Where, on this soggy evening in July, are Take That?
It's not just the eye-boggling number of people crammed into Wembley Stadium (90,000), or the sheeting rain, that makes it difficult to spot the pop group. It's the sheer, extravagantly busy spectacle of Progress Live – a sold-out tour of the British Isles' biggest roof-free venues. The reformed boy band are accompanied by – and often dwarfed by – pyrotechnics, robots, ninja acrobats, ballet dancers, martial artists, Pet Shop Boys… and some sort of panto caterpillar.
Ah, there's Britain's biggest band: standing way up there, near a giant metal-man's head, clutching microphones. And here they come. Robbie Williams, trussed in a harness, swan-dives to the stadium floor. Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange – the four bandmates Robbie rejoined in 2009 after a 15-year hiatus-cum-huff – descend more sedately, in elevators. And wallop: up goes the skyscraping chorus of "The Flood", the first single from Progress, the album that, after only five weeks in the shops, was the UK's biggest selling last year.
Sitting somewhere in the audience is Simon Webbe. Five years after Take That broke up, he was the final handsome youth recruited to join Blue. His boy band released four albums in three years before splitting in 2005. "It was nice to see the reunion," Webbe says later of the Take That concert. "I looked around the stadium and thought: 'I just hope we can get even half of this.'"
Twelve months after the Take That/Robbie Williams rapprochement, Webbe, 32, and his erstwhile colleagues (Lee Ryan, 28; Duncan James, 33; Antony Costa, 30) also embarked on the resurrection shuffle. Blue began their comeback by representing Britain at May's Eurovision Song Contest. They came 11th.
Meanwhile: anyone seen Charlie Simpson? The former singer with Busted – more than 2m albums shifted, 11 nights at Wembley Arena sold out – ended his boy-band career in 2005 when he quit to devote himself to Fightstar, his hard-rock side project. Recently came news of another musical change for Simpson: a solo album, influenced by singer-songwriters such as Jackson Browne, its release financed by City investors.
Oh, there's Simpson: playing the tiny stage of Water Rats in London's Kings Cross. Two weeks before Take That's record-breaking eight-night run at Wembley, the winner of two Brit Awards launched his mellow but robustly tuneful Young Pilgrim album in the 200-capacity club. It wasn't sold out. Simpson wasn't bothered. "I welcome anyone into my show that likes my music," the 26-year-old had said over lunch that day, "on the right pretence [sic] that they're actually listening to my album and liking it. I don't want them to come because it's me."
Raise your lighters for the Ballad of The Boy Band. It's a moving song, full of laughter and tears, bittersweet memories and, still, raging ambition. It touches on anecdotes about bullying lesser boy bands (Blue vs A1), emotional crises in German hotel rooms (Busted), insane wealth ("I had a Ferrari at one point," remembers East 17's Tony Mortimer), insane slog ("I was in five different boy bands," winces Matthew Morrison, aka Glee's Mr Schuester), therapy (Mortimer again) and the shame of being a teenage lad doing pop songs and silly dance routines for little girls. ("I was very embarrassed that I was in a boy band," admits Robbie.)
This summer there are a lot of grown men humming this emotional tune. In America, the reformed New Kids on The Block are touring with the reformed Backstreet Boys – supported by Morrison, who is using a break from Glee to restart his stalled musical career. In London, East 17 are also back on the boy bandwagon.
We might blame nostalgia. Or the record-breaking cash machine that is the Take That reunion. Or the fact that, once the trauma has faded, life after the demise of a wildly successful boy band can seem a little hollow.
"We thought we'd get back and see how it goes," says Mortimer, 40, cheerfully shrugging off the fact that the last time East 17 tried a comeback, the band's principal songwriter was punched in the face by his singer. "We haven't got Robbie in the band, so we're not gonna fill a stadium! Handy if you've got that one in your back pocket – 'Oh, and here's Robbie!' That's a guaranteed 60,000 tickets sold. I wonder if anyone would notice if we sneaked him into our band…"
Charlie Simpson never wanted to be in a boy band. In 2000 he was a 15-year-old boarder at historic private school Uppingham. He loved hard rock, his older brother was a pupil, and he was in a covers band called Spleen. One year on, his drummer had been expelled and his brother had left.
