GQ (Octobre 2012)

For years, Williams has lived in a spotless gated community way up on Mulholland Drive, overlooking the San Fernando Valley on one side and greater Los Angeles on the other, and where he counts Beach Boy Brian Wilson and Slash as his neighbours. His house is predictably enormous, and has so many higgledy-piggledy rooms, stairs and lifts it looks as though it were designed by someone with a particular penchant for Escher. No profile of a Hollywood celebrity is complete without a clause describing how the subject "pads" across the room, although in this case it is difficult to see what else would fit; the carpets are so sumptuous - Jeez, even the kitchen tiles are sumptuous - that you feel as though the house is one big extravagant playpen.

Given the toys, the clutter and the interior, it feels a little like the loft conversion furnished by the Tom Hanks character in Big, only with some seriously expensive art and recording equipment thrown in for good measure. His computer is covered in Post-it notes covered in lyrics, song titles and ideas. He'll regularly trawl the internet for subjects to write about, picking up words and phrases ("With the Take That thing, I wanted to be on top of my game, so I went in prepared with some ideas. You know the [line] "standing on the edge of forever" [from the single "The Flood"]? It's from a Star Trek episode from the Sixties"). There is a Willy Wonka quality about Robbie Williams that he seems quite happy to indulge; it is in no way sinister, though, and any megalomaniacal leanings he might have are tempered by the tracksuits he insists on wearing. In this respect he has the air of Prince crossed with Jimmy Savile - a cockiness and a natural ability to charm, offset by deliberate self-deprecation (and the occasional bout of self-loathing) and a rough-hewn wit. (He's also one of the few people to have asked what a word meant when I used it in a question.) He's even resigned himself to a life without success in America.

Williams, 38, has a small team of cooks, assistants, security guards and chauffeurs, all of whom appear extremely at ease with their boss. This is the house he shares with his wife, Ayda, whom he married in August 2010 after a four-year relationship. They are expecting their first child any moment.

I've always had a soft spot for Robbie Williams. I had a dinner in one of the private rooms in London's Groucho Club about 15 years ago, and halfway through, Robbie burst in from the club downstairs, looking for the loo. Liking what he saw (I think they may have been blonde, blonde and ginger) he stayed for the rest of the evening, spending the last hour sitting next to a Condé Nast circulation executive, discussing the pros and cons of point-of-sale promotional activity at retail.

It is his inability to leave the past behind which continues to endear him to people, and makes the likes of GQ eager to smother him with yet more awards. Because, let's face it, he deserves his success: not only is he innately talented, he also wears his success extraordinarily lightly. And although he lives a remarkable, privileged life, he actually hasn't changed much at all.

As we sat in his studio in Mulholland, discussing his new album, Take The Crown, he played me some of the demos, songs that sounded like an amalgam of modern, electronic pop, mixed in with the arcane and the deliberately contrary: Talking Heads, New Order, AC/DC, INXS, Depeche Mode gone gospel - all put through a blender. He has some new collaborators, and the fusion has worked in a surprising and impressive way. He's been working with various members of Undercolours, as well as with Garret "Jacknife" Lee, the Irish producer and remixer who has worked with Two Door Cinema Club, U2, REM, Elbow, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, the Hives and Editors.

Earlier, I had watched Robbie and his small band lurch through the selection of his greatest hits that he would perform a few days later at Sir Philip Green's 60th-birthday party in Mexico. As he effortlessly rehearsed the songs ("Come Undone", "Millennium", "Feel", "She's The One" etc), he casually dropped a few C-words into his repartee, much to the shock of one of his pick-up backing singers. "Don't worry, love," he said, as she protested. "In Britain, it's no more offensive than saying 'bidet' or 'sofa'."

Your new album is called Take The Crown, which is obviously you in confrontational mode. Who are you in competition with?

The world? It's me against the world. I love Michael Bublé, and his numbers are massive. Who else is there? Coldplay? Not really. Because I win. There isn't anyone. No one came up. Justin Timberlake is off doing films. Not Gaga. There is nobody doing what I do. I don't see anything, especially with the way pop is going now. God bless them, I am not knocking them down at all. You get Katy Perry one week, you get Britney Spears the next, Rihanna the week after. They are all going to the same place and inevitably the charts are all sounding the same. Everyone has become a lot narrower. The charts have become a lot less interesting because of it. Bananarama seem wild and aggressive compared with everything we have now. You can't be ugly any more, like Noddy Holder. He's actually a very good-looking man, but he wouldn't get a look-in today. However, I saw the U2 "360" show on DVD. Well, they are the guvners. Bono is a guv and they are the guvners. Everyone else can f*** off. And it's not even trendy to like them.

