Say "wassap" 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 of 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 the Boys themselves. But to the girls who swarm around Tiffany on this bright Florida afternoon, Backstreet inspirenothing 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 nonthreatening 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 woship from afar; she's happy to sit with her copy of 'Hangin' With the Backstreet Boys: An Unauthorized Biography,' and reread factoids 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 cliche 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 ben central heat and AC. Howie hooked up with Nick and A.J. back in 1993, when they were all auditioning for TV shows here in their native Orlando. Kevin Richardson, now 27, responded to an ad places by a talent agancy; 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'd 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 Kids' road manager, working under uber-Svengali Maurice Starr, when, in 1993, he heard about a quintet of pretty white boys who could harmonize like an R&B group. He immediately saw the possibilities. "It was all hip-hop and alternative music then," say 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 -- predictably 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 passed. "Johnny Wright learned a lot from us," 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 its doors to 17-year old Leslie, who is confined to a wheelchair. The band's tour publicist, Denise (who is also A.J.'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 wished 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 the 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: Whilethe
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
despatching the Boys to theme parks and junior high schools 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 label, Jive. "So the
idea was to make a record that would appeal to the global marketplace. "
Fenster hired Swedish writing/producing duo Denniz PoP and Max Martin, who
had penned hits for Robyn, and produced Ace of Base and Irelend's version of
Backstreet, Boyzone. The Euro strategy worked: Backstreet's self-titled
debut album, a slick collection of New Jack posturings, went to 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
platinum 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 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 Playing Games (With My Heart)," Kevin, aghast at
the sight of himself bare-chested and wet, demanded a reshoot. The record
company shooed home away. After their debut album was finally released here
last August, Kevin called the president of Jive and griped that all the
merchandising -- "Sweet Valley High" inserts, throw pillows, bandannas, key
chains -- was out of hand. He was told to suck it up. "There's always gonna
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 whinning: "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 insatiable 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 instrumetns, and
McPherson says they have a shot. His major issue is with thier 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 pounds the floorboards so violently two roadies rish 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, gallantly seat each at
a small table, then fall to thier 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 quizzical look, but he keeps his head bowed. He's still laughing.
That's when Liz Arana passes out -- not at this show, but at that 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 slopped eyelids and slight
heft, 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 standing in front of
me on the 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
passed out." Liz, who bursts out crying whenever she sees anything of theirs
for the first time -- a video, a photograph, a TV appearance -- says it was
awful. "I missed three songs!"
Liz spends suburban afternoons watching her compilation tapeof Backstreet
appearances, or pasting photos into her Backstreet scrapbook, or staring at
her walls, which are plastered with Backstreet pinups. The walls, she says,
are a problem. "My mom 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 $1, 000 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 wants a girl
with a perfect personality; it doesn't really matter how they look." 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 life forms. Johnny Wright says that during
the junior-high tour, he made sure that the kids knew that "A.J. loves cars,
Howie loves clothes, and Nick, Brian and Kevin love sports. We wanted to
show that these are regular guys" -- i.e., not gay. The courtship of teen
girls dictates that the Boys remain publicly unattached, and this makes them
sensitive to the notion that they are anything but heterosexual. Howie
understands it's "not macho" to be in Backstreet, but says if the band were
black, they'd get compared to Boyz II Men or Shai, and boys would be down.
Here, too, Donnie Wahlberg can empathize. "But instead of worrying about
who's not paying attention to them," Wahlberg 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 other chat up the models, Brian stands off in the back. He's the
only Boy who's not really comfortable schmoozing or even accepting
compliments; by nature, he's quiet and reserved. (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 get his mind off the
"little handicapped girl" A.J.'s mom brought backstage in Orlando; she's
actually battling two forms of cancer. "I didn't know how to approach 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 to break
up the 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 thing." His eyes widen. "Can you imagine?"
The next morning, the Boys are on Regis & Kathie Lee, performing "As Long As
You Love Me," a sparkly ode to unconditional love. Nick shares lead vocals
with Brian and sings to his own image in the moitor. Buring a 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, nad girls begin crawling all over the
van, smushing their faces up against the glass. Nick turns to Brian. "You
know, if we don't go out there," he says 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 stared 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 nights 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 one was
Howie's. He got stuck, and he make 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 then 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."