How Deep Is Your Love: Take That's Bizarre Farewell Video

The announcement on 13th February 1996 that UK pop act Take That were no more was one those moments that defined the passing of childhood for many an 80s baby. 

The news itself did not come as much of a shock, for the pieces were already beginning to crumble. Once a perfectly-assembled quintet, they'd been a man down since the previous year's summer, when Robbie Williams had departed with immense acrimony, and under much tabloid scrutiny. Frontman Gary Barlow, the songwriting talent behind the group, sensed that the time was right for him to cut his remaining bandmates loose and make a bid for his own solo career. Famously, the Samaritans set up special hotlines to counsel distraught fans, and I saw the news reports of teenage girls sobbing and begging their idols not to desert them - although the only anecdote I personally have to share involved a girl at my local youth club who reacted to the breakup by gleefully snapping a Take That pencil into four separate pieces. I'm guessing she was an East 17 diehard.

Still, even if you didn't share in the fans' howling attachment (as I certainly couldn't), it was hard not to feel disconcerted at the announcement, particularly if, like me, you were a kid at the time, and Take That had been around and dominated the charts for such a significant portion of your lifetime that a world without them seemed a little more depleted. I couldn't help but partake in that melancholic sense that things were changing, even as I hid behind a wall of schadenfreude (just not to the same flamboyant degree as my pencil-snapping acquaintance). I was old enough to know that music acts came and went (when was the last time anyone in the UK had given thought to New Kids on The Block, the boy band from across the pond whose success had paved the way for the likes of Take That?), but Take That were one of the biggies, and it was the first time that I had borne witness to a band giving a press conference to say, "That's it, we're done." It wasn't one of those soft-pedalled breakups where the band members temper decisions to part ways with non-committal terms like "for now" and "who knows if we'll be working together again in the future?" They were very clear that this was where the Take That train would terminate. They had one last bit of unfinished business in the form of their upcoming Greatest Hits release, and its promo single, a cover of the 1977 Bee Gees hit "How Deep Is Your Love", but it would be their absolute last as a unit. Said Barlow: "Unfortunately, the rumors are true. "How Deep Is Your Love" is going to be our last single together, and the Greatest Hits is going to be our last album. And from today, is no more." We were assured that the end of Take That didn't mean the end of the group's stories as individuals, with Barlow being particularly ambitious about jumping into his solo career straight off the bat. Nobody could have been prepared for what was coming right around the corner - that in the twist of separation, it'd be Williams who'd excel at being free - or indeed ten years down the line. Right now it was February 1996 and as we understood it, things were never going to be the same again.

"How Deep Is Your Love" was released on 26th February and, with listeners eager to savour that final flurry of Take That momentum, occupied the top spot of the UK charts for three weeks. Even so, it felt like a curiously modest offering for such a momentous occasion. The band's treatment of the Gibbs' disco-era classic is perfectly nice. As a record there's not a good deal wrong with it, unless you're one of those purists who turns your nose up at covers on principle. But I doubt that many fans are going to rank it among their strongest output, and as the swan song to a glittering career it had the whiff of an anti-climax. Some questioned why they'd chosen to bow out with something as perfunctory as a cover, particularly when their previous single "Never Forget", with its bombastic meditations on the mutually transient nature of youth and celebrity, had felt like it was practically destined to be their grand finale. "How Deep Is Your Love" became the would-be palate cleanser that gave off its own bemusing aftertaste, as sure a sign as any of the band's waned morale post-Williams. But the video was a different story. The video was where all the farewell energy had gone, and it was...a choice, to say the least.

