05/22/97

Hanson and the fame game

Nobody doubts Hanson has a toehold in pop stardom. But does the band have legs? Optimists compare the fast-rising adolescent pop trio to the Jackson 5, the Bee Gees, even the Beatles. Detractors draw parallels to short-lived teen acts like Menudo and New Kids on the Block.

Hanson's catchy MMMBop rests at the top of Billboard's singles chart after reaching an estimated 50 million listeners in four weeks of heavy airplay. The album, Middle of Nowhere, leaps to No. 6 after its No. 9 debut last week.

Response to the chirpy single "has been very good for a brand new group," says Ken Benson, program director at KKRZ in Portland, Ore. "It's such a good, upbeat, summertime song with a fairly broad appeal, from preteens to adult women in their mid-30s."

Unlike the manufactured Menudo or Spice Girls, Hanson grew organically. After its 1992 public debut as an a cappella doo-wop group, the trio played 200 shows, wrote 100 songs and releasedtwo albums before signing with Mercury.

Fans are rapidly discovering the identities of siblings Zachary, 11; Taylor, 13; and Isaac, 16. The Tulsa towheads have triggered girrrl hysteria at every stop and fueled a media frenzy that's generated profiles in outlets from MTV and Seventeen to The New York Times and CBS News.

Whether Hanson is headed for the tenure track or one-hit wonderland depends on steps taken after the hype and hoopla fade, observers say.

"I think they have the musical talent to grow," says Tom Moon, Philadelphia Inquirer music critic. "But unlike some other teen acts, these guys have only proven they can do one thing. It's certainly working, but you can't go to this well more than a couple of times."

While Hanson ably emulates classic pop and R&B influences, the baby band must carve a distinct identity to remain relevant, Moon says.

"The key is, is the record company willing to let Hanson go in a different direction?" he says. "Will they accept a record two years down the road that doesn't sound like this?"

Young fans quickly outgrow bubblegum bands, but it's too early to brand Hanson a one-hit blunder, says Hits managing editor David Adelson.

"Traditional industry naysayers would brand these guys the Top 40 flavor of the moment," he says. "However, if you look past the surface, there are quality lyrics. The record is getting critical praise.

Will Hanson become a parody of itself? That's hard to predict."

Maturity, literal and musical, is crucial to Hanson's future, says Radio & Records music editor Steve Wonsiewicz, adding, "In country music, you can do things the same way over and over. But in the pop world, it can be a negative to get stuck in one image."

A factor in Hanson's current success may be timing.

"It's been a long time since we've had young bands doing really good songs, not schlocky sugary pop," he says. "Younger fans need something fresh. There's only so much shoe-gazing grunge rock they can take."

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

2/04/97

Fans poring over Hanson news

Ike's is dark blue. Zac's is bright green. Tay prefers aquamarine.

Even Hanson has to brush every day.

No factoid is too trivial for Hanson's mass of hungry young fans, to whom even toothbrush color is heart-fluttering fodder. Aficionados are using the Internet to trade minutiae about the brotherly trio and are gobbling up any information they can gather about the band.

"There's some fascination people have about wanting to know them on a personal level and know more than anyone else knows," says Landon

Morgan, 16, who, with buddy Luke McSpadden, manages My Little Tribute to Hanson, a Web site (http://users.aol.com/nadaace/hanson.html) declared among the top 5 Hanson sites by React, a webzine and weekly magazine of teen news.

Catapulted to success early this year with its No. 1 hit MMMBop, the popular band consists of three Hanson siblings: guitarist Isaac, 17, keyboardist Taylor, 14, and drummer Zachary, 12.

About 150,000 fans from the USA and Canada have joined the official fan club mailing list since March, when the trio's album, Middle of Nowhere, was released, band manager Christopher Sabec says.

Hanson's appeal with the school-age crowd continues to grow as the group embarks on appearances for its second single, I Will Come to You, and its holiday album, Snowed In.

A late-November mall tour brought out as many as 30,000 fans at a single stop. Many waited up to 10 hours for a glimpse of the trio. High absenteeism at Kansas City, Kan., schools was attributed to a Hanson concert that day. Fainting spells were treated in Leawood, Mich.; cuts, bruises and hyperventilation greeted emergency crews in Grapevine, Texas.

But just as paramount for fans as seeing their teen idols play their music is learning about the boys' daily routine and likes and dislikes.

McSpadden and Morgan's site just added pictures of the Hansons' back yard and front porch to satisfy browsers' curiosity. "We meet lots of people, mostly girls between the ages of 14 and 17," Morgan says.

