In the last issue of Superteen (July 1998), BackStreet Boys' A.J. McLean told you all about his family, his childhood, and how he got his start as an actor! Here's the rest of his sizzlin' story- his early days with the BackStreet Boys!
"Kevin kept talking about this cousin he had in Kentucky. We were trying to find guys from around the area, but we couldn't find anybody. So we sent a plane to get Brian; he was picked up in a limo. He came to the band house, auditioned for us, we liked him. A week and a half later was his first performance in front of 5,000 kids at Sea World's Grad Night, 1993. Everything kind of blew up from there. I got taken out of high school before Christmas of 1992.
Nick and were being tutored at the time and he was living locally with his mom, because it was [too far] to drive from Tampa. Brian and Kevin were living together and the rest of us were living with our parents. Soon we met with the head of SADD [Students Against Drunk Driving] and became Ambassadors for the organization. Then we played a show for 3,000 high school students who were affiliated with SADD. There were a couple of important people from Jive in the audience and that's how we came over to the Jive record company. They said they loved us and wanted us to come up to New York and talk to a bunch of people there who wanted to sign us. I've been looking for something like this, and it's the one thing I want to live for: to get up on a stage and make an audience smile. If I can do that, I've done what I'm meant for.
When I was younger I wanted to be in comedy. I used to want to be a fireman, but I gotta be out there in front of people! I'm a ham, and I've gotta be out there doing crazy stuff on stage. Especially on stage, Brian and I are two clowns. We'll play off each other and do stupid things. [Back in the days] we did a show at J.J. Whispers with our band for the people from Jive; they wanted us to have a videocassette to send to some producers so they could hear our vocals. It's funny because there's a certain reggae song where we pulled girls up on stage. There was this one girl who was totally [into me]. When we stopped, I fell on the floor and was acting all crazy. Because when you're onstage, you know you're going to get attention; whatever you do, they're gonna like [it]. There's never been any competition with this group. If there were, this group wouldn't be a group anymore. If you have that kind of attitude, forget it!
My friends have been my buds since my freshman year in [high school]. Two of them I met in chorus they other I met in basketball. They're my buds and we just hang out together. One of my friends passed away [a few years ago]. He got involved with the wrong people and was at a picnic and drinking and drowned. That kind of set me back a little bit. My friend's still call me, they're like, 'how's the group going?'
A couple of them know the guys; we've all played basketball together. They are really supportive. Normally girls will come to all the shows, but these guys have been to almost all my shows. They've hung out with the guys.
I [once] bought myself a pager, which was really stupid. Sometimes I'd get paged by friends for no reason. Sometimes I'd get pages from friends and they'd type in codes and I'd sit there and try to figure out what the heck they meant. One of my ex- girlfriends would type in "Hi, honey" with the numbers as letters. She would type in numbers and I would have to figure it out by looking at the phone. But then Kevin, the fellows, and my family were all paging me with like. 'Yo, what's up, A.J.? What are you doing tonight? You wanna go to the movies?' all spelled out! Sometimes my mom would page me with my house phone number and 666 after it, which was a joke. I'm like, 'Satan's calling me!' Howie would put '43,' which is 'HD' which mean Howie D.; Brian would put B-ROK and Nick would put a series of numbers.
I used to do the same kind of silly things. My answering machine at home was me being stupid: 'Yo, waaaasss up? You've reached the McLean residence...talk to ya later on! Seeeee yaaa! Bye!' I redid it. I wanted to sing on it. I kinda wanted all of us BackStreet Boys to sing on it like 'hey you've reached my house now and...'
My advice to young people going into the business is, if you've got in in your heart and deep in your soul, there's a reason for it. Don't think, "Well, am I going to be called [names], because I wear tights sometimes.' Actors are sometimes misunderstood. They're just people portraying other people. I think people wanting to get into the business should definatly do it. They have to be willing to be competitive. It's a very competitive business. But I think the more people who are involved in it, the more people will understand us. Follow your dreams, your hearts, and you souls! That's pretty much what I've done."
- Superteen
August 1998