"I was suddenly not in a good place at school," remembers the well-spoken, strikingly handsome muso from Suffolk. "I had no yearning to do anything academic. Playing music consumed my life."
His music teacher showed him an ad in NME: "'Guitarist and singer wanted for pop band…' – it was pretty vague." During October half-term Simpson travelled to London and auditioned alongside 30 other wannabes in a hotel near Hyde Park. Matt Willis and James Bourne were already in the line-up and the songs were written. The next day Simpson was offered the gig as Busted's lead singer.
"And that was it. Then it happened very quickly – we signed a record deal within two months." His reservations about the nascent trio's musical direction were overcome by his desire to escape school. "They never surfaced again until the night I signed the deal. I remember looking out the window as we drove down Park Lane, wondering: 'Have I done the right thing?'"
He didn't have time to worry. Busted's first three singles all hit the top three. But Tony Mortimer understands Simpson's reservations. As an up-and-coming songwriter in Walthamstow, he was advised by his manager to assemble a band. "I would have been solo if my voice was better," admits Mortimer, now the father of two teenage girls.
In 1991 he recruited some friends from school, basing East 17 "on the blueprint of New Kids on The Block. Take That didn't even exist in my head. But after we signed a record deal we was played a video," he continues in his strong Cockney accent, "and was told: 'This is your competition' – it was some guys on the floor getting covered in jelly and wearing leather. And we were like: 'OK, the market's ours if that's our competition!' That was Take That. Then…" he chuckles, "they were really successful."
And so were East 17 – they sold 20m records. Mortimer was happy to let Brian Harvey, his singer, soak up the attention and most of the girls. "We used to have this joke about our security guys – they were actually to protect the fans from us!" The Radio 1 roadshow helped shoot them to fame. "Bude in Cornwall was a good one – 10,000 people. David Icke was there. But he had gone by then. He was looking at the ocean talking to himself. So I went and sat in a cabin with Del Amitri."
Blue had their own musical heroes, and their own boy-band rivalries. "We were on the Smash Hits tour with A1," says Lee Ryan, slouched on a sofa in the Kings Cross studio where the foursome are recording their comeback album. "One night we were all in the lift at the hotel. They pressed the button for their floor, then every other button so we had to stop at all the floors before we got to ours. They looked at us and said: 'We don't want the fans knowing what floor we're on…' We was like: 'Oh, motherfuckers…' So we covered their tour car in shaving foam and condoms."
"But Westlife were the guv'nors," adds Antony Costa. "They've been doing this now 13 years… 11 number ones… sold-out tours, sold-out albums."
"The thing I really respect about Westlife," chips in Duncan James, "is that they kept a formula going. Ballads, sitting on a stool, halfway through the song they get up – every song was pretty much the same! But it worked."
I've interviewed a lot of these pop out-fits over the years. I know that the boy-band hamster wheel – round and round, churning out the hits, playing the part for the fans – was too much for some. Busted's Charlie Simpson was exasperated by inane questions in interviews with the pop press; he wanted to talk to Kerrang! about alternative rock bands. His dark night of the soul came in a German hotel room when he "almost broke down. And people would say, 'It's fine though, you must be making loads of money!' And I was like: 'I don't give a shit about that.'"
East 17's Tony Mortimer was crushed by the need to keep the "gravy train" on track. He won an Ivor Novello for writing "Stay Another Day". It was the Christmas number one in 1994, but it was about his brother's suicide. "If I get to open my soul to the public, it's an honour," he reflects. "But my family had no say. Even now when they hear the song it's hard – it takes them right back. They're like: 'Cheers, you twat – made that one a bit public…'"
The song's huge success, he says without irony, "was the final nail in the coffin for me". Nonetheless he soldiered on until 1997. That year Harvey boasted publicly about taking ecstasy. Mortimer, finally, had had enough.
Frustrated by Take That's music and at loggerheads with their management, Robbie Williams escaped from his boy band in 1995. In an interview last year, I asked if that period – when he famously pitched up at Glastonbury with Oasis, hair freshly bleached, waistline thickened – was like John Lennon's Lost Weekend.
