Robbie Williams - Let me entertain you... please

How do you market a star who's in need of a relaunch? In advance of Robbie Williams' new album, Ian Burrell looks at the return of one of pop's biggest names

(Getty)

At the conclusion of his performance of "Bodies" at London's Roundhouse theatre on Tuesday night, Robbie Williams stared out into space and his eyes rolled in their sockets. "Wow!" he said.

Maybe, he appeared to be thinking, I'm going to pull this off. "Good evening, everybody, you nearly made me cry," he told his audience. "...but I realised it's not The X Factor."

The typically self-deprecating gag was an admission of how close he had come to a career-wrecking performance only nine days earlier, when he had performed live on ITV1's all-conquering talent show with disastrous effect. His eyeballs rolled then too, but not in awe at his own talents. "His eyes looked like they were going to burst out of his head," said the Daily Mirror after the television show. "Manic panic was written all over his profusely sweaty face."

So bad was Williams on The X Factor that he felt the need to deny that he had been high on drugs when performing, saying he had taken nothing stronger than coffee but had felt like "the deer in headlights" and "had a bit of a wobble". Suddenly, the pop star with sufficient tattooed swagger to draw 375,000 to the rock shrine of Knebworth Park, a performer who is seriously compared to Mick Jagger within music industry circles, was describing himself as Bambi.

"They got it so badly wrong," says one music industry figure. "Robbie is a bit of a rock star and if you're a rock fan, you want him to carry on being a rock star, not suddenly become Bruce Forsyth."

How could this have happened? How could the most-awaited comeback album launch in the recent history of the British music industry, a business in desperate need of Williams's undoubted capacity to shift units, have been so spectacularly miscalculated? And has the former Take That star done enough in his Roundhouse show for the BBC's Electric Proms series to put his relaunch back on course?

The comeback strategy designed to make a success of Robbie's new album, Reality Killed the Video Star, will have been drawn up by the artist himself, his manager Tim Clark, his newly installed PR man Murray Chalmers and key figures at his record company EMI. Robbie, aside from the strength of position that comes with his fame and wealth, is a forceful personality who thinks a great deal about his career trajectory and fights his corner if he feels his instinct is right.

The attraction of an appearance on Britain's most high-profile entertainment show, one that is having vast amounts of money pumped into it by ITV, is easy to understand. Whitney Houston has also performed in the current series, and Michael Bublé is due to appear this weekend.

The famously charismatic Simon Cowell, whose ability to spot a performer with public appeal is unquestioned, regards Williams as one of Britain's greatest showmen. So much so that Williams's name has even been put forward as a possible future judge on the show.

Robbie may have blown that opportunity, having pointedly told the Electric Proms audience "Thanks, BBC, for making me comfortable." ITV won't have appreciated that, not after he blamed his X Factor nerves on the fact that he found himself briefly trapped behind a jammed stage door.

There was something symbolic about that door. The whole concept behind Reality Killed the Video Star seemed to be a reaction against the power of the television talent contest and its domination of music sales; artists that Lily Allen recently derided as "nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell".

The producer of the album is Trevor Horn, who famously produced the 1979 hit "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. It was Williams's idea to pick an album title that echoed the name of the song that launched MTV, a defining moment in music industry history, a generation ago. In an interview with The Times, before Williams had faced the headlights of The X Factor, Horn tried to explain the difference between Williams and the talent-show acts. "People from reality shows can be like a tree planted in a garden where the roots aren't deep – if they don't take quickly, they're going to die," he said. "Someone like Robbie is born for fame, and it's not just talent but charisma: he charges through the door and the whole mood lifts." Except this time, Robbie was behind the reality-show door, and it wouldn't open.

In spite of Williams's immense presence as a stage performer, he has become uncomfortable with playing live. His three shows at Knebworth Park in 2003 amounted to the biggest event in British music history. But in a recent cover interview with GQ magazine, another element of his comeback PR strategy, he described the terror he experienced when doing his last world tour in 2006.

"I just buckled under the weight of it," he said. "Even before it started, I felt like getting on the Titanic. Then I got stage fright. And stage fright in front of 80,000 people is horrendous."

That panic increased as the tour reached Britain. "I was trying to get my hands on steroids. I'd been sick, and I'd had the flu, all kinds of stuff going on. It's a big ask, five nights at Milton Keynes, two nights at Leeds. Other people find it easy to do. But I, for some reason, can't take it."

George Ergatoudis, head of music at Radio 1, told The Independent that the BBC Electric Proms gig was a "make-or-break opportunity" for Williams, adding "a fact that I doubt is lost on Robbie". More than four hours before the notoriously nervous Williams had even stepped on stage, the BBC was sending out an embargoed press note, boasting of the scale of the event: "Robbie Williams breaks world record with Electric Proms performance." The show was broadcast to audiences in 250 cinemas in 23 countries, including an 8,000-seater auditorium in Mexico City. The BBC also predicted a radio audience of 33m for the concert, which was shown later the same evening on BBC2.

It was a brilliant way of launching the album to Williams's international fan base without the need for a tour bus. Equally importantly, the critics were impressed; a very creditable four stars out of five seemed to be the consensus. "Charming, friendly and utterly imperious" was the verdict of The Daily Telegraph.

Robbie's management team are drawing considerable comfort from the fact that "Bodies", helped or hindered by the performance on The X Factor, is his best-selling single in a decade and has made it to the top of the iTunes chart in five European countries.

Sam Delaney, editor of Heat magazine, says the failings of Williams just help to distinguish him from the "bland and boring". "As far as we are concerned he's the perfect celebrity. There's just so much happening in Robbie's life, he has the narrative that we at Heat require."

Collectively, the music industry is willing Williams to make as successful a comeback as his old band Take That. Gennaro Castaldo, of HMV, said the artist had the "personality and charisma" to win through. "The fan base is still very much there and Robbie has always had broad appeal," he said.

But that charisma and broad appeal was not enough to make a success of Williams's 2006 album, Rudebox, which sold so badly that a million unwanted copies were recycled for road surfacing in China. This time Robbie really needs to be on the right track.

'Reality Killed the Video Star' is released on 9 November on EMI