Most Take That fans will remember monthly trips to their local newsagent to eagerly get their mitts on the latest copy of Take That Official , a magazine packed with interviews, posters and news about the band. The magazine was edited by music journalist Alex Kadis, who spent several years becoming a trusted confidante to the boys. Here, the London-based music consultant, who has recently published her debut novel, Big Nobody , recounts her fondest memories of her time with the famous fivesome.
Hi, Alex. Can you tell us how it all started?
I first heard about Take That when I was the features editor at Smash Hits . We were desperate for some great pop stars at the time, but after we watched the Do What U Like video, we all said, “What the hell do we do with this?!” Yes, teenage girls are interested in romance and snogging, but that video was almost sexual!
8View 8 ImagesTake That Official editor Alex Kadis got to travel around the world with Gary, Robbie, Mark, Jason and Howard
8View 8 ImagesThe Take That boys welcomed Alex into their musical gang
We ended up doing a shoot with them on Camber Sands in East Sussex, on what turned out to be a beautiful sunny day in June 1992. The boys were in such good spirits and from the minute I met them, I thought, “These are really, really nice people.” There was a spark between them that I hadn’t seen in a pop band before.
After the shoot we left to go for a pub dinner. As we were driving across a field full of sheep, their new single It Only Takes A Minute came on the radio, and then they got a call from their record label saying it was probably going to go into the charts at No11. They were over the moon, so we stopped the car and jumped up and down in the field!
So, how did you end up editing Take That Official ?
When I left Smash Hits shortly after, their manager Nigel Martin-Smith asked me if I’d like to edit a monthly magazine about the boys, and that’s how Take That Official came about. My job was to listen to everything they said and turn it into something other people would want to read, without betraying their confidence.
View 8 ImagesAlex Kadis accompanied Take That on many of their travels in the nineties, including a particularly memorable trip to upstate New York(Image: Dave Hogan)
You must have had some incredible experiences over the years…
Yes, I saw some amazing places and got a really intimate look at a band that was rising to the top, and later a really intimate view of what happened when it started to break apart. At the height of their success, I remember us going to a Spanish radio station for an interview. There was no way their security team could have got them through the crowds of girls lining the streets, so we had to go into a cinema further down the road and walk to the radio station via connecting doors and tunnels, which was very exciting.
One of my happiest memories – which is also sad at the same time – was when they did their final performance after they’d announced they were splitting up. We got on a boat and went down the canal in Amsterdam. Every bridge we passed under was full of fans waving and screaming at them.
You spent so much time with the Take That boys behind the scenes – did you ever have a favourite?
I got very close to Jason. I used to stay with him at his first flat in Manchester and we’d sit around at night playing Neil Young records, and I introduced him to The Moody Blues. There was nothing romantic in it, just a shared love of 70s music. Jason was such an anchor and a guide for the others in those early days, but at the same time he had a big dose of imposter syndrome. He was almost constantly searching for his identity, and he couldn’t find it within the construct of Take That.
View 8 ImagesTake That’s fans followed them around the world in the 1990s – and many still do(Image: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock)
Gary was great company too, and very, very funny. He would often organise trips together when they weren’t on tour. One day he got a bus to take everybody ice skating, and he took the microphone and announced, “Right, ladies and gentlemen, this is your compere for tonight.” And he did a bit of a club act. It was hilarious. It could be difficult for him because he wasn’t the so-called ‘pretty one’, or one of the dancers, he was the songwriter. So while the others were enjoying time off after a tour, he went straight back to songwriting. He had ambition that always extended beyond Take That.
All the boys have quite different personalities, what did the others bring to the group’s dynamic?
Howard never let stardom get to him, and was always rock solid. If any of the boys had issues, it was Howard they would speak to. He would be the one to say, ‘It’s OK, this is what we’re going to do to mend it.’ He was also very funny, always sticking his bum in someone’s face.
I think I saw Howard’s bum on and off stage more times than I’ve seen any bum in my life! Similarly, Mark has a great sense of humour, and is very principled too. He’s also more talented than he’s ever been given credit for. I can see Mark all over the more recent Take That songs. And of course, you can never get tired of looking at him, he’s just so good-looking from every angle.
8View 8 ImagesAlex became friends with all the Take That members, and describes Howard Donald as ‘rock solid’
8View 8 ImagesMark Owen was managed by Alex as a solo artist(Image: Press Association Images)
You even went on to manage Mark as a solo artist too…
Yes, I managed Mark as a solo artist for five years after Take That split up. He played me his demos and they were really good and I admired his work ethic. He wanted to be taken seriously as an artist after being known as the cute superstar from Take That. In hindsight, it’s a shame he hadn’t had a couple of years off because I could see that the damage that had been done to him by becoming so famous so young only started to creep up on him during his solo career.
They were all just kids, and the pressure to deliver and to work such long hours was immense. Of course, it was a glamorous life with star treatment and fancy hotels, but what people didn’t see was the daily grind. The grind that grinds someone down until they don’t actually know who they are at the end of it.
Robbie has spoken about those feelings quite a bit in the past…
He has, and I think that’s what happened to him. He had a very down-to-earth wisdom which made him really likeable, but it also made you forget how young he was, and he had lost his concept of what normality was. It was so sad when Robbie was told to leave the band. He didn’t really want to go, he just kept threatening to go. He was just a kid who wanted to be a kid, but his job didn’t allow him to be that. They were so young and they were having the best and simultaneously the worst times of their lives. They were all wrung out by the end.
View 8 ImagesRobbie, Jason, Mark, Gary and Howard were brilliant to tour with in the 1990s, Alex says(Image: Daily Mirror)
When did you learn about the band’s comeback in 2006?
Having not seen them all for a few years, Mark invited me for breakfast at the Bluebird in Chelsea one day in 2005 and told me they were talking about potentially getting back together to do a gig. He asked what I thought, and I said it seemed like a good idea because at the very least it would provide them with closure. But of course it wasn’t closure, it was an opener.
I met them backstage after their brilliant first gig at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena in April 2006, and I could feel the spark and realised that yes, it had been over too soon. They had worked through so much stuff separately and they needed to be back together to work through things as a group again. They were all very, very surprised by the reaction to their comeback and how big it became.
Do you think that they’re going to deliver something amazing again this summer ?
The Circus Live tour will be a great reprise, and I have a feeling it might be their last one. They’re piling on the nostalgia and bringing the best of the best to the stage, and it is such an upbeat, happy and colourful tour. It feels like a celebration, and they absolutely deserve a celebration.
Alex Kadis’ debut novel, Big Nobody, is out now
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