May 17, 1998

Cute, Packaged? Sure. But Hanson's Talented.

By NEIL STRAUSS

Every time I leave an interview with Hanson, I wonder whether I've been had. The three of them are always a little too mature for their age, a little too down-to-earth about their success, a little too perfect in their answers and attitudes.

They never slip up. Any attempt to prove that they are a manufactured phenomenon, that their parents put them up to it, that their music comes from anywhere or anyone other than themselves is instantly and candidly defeated.

It's not that I want to expose Hanson. I like Hanson. I'm not talking about finding its hit "MMMBop" a great hummable novelty along the lines of "Yummy Yummy Yummy." I'm talking about the album, the band, the harmonies, the musical craft. And everybody I talk to -- be they friends, relatives, supermarket baggers or colleagues who haven't really listened to the band -- tells me I must be kidding. I'm not.

Hanson is the band everyone loves to hate. The three of them are blond, they're cute, they're young, they're successful and their music is too precious, too catchy, too squeaky clean. When it comes down to it, that's not really hate. It's resentment. We live in a cynical, insecure time that turns against just about any wholesome matching blonds that find success in recent years, from the Nelson brothers to the Olson
twins to Ace of Base to most any movie villains with European accents.

Even beyond hair color and adorability, if you look at the Hanson package, it seems to have the word "manufactured" stamped all over it: three brothers raised on a Time-Life collection of 50's and 60's rock and soul making records in perfect harmony out of their garage in Oklahoma, singing at backyard barbecues and amusement parks, and in the process developing a song ("MMMBop") that went on to be the country's
No.1 pop single for three weeks.

For many, the hit band Hanson seems too young, too glib, too everything. But a closer look shows they're an authentically musical phenomenon. But if Hanson is not the real thing, then neither is Paul McCartney, Bonnie Raitt, the Beastie Boys or any other act that gets help tightening and polishing its music from record companies, producers, songwriters, backing musicians, family and friends.

ISAAC HANSON, 17. Thank you very much for being so complimentary of our music and everything. That is very cool to us that you're into the band.

TAYLOR HANSON, 15. The thing is, whenever you're liked in any way or whenever anything does well, I guess you're hated just as much.

ZACHARY HANSON, 12. Somebody wishes they were you.

This week, Hanson took an aggressive approach to quelling naysayers and doubters, releasing a new record in an attempt to prove it is a pint-size pop behemoth of its own making.

The album is a collection of songs from the two CD's Hanson made on its own before finding success in the arms of a big record company, Mercury. Titled "Three Car Garage," it features the band's early versions of "MMMBop" and other songs, demonstrating just how much (and how little) the band changed when Mercury teamed it up with songwriters known for their work with everyone from Aerosmith to the Drifters and the in-demand producers of the moment, the Dust Brothers. Technically,
"Three Car Garage" is the band's fifth album -- impressive for a group whose members are still middle- and high-school age.

Except for a little turntable scratching, a few hip-hop beats, better musicianship and a jauntier tempo, "MMMBop" remains virtually unchanged in its 1996 version. The melodies and harmonies on other early Hanson songs are just as striking, from the aching choruses of the "Toy Story"-style tale "Soldier" to the jangly gospel takeoff of "River." Sure there are some duds on the record, but no more than on, say, the
next Smashing Pumpkins album.

Hanson is often compared to the Spice Girls because the brothers attract the same screaming prepubescent fans, but the Spice Girls can be defended only on pop culture terms, perhaps as a phenomenon contrived to unify a fragmented culture (Sporty Spice, Posh Spice, etc.) with a homogenous sound.

Hanson, however, apart from its image and success, can be defended on purely musical grounds. Before the pop audience had even heard of the band and advance copies of its album "Middle of Nowhere" were circulating in the music business, it was already clear that this was not a band of its time like the Spice Girls. It was out of its time, with a 15-year-old testifying like a 60's Memphis soul man about how
"weird" people can be and a 12-year-old mixing the Beatles, doo-wop and rhythm-and-blues in a ballad about a cartoon character.