You're coming out of the traps at great speed. You want to beat everyone this time, don't you?

I don't know when it became fashionable not to want success. Maybe it started in the Seventies with Joe Strummer. I'm from the Eighties. I'm from a time when that's what you were supposed to do, and actually that's what you are supposed to do now. All right, you don't want to go on The X Factor. So go back to your little hovel, stay there and don't sell a single bean. Good luck to you. I want a hit. I don't think anybody spends 12 months writing and recording an album, making something cool, and says, "Great, I hope this doesn't sell." I don't understand that mind-set. I want hits: a big bunch of them.

To use the well-worn tabloid phrase, you're obviously "loved up".

I didn't write 15 songs in two weeks just because I was happy, but because the music was right. The first album I did took seven days to write. It was just the synchronicity that made it possible, and I wasn't too happy then. I do know that I made one album quickly miserable and this one as quickly happy. Most of my songs are usually about feeling rubbish. I thought, "What am I going to sing about now that I'm happy? I am going to sing about great happiness!" Gary Barlow came up to me and said, "You have never written a love song," so I did just that. I've managed to write a happy album. Normally it's a scramble to just get a single. Now I've got the option of about eight.

Were you worried that you might make a John and Yoko record?

I wanted to do "You Keep It All In" by the Beautiful South with me dressed as John and the missus dressed as Yoko and put it on YouTube. Still might do it. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I was going to do, so it was fortuitous that [Undercolours] turned up when they did and gave me a new sound.

The Take That reunion has set a very high bar.

I've never thought of it like that before. I hope that my time with the boys gives me a free slingshot upwards again. I'll be really p***ed off if this doesn't work. I want a No.1 album, I want a No.1 single, a big-selling tour, I want this to be a huge success and I've been preparing for it since I went on tour with Take That. The main reason for getting back together wasn't financial, as we could all make more money on our own, it was because I love Gary Barlow.

Would you ever do a duet with Gary?

I've written a couple of songs with Gaz, but he's not singing on the album. I love working with Gaz. I'd love to do an album with him - me and him - but that wouldn't go down well with the boys, I don't think. I'd love to do that in between Take That being Take That and I'd love to do something with Gaz at some point. And being Take That again at some point, too.

Do you ever have a dread of ending up solely on Radio 2?

I love Radio 2, there is nothing wrong with Radio 2. But it's like turning your back on the youth if you are only there. I don't want to go softly into that night.

You still appear unapologetic about psychoanalysing yourself in your lyrics.

Well, what does Jay-Z rap about? He raps about himself. What does Eminem rap about?

When you first went solo, what gave you the confidence it was going to work?

Delusion, but you know that delusion was really powerful. I was absolutely f***ing deluded. I think everyone's delusions get to them in the end. Look, I was in Take That, I had sung "Everything Changes" and "Could It Be Magic", but I had never written anything. I'm not the best singer in the world but I thought I was going to take on the world and win.

And I did. But I look back at it from an outsider's perspective at me as a 20-year-old and I see a deluded little c***. I would suggest to people to use your delusions. They are powerful.

When you're on stage, your stagecraft has more to do with music hall and working men's clubs than rock'n'roll.

I've not studied rock'n'roll; I'm not versed in the ways of Jim Morrison. I don't know it. Basically, I started out doing my version of a pop star - what I thought a pop star was. I was writing the script. I know there are a load of rules to follow, because I read people's interviews about how music should and shouldn't be, what a performance should and shouldn't be. But I never had those rules. I was in Take That. I was free to be a dick.

You've said you rarely go to gigs. What was the last one you went to?

I can't remember. Maybe the Dixie Chicks in 2005. Gigs really aren't my thing. I've been to see Coldplay twice, been to see James Blunt twice, and U2. And then there were an awful load of gigs that I went to when I was 20 or 21, but I was more interested in being in the toilets than anything else. You know, I am a mainstream person with mainstream tastes and I want to hear the hits. I am not going to sit through 40 minutes of album tracks, and I am not a big fan of the big crowd. Which is why I watch a lot of performance DVDs. I know I should be more curious, but I just watch them on TV. Prince, the "Lovesexy" tour - he is from another planet. All of Sinatra's. Dean Martin. Kylie. Beyoncé.

You've always said you're not a very good singer. Just how good or bad are you?

I am not as bad as people would suggest. Not as good as I would like to be.

Is there a generation gap any more?

I think maybe we ran out of songs, and maybe we ran out of attitude, too. I think dysfunctional people are being funnelled into very corporate behaviour. Look at the Brits... no one's fighting and it's boring.