I say "energy", but I'm not sure if that's really an apt word for a video where the band spend the duration in a sedentary position, tied to chairs while a crazed abductor subjects them to various tortures. But it gives the single a sense of finality that the song alone couldn't convey - and that too is quite the choice. On the cheekiest of levels, it saw them coming full circle. Take That had started their career with the BDSM-friendly "Do What U Like", so maybe they'd seen something poetic in the idea of ending with a video themed around bondage. There's none of that joyous jelly-smearing going on here, mind, with "How Deep Is Your Love" being intent on combining two differing, even opposing moods. Director Nick Drandt gives the video a dark and gloomy look that captures the overhanging solemnity of the matter, with the knowledge that we were at the end of an era. But it's also a knowingly silly piece (if in a much moodier, more restrained manner than "Do What U Like") as if the band were aware that they shouldn't take themselves so seriously and that the best thing they could do, under the circumstances, would be to go out with a dash of humour. The abductor, played by model Paula Hamilton, is genuinely creepy, but in the campest of ways. You can tell she's crazy because of the weird panda eyes she's acquired through her excessive use of eyeshadow. And also because she dresses like Cruella de Vil in the latter half of the video, where, not content simply to jab Barlow in the throat with a fork, she takes all four of them out on a road trip and positions them atop a steep slope overlooking a reservoir in Middlesex. She seemingly does an eeny meeny miny moe to select at random which one she's going to torture next, but it's of no surprise when she singles out Barlow yet again. He was the undisputed star of the final curtain, nabbing the lead vocals and leaving Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Mark Owen with little to do on "How Deep Is Your Love" outside of harmonising and looking on in horror. 

What's interesting about the video (aside from how it ends) is its casting of the obsessive fan as the villain, particularly in light of the distress exhibited by the real-world fans at the prospect of having to bid their beloved popsters farewell, at least in their current form. Here, the band are literally held captive and constrained by a fan who would seemingly rather destroy them than let them be free. Obviously, it's an ironic take on the depths of devotion; we have a fan whose passion for Take That is so uncontainable that she needs to keep them roped and duct taped in her basement and make them her personal playthings. But the context of the video also makes the choice of song a lot less arbitrary as a finale. It wasn't just a pretty tune they could cover convincingly, and old enough that their teenaged fanbase wouldn't necessarily be comparing it to the Bee Gees original (unless their mothers had introduced them to Saturday Night Fever). It was a plea to the fans, asking them if they loved them enough that they'd be willing to let them go, let them grow and let them blossom into something else. To bear with them, as they had asked the anonymous 14-year-old who had called into that fateful press conference in tears, and to embrace change and all the possibilities it might bring. The alternative, the video proposed, would be analogous to keeping the band stagnant and confined, each bound to their assigned positions as part of Take That, for no other purpose other than to suit the fans' needs for comfort and diversion. 

This depiction of Hamilton as a twisted representation of the band's fanbase was not, I believe, intended with any malice. There was a winking wryness to the affair, as is particularly evident in the video's resolution. "How Deep Is Your Love" does not have a bittersweetly triumphant ending, where Hamilton realises the error of her ways and the band goes gracefully into the sunset, promising to make the most of whatever lies ahead on their diverging paths. No, it fades out in the most spectacularly morbid fashion, with Hamilton grabbing Barlow and dangling him over the drop; as he continues to challenge her over the extent of her devotion, we focus on that telltale smudge trailing from one of her panda eyes, a sign of her inner turmoil, until finally she lets him go. As in, she lets him fall from her grasp, and he's apparently about to find out how deep is that reservoir. Donald, Orange and Owen look on in horror, as they've been doing this entire time, while Hamilton stands aghast, struggling to process what she's done, until she takes note of the other band members sitting there, and that sociopathic smile returns as she heads in their direction. You get the impression that she's not one to break up a collection. So that's it. The end. Take That are all dead. Williams might think he's off the hook, but what are the odds that Hamilton will be hunting him down in the aftermath and bringing him to the same location?

A final video in which the group's disbandment was signified through their fictitious murders was certainly a novel means of attempting to tie a bow on the Take That story. You could argue that it was even a misjudged one - I'm not sure how receptive those distraught fans would have been to the implicit humour, or if watching the band's implied demises would have brought them any lick of solace in this darkest of hours. Maybe they'd have preferred something a little more wholesome and reassuring. But for all its macabre quirkiness, there's an emotional honesty about the video that I find intriguing, and admirable. If "Never Forget" was the band's proclamation, loud and victorious, about the exhilaration and precariousness that came with having reached the top of the world, looking down and seeing how far you'd come but also how far you potentially had to fall, "How Deep Is Your Love" was their quieter acknowledgement that the moment had simply passed and there was no going back. It wasn't the mighty bang of a finish that "Never Forget" would have been, but so what? Sometimes a resigned whimper can be as resounding, especially when it's so gloriously weird a whimper as this.

