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 some disconcertment 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 certainly 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 music purists who turns your nose up at covers on principle. But I doubt that many fans are going to rank 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 moves 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 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 had 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 a symbol for the band's demise, but rather their temporary casting into irrelevance, as well as a haunting peek into an alternate universe where this might indeed have been our perturbing farewell. But it certainly does capture the rockiness of its moment.
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