27-show tour: That’s progress

Take That’s forthcoming tour is a big deal.

Actually that doesn’t do justice to Progress Live. The quintet’s 27–show trip around the UK is a stupendous deal.

The schedule includes eight nights at the City of Manchester Stadium: no other band in the country, if not the world, could fill a 60,000–capacity venue for more than a week as part of a tour.

Then take into account that all 1.34 million tickets for the tour sold out within a day — the boys had to add 11 shows as soon as phone lines opened to keep up with demand — and the achievement seems even more impressive.

Gary, Mark, Howard, Jason and Robbie could probably have added 11 more nights and still not satisfied all the people who want to see them perform this summer.

The sheer scale of what’s ahead of the Fab Five in the next few weeks isn’t lost on the band.

“It’s all coming together now,” says Oldham-born Mark. “If you’d have asked three weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been so sure, but it’s really coming together now. I feel like we’re in a really good place.”

Gary adds: “The idea of actually going on tour is really exciting. But there’s always so much to do, so there is a worry. I’m not really excited until we’re done and ready. I might not get that feeling until the first or second night, as late as that.”

One of the reasons for their slight apprehension stems from the success of their last tour, not to mention its unprecedented scale.

The concerts accompanying Circus saw the band, then a four–piece, of course, performing with scores of dancers and acrobats, as well as engaging in the carnival atmosphere themselves by putting on clown make–up and riding unicycles, all while singing some of the best–known songs of the past 20 years.

“That’s just it,” says Mark. “How are we going to top the last one? That was the first question we had to ask when planning the Progress tour.

“The first and most important thing we did was to get the songs sorted and build the show around that.

“When you look at the songs we’re going to play, even if we go up there and do nothing but stand and sing, there are some great songs.

“We have a lot of confidence in the set list we’ve built over 20 years. But us being us, we can’t just go up and do that, we have to think, ‘We could sing the song, but we could also do it while flying out of a plane. Come on!’

“There are certain members of the band who push the theatrics a little more than others,” he continues. “After we’ve decided on a set list, we have to find a happy medium with the production side so everyone is comfortable.”

Robbie rejoined the band ahead of writing and recording Progress, which has now sold more than two million copies in the UK since its release last November.

The Take That of 2011 is a very different band to the one he left in 1995, and his absence from their 2005 reunion and subsequent two albums was almost as big a story as the reunion itself.

Mark adds: “Now and again I think, ‘Oh, we’re back, all of us’ and I’d laugh inside. I can’t believe it. I keep getting this warm feeling.”