"Moms contact us, too, saying, 'My daughter's in love with Hanson.

Can you send me anything?' They're craving information."

One Web site titled Hanson Addicts Anonymous (www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/7698/index.html) has had more than 103,000 hits (the number of individual items on a Web site viewed by visitors) since it started up in July.

Another site, reporting more than 7.5 million hits so far, chronicles Hanson oddities, such as how the right-handed Isaac sleeps in boxers and the left-handed Taylor shampoos his hair with Herbal Essence and prefers creamy peanut butter. The band's youngest member, Zachary (the only one who doesn't wear orthodontia), plays with Legos and sleeps in boxers and T-shirt.

On a recent chat with Hanson on America Online, the brothers warned fans that some of the information in the bevy of current unauthorized biographies is incorrect, and the boys steered fans to Hanson: The Official Book.

"Sorry to tell you," they told fans in the chat room, "you WON'T be able to find out what color underwear we wear!"

(Hot update: Morgan received a new photo on Thanksgiving from a Hanson photo shoot that he plans to put on his site. "Zac had his pants unzipped. He wears blue boxers!")

A 30-question trivia quiz is multiplying on many Hanson fan sites, and links to the quiz are now on just about every site. Interspersed with official information, such as where the band hails from (Oklahama) and the names of the other three Hanson children (Jessica, Avery, Macenzie), are queries such as Zac's favorite school subject (math), Taylor's favorite color (red) and worst habit (tapping on everything) and the Hanson home ZIP code in Tulsa (74170).

"Everyone wanted to know their shoe sizes," Morgan says. One recent rumor that "spread like wildfire," he says, gave Isaac a size 15 foot, Tay a size 12 and Zac an 11. "For a 12-year-old to have a size 11 shoe is outrageous!" (For the record, it's 81/2.)

In Atlanta recently, Sabec says, everyone wanted to know about Hanson's bed-time routine. " 'Do they have a snack? What do they drink before bed?'

"The most often-heard question, though, is whether fame has gone to their heads, he says. The answer: "Absolutely, infinitely no!" says Sabec. "They're the same guys they were back when this was just a dream for them."

There is one other regularly asked question that always makes the trio smile: Where they met. "Every time we get that, we laugh," says the brothers' manager. "It makes me chuckle just thinking about it."

By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY

Hanson unfazed by 'teen dream' year

LOS ANGELES - Less than 10 months ago, Hanson arrived from the middle of nowhere with Middle of Nowhere. The album promptly went to the center of the universe - at least in the hearts and on the shopping lists of pre-pubescent girls, as instant hit single MMMBop triggered teen hysteria unwitnessed since New Kids on the Block exited the neighborhood.

Kid stuff? As if.

Initially derided as bubblegum, the cherubic trio from Tulsa has earned grudging respect from pundits and boomers. VH1, touted as the video channel for discriminating grown-ups, just taped a Storytellers special on Hanson. The 441 critics who voted in The Village Voice's prestigious Pazz & Jop Poll named MMMBop best single of 1997. And while the Spice Girls were Grammy shut-outs, Hanson is up for best new artist, record of the year and pop group performance.

Boy oh boy oh boy.

"It's just an amazing, humbling experience," says eldest brother Isaac, 17. "You think, 'I don't deserve this in the slightest.' We just make music. We cross our fingers and hope people continue to respond to it."

"The thing that blows me away is the sheer energy behind the fan power," says Taylor, 14, the soulful singer and anointed heartthrob (initially mistaken for a girl by some). "It just boggles my mind."

Taylor, Isaac and Zachary, 12, form a semicircle in a hotel suite jammed with camera gear from a previous media incursion. Between snack breaks, fidgeting bouts and Beavis and Butt-head impersonations, they manage polite replies except to questions they consider, like, sooooo boring. Ask them to sum up the past year in a nutshell, for instance.

Zachary: "I personally don't think you can fit it in one nutshell."

Isaac: "Depends on the nut."

Zachary: "Maybe one of those jumbo walnuts."

Taylor: "If you got a big peanut with two compartments, maybe you could squeeze some in both sides. Yes, we've had an amazingly hectic and awesome year. It's just impossible to explain in one sentence."

OK, how about one high point?

"I think the Concorde has been the highest altitude we've reached," Zachary quips.

The Hansons tend to bounce between extremes.

One is goofball juvenilia. Demonstrating the pressure fame brings, Zachary hurls himself to the floor in fake convulsions. Addressing the issue of growing up in the spotlight, Taylor cracks, "Up? Zac has grown sideways 'cause of all those hamburgers." Grilled about leisure activities, Taylor deadpans, "We go to bars and get smashed."