Williams echoed the sentiment (albeit more bitterly) in his 1998 single "No Regrets". By this point he was feeling confident enough as a solo artist to be taking potshots at his former bandmates - while "No Regrets" sounds on the surface like it's detailing the conflicting emotions arising from the breakdown of a more conventional romantic pairing, the lyrics "You're far too short to carry weight" (performed as backing vocals by Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys) are often cited as the giveaway that he was airing his dirty laundry with Barlow. And the music video ended with his own implied demise - or at least, that was always my impression at the time. We watch as he abandons a glitzy stage performance and goes on a little meander with a leaking jerry can in hand, leaving a trail of highly flammable liquid behind him; inevitably, it catches fire, and the flames come rushing in his direction as he delivers the dramatic punchline: "I guess the love we once had is officially...DEAD!" Sure, there's an obvious metaphor to be had in there about burned bridges, but it was also my presumption that he was about to be engulfed by an inferno of his own making - the imagery is a little more abstract compared to Barlow's demise in "How Deep Is Your Love", but the detonating of that final whammy right as the flames are at his heels has us exiting on a note of hair-raising dread. For although Williams crowed about being a survivor ("Suppose it's just a point of view, but they tell me I'm doing fine"), the song made plain that he actually harboured a myriad of regrets about the situation ("If I could just stop hating you, I'd feel sorry for us instead"). He'd like the Take That moment to have resolved differently, but he concurred that it was over and there was no going back. 

The funny thing is, of course, that the sentiment would prove incorrect on both sides of the equation. Sometimes a moment that seems permanently faded does come back around, if not necessarily in any great hurry. The years that followed Take That's split would be punishing for Barlow. He didn't really go plummeting into a watery grave, but he was forced to retreat into the wilderness when his solo career didn't take off the way he'd hoped, despite an auspicious start, and could only watch as Williams ascended to a level of mega stardom that most musicians only dream of. By the end of 1996 the vacant spot Take That had left as the faces of British pop had been claimed by the Spice Girls, with the success of "Wannabe" indicating that listeners had an appetite for something with a little more brashness; it took Williams a few goes to get it right, but the public responded to the cheeky personality he brought to his output, all while Barlow struggled to stay afloat. For a time it looked as though the rest of Take That were destined to become mere footnotes in Williams' career, the world seemingly happy to leave them dumped and decomposing at the bottom of that lonely reservoir in Middlesex. Then in late 2006, more than a decade after the split and "How Deep Is Your Love", Barlow, Donald, Orange and Owen were able to crawl back out of their metaphorical quarry and pull off one of the most impressive comebacks in pop history. Their new single, "Patience", was a major hit, topping the UK charts for four weeks and picking up the prize for Best British Single at the 2007 Brit Awards. In the end, those assurances to the tearful 14-year-old who'd been asked to bear with them were no bluff, even if the journey had been a far twistier one than either the band or the fans could have anticipated. And although Williams initially declined to be part of the reunion, even he was won over by the goodwill it engendered, reconciling with his bandmates and updating the final punchline of "No Regrets" to "ALIVE!"

All of which retroactively changes the meaning of the "How Deep Is Your Love" video. It ceases to be an allegory for the band's demise, but rather their temporary casting into irrelevance, as well as a haunting peek into an alternate timeline where this might indeed have been our perturbing farewell. But it certainly does capture the rockiness of its moment.

