Say “wassup” to the new kids on the block:1998 song-and-dance pinups the
Backstreet Boys. Their young fans absolutely adore them, but, Maureen
Callahan wonders, is the feeling entirely mutual?
Tiffany is, like shaking, she has just smelled a Backstreet Boy. “He was wearing
cologne!” she shrieks, as she pogos outside Disney World’s House Of Blues.
The venue itself, where the Backstreet Boys will later perform to a sellout crowd
whose average age is 12, is more than apt: An antiseptic franchise inspired by
similarly successful ventures, it’s practically a metaphor for the Boys themselves.
But to the girls who swarm around Tiffany on this bright Florida afternoon,
Backstreet inspire nothing less than reverence. “I was close to Nick once,” says
a solemn 15-year-old named Jana. “But I was so shocked I couldn’t say
anything.”
Having borrowed liberally not just from now-defunct, sexually
non-threatening Euro boy bands such as Take That and East 17 but also from
the American daddy of them all-New Kids On The Block--the Backstreet Boys
have emerged as the teenybopper band of the moment. “I’ve tried everything to
meet them,” says a shy, chubby fan named Katie, who would really rather worship
from afar; she’s happy to sit with her copy of Hangin’ With the Backstreet Boys:
An Unauthorized Biography, and reread factiods about Nick. “We have a lot in
common,” she says, readjusting her wire-rimmed glasses. “We both like to play
Nintendo, and we both like sports, and.....ooooh, he’s fine!”
Eighteen-year-old
Nick Carter is by far the most popular Boy-he’s the youngest and looks a lot like
Leonardo DiCaprio. Then there’s 20-year-old A.J. “Bone” McLean, who-with his
three tattoos, wacky facial hair, and 200 pairs of tinted sunglasses-is either a
cliché or kinda dangerous, depending on your age. Howie Dorough, 24, answers
to Howie D. or Sweet D. He lives at home, and aside from a Corvette Stingray,
his most extravagant post-fame purchase has been central heat and AC. Howie
hooked up with Nick and AJ back in 1993, when they were all auditioning for TV
shows here and there in their native Orlando. Kevin Richardson, now 27,
responded to an ad placed by a talent agency; he then called his cousin, Brian
Littrell. Unlike the others, who were looking to get famous any way they could,
23-year-old Brian had nursed dreams of singing professionally. In fact, back in
high school, he’s wander the halls crooning New Kids tunes. “People looked at
me like it was a sissy thing,” Brian says, “But I didn’t care. I would’ve given
anything to do what they were doing.”
Today, thanks to their manager,
Johnny Wright he is. Wright had just come off four years as the New Kid’s road
manager, working under uber-Svengali Maurice Starr, when in 1993, he heard
about a quintet of pretty white boys that could harmonize like an R&B group. He
immediately saw the possibilities. “It was all hip-hop and alternative music then, “
says Wright, “but I knew that the girls who had been New Kids fans had little
sisters.”
Though they may be five men who dress alike, pop-and-lock in sync,
and routinely dodge stuffed animals onstage, the Backstreet Boys-and
Wright-predicably run from any and all comparisons to NKOTB. Still, while
creating and refining their image, Wright called ex-New Kid Donnie Wahlberg
and asked him to give Backstreet advice. Wahlberg says ruefully. Now 28 years
old and cobbling together an acting career, Wahlberg understands all too well the
ups and downs of being a teen heartthrob. “If there’s any resistance to the
Backstreet Boys,” he says, “it’s probably because of us.”
Three hours before the show, the House of Blues opens it’s doors to 17-year-old
Leslie, who is confined to a wheelchair. The band’s tour publicist, Denise (who is
also AJ’s mom), had mentioned the Boys would be busy entertaining “a little
handicapped girl” before the concert, but Leslie isn’t the one. She doesn’t care;
it’s her birthday, and she’s just spotted Nick roaming the hall. She’s so rattled
she inadvertently crumples her Backstreet Boys calendar. As Nick perfunctorily
wishes Leslie a happy birthday, he spies two able-bodied girls lurking not five feet
away, and he’s off. Later, as he passes Leslie on his way backstage, she goes
for it again: “Nick! Nick!” she implores, hands clawing air. Nick, who possesses a
finely calibrated sense of detachment, pretends not to hear her. “Oh,” Leslie
whispers to herself. “Bye.”
Back in the dressing room, Nick and the others huddle with Wright. It was Wright
who devised the plan of attack that broke Backstreet: While the alt-rock
revolution was raging in the States, Wright took them to Europe and slapped
them on every boy-band bill he could, exploiting their all-American
wholesomeness. (“At one point I had them run across the stage with the
American flag”, he says proudly.)
