What I’ve Learned: Robbie Williams

I played the Artful Dodger in a play when I was younger and got a standing ovation every night when I came on. It was intoxicating. I wanted whatever that was.

Dad and Mum split up when I was four. Mum kept the records: Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. That was my library.

For my ninth or tenth birthday, my sister bought me two records: Pink Floyd The Wall and a collection of electro music. I didn’t get Pink Floyd at all, but this electro stuff was like Oh my God, I want to eat and drink it. So the music I heard growing up was a weird mixture of Glenn Miller and Afrika Bambaataa.

My nan taught me what real unconditional love looked like. Without her, I wouldn’t know.

I learned how to charm a room from my dad. He worked on holiday camps—the closest thing you’d get in America is the Catskills, but it’s a trailer park. I learned that a life in the entertainment industry was possible.

I learned how to work from my mum. Real work looked real depressing, because my mum worked all the hours that God sent her. The way my mum moved up out of her economic background—the wife of cannon fodder—to owning her own shop is equivalent or bigger than what I’ve achieved.

You spend the second twenty years of your life sorting out the first twenty years of your life.

I left school when I was sixteen with no qualifications, nothing higher than a D.

If I had been good at math, my mum would’ve pushed me to be a mathematician. As it happens, I was good at showing off, so my mum pushed me in my showing off capabilities. I’m good at getting eyes on me.

If I was born in the creator generation, I’d have been a YouTuber.

I didn’t even dream of music. I auditioned for a boy band, Take That, and got in. So this life in music has happened by mistake.

There were five boys all vying for position in life and the industry. We all loved each other, didn’t trust each other; were friends, but weren’t friends.

And then at home, there was a two-grand contract on my head to kill me, from local people who could do that.

It was because of jealousy. Hood shit.

Literally a hundred girls would book themselves in a hotel to be with me. This is not normal, so my idea of sex and my sexual relationship with women is warped.

Whatever happens when you get the bends is what happens when you become famous.

I don’t know how much a pint of milk is. It’s not my fault.

Leonard Cohen wasn’t a pop-song writer; Thom Yorke isn’t a pop-song writer. Those are the things I wanted to write. What innately comes out of me is pure pop. I can’t help it.

What was the first time I missed? When I released a single called “Rudebox” in 2006. I was in the middle of a massive mental breakdown. When you miss your first shot after not being able to miss, it can buckle your confidence. You can have an existential crisis, which I tend to do.

I don’t think I’m a musical genius. There is a never-ending supply of melody that I find very natural. The tapper hasn’t turned off, touch wood.

How do you write a pop song? Practice and get lucky. That’s it. I am one of the luckiest people on the planet.

If you can write a song, you can be Elon Musk.

I’ve come up with an idea for my own hotel. I’ll do the design for it. Why can I do that? Because I can write a song. That same creativity can also choose bedsheets and wallpaper. That’s not confidence; that’s knowing that I can do it.

I used to be able to sing track seven off the album and the whole stadium would know it. These days I can sing the first single and the stadium don’t know it. It happens in everyone’s career. I don’t like that.

In my particular line of work, it’s not about you; it’s about them. I don’t want to get up and do the same songs every night, but I also want to facilitate the best evening possible because people have paid good money to receive that.

Money isn’t the top of the mountain, and the top of the mountain isn’t the top of the mountain. When you get to the top of the mountain in any profession, you have an existential crisis because it didn’t fix you.

Fame won’t fix you. Success won’t fix you. Purpose kind of fixes you.

Money gave me the ability to sit on my sofa with a cashmere caftan on, growing a beard, looking like a murderer, smoking weed, watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and looking for UFOs in the evening. It made me lazy. But it also gave me enough space for me to realize, man, you need to do something with your life. I was thirty-two.

No fucking way I was getting married; I have, it’s been the making of me.

No fucking way I was having children; I have, it’s been the making of me.

What have I learned from marriage? That I can keep my cock in my pants. I thought that was impossible. So far so good.

When my first kid, Teddy, arrived, it was terrifying for so many different reasons. I couldn’t look after myself. How on earth was I going to look after a precious soul?

There were like 375,000 people at Knebworth, which is like giving birth to 375,000 Teddies. Jesus. Existential crisis. Why are all these people here? What does all of this mean? How am I going to fill this stage? It’s only me. I don’t see what they see in me.

I made my legs walk to the stage when my legs didn’t want to walk to the stage.

The biggest experience of my life right now is being the captain of the good ship Williams. But I’m not overwhelmed by it now because of experience.

This might be incredibly wrong and sick, but there’s something to die for other than my wife and kids, and it’s the job. I don’t know why I find that empowering, but I do.

The job has given me a creative output that is probably saving my life and helping my mental illness.

I feel as though I’m about to get lucky again, and this time I’m grateful and happy. I’m wide-eyed. I’m new again.