Then there's the worldly sophisticate stance. Zachary embraces the Boy Socrates role. Among his pearls: "If fans say they don't like us anymore, that's just life."

"It's harder to play music when girls are screaming, but that's just part of life."

"If you are in this life, you are learning, whether or not you're in school."

"We had a tough year, but life is tough."

If the brothers Hanson feign maturity, it's because they're fed up with the media's fixation on their youth. "I have to laugh when someone asks if we're missing our childhood," says Isaac, noting that they find ample time for in-line skating, arcade halls, movies, parties and hanging out with friends.

Zachary continues: "When I turn 16, I can flip hamburgers for 5 bucks an hour, or I can go around the world and perform for thousands of people and make a lot of money. What am I missing?"

Taylor completes the thought: "You can flip hamburgers, save money, go to college and then start a band. We skipped all the in-between."

Isaac, who wrote his first song at age 8, adds: "We may seem young, but we've been doing this for almost seven years. It's a bit scary to look back now. I think, man, I didn't realize how young I was."

David Cassidy is older than their combined ages, but the Hansons are hardly neophytes. Their musical passions were stirred as toddlers and shaped by their parents' Time/Life rock oldies compilation. They honed their choirboy harmonies, penned feel-good pop tunes and picked up instruments - Isaac guitar, Taylor keyboards and Zachary drums.

Before linking with Mercury Records, the threesome distributed two CDs, wrote more than 100 songs and toured regionally, making their debut at a street fair in 1992.

Lawyer Christopher Sabec agreed to be the boys' manager after hearing them sing a cappella. A dozen labels rejected the group, but Mercury talent scout Steve Greenberg signed Hanson after catching an earful at a Kansas state fair.

Middle of Nowhere, recorded in Los Angeles with hip production duo the Dust Brothers, arrived in May and countered the dour vestiges of grunge with a fresh wave of sunny alternapop. The album has sold 9 million copies worldwide, and momentum isn't waning. Gus Van Sant, director of Good Will Hunting and Drugstore Cowboy, directed Hanson's new Weird video. A U.S. tour starts this spring.

"If you make it on the sheer novelty of youth, it's over when youth fades," Mercury chief Danny Goldberg says. "But like Stevie Wonder or Steve Winwood, Hanson can have a long career. They've got great prospects as long-distance runners because they're talented. These three guys sing in beautiful harmonies, wrote most of their album and play their own instruments.

"Though success depends on a certain amount of luck and the mysterious trends in the culture, it would be foolish to bet against Hanson."

The flaxen-haired pop cherubs are the oldest of seven siblings born to Walker, an oil company accountant, and Diana, a former singer. The high school sweethearts, who wed at 19, also have Jessica, 9; Avery, 6; Mackenzie, 4; and infant Zoe.

The ever-present parents "are cheerleaders," Isaac says. "It's remarkable how cool and supportive they are."

The brothers Hanson take pride in their wholesome upbringing. They were home-schooled (and continue to study under Mom's guidance) and raised as evangelical Christians. "Our faith is very important to us," Isaac and Taylor chime in unison. Yet they resent being dubbed America's only dysfunction-free family or, as Entertainment Weekly put it, "the anti-Simpsons."

"That is totally not true," Taylor says. "Everybody argues, everybody fights, everybody has stress. When you have fun or enjoy what you're doing, you have to run with it, because life is a pain most of the time."

Nor do they enjoy being likened to manufactured precursors like Menudo or current competitor the Spice Girls.

"We're known as Ike, Tay and Zac, not Posh, Butter, Spicy and Rare or whatever they are," Taylor says. "They do their thing, we do ours. I think they're cool. To get that successful, they worked their butts off."

Isaac says, "So more power to them."

"I guess you'd have to say more girl power to them," Zachary adds.

Oh, while we're on the subject of girl power . . .

"Girls have a lot of power," Zachary interrupts. "We were smashed against a car once by French girls."

Grrrr. Another evasive tactic. Trained gentlemen, the Hansons don't kiss and tell.

"If we had girlfriends, we probably wouldn't tell anyone," Isaac says.

They make light of the shrieking stampedes that pursue them from hotels to venues. But they don't dismiss them as inconsequential.

"Young girls are the main mass of record buyers," Isaac says.

"Guys just want to sit back and play football and hit each other," Taylor says. "We'll take as many fans as we can get. You never know when all this is going to go bye-bye."

By Edna Gunderson, USA TODAY