Five: ‘Our reunion is like a part of yourself has been found again’
The struggles faced by the members of Five during their 1990s heyday were well documented in the BBC’s Boybands Forever documentary, but after launching their reunion with a surprise performance with Robbie Williams, the pop group say a part of themselves has been “found again”.
Five, best known for songs such as If Ya Gettin’ Down, Keep On Movin’ and Everybody Get Up, are reuniting with their original line-up for the first time in 25 years for their Keep On Movin’ tour, which will see them perform in Leeds and Sheffield.
The group – made up of Abz Love, J Brown, Ritchie Neville, Scott Robinson and Sean Conlon – have performed as a four-piece and with three of their original members after the band’s break-up, but have not fully reunited since splitting in 2001, when they were a three-piece. Conlon says: “It’s like a part of yourself has been found again.”
News of their return has been received so warmly that the band had to put on 13 extra dates to satisfy demand. Neville says: “Obviously you wouldn’t step into it and put yourself on the line if you thought you was going to flop, but you can’t help, as a human being, having this fear of, like, is it going to fly? Are people going to care? Or has it just been too long? So to then practically double the amount of dates that we’ve put on (and) sell out these arenas, it’s been genuinely heart-warming.
"I think our story, like, the other side of it, that the shadowy side has been told, and once we announced it in the UK, it was sort of like people in the street going, ‘yeah, Five do it’, and it’s almost like champion of the people.”
The band speak about their first appearance on stage in more than two decades with Williams at London’s Emirates Stadium earlier this year, revealing the former Take That singer had planned to perform Keep On Movin’ without them.
Robinson explains: “It was quite last minute, and it all came from the fact that, obviously, Robbie has very openly spoke about his struggles and stuff, and he really looks out for you, and he’s looked out for lots of people…
"And when he heard that we were announcing, he was so happy, genuinely happy for us, that he was like, ‘I’m on tour, I’m going to sing, Keep On Movin’ anyway, why don’t you sing a little bit of it with me?’.
"And a little bit of us was like, ‘oh my god, that’d be cool’, and then was like, ‘hang on, but we’ve not done a rehearsal or anything, blah blah’, but because it wasn’t a full performance, it wasn’t choreographed and stuff like that.
"It was just, come on, rock out with Robbie Williams in front of 70,000 people, you just couldn’t say no. We thanked Robbie so much for that moment.”
Conlon adds: “We didn’t feel fully satisfied, so he’s just given us a little taste of what’s to come, he’s just got us buzzed up for the time now.”
Five are at First Direct Arena, Leeds on November 8 and 29, and Utilita Arena, Sheffield on November 19.