In March 1996, immediately after announcing its final dissolution, Take That released their latest single. It was also the group’s first as a quartet, since Robbie Williams had left the previous year. They chose to say goodbye with ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ – version of the classic Bee Gees – because they had one goal: “to show that we could still do a cover at this point in our career and do it very well.” The single became his last number 1 in the UK until his return in 2006 with ‘Patience’. The “icing on the cake” came with a final and impressive video which symbolized the death of the ‘boy band’.
The final chapter of Take That
In the summer of 1995, Robbie Williams decided to leave Take That as the band was in the middle of its fourth tour, the Nobody Else tour. The others decided to continue the concerts until the end of the tour in October. They didn’t mind going on stage for the first time as a quartet. But only four months after the end of the tourGary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen and Jason Orange They officially announce their separation. February 13, 1996 was the chosen day.
As usual, the ‘boy band’ said goodbye with a compilation featuring their ‘greatest hits’:Represents the last five years of our lives in a single album”. There was only a new song. Even though he was almost 20 years old, it was the group’s first recording as a quartet: the version of the Bee Gees classic: How Deep is your love.
“We wanted to demonstrate…”
“We wanted to show that we could still do a version at this point in our career and do it very well”, explains Gary Barlow in the book ‘1000 UK #1 Hits’. We remember that Take That had already recorded a version and with excellent results. For example, on their debut album in 1992 they included Could it be magic – an original song by Barry Manilow – with which they won their first major award for Best British Single at the Brit Awards.
The Take That boys in a photo from 1996 / Getty Images/Fiona Hanson – PA Images
Coincidentally, on February 19, 1996, when barely a week had passed since they announced their separation, They attended the Brit Awards. As well as picking up single and video of the year awards (for Back for good), they took to the stage at Earls Court to sing. And the theme they played was How deep is your love.
a symbolic death
The release of the group’s latest single, in March, was accompanied by a singular video, which It had nothing to do with the romanticism of the themesince it was a kind of mini horror film, barely 4 minutes long, Directed by Nicholas Brandt. In the first scene, the four band members appear, in a dark basement, tied to chairs with thick ropes. Then comes the kidnapper, the English model Paula Hamilton, who plays a sinister blonde woman, dressed to the feet in red, with not very good intentions. The obsessive and psychopathic fan he distinguishes in particular Gary Barlow (the singer of the song) and marks his face with the end of a fork which ends up planting itself in his throat.
How deep is your love era too Take This is the farewell clip. Most significant is its final scene, when the woman in red leads them to the edge of a cliff, still tied to the chairs, and pushes Gary. The others will soon follow the same fate. The shocking last seconds of the clip, with the murder of the four, is an obvious analogy with the death of the group.
The icing on the cake”
The Bee Gees’ version of the popular song became Take That’s eighth and final UK No. 1 (until 2006 when they released Patience), where it remained for three weeks. The song also topped the charts in Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. In LOS40, he reached the top of the list on April 13, 1996.
Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb and Barry Gibb / Getty Images/GAB Archive
It was the “icing on the cake” for Take That, as it was for the Bee Gees.. The brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb they had written it in 1977 on request. They were at the Château d’Hérouville studio in France, and producer Robert Stigwood called them from Los Angeles. He asked them for “5 or 6” songs for a “low budget” movie he was working on. The film in question was none other than ‘Saturday Night Fever’. Barry Gibb told Gary Barlow, in his BBC Radio space ‘We write the songs’, that after accepting the commission: “We started writing… and I think ‘How deep in your love’ was the icing on the cake.”
In just two weeks of work in the Château d’Hérouville studio, in France, the songs are born they made Saturday Night Fever the best-selling album in history until the arrival of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Even so, to this day, it’s still one of the soundtracks best sellers of all time.
In 2018 Take That volvió a grabar How deep is your love. This time, they recruited a new 72-year-old member. None other than Sir Barry Gibb himself. They included the “remake” on the Odyssey compilation, as part of the band’s 30th anniversary celebrations.