At home, Wright was forced to go the direct-market route, quietly dispatching the
Boys to theme parks and junior highs across the nation. “Teenage male vocal
groups were not going to meet with acceptance in America,” says Jeff Fenster,
VP or A&R at their record lable, Jive. “So the idea was to make a record that
would appeal to the global marketpace.” Fenster hired Swedish writing/producing
dup Denniz PoP and Max Martin, who had penned hits for Robyn, and produced
Ace of Base adn Ireland’s wersion of Backstreet, Boyzone. The Euro strategy
worked: Backstreet’s self-titled debut album, a slick collection of New Jack
posturings, went on the sell 12 million copies overseas. Eventually, pop groups
such as Hanson and the Spice Girls eased Backstreet’s reentry Stateside (their
album is now quadruple platnum here); likewise, their success has spawned a
slew of harmonizing teen hopefuls, such as *N Sync, Five, No Authority, and
911-none of which have yet to register with the kids. As the Boys can testify,
winning over the jaded youth of america can be a bitch. “Those were the most
intimidating, cruelest crowds,” says Kevin of the band’s days on the junior-high
circuit. “Little teenage dudes coming up to us and saying, ‘Backstreet Boys?
Who are you?’”
Though Wright maintains that the Boys are “very much in control of what they
do”, both Kevin and Howie have flinched over Wright’s tactics. “We don’t wanna
be in a certain situation,” says Howie, gently alluding to the New Kids’ career
trajectory, “but we have links to certain situations.” After making the video for
“Quit Playin’ Game (With My Heart)”, Kevin, agast as the sight of himself
bare-chested and wet, demanded a re-shoot. The record company shooed him
away. After their album was finally released here last August, Kevin called the
president of Jive and griped that all the merchadising-Sweet Valley High inserts,
throw pillows, bandanas, key chains-was out of hand. He was told to suck it up.
“There’s always going to be a market of little girls who wanna hang cute boys on
their walls,” says Dave McPherson, Jive’s assistant VP of A&R, who signed the
Boys in May 1994. Wahlberg is even less tolerant of such whining:”Look, if
you’re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you’re gonna tap into
a frenzied marketplace,” he says. “Teenage girls have an insatible appetite.”
Despite the short shelf life of most boy bands, Backstreet plan on a long-term
career. They’re all learning to write and play instruments, and McPherson says
they have a shot. His major issue is with their lyrics, which are pure Hallmark.
Only one line on their album remotely smacks of do-me abandon (“Am I
sexual?”), and when they deliver it in Orlando, the girls roar and pound on the
floorboards so violently that two roadies rush to secure the speakers. Still, the
real highlight of any show comes during “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” when
Howie, Kevin and Nick-in a move conceived by Wright-serenade three lucky fans,
pre-plucked by security. As the girls tremble under spotlights, the Boys, swathed
in white, gallently seat each at a small table, then fall to their knees like lovesick
troubadours. Tonight, Howie and Kevin pull it off with aplomb; Nick, however, is
laughing so hard he’s reduced to lip-synching. He gives his girl a buddy pat on
the back; she shoots him a quzzical look, but he keeps his head bowed. He’s still
laughing.
That’s when Liz Arana passes out-not at this show but at this same moment.
“Oh, that is so beautiful when they sing to the girls,” she gasps. Liz is a
soft-spoken 15-year-old who, with her sloped eyelids and slight heftm seems like
the kind of girl who yearns silently from her Long Island bedroom. But at last
year’s New York City Backstreet Boys’ show, her first ever, she was drunk with
adrenaline. “Okay,” she begins. “I pushed my way to the front of the stage, and
there was some 12-year-old girl standing in front of me on a crate!” So: Liz
knocked the girl down, climbed onto the crate, ripped off her bra and threw it at
Nick, and then completely lost it. “When they sang ‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart,’ I
just burst out crying, and then I just passed out” Liz, who bursts out crying
whenever she sees anything of theirs for the first time-a video, a photograph, a
TV appearence-says it was awful. “I missed three songs!”
Liz spends suburban afternoons watching her compliation tape of Backstreet
appearances, or pasting photos into her Backstreet scrapbook, or staring at her
walls, which are plastered with Backstreet pin-ups. The walls, she says, are a
problem. “My mo just painted them,” she says, “and she wants the posters down.
So does my boyfriend.” Robbie, whom Liz has been dating for a month (“He’s my
first serious, serious boyfriend”), loathes the Backstreet Boys. “He says they’re
faggots and they can’t sing,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Your point is...?”