"I dunno what he got up to in his lost year," Williams replied, "but I'm sure it was more culturally enriching than my year in a Maida Vale basement, hanging out with gangsters and all and sundry, staying up for too many days in a row. It was the first time I wasn't in Stoke with my mum. And it's the first time that you go: 'What, I can eat all the cake?'" Summing up, he described his post-boy band annus horribilis as "the hubris of youth and cocaine".
Blue went their separate ways in 2005, worn out by "working 22-hour days". For James, there had been the added pressure of keeping his bisexuality secret. "I did Dancing On Ice, and [former Boyzone member] Stephen Gately was on it. In the changing room one day he hugged me and said: 'Duncan, don't let anybody put you down. Don't feel ashamed.' He was great: someone who'd been through exactly the same as me – coming out and coming from a boy band. I was devastated when I heard he'd died."
Both James and Webbe entered the world of musical theatre (Legally Blonde, Sister Act). The break-up hit Costa worse, "because I had nothing. And I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here came in four months after. I thought: 'I gotta do it.' They were talking about it on Heart FM, calling me 'Antony Costa, failed pop star'. I'm like: 'Is this what I'm gonna be?' I was only 23."
In terms of solo careers Ryan, the band's bad boy, was pegged as The One Most Likely To. But his sales stuttered and he endured various tangles with tabloids and police. And fans: he had a child with one. Webbe, meanwhile, sold 2m copies of his two solo albums. But even he wasn't happy on his own.
"I was used to singing four lines, dropping the mic, and looking to one of these guys, waiting for them to start singing. And I remember doing that, then thinking: 'Oh shit, I've got to carry on singing!' Singing a whole song – 'This is hard, man!' In the back of my mind I couldn't wait to get to this point."
"This point" for Blue is making an album they're funding themselves – they had always planned to reunite to mark their 10th anniversary. They count their lowly placing at Eurovision as a victory. The day after the TV show, their song entered iTunes charts all over Europe. And RedOne, hitmaker-producer for Lady Gaga, saw them on the contest. He's now invited Blue to record with him in Miami.
They're remodelling themselves in other ways, too. All four have been putting in serious gym time. "I remember seeing Gary Barlow when he wrote for us," says James. "I didn't recognise the geezer – he'd piled a lot of weight on. And when Take That came back, he was chiselled, he was slick, he was on it. When you're making a comeback, you have to come back in shape. Britney Spears wouldn't come back looking fat. Because she'd get slated before she'd started."
Take That are the benchmark for boy-band alumni. They've shown that if you can come to terms with your past you can overcome lingering resentments. During Progress Live, Barlow makes fun of both Owen and Williams, offering the post-rehab teetotallers glasses of milk.
"My therapist taught me an amazing tool: acceptance," says the affable and engaging Mortimer. East 17 are about to release the catchy single "Secret of My Life" and are playing 2,000-capacity venues in September. "If you can accept who you are, what you were, that's when the weight gets lifted. Yeah, I'll put me hands up: I was in a boy band. And I still am! And I'm 40. And you know what, it's probably the only thing I can ever do. But," he smiles, "me back's a bit sore – won't be doing so many dance moves on stage, and think I might be hiding behind the instruments a bit…"
Acceptance only goes so far. There's no room for the erratic Brian Harvey – who, in 2005, ended up in a coma after running himself over with his own car – in East 17 Version 2.0. Having toyed with the idea of his rebooted boy band having a girl singer, Mortimer has recruited former X Factor hopeful Blair Dreelan, 26. He has a great voice, a six-pack and ADHD. "Blair's a ball of energy. In the morning he starts all slow. By the end of the day he's mental."
But not everyone has their eyes on the stadium prize. When Charlie Simpson told Busted's management he was quitting, they told him that if he stayed "I could sort the rest of my life financially. And I said: 'I'd rather play [grotty Camden boozer] Barfly for the rest of my life than do this any more.'"
After Simpson left, the boy-band dream died for Busted. Willis went into rehab and, like Blue's Costa, entered the celebrity jungle. "He's a lovely bloke," says Simpson, "and he's dealt with it all well. There's no animosity with those guys. They could have been very difficult. But I can't feel guilty for killing the golden goose. That's just the way I was feeling."
Would he ever take part in a Busted re-union? "Not in a million years."
