That's because there's a wild side to the Backstreet Boys. He's AJ McLean, the multi-tattooed member of the group whose constant changes of hairstyle and color probably make Dennis Rodman feel inadequate. Fans love the unpredictable AJ, but the group's managers weren't always so sure he'd be a hit.

"One of our managers told me when I got my tattoo," he told Smash Hits Magazine. "They were all angry with me. I just thought, 'So what?' They were afraid it was gonna kind effect our image, but we're not about image. We're about good music. So what do I do to my body is my business. It's forever, so I have to be prepared."

And AJ, more than most pop stars, is prepared for controversy. In fact, he meets it head-on, giving the supermarket tabliods a run for their money. As AJ himself has admitted, he has a tendency for stretching the truth just for the fun of it. "I'm really good at it," he admitted to Smash Hits. "I stopped about a year ago because I was getting a little carried away. Things started getting back around to me, and you're not a really good liar, you could get caught."

Still think your parents wouldn't mind him over for dinner? What if he insisted they called him by his nickname: "Bone"? Does that really mean what we think it means? Maybe, maybe not.

"There are three interpretations" of the nickname, AJ told a reporter. "One is the rude one; one is the way I look, being so skinny; and one has to do with a bunch of beads [I used to wear]-- they look like bones. Sometimes I won't even answer to AJ, I'll just answer to Bone."

Good To The Bone

AJ is pretty obvious; Alexander James Mclean marches to his own drummer, which is probably why he is so enormously popular with fans.

AJ was born on January 9, 1978 at Palm Beach, Florida's Bethasda Memorial Hospital, the only child of Robert and Denise, employees for IBM and a local hotel, respectively. Although he's often stated that he had a wonderful childhood, he admits it wasn't all singing and dancing. When AJ was four years old, his parents divorced. The breakup was not amicable, and AJ's father literally disappeared from his life. The seperation from his father was difficult for AJ, who felt he lost out on all of the father-son activities most of his friends had. This may have contributed to his wild streak, but rebellion comes so naturaly to AJ that he's not so sure. What he does know for sure is that he really missed his father.

"I saw my father for about two days at Christimastime when I was six. That was it, I never saw him again," he told Teen Magazine. That finally changed when he discovered, at the age of 18, that the man was living only a short distance away from him. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, he paid his father a surprise visit. "This guy opens the door and I'm like, 'Is there a Robert McLean home?' and he said 'Alex?' I was like, 'Whoa, Dad, you recognize me?' I walked in and there's Backstreet Boys' stuff everywhere. He'd been keep up with me since the day I started."

AJ's father might of been AWOL, but the rest of his family -- especially his grandparents, his Uncle Bill, Aunt Darlene and his cousin Kathy -- was always there for him, providing AJ a termendous amount of support when he was growing up. They also gave him the encouragement to pursue his passion for the arts, which he started doing even before he was old enough to go to school.

"Actually, I wanted acting to be my first career," he told 16. "I wanted to be a dancer or an actor." To Teen Beat, he said. "I was also modeling for print work with JC Penny and national magazines. Like, if they showed a picture of a family in an ad, I would be one of the little kids."

Of all his family members, though, the most supportive was his mother, who, in the early days of BSB, accompanied the band with the underaged AJ. She made sure he kept up with his studies and, when nothing much was happening for the group, wouldn't let him give up his dream.

Puppet Master

Along with the acting, dancing and singing, AJ also allowed his imagination to take him in a different direction. He has loved puppets since he was a little kid, and so he became a puppeteer, using many different stuffed animals he had since he was a baby to put on shows for people. "I was bored," he told the press. "I used to have a a lot of plush toys and I'd play with the plush toys, and I got into puppets. I did a lot of talent shows with puppets. It just caught on because no one had seen anyone my age interested and having that much fun doing stuff with puppets. I got a major kick out of it, and I still do."

Still, it was acting that he was most passionate about. He made his semi-professional acting debut at the Royal Palm Dinner Theater in Florida, playing Dopey in a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Many other acting jobs followed; by the time he was 12, he had done more that two dozen plays.

It was at the time that he was accepted into a well-regarded performing-arts school near his home. The dance classes at the school gave him the skill not to just mimic what he saw from other performers, as he had done in the past, but to understand the craft behind what they were doing.

The acting classes paid off, too. He landed a few roles, most notably on the Nickelodeon-produced series, Hi, Honey, I'm Home, and Nickelodeon's Welcome Freshmen and Fifteen.

Once he got to high school, AJ moved over to a regular school, and he suddenly found that it wasn't as much fun -- especially the social part. "I didn't hang out with the cool people," he's said. "I was kinda quiet and by myself. I was Mr. Comedian when I was with my own friends, but otherwise, I was mostly quiet. I got pretty good grades, too. Except once I got an F for Pre-Algebra. I hate math."

To Smash Hits magazine, he elaborated, "In school, everyone was afraid of me cuz I was such a freak. No one would come near me; they were like, 'What the hell's wrong with him? He's so weird.' I didn't fit in. I was in a class of my own. I was just very different. I was an entertainer. High school is all about basketball, football, fights, gangs, this and that. If you're a singer or dancer, then you're cooncidered a freak. But just look at me now."

Yes, look at him now! Of course fame does have its downside. "Touring can be exhausting sometimes," he says. "And sometimes there are just too many demands made on us."

But such things, he emphasizes, are minor complaints, concidering all that he has been thankful for.

"That fact that things are going so quickly is what's blowing my mind," he's said. "The pace of success -- it's like, 'Slow down and give me a little time to have a life.' I never went to my prom. I never really went to high school. I got tutored. I graduated, but I did my classwork in a hotel room. I still got to fly back home and graduate with my class, though. I was nervous. All my friends and family were watching as I walked up the steps of the stage to accept my diploma. And what did I do? Trip!"

For McLean, one of the few missteps in his career.