Popworld magazine, June 2003
Boy bands are all the same, right? Wrong. You’ll never see these five lads perched on stools, crooning soppy ballads. Ladies and gents (but mostly ladies), prepare to be shaken up by…Triple 8

Oh my God, check this out. High up on the fourth floor of the Conrad Hotel at London’s Chelsea Harbour, David Wilcox, one fifth on new boy band Triple 8, is blown away by the view. Band mates Iain Sparx Farquharson, Josh Barnett, Jamie Bell and Justin Scott join him on the balcony of suite 210 to admire the scene. He’s right, the view is amazing and the hotel room is on the plush side. But these fancy surroundings could be a taste of things to come for Triple 8. If we’re to believe the biography provided by their record company Polydor, these five fellas have the songs, the looks and the attitude to grab the charts by the throat. ‘Balladeering boy bands beware,’ reads the blurb. This’ll knock you right off your stools.

Triple 8’s debut single ‘Knockout’ gives a taste of that stool-clearing power; it’s a tough pop tune that comes across like Five mixed with Limp Bizkit, plus a dash of Nsync. An odd mixture, but it certainly works. On the surface of it, we’re a stereotypical boy band, says Sparx. There are five of us and we all do sing. But we want to give people more. There aren’t a lot of acts in the UK that give their performances 120%. They just settle for sitting on stools and wearing nice clothes. Hmm, who could they be talking about? We don’t want to be another shit boy band, adds Jamie. That’s why the charts at the moment aren’t great, because you can see how little effort goes into it. They know how the song goes and they know they’ve got to look into a camera. It’s just a bit nothingy – nothing sticks out and is just in your face.

Number crunching
Triple 8 are managed by two of pop’s heavyweights: Chris Herbert (ex Hear’say and Five) and Craig Logan (former member of 80’s boy band Bros and now European manager of Pink). We really couldn’t be in a better position, says Sparx. It’s good now, but it’s going to be better when we’re out on the road and it gets too much, cos we’ve got managers who’ve already been through it.

But what about the obvious comparisons? After all, here are five good-looking bad boys with rocky pop tunes, managed by the same man behind Abs and co… Well, says Sparx, there are five of us, and we are managed by the same man, but it’s the other thing we’ll let people make comparisons about. The whole Triple 8 thing will come when you see the performances. We’ll do our own thing.

The group’s name came from the most unlikely of sources – an airport billboard. We went out for dinner one night, recalls Josh, ‘and everybody had paper and pens to write down names. We wanted a name with a number in it cos it looks strong. Then we saw ‘888’ on this billboard, and after that we started seeing it everywhere we went.

You won’t believe this, but when we got back from the airport, adds David, there was a car outside our house that had a triple eight in its registration. It sounds like bullshit but I swear we’d never seen the car before! I like it because it means good luck in Chinese, explains Sparx.

Breaking through

As a group, Triple 8 have been hidden away from the public for the last 12 months, but the five lads have been trying for the last six years to make their mark in music. Sparx (the daddy of the band, one of the most sensible members, and rumour has it, the best singer) and Justin (the coolest and the mover) grew up together in Bristol and formed a group named Jelayju with Josh (the business manager and the one who, according to Sparx, always looks the part). Jamie – the baby of the band and probably the most normal (he still plays football with his mates on a Saturday afternoon) – comes from a stage school background.

Fifth member and group joker David had tried and failed with a group named Hiwayz, and was once in a band named Hymn with none other than Kym Marsh. The David Beckham lookalike was drafted in at the last minute to join the other four in a recording studio in Norway. The first night, it seemed like David had been there for weeks rather than 12 hours,’ remembers Jamie. ‘It was really weird: he just fitted straight in. Then there are David’s other talents. He really impressed me with the way he drank his tequilas, admits Justin. He gets the salt and snorts it up his nose, then drinks the tequila and then squeezes the lemon into his eye! He was our kind of guy!

Hey ladies
Like several other boy bands, Triple 8 live together, in what David describes as our chintz-ridden palace! It came with brown couches, and the wallpaper looks like you’ve just entered an Indian restaurant. And the carpets ming! Not a lady-puller, we imagine. And these boys like their ladies; the Knockout video features loads of scantily clad females. It was damn hard work, Josh grins.

They look at us as if to say ‘You’re just another boy band, and then they drag us through tunnels and into cages,’ adds Sparx. It was awful – 15 sexy women!

Stupid question time:
are Triple 8 looking forward to all the female attention?
Yes, I am! pipes up Justin.
Josh agrees: Any attention is wicked, even when you’re out and a girl’s looking at you. There’s no greater feeling than thinking someone likes you. Though I guess it can be a bit false with groupies – if we get them! Groupies, we want you!

So there are no girlfriends, then?
That’s the standard boy band answer. No, you won’t get the standard answer, pipes up Sparx. I have a girlfriend and David has one too. I’ve been with my girlfriend on and off for three years! It will be difficult, but I think the only problem is going away. We’re so passionate about our work, I think it takes over from most things!
But, interrupts Justin, the rest of us are footloose and fancy free. Can’t be having a girlfriend at the moment – I don’t think I could hold it down!

Not white (but it’s OK)
One of the most interesting things about Triple 8 is that the fellas don’t have pretensions about being creative types. They are what they are: a hot new boy band.

I don’t think any one of us would say we’re songwriters, because that comes with practice, Sparx admits. ‘It’s the writers job to write and it’s our job to sing and dance. We’ve written songs and thought That was crap. For now we’ll just concentrate on the vocals and the performance!

And the performance is just as important as the music for you?
Well, ponders David, I think people like to see great performances. I’d rather go to see *Nsync than Blue. I mean, Lee from Blue is a real talent and their success has come from having some great songs. They’re a good band, but not necessarily a great one.

So Justin Timberlake is more of your kind of entertainer?
He’s the biggest talent in the world for me, admits David. When you come out of the world’s biggest boy band, you either explode as a solo artist or you bomb, and he’s the biggest thing around.

Sparx nods: I think it’s all about talent. If you’ve got that, you can make the transition quite easily. He’s the whole package, he looks good, he sings well, he can dance, he writes, he produces, and he’s worked hard for that!

A good role model, then?
Definitely, says Justin. *Nsync worked their butts off to get where they are. We’re typical artists in the fact that it’s never good enough. No one in this group will ever get slack! We’re the kind of individuals who’d tell each other when we had to pick up a bit. We’d kick each other’s arses!

Talk of kicking each other’s bums has the boys falling about. Are scraps a part of the Triple 8 lifestyle?
We’d never start a fight for the sake of it, says David, but we can look after ourselves. You could put us in a pub with other lads and we wouldn’t stand out in any way. I still go out for a beer with my mates. Like most lads, we play football, smoke, drink, shag birds…we just sing and dance too!

Summed up
OK, lads, sell Triple 8 in one line…
Josh: I’d say we’re world dominating.
David: We bring realness to the table.
Justin: We’re more exciting than your average boy band. We’ll entertain you. David: And there’s a few things we’ll be doing that will shock people.
Sparx: We’ll always be striving to be one step ahead.
David: Yeah, that’s right. We’ll be throwing away the rule book!