Guided Muscle (aka Incredulous Coyotes Need Not Apply)

If I were to pick out one short that, for me, represented the absolute cream of the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner crop, I'd inevitably go to Chuck Jones' 1955 masterpiece Guided Muscle, a choice that I'll confess has relatively little to do with the coyote's endeavours to stop that infernal ground cuckoo in its tracks. Guided Muscle is like an exquisite sandwich, its filling wedged between two particularly flavoursome slices of bread. The filling is still an essential and gratifying part of the experience, but it's the bread I'm really here for. As a young child, I had Guided Muscle on a VHS tape along with eight other Coyote and Road Runner shorts (part of a series of Looney Tunes releases put out by Videolog to coincide with Bug Bunny's 50th birthday); it always stood out to me as the single biggest oddity of that collection, all on account of how it was bookended, with an opening sequence I found strangely unsettling (in the best possible way) and a closing punchline that for a long while just left me baffled. We might as well start with the ending, for it is the juicier of the two - after suffering one defeat too many in his ever-fruitless pursuit of the road-runner and becoming charred by an explosion he had devised, set up and activated, a visibly irate Wile withdraws from the chase, producing a sign that reads, "Wanted: One gullible coyote. Apply to Manager of this theater." He then signs off by pulling the "That's All Folks!" card across the screen. Cue "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down".

What's going on here might seem blatantly obvious to adult eyes, but appreciate that, at seven years old, this was a difficult joke for me to wrap my head around for three different reasons:

1. I was unaware of some of the ways in which American English differed from British English, and couldn't be 100% certain that a "theater" was actually the same thing as a "theatre". On top of which, I would have been thinking of a theatre in terms of a playhouse rather than a cinema.
2. At that age, I also had no idea what "gullible" meant.
3. Like a lot of children who grew up watching Looney Tunes shorts on television or VHS, I had little inkling of how old they actually were, or of the fact that they hailed from another era completely, where cartoons were screened theatrically before feature films. I would have assumed that they were made for television like every other cartoon I was in the business of watching. Gags where characters interacted with a film strip and a white screen still made a degree of sense (I appreciated that the characters were bending reality and going beyond the confines of their world), but something like this I had no real reference for.

Eventually I figured out that what Wile was doing here was tending his resignation, and over time all of the other details became clear. It (briefly) put the fanciful, none-too-serious notion into my head that it wasn't necessarily the same coyote we saw chasing the road-runner in every short - Guided Muscle was only the third cartoon on this tape, so did that mean for that the remaining six we were seeing how that gullible new applicant was faring? A darker thought crossed my mind that the coyote perhaps wasn't surviving some of the more extreme of his backfired schemes and was being repeatedly replaced by lookalikes in between shorts (I mean, doppelgangers were out there - just look to the Ralph Wolf shorts). On that note, how could I be certain it was even the same road-runner being chased every time? What if the coyote was obtaining the occasional victory when no one was watching and new specimens were coming along to fill the void? After all, this is the closest a Looney Tunes series got to replicating the kind of set-up you saw in nature documentaries (the constant use of Acme products notwithstanding) - the subjects didn't talk and were observed in their natural habitat, engaging in the same age-old battle of hunger vs elusiveness that's defined the rhythm of life for countless generations of predator and prey. The individual participants were constantly changing, even if the basic narrative remained the same. Obviously, I appreciate that none of that idle thinking holds water, for Looney Tunes shorts typically adhere to their own self-contained continuity. What happens in one is unlikely to have any direct bearing on the next. Case in point, Guided Muscle was already the seventh of the coyote vs road-runner shorts, yet the opening sequence gives the impression that Wile is encountering Road and getting acquainted with his incredible acceleration for the very first time. In that regard, I like the way in which it tells a complete story and how the opening and closing sequences, while they may not directly echo one another, show Wile's fixation coming full circle. 

