out of tune , but this is what I believe . I don't think there's anybody necessarily around him that does it as well as we do . I'm sure there's people who are quite able to do it , and perhaps I'm saying the wrong thing here , but I do believe we do it well and we've hit that point where I think that we .
The new stuff is is probably where I'm at .
I love morning , sun .
I love , I love everything we've done . I don't think you hit that point where it's become an actual out there record . It's had a lot of thought and a lot of effort and they're all my favourites . Yes , Without being too but the new stuff , because I think our ability is better now .
Yeah yeah , I agree .
Our judgment's better . Yeah yeah , whether that's just my opinion or not , I don't know .
¶ Robbie Williams Music and Future Plans
You're looking forward .
Yeah , so what's in store for Daft dog productions then ? What other things have you got planned ? What direction are you going in ?
um well , we are doing some more swing stuff , that's all that's all I'll kind of say at this point . Yeah , um , and we certainly , um , we've got ideas to do .
Well , if we put a project together that either we could do or rob might want to do as well , yeah , so it's , it's , we've got a little idea to , to , to put a bunch of things together , of a genre perhaps you know I know that's cool , let's call it for once of a better expression dance year , disco year , type music . I'm gonna say it like that .
We love that .
When we stand at night in the pub talking . That's what we really kind of . Looking forward to Not that we're in the pub every night but on a Wednesday , On a Wednesday yeah . We get quite vibed up and excited about that , don't we ? We love that stuff , don't we ?
I think what will come out of that will be some really strong stuff , because we love it yeah . And it might be something that maybe Rob might latch onto some of it . I don't know , but I do believe from our own point of view that's what we might try and see if that .
It'd be probably the first time we're doing something , just not for a project but something that we love doing and then see what comes of it .
I think there's a real strength in that in general , which is just doing something for the sake of doing it . It starts with you guys .
Let's just make something great .
Let's not worry about its end sort of home . And then you just have fun .
Then and then good things happen .
Do you know what I mean ?
And we're also writing something that's going to be for a show or potentially for a show . Yes , we're not written it yet , but it's on the cards for us to do . That's an interesting project , when it ends , when it sees the light of day on us . But you've got to dip your toe in the water and see what happens , could be quite a big thing yeah .
But it's an interesting project .
Very interesting .
yeah , that's also good .
Whether it pays bills a lot .
That's nothing to do with anything .
So , Scott , have you got a favourite Robbie song ?
It can be any song , any of his songs . Well , I remember there was the sort of 50th birthday message and thing , my favourite song in that that I cited .
It's difficult to choose because there's a lot of his songs that I really like , but this particular one was a cover version of Lewis Taylor's track called Love Light , and I've talking about being a music fan of somebody . I've been for many , many years a fan of Lewis Taylor and I heard Rob's version of it and I just thought it was freaking great .
Yeah .
You know , I really like his take on it and it really does something different from Lewis Taylor's version . So that's . You know I could listen to that until the cows come out , right . I just think it's really good . So yeah , I mean I could go on . I love that song .
So yeah , I would , I mean I could go on , but I really I really like that track , um , is there anything else that I would cite as something that really I just think ? I just think rock dj is an amazing song and it's great because brothers brothers andrew , spencer and scott were involved with that one .
So that's um , that's good yeah you know it's involved , heavily involved .
Yeah , that one . So that's good , you know , heavily involved .
That's another story , so Rich , going over to you .
Well , I'm asking the same question , obviously again . I said something on that . Put Mr Bojangles on the birthday thing . But I think it almost can't stop there for me yeah . And I have also said in the past . I love tripping and quite like radio as well . I love Supreme . Is it called Supreme ?
Supreme yeah .
I like , come Undone as well . I was going to say that one as well . I keep rattling them off , yeah , yeah , and I might be more of the hits type person , because I'm a very pop thing and I know a lot of fans might like things that are slightly obscure , which is good , because when our tracks don't make it they're quite obscure .
So they might like them . That's always good . But I do like things because , because they're successful , I kind of know why they're successful . Yeah , a bit of a matrix moment for me in music is that I know why that's successful . Because it's ace , yeah , yeah , exactly exactly , yeah , yeah , yeah .
So I've listed a few there , but yeah , yeah , thank you , yeah .
I would just add one more to the list , which I think the track is amazing and the video is freaking amazing as well which is rebox , yes it's just that blows my mind , that song I could listen to it over and over .
It's so cool one of the coolest things , I think he's ever done .
Do you think the backing vocals ?
aren't it .
I was a bit unsure about them to be honest some guy from Stoke somewhere , yeah , but no , that is , that's yeah , we love that .
Yeah , we do so and .
I kind of played you my take on it last time ?
yeah , you did . I still haven't finished it yet yeah love to hear more of that . Yeah well , thank you for joining us on the show . We could talk to you for hours and we will continue to after the show yes indeed .
It's lovely to see your creative partnership and hear your story right from the beginning , and I think Lucy and I can see why Rob enjoys working with you . We can feel why Rob enjoys working with you , and long may it continue . We know there's a lot of more songs in the vault and , as you say , you're working on more , so we need to watch this space .
We hope for more , yeah , and can we say thank you to you Because the way that you've interviewed us has been so enabling and relaxed , and so thank you . It's been a real honour to be involved and to be asked , and you've come such a long way , and set up all these amazing mic stands in the studio .
So thank you so much , it's a pleasure .
Oh yeah , let's do it all again .
Oh , gagging there . I just wanted to also add to that when does your humour end ? Where does it begin ? Where does it ? begin .
Where does your humour begin , I ?
couldn't remember . But yeah , at the same time I'm sorry if we've rattled on in a kind of tangenty way .
No , it's good . The more content , the better Rich .
All right , okay , I woke him up when you were doing your bit .
Oh , that's fine Wake off . No , no , thank you . Thank you as well , it's a pleasure . Thank you very much . Thank you .
And I'm sure we'll come back for part three .
Yeah , let's go and have a beer . Yeah , yeah , yes , okay , I'll drink it . Cheers guys , thanks for joining us . Thank you , cheers , thanks , cheers .
Robbie Williams Rewind .