British pop legends Take That join Rebecca Judd in studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss the release of their ninth full-length album, ‘This Life’. In a wide-ranging interview, Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen tell Rebecca about the reasons behind the new album’s title, quashing any talk of this being a reunion, forgetting some of their discography, their close relationship, their new hobby magnet fishing and the experience of recording the album in Georgia, USA.
Listen to the interview in full on The Rebecca Judd Show on Apple Music 1 tomorrow (28th November) from 9am GMT at apple.co/_Rebecca.
Take That on why they called their ninth studio album ‘This Life’…
Gary Barlow: I think as we were writing the album, I think it definitely became apparent to us that we were brimming with ideas. I mean, it is a long time since our last record and a lot’s happened in our lives and in the world since then, and I guess that’s how you want to be when you arrive at a studio, your mind full of ideas. And so it is an album about our lives and where we’re at right now, and we’re obviously writing at a point of our lives where we’ve experienced a lot, and the content is quite dense and interesting, I think. It’s a good age to be a songwriter, I think, because you’ve had a lot of life lived and a lot of things have happened, good and bad, which is all good for songwriting. And then the song, ‘This Life’ comes along and it just felt like a perfect representation lyrically of what the album’s about.
Take That discuss their return after six years and not labelling it a reunion…
Howard Donald: Yeah, I mean it was inevitable. I mean, we see it as a new phase, I guess in our career and we’ve been interviewed a few times and they say, “Oh, so what’s the reunion like of coming back?” And we say, “We’re thinking, no, this is not a reunion, we’ve always been a three since 2014.” And yeah, we are always writing all the time, writing, writing, writing, so we always knew that we would be bringing out a new album, and for us, we’ve had a great amount of time to actually prepare for this. For me, maybe in my own biased opinion, I think this is probably one of the best vocal songwriting albums we’ve ever done, I think.
Take That discuss forgetting some of their discography…
Mark Owen: So we’re 30 odd years in. We’re lucky because we’ve done nine albums, this is our ninth album. We have a lot of catalogue, we have a lot of songs to choose from. We were doing that yesterday actually, we were listening back to some of the old records and thinking, “What should we play, what songs?”, so it was great.
Howard Donald: It was actually so funny as well because we were playing all these old albums from the ‘90s and I’m playing them, I’m the DJ, I’m playing them and Gary and Mark are going, “Who’s this?”
Take That discuss what’s usually in their dressing rooms whilst on tour…
Gary Barlow: I am quite strict, I don’t eat cheese and things like that before the show, because of my voice.
Howard Donald: I like my sparkling water, you see. So I have a bit of that and just a bit of fruit. There’s nothing too complex in the rider, it’s not like one of these demands of-
Gary Barlow: I’ve seen some choccy woccy in yours.
Howard Donald: Oh yeah, sorry – I forgot about that, I have Cadbury’s chocolate, not like I mention it. I’ll say it again, I have chocolate.
Mark Owen: Well, nobody wants to ever share a car or a dressing room with me, because back a long time ago when I met Whitney Houston in Japan, and she said to me to keep the air con off. So usually we are playing the O2 in the middle of a heat wave in London and in the back of my mind I’m going, “Whitney said don’t turn on the air con.” So my room’s usually boiling hot, so nobody wants to share the room, but I do have a humidifier and no air con. It’s like a steam room, people come in, it’s like whoosh. And then usually burn a bit of incense.
Take That discuss the album’s first single ‘Windows’…
Mark Owen: Well, we’d just signed a new record deal, which was a big thing for us, and so everything felt new, but after ‘Windows’, the next step was finding the right producer, and we found this gentleman called David Cobb, who works mainly out of Nashville, is his main studio. He’s done people like Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Dolly Parton. I mean, the list is endless, but we went to Nashville to record Windows in a studio called RCA Victor, which is where Elvis Presley made 200 records, he’s recorded there in this studio. You can’t help but feel the environment you’re in when you’re making these records.
Gary Barlow: You know, one thing Mark said early on, before we had any music, which I thought was a really good way of setting up each day we wrote, was we’d been booked again for playing Hyde Park. So this was a year ago, and Mark said, “What you’ve got to imagine is that we walk out on the stage and we’re waving like that to everybody, and then you strum – and that’s the song we’re looking for.” So you’re thinking, “Oh my goodness me.” So when Windows came along, I thought, “I can imagine doing that. I can imagine walking out there, it’s a summer’s night, and going into the tune straight away.”
Take That discuss their new hobby ‘Magnet Fishing’ while in Georgia recording the album…
Gary Barlow: When we decided our producer was the guy for the job, he said to us, “Great, I’m really looking forward to this. I’ll come to London.” And we said, “Well hang on, where do you like to record?” He said, “Oh, well I like to record at home.” And we were like, “Well, where’s home then?” And he said, “Savannah in Georgia.” “Where’s that?” I mean, we’d never even been there. He said, “Better than that, I’ve just bought a new studio there and I’m desperate to make some music in it.” And it just felt like, “This is it, we’re coming to Savannah.” His house was right on the edge of where the ocean came in, it was so good. Sorry, I know this is the longest answer ever, but we found a new hobby, didn’t we How, while we were there? Magnet fishing.
Howard Donald: So you put a big magnet on a big rope with a good knot, and you throw it into rivers or underneath canal bridges, and you pull it in and you bring up metal stuff from out of the thing. So apparently a lot of these magnet fishing things on YouTube, they can go on these things and go underneath Canal bridges in Birmingham, and pull out these safes or guns, because the best place to find treasure is under a canal bridge at night. Because what they do is these criminals, they go under the bridge and they throw the evidence away underneath these things. All I’ve found is a few fridge freezers and I’ve got a little side business where I do them up and I sell them for…
Gary Barlow: Hey listen, we were making an album at the same time by the way. But, the one thing that we did get was we got a massive chainsaw.
Howard Donald: Which is track number six, called ‘Chainsaw’.
Take That on their close relationship and never expecting to be in this position 30 years on…
Howard Donald: No way. How is this even happening to us? How fortunate and how lucky are we to come back [in the 2010s] after all this time and then be even more successful the second time round? But I would say that the second time round is the best period because we all have kids, we’re obviously a little bit more grown up, especially these two, I’m not as grown up, and we are enjoying it more. We talk with each other and we have a great friendship, and life is really good, and we love making music still, so we are really hungry for it.
Take That on the prospect of retiring…
Mark Owen: We love what we do as Howard said, and we like being creative, and we enjoy our job, and we all realise we’re lucky to be able to do it for this amount of time. But I honestly don’t know what else we would do, we like making songs and we like getting together, and it doesn’t feel like work. I don’t know why we wouldn’t be doing it in 30 years unless we have a big fallout I guess.
Gary Barlow: Not a lot we could say to rather nowadays that would offend each other.
Howard Donald: We know each other’s habits and everything.
Mark Owen: I guess it’s just as long as we can get up out of bed and get to work, we’ll keep doing it.
Gary Barlow: I think we keep going, whether they want it or not.
Take That are heading out on tour next year all dates and tickets can be found here
Comments are closed.