Nobody's throwing a bucket of water over John Prescott, no one's offering Liam Gallagher outside. It's just very trained individuals playing the music game. There was plenty kicking off all the way through the Nineties and then everybody got nice. And they took lessons in Twitter and Facebook, and media training - what the hell is that? There's no room for spontaneity, it would suggest, from pop stars. People aren't p***ing enough people off. All they do is pour money into their stage sets. If you haven't got lots of projection mapping going on behind you, then you aren't in the game.

How important is America as part of your new deal with Universal?

Not at all. Zero. I haven't released a record there since 1999. You spend 12 months grafting and then at the end of it you still have nothing to show for it. What would America bring to me? More money? I'm too lazy to try to break America again.

Do you consume British media, apart from the stuff about the industry?

Not really, and not even stuff that concerns the industry, but I've been following the Leveson Inquiry. I think it's really important that the press have their freedom and should be able to bring down a government if needs be, but I also believe there are certain situations [in which the press can be] quite satanic in nature.

Were you hacked?

Oh, yes. I saw my number, and the names, and other people's names. I was aware of it in 2006, when I got rid of my phone.

What did you think about it?

It wasn't surprising in any way - I already thought it was happening. I only ever had to think something and it was in the papers the next morning. I know and understood how they get to people. I've lived in a world where you're paranoid that people are doing it and that was already happening anyway. The phone-hacking scandal was just a bit more confirmation. One of the best things about living in California is being distanced from my constant need to impress people back home.

When did that realisation begin?

When I fell in love. You know there's so much positive stuff going with the two of us; she's really kind and positive and she's attentive and wants the best for people and wants to help them. And once I'd seen that in her, it made me feel good that she wanted to be with me, which must mean that I'm actually good, so I was like, well, let's cultivate this.

I went all the way through my twenties thinking I was sentenced to a life of mental imprisonment, but I'm in a better place now.

You've often seemed stereotypically tortured about your success, as though you didn't deserve it.

I always thought this house felt like someone's rich uncle owned it and I was just a lodger, and I remained in there, being apologetic for myself all the time, like, "Don't mind me, I'm a c***." Then you read about yourself being a c*** and you go, like; "Oh yeah, there's the evidence, I am a c***." So you become a fully blown, card-carrying c***. What does it feel like owning all this s***? What does it feels like to own the McLaren in the garage, to know that I've sold 70 million albums? Well, I have my fans, and I have the people who think I'm a card-carrying c***, but I am not the cardcarrying c*** they think I am.

Would you consider being a judge on a TV talent show?

I could do it, but I wouldn't want to. I'd want my own show.

Otherwise you're at the mercy of Simon Cowell [or] the head of BBC. You just watch people come in and then be thrown off and I wouldn't like to put myself at the mercy of that. I'd like to own the show and not be able to be sacked.

How typical were your fears of becoming a father for the first time?

I was very calm at the beginning, then I gave up smoking, and I don't know if it was because of the nicotine leaving my system, but I started to worry. I always considered myself to be perpetually 18 and now I can't be. Also, you go through therapy and blame your parents - now all of a sudden you're a parent and there's no one to blame any more.

And [your child] could blame you. Also, I've been famous since I was 16. I've never had to do anything for myself.

Everything's always been taken care of. Hopefully that will continue. But what if it didn't? And I have to bend and form another person. There are all these concerns. And then I just chilled out in the last couple of weeks as we had an interview with a nanny! They're like the oracle or the Google of little baby people.

**Are you still injecting yourself with hormones? And do you really have the testosterone of a 100-year-old man?

** No, I have none, I take meds and inject myself once a week. It's just something that I had, I take care of and everything is cool. It's part of the story, it's part of why I've been, where I've been, who I am.

Have you ever made a sex tape? And if not, why not?

No I haven't. I think I was videoed once but it didn't work. But it had been set up. I was obviously glad that it didn't work because it involved copious amounts of cocaine and playing snooker with a rope. Right now, being married for so long, if I could go back in time I'd have done a couple of sex tapes, I think.

Your Soccer Aid event has become much bigger than anyone expected it to be.

I love it. When Roy Keane turns up that's pretty impressive. And Zidane was there, Clarence Seedorf, big Jaap Stam, Maradona. You're still a little boy, really, when those people kind of turn up. And you get to ask them all the questions that you've always wanted to. Gazza didn't stop telling stories and they all involved killing animals. "We stuck a firecracker in a frog's throat and we lit it and the frog fing exploded!" And then, "The hedgehog, stuck it in the fing microwave, then we put it on for three minutes and it f***ing exploded!" Roy Keane was fascinating, too. I think he probably really struggles in social situations. He feels like I do, but I just fill the space with rubbish and he fills it with anger. I reckon Roy Keane needs a hug.