Steve Greenberg, the executive at Mercury who discovered the band, remembers being surprised by the brothers' musical knowledge. "When I went to see them at a county fair in Kansas, one of the songs they were performing was 'Back to the Island' by the Baha Men, a record I produced years ago," he said. "Since the record was hardly a hit, I assumed that their manager had told them a good way to schmooze me would be to play a song I was involved in. But when I asked how they learned the song, they said, 'Learn it? We recorded it two years ago.' At that moment I knew that it was fate that I should sign them. They're probably the only three kids of their generation whose favorite songs are 'Who's Making Love' by Johnnie Taylor and 'Shake a Tail Feather' by the Five Du-Tones."

ZAC. I don't know if Steve Greenberg told you this, but when he went down to see us the first time, he said, "I was going down there to see what was wrong with you."

TAYLOR. Because, think about it, three kids from Oklahoma who at that time were 16, 13 and 10 or 11, and they're supposed to play and they're supposed to write songs and they supposedly did these two albums that are pretty good.

ZAC. But we started playing seven years ago in May.

TAYLOR. Why not? What were we supposed to do, say, "I'm not going to make music until I'm this age because I'm not old enough"?

Outside Hanson's video shoot for the single "Weird" at a community pool in Los Angeles, scores of schoolgirls were clustered outside hoping for autographs. One was Roberta Rodriguez, 13, who, without help from any of the dozens of teen-agers' magazines Hanson graced the cover of that month, could recite the brothers' birthdays, their favorite colors and their shoe sizes (7 1/2, 10 and 11). She even knew which one wore a retainer. "My friend had 210 posters of Hanson, but now she likes
Immature, so she gave them away," she said, referring to the teen-age singing trio.

Cynics may scoff that Hanson's career will be over when all of their voices change, but a bigger danger is what will happen when their fans go through puberty. Pre-teen-age and early-teen-age obsessions are dramatic but fickle, and there is a chance that Hanson's decision to tour this summer (promising two-hour shows!) instead of working on a new album may find them without an audience when they finally get around to
releasing new songs.

But, speaking with Hanson, it is clear that they are driven not by the thrill of success but by the excitement of making music, which lasts a lot longer. This is a band with enough knowledge and respect for rock history to sing the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" in private but never in public for fear that they couldn't do justice to a pop song so perfect.

There probably aren't many others their age who would rather meet Billy Joel (Zac), Aretha Franklin (Taylor) or Otis Redding (Isaac) than a Backstreet Boy. But Hanson's home-schooling program -- which currently has Taylor reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand -- occasionally includes seminars (and homework papers) on rock history.

When the subject is brought up, the band eagerly discusses Col. Tom Parker's influence on Elvis Presley and the death of the popular standard. Currently, Danny Goldberg, president of Mercury Records, is on tap to give the boys a lesson on Woodstock, which he attended.

But let's not let Hanson get off too easy. They may not be mindless slaves of pop culture, manufactured pinups or lip-synching phonies, but they are hiding something. There is one part of their home-schooling that they don't like to talk about: Bible studies. Raised as Evangelical Christians by a protective father, Walker -- the real-life counterpart to Ned Flanders, the pious, goody-two-shoes neighbor on "The Simpsons"
-- Hanson squirm when asked, "Do you pray every day?"

ZAC. You know ...

TAYLOR. We like to keep it on the side because people -- it kind of gets in people's way, like even if, Zac sometimes----

ZAC. Even if it didn't matter, you know people would go, "Well, I don't like them 'cause, you know." We like to keep it, like, to the music. The music is what we do.

Perhaps the most common criticism of Hanson is that the band issimply a
rip-off of the Jackson Five.

Certainly, the music has the same energetic, soulful bounce, and on record Taylor testifies like a young Michael Jackson. But most great rock has an antecedent in black music, whether it's the Beatles or Elvis Presley. And the Jackson Five comparisons are becoming moot since Taylor's voice has changed.

One Jackson-related issue, however, remains relevant: Does Hanson know the price of too much fame too soon? After all, the source of most of Michael Jackson's recent career missteps could be traced to his impossible quest for his lost childhood.

ZAC. You could look back on all of this and say, "I didn't get to see my friends as much, and I didn't get to mow the lawn and get $10, and I didn't get such and such." Or you could go, "I got to travel around the world, perform for thousands of people, go to the Grammys, get MTV Europe awards."

ISAAC. Oh jeez, I'm so deprived. I was abused as a child.

ZAC. I was abused by getting to stay in nice hotels.

TAYLOR. I think that whole thing is really overrated. If it stops now, I'm just going to look back at how fun it was.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company