Escape to LA

Robbie Williams cannot escape celebrity or even the occasional multimillion-pound record deal, if the past few months are any indication. Still best loved in his native United Kingdom, his fifth and latest album, Escapology, is the one that looks set to further define and confirm this 28-year-old’s place in popular culture. Welcome back the man who is rewriting the book on the modern-day icon with his name printed in every chapter, line and verse.

Since 1997 Williams has been flaunting his solo personality from Stoke-on-Trent to sun-bleached Malibu. With a brand-new record deal from EMI, the company that, in the same year, gave Mariah Carey her freedom for a paltry £20-million plus, it would seem that artists the calibre of Williams are finally dictating to their record companies and in the process turning the likes of EMI on their heads.

In 2001 Williams did his big-band album, Swing When You’re Winning, with its memorable live performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which brought the house down and shot his album sales into record numbers.

With a new home in California and a tan to boot, Williams set about writing what would become Escapology in early 2002 in record-breaking time, with imperfections being relished rather than polished away. “I’ve never enjoyed the process of recording. I’ve always found it very boring,” he recalls. “I’ve always found it very lonely. But the Swing album changed all that because it was just amazing. I was working with a 60-piece orchestra a lot of the time, singing to them playing in the studio, which I never thought I’d be able to do and pull it off. And it was a joy. I thought it’s just a shame that recording my own material can’t be this much fun. And then, blow me if it hasn’t been as much fun as the Swing album on this album as well. It’s been amazing,” he beams.

Like most artists worth their salt, Williams did not want to rehash his last pop record (Sing When You’re Winning), or even Swing for that matter. Rather he and long-time co-writer Guy Chambers returned to the source that made them both great. “We went back to the basics of the first record [Life thru a Lens],” Williams confirms. “It was rehearsed in a room with a band. For this album we did exactly the same thing. I got five musicians in a room for a week. They learned all the songs and then came out and I sang with the band. It was really simple. It was great.”

Listening to the new CD, the change in lifestyle and relocation to the land of the twang has done wonders, if only because Williams feels completely relaxed and happy with West Coast living. “It’s everything I dreamed of and more,” he explains excitedly. It’s what I thought being a singer entailed when I was a kid, because it all came true when I moved to Los Angeles. Lots of friends, a lovely lifestyle and the sun out — it was amazing. I think that comes across in a lot of the songs.”

So what then is in the album title? It came to Williams as part of his induction into the City of Angels. “How I hit upon Escapology was, I was riding up Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles,” he recalls. “Laurel Canyon is supposedly Houdini’s house, but in reality it’s not. I bought this book [LA Exposed] that tells you about all the rumours and what the truth is. According to this book the whole Houdini estate thing, up on the right as you are going up, is a big myth. As I was travelling up I was thinking about Houdini and his posters and the images were amazing. That and the fact that I was actually thinking of a way not to do the photo shoot for the album,” he jokes.

The new disc serves Williams well in helping to get his message across to a public often keener to criticise than they are to really listen to where the artist is at. Monsoon is one such track that illustrates the opportunity for Williams to have his say perfectly. “I know an awful lot of stuff is written about me and there’s a lot of speculation and you have no forum to actually present yourself where people get an honest view of you,” he says. “So a lot of the time I can only do it through my lyrics. And Monsoon is a very honest version of what I think is going on.”

Another poignant moment of self-reflection and respect comes through in the rather obviously titled Nan’s Song. “It’s a song where I completely wrote everything — the words and the music,” Williams proudly says. “I am constantly amazed that I have some creativity — to actually present something that I’ve done and look at it is amazing. To have people listen to it, genuinely enjoy it and cry when they listen to it — it’s just phenomenal, often unbelievable,” he gushes.

The album’s clincher, though, is Feel, Escapology‘s first single and already the UK’s first number-one hit from the record. “It’s just a beautiful song,” Williams concludes. “There’s not much I can say about it. You listen to it. It’s a beautiful song. I pour my heart out. The vocal’s great. I couldn’t redo the demo because that vocal take was the best, so the voice that you hear on the album is the same one as the demo. I just couldn’t sing it as well as I did that day.”

Love him, hate him, be intimidated by his genius, his sincerity or his magnetic personality — one thing cannot be denied, Williams is keeping British pop music vital and dynamic at a time when it needs it more than it ever has. “I think there are a lot of closet Robbie Williams fans out there and I think this album may make it possible that the few hundred people that haven’t bought any of my albums yet could buy this one now,” he says.

You don’t need to like Williams, you merely need to engage yourself in the music he makes in order to appreciate his talent. He may not be an Oxford graduate, but a cum laude winner in life he most certainly is. Some people collect stamps, coins and even music — Williams collects converts and with them their hard-earned cash. Smarter than that you just don’t get, especially one you can sing along with.