This is the first time Liz has ever been so enthralled with a band-she says she
has spent more than $1000 on Boys merchandise-and she, like millions of other
girls before, is slightly embarrassed by the depths of her passion. She only feels
comfortable talking about it with other girls, girls who, like her, are beginning to
date real boys but who feel safer longing for the unattainable ones-the Nick
Carters. She cradles a slip of memo paper and reads a quote of Nick’s that she
copied: “Everyone want a girl with a perfect personality; it doesn’t matter how she
looks.” Does she believe boys when they say stuff like that? “Not all boys,” she
answers softly, “But Nick, I would believe.”
A couple of days after the HOuse of Blues gig the Boys are in New York City for
a photo shoot. They hug-they perform this ritual constantly, even after only a
half-hour apart-then circle a gaggle of models as though they’ve encountered
unidentified lifeforms. Johnny Wright says that during the junior-high tour, he
made sure that the kids knew that “Aj loves cars, Howie loves clothes, and Nick,
Brian, and Kevin love sports. We wanted to show that there are regular
guys.”-i.e., not gay. the courtship of teen girls dictates that the Boys remain
publiclly unattached, and this makes them sensitive to the notion they are
anything buy heterosexual. Howie understands it’s “not macho” to be into
Backstreet, but says if the band were black, they’d get compared to Boyz II Men
and Shai, and the boys would be down. Here too, Donnie Walhberg can
empathise. “But instead of worrying about who’s not paying attention to them,”
Walhberg says, “they should worry about who is. Because once these girls get
older and start drinking beer and piercing their noses,” he says, “theys are going
away.”
While the others chat up the models, Brian stands off in hte back. He’s the only
one who’s not really comfortable schmoozing or even accepting compliments; by
nature, he’s quiet and resevered. (While the rest of the Boys went clubbing after
the Orlando show, Brian hung with his 50-year-old dad, who was visiting from
Kentucky.) Right now, he can’t take his mind off the “little handicapped girl” AJ’s
mom brought backstage in Orlando; she’s actually battling two forms of cancer. “I
didn’t know how to aproach her,” says Brian, whose most vivid childhood
memory is of doctors strapping him to his hospital bed and beating his chest till
he was in tears, hoping ot break up a staph infection that went straight to his
heart. (About a year ago, Brian’s heart began leaking blood, and he underwent
surgery last month.) “I wanted to say, ‘Listen, I’m getting ready to have an
operation, too’ So I went over to her mother and told her that, and her mother
said, “Oh, my daughter could tell you a lot of things.’” His eyes widen. “Can you
imagine?”
The next morning, the Boys are in Regis and Kathie Lee, performing “As Long As
You Love Me,” a sparkly ode to unconditional love. Nick shares lead vocals with
Brian ans sings to his own image in the monitor. During the Q&A, Kathie Lee,
eyes dewy, offers to set Brian up with her niece, who’s also had heart surgery.
As soon as the segment is completed, they clamber into a waiting van. The
garage door shimmies open, and the girls begin crawling all over the van,
smushing thier faces up against the glass. Nick turns to Brian. “You know, if we
don’t go out there,” he sighs wearily, “we’re gonna look like real pricks.”
Having fulfilled all obligations, Nick and Brian head to the nearest Blimpie. Nick
orders a tuna fish hero and, as he blithely stares at himself in the mirror, tries to
discern the nature of teen girl fandom. He comes up empty: “It’s real hard to put
yourself in their shoes,” he says finally. But Nick’s obviously amused by the
frenzied adulation-for instance, he could barely contain himself onstage just four
night ago. “The joke was on Howie,” says Brian, who explains that security likes
to play “little pranks” to break up the monotony. Nick bounces with delight, like a
baby in a high chair. “Howie ended up with a not-so-pretty girl,” he says, wiping
errant chunks of tuna from his chin. “Do you remember her? Do you?” Oh sure-
she was one of the heavier ones, right? “Aaaahhhh, yeah,” Nick says, with
strained diplomacy. “I got my girl, Kevin got his girl, and the last girl was Howie’s.
He got stuck, and he made this face like ‘I’m gonna kill somebody.’” He shrugs.
“It was funny.”
On the way back to the hotel, Nick and Brian are intercepted by yet more fans.
They pose for pictures and hurriedly scrawl autographs; a couple of girls hang
back and speak in hushed tones. “You know, I saw Nick sign an autograph for
one girl and he threw it back at her. I want to know why he’s like that.”
“You know what I wonder?” says her friend. “I want to know if he would ever date
a fan.”