The intention behind the opening sequence was much less of a puzzle to me as a child - that Wile was apparently desperate enough to be preparing a discarded tin can as a meal spoke volumes about his impoverishment and how badly he was eating in general - but it always disturbed me, even if he ultimately stops short of attempting to eat this most exotic of delicacies. What makes the sequence so glorious is how beautifully straight it's initially played, with the coyote going about his business with the can as if this were the most normal behaviour on Earth. There's no hint of any kind of craze or desperation in his eyes. It's only when he sits down to try cutting the damned thing with a knife and fork that his expression warps into something significantly more exaggerated, as the grim reality of his situation sinks in. The abruptness of this transition is what really spooked me about this sequence, not least for how Wile breaks the fourth wall, shooting his demoralised gaze directly at the viewer as if the awareness that he's being watched has made him self-conscious of his own wretchedness. He cannot face his audience and degrade himself any further. There is, in addition, an excessive amount of red around Wile's eyes during this particular moment, due to what I presume to an inking error, but it adds fortuitously to the overall uncanniness of the scene. Another detail I particularly love is the broken bottle of pink liquid positioned to the right of the coyote's dinner plate that's obviously intended to give the appearance of a fine rosé wine, although who knows it actually contains? Wile discards it along with the can, indicating that whatever it was, it likely wasn't more palatable.

Wile's assigned Latin name, Eatibus almost anythingus, informs us that he isn't exactly a picky eater, but we've already witnessed where his limits lie. He's not reckless enough to try forcing something as inedible as a tin can (no matter how thoroughly boiled) through his digestive system. By the same token, he decides at the end of the short that he isn't reckless enough to keep pursuing the road-runner and suffering injury after injury in his attempt to pinpoint some kind of fatal chink in the bird's armour - to do so would be as delusional as his prior belief that he could cure his hunger pains by chowing down discarded tin cans. The problem of his hunger remains unresolved, but he he's least seen the futility of his chasing and taken a step back (for now, anyhow). I will admit, even if the ending is no longer a point of confusion to me, that there is a degree to which I still find it somewhat troubling, specifically in the notice's request for a "gullible" coyote. There is subtle humor in the implication that the hypothetical applicant would have to be self-aware enough to recognise themselves as gullible, but it also indicates that the position is to be regarded as a trap, raising questions about who is the predator in this scenario and who is the real prey. Although Wile initially sees Road as his salvation, he is in fact the perfect bait, luring Wile ever deeper down the path of Sisyphean endeavour. He's on a quest to attain the unattainable, doing things a little differently every time, determined to keep going long after he's exhausted every possible option. It's what makes the scrawny fleabag so endearing. But it's also what, according to Chuck Jones, in the series of (contested) rules he reportedly laid out for the series, makes him such a thoroughgoing fanatic, citing George Santayana's definition of the fanatic as "one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."

It's in Wile's apparent resignation at the end of Guided Muscle that we see shades of the grind experienced by the coyote's aforementioned doppelganger, Ralph Wolf, with the implication that his designated role as the predator in this equation is a job like any other. Of course, the Sam and Ralph shorts were entirely firm on where the boundaries lay between the characters' personal and professional lives, by having the wolf and sheepdog drop their antagonistic demeanours the second the clock struck 5pm and head off home to their neat suburban houses, wishing each other well for the evening. In Wile's case, and in spite of Jones' insistence that he could stop any time if he weren't a fanatic, it's not clear if walking away is even an option. Compared to Sam and Ralph, there is no other world for him to retreat to, and no differentiation between the characters' assumed and "real" personas. What does the coyote even have to do in his sparse terrain other than to fixate on catching the road-runner (or experiment with tin cans)? Something I've always enjoyed about the Coyote and Road Runner shorts is their purity - the characters never ventured beyond their stretch of the desert and for the most part seemed to be the only inhabitants that actually dwelt there. Rarely do other parties get involved, the only persistent hint of a world that exists beyond coming in the supply of Acme products that Wile is (inexplicably) able to have sent his way, and even then, their products appear to exist purely in service of the coyote's endeavours, given their peculiar and often niche nature. One of my favourite gags in Guided Muscle occurs when Wile resolves to try tarring and feathering the road-runner and consults a publication entitled How To Tar And Feather A Road Runner; the existence of such a book should be ludicrous enough in itself, but the subtitle indicating that demand for the book is such that it's already in its 10th printing takes the joke to the next level. Another sequence involves an outside intrusion in the form of the red truck that comes thundering down the narrow road Wile has just greased, although you get the uncanny impression that this truck (not unlike that from the movie Duel) exists not as a means of mobility for any flesh and blood participant of some broader universe, but as force of calamity pulled from nowhere to inflict further misfortune upon our hero. The road runs throughout the desert, not as a means for travellers to pass through it, but foremost to the lay the grounds for the ongoing chase (such conditions are, after all, demanded by the very name that one of the parties bears, both as an individual and as a species).

