One day in early May, Williams resumed his vigil on the balcony of his flat, but on this particular occasion his binoculars were focused solely on the Thames-side frontage of the Conrad Hotel, on the opposite side of the marina. All day long, squinting into the sunlight, he trained the glasses on the windows of the building, looking for any sign of movement behind them.
From his sixth-floor suite in the Conrad, Gary Barlow was looking out too. Gary had heard that morning from his Take That band mate Jason Orange, who was back in touch with Williams after a long hiatus, that Robbie was to be found in residence at the Belvedere. As Gary prepared for the group's barnstorming appearance that night at Wembley Arena as part of Take That's sell-out reunion tour, he stood for a full fifteen minutes on the balcony outside his room, watching. He imagined, illogically, that somehow he would intuitively know behind which of the scores of panes of glass opposite he might spot his one-time cohort in Britain's biggest ever boy band and - for the past eleven years - his sworn nemesis.
Both men, who had not laid eyes on each other, let alone spoken, for a decade, would eventually give up without catching sight of their respective enemy.
There are metaphors here, of course: those of the look but don't see, listen but don't hear' variety, which have come to characterize the complicated backstory of Williams and Barlow. Theirs, after all, is a tale of love and loathing, of devotion and destructive obsession, which continues, after more than twenty years, to be the defining relationship in both their lives. Their fractured "bromance' has shaped the often-tortured history of one of the world's most successful bands. It has truly been a love-hate relationship that has at times been so visceral, so deep-seated, that it has come close to threatening the sanity of both men and led to one of the most caustic feuds ever known in show business. Then, like all great stories, it had in its third act an unlikely twist of reconciliation and redemption, but still left the open-ended question: given their incendiary history, would the dΓ©tente last? Could it last? Or would the old tensions and vying for power that exploded so destructively before serve to tear them apart once again?
In many ways it is tempting to see Robbie and Gary as one another's muse. Not in the classic sense, as a positive source of inspiration and encouragement, but in the way both have focused every last ounce of energy on obdurately refusing to submit to their respective rival. There have been dark days for both men over the years. For Gary, there have been times when he has been flat out on the canvas, his career reduced to rubble, ridiculed and despised by those who once feted him. Aside from a passing phase of self-pity, however, he insisted on getting up and putting the gloves back on, unwilling to acquiesce to his foe.
Robbie has successfully managed to turn his destructive hatred of Gary into a positive. He distilled and bottled his anger at his former band mate and drank shots to give him courage, to make him work harder, write more and strive to grind his enemy into the ground.
In the same way that the slights against him, real or imaginary, served to fuel his creative output, so too did the spite, long reserved for Barlow, fortify him at his moments of greatest weakness, when addictions and depression threatened to submerge him.
Then, like their burning loathing, their eventual reconciliation ignited a creative spark that, in the case of Williams, had been virtually extinguished by the weight of his myriad problems: his battle with drugs, his isolation and his artistic malaise. In the case of Barlow, it freed him from the weight of his past mistakes and allowed him to fulfil the role to which he came late: that of mentor and creative facilitator.
Both men have cast a shadow over one another during the moments of rawest contrasting emotions, at the happiest and saddest of times, and in doing so, they have combined - together and apart - to spur the other on to great things.
Extract from Robbie and Gary: Itβs Complicated by Paul Scott (Pt. 1)
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