Back to the UK! Part 2: Robbie Williams Homecoming

Even though it came at the beginning, the highlight of my trip — and the whole reason it happened, to be fair — was seeing my popstar at his hometown football stadium.

Rob’s a proud native of Stoke-on-Trent, and an avid Port Vale supporter, but had never played a show there, despite always dreaming of it. And so he planned the Robbie Williams is Coming Home (an annoying English football reference that I choose not to dwell on) charity show, for June 2020. I, of course, got a ticket and planned my trip to Stoke right away.

But then for some reason, the show got postponed until this June. And after much waiting and replanning, I was there.

The gig was on a Saturday night, so I took the train up from London on Friday to ensure I had plenty of time for any travel disruptions (although, thankfully there were none), and spent most of Saturday just getting ready for the show.

I’d booked a hotel in Hanley — probably the farthest I could have gotten from the stadium in Burslem — but figured hey, it’s a stadium, there have to be a ton of great public transport options to get me there. Not so much. Every online route planner I checked pretty much just frowned and told me I should walk for 45 minutes, especially on the way back, given that the show would end about half an hour after the last bus of the night. So on the night, I decided to walk over to the show instead of taking the bus, just to see how it was, and be able to have some landmarks in case I was stuck trekking back in the dark.

We’d been sent information that the show started at 6:40, but Rob’s dad also posted that the main show wouldn’t start until 9:00. I normally wouldn’t go to any General Admission event any earlier than I have to, because my middle-aged body abhors standing for longer than a couple of hours, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss the opening act, Lufthaus* so I left the hotel around 5:30. With the long hike and giant queue outside the stadium, I got in the doors around 6:45… to find that what had started at 6:40 was a couple of local radio DJs trying to hype up the crowd, and Lufthaus wouldn’t be on until 7:45. Ouch, my joints!

At least I had plenty of time before the big show to wait in lines for things, of which there were plenty. The longest was for merch, so I watched the queue and went to buy my t-shirt when it was only about 20 people deep, instead of stretching the entire length of the pitch (seriously). When I was walking away with my purchase, a guy kept grinning at me like he knew me. I figured it was mistaken identity, but turned out he was just friendly. He said hello, so I acknowledged him politely.

Him: “How long did you have to queue for that?”
Me: “Just a few minutes, not that long actually.”
Him, upon hearing my accent: “Where are you from?”
Me: “Seattle.”
Him: “Seattle?! And you came all this way for this?”
Me: “Of course, anywhere for Rob.”
He then got the attention of a group of folks nearby, announced: “She came all the way from Seattle for this!”
They all gave me a big cheer, and I gave them their prize for finding the American in the crowd.
Not really.

Anyway, much as I love the original Lufthaus music I’ve heard so far, their set wasn’t all that exciting. It was just Tim and Flynn (the other 2/3 of the group) DJing for 45 minutes, playing a bit of their own stuff, plus some standard dance tracks and a remix or two. And despite being the evening of a warm sunny June day, it was windy and freezing in the stadium by that time. We were a tough crowd.

Finally, at 9pm on the dot, Mr Williams and the band came on stage. And as usual, I can’t come up with good enough words to describe it. He was clearly having a blast and felt very at home on his… erm… home turf, because he killed it. Some of the show was just a normal set, and some was a musical biography, complete with some Take That (Could it be Magic), Don’t Look Back in Anger (because Take That sacked him for going to Knebworth with Oasis), the much loved among Friendlies but rarely played Karma Killer, No Regrets, and Love My Life.

The audience was certainly very supportive, although toward the middle of the crowd where I was standing, there seemed to be a lot of folks there to celebrate the local boy made good, and not so much his music. They knew all the words to Oasis and Angels, but totally lost interest during the lesser known songs that made me most excited. Not that I begrudge them being there, it’s fantastic to have a whole community so completely behind our guy that they’ll stand on a freezing pitch in a sea of 20,000 humans, despite the still very real risk of Covid, without even knowing the guy's songs.

I feel like Rob knew the crowd would be a mix, though, including the rabid Port Vale fans, and the encore started with him coming out wearing (and officially unveiling) their new ’22-23 strip, carrying the trophy they’d just won the week before. And then before finishing with his standard Robbie-encore-hits, he did Glad All Over, which I assumed (and Google confirmed) is affiliated with the club, given the crowd’s over the top reaction to a cheesy 1960’s Dave Clark 5 song.

In the end, my body was aching in completely unexpected places from the long walk and standing for so many hours, but I still smiled on every step of the 45 minutes back to the hotel. It was a perfect way to see Robbie on stage for the first time in 2 1/2 years, and I loved every second of it.


*Rob’s EDM side project that he’s pretending publicly not to be a part of, but has been talking about and playing us songs from for a couple years already, because the man can never keep a secret when he’s excited