One of the great underlying absurdities of the Sam and Ralph shorts was in the question of who was actually employing the two canines to go to war with one another on a daily basis from 8 to 5 - the depiction of a sheepdog as a working stiff made a degree of sense, but what kind of sheep farming business would also be hiring a wolf to stir up conflict within that time? One interpretation is that it's all being orchestrated for the benefit of the viewer, so that we could derive amusement from their ostensible enmity, until they've fulfilled the day's quota for cartoon mayhem and get to retire for the night. The ending to Guided Muscle, with its more explicit reference to the physical space from which the short's original audience would have observed the action, has Wile exhibiting such a self-awareness that entertaining the viewer is own his raison d'être, acknowledging that his giving up on Road Runner requires another coyote to take this place. Such is our fascination with seeing a malnourished coyote suffer endless pratfalls in pursuit of a terrestrial cuckoo. I like to think that by the end of the short he's dropped more than just the delusion that the road-runner is a viable quarry. Up until now, Wile has obviously regarded the viewer as his ally and confidant, judging by the series of gestures and glances he directs toward the camera as he goes about his predatory business. The first of his ill-fated schemes, which involves affixing an arrowhead to his nose and firing himself with a large bow, contains a particularly harrowing (and hilarious) moment where he turns his head elatedly toward the viewer, expecting them to share in his excitement that things are running according to plan, only to get blind-sided by the saguaro cactus directly in front of him (which proceeds to fall off of a cliff, taking him down with it). His trust in the audience is flagrantly misplaced. In the end, Wile appears to have fallen out of love with the viewer as much as he has the concept of consuming Road, having seen though the exploitative nature of their relationship. Any coyote applying to fill in his position would need to be gullible, not just in the belief that they can actually catch the road-runner, but in the belief that showbiz is glamorous and the audience is on their side and not deriving a tremendous kick from their ill fortune.

Conversely, the coyote is also the party with whom the viewer overwhelmingly identifies, which makes that relationship an intrinsically masochistic one. By now it's pretty well-established that if you were rooting for the road-runner, you were doing it wrong, when it's Wile who possesses all of the attractive qualities. The vulnerabilities, the drive to attain something better than the hand life dealt him, and the dogged attachment to his beloved pipe dream, no matter how thoroughly and repeatedly the universe insists on bending to beat it out of him. He keeps going, hoping that with enough persistence and variation he will procure a better result and taste the kind of success the world seems intent on denying him. For that reason, he has our sympathies, and it's easy to see in him a mirror to our own fallibilities, adding an extra shade to the coyote's final implication of the audience in Guided Muscle. By evoking the audience's immediate space, and indicating that the application process would be happening right there within their very theatre, he is evoking the viewer's own potential as a candidate to take his place. The short ends with the insinuation that the viewer, like the coyote, is at risk of becoming caught in a trap of their own making. The bait is laid out right in front of them, even as it calls attention to its deceptive nature with its specification for a gullible applicant. Of course, the signage also specifies that the applicant should be a coyote (this part is underlined for emphasis), which would appear to automatically disqualify all of us non-coyotes in the theatre. But perhaps we could become coyotes, if only a figurative sense. Scrawny little underdogs who believe we deserve better and won't let that light of tenacity go out, even as the odds are perpetually stacked against us. How do we know when we've crossed the slippery line from hard graft and determination into self-destructive obsession? If eating discarded tin cans is our only alternative, does it make any difference either way?