HE MAY "TURN INTO A TOTAL IDIOT" AROUND WOMEN, BUT SHY INCUBUS HEARTTHROB BRANDON BOYD HAS BEEN CHASED BY CRAZED GIRLS SINCE THIRD GRADE. NOW HIS BAND IS BLOWING UP BY REJECTING THE MACHO NOISE-MONGERING OF HARD ROCK-SO WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT BEING SUCH "DARN NICE GUYS"?
Still, Brandon feels lousy. In the video, the SoCal-based modern rockers-guitarist Mike Einziger, bassist Dirk Lance, drummer Jose Pasillas, and DJ Chris Kilmore-escape from rioting teenage girls by running down a bridge and jumping into the ocean, where they are rescued by pretty mermaids. Unfortunately, no one tells Brandon that hopping in and out of deep water all morning can lead to inner-ear rebellion if you've got the sniffles, and his eardrum is close to bursting, as a doctor will inform him. Smoke is an old folk remedy, but it doesn't work on Brandon. ("It did raise my, um, spirits," he says.)
So he lies on a couch with a hand clutching his ear, worried Incubus may have to postpone an upcoming tour of Japan and New Zealand. The video, however, marches on without him. (Future Pop-Up Video trivia: The "Brandon" who is saved in the ocean is a look-alike production assistant with even more freakishly sculpted abs.)
In the end, Brandon's go-get-'em mom, Dolly Wiseman, saves the day. A cuddly force of nature with bright red lipstick and psychic instincts, she drives onto the set in her SUV, lays what she calls her "healing hands" on her son, and decides he needs to go to the hospital. He does, and after ingesting a mess of funky steroids, he's feeling slightly better the next day.
This isn't the first time Wiseman's intuition has helped her son: When he was a baby, he knocked over a cup of hot coffee and burned the area around his armpit. An ER doctor said it was nothing; unconvinced, Wiseman flew Brandon to a burn center, where she learned it was a severe injury that would require a skin graft from his thigh. "All through that ordeal, he never cried," she remembers, still slightly awed.
"Brandon's a mama's boy," says Darren. "We all are." (Brandon is the middle of three sons.) It's true: Brandon mentions his mom constantly, even more than his ex-girlfriend Jo English, whom he dated for three years and who appears in Incubus' "Stellar" video. "My mom is the most creative person
I know," Brandon says, his highest possible compliment. (Wiseman is a singer, artist, and writer.) "She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence."
Wiseman has shaped Brandon's approach to music, love, spirituality, and shirts. She did his colors once, "and it totally stuck into my subconscious," he says. "I can't help it now-like, I wear brown and shit." Her metaphysical questing has also rubbed off on her son, who practices yoga and loves books like The Mists of Avalon. "Most of my interest in things of that ilk comes from my mom's bookshelves."
Considering their close relationship, it's no surprise Brandon gets along so well with women. "Growing up, most of my friends were girls," he says.
"I really need female friends." Considering his androgynous beauty and sweet demeanor, plus Incubus' kid-tested/mother-approved guitar rock, it's no surprise he's MTV's newest weapon of mass heartbreak. Girls scream for him to take his shirt off at Incubus shows (he usually obliges), and Teen People recently voted him one of "The Hottest Guys in Music." His sensitive-guy appeal sets him apart from today's testosterone-drunk rock. While chunky-boy Fred was crowing about nookie and groping groupies, Brandon wrote the flowery 2000 hit "Stellar" in homage to his girlfriend's celestial body: "Meet me in outer space / I need you to see this place / It might be the only way that I can show you how it feels to be inside you"). He's the kind of guy who can call a vagina a yoni (the term used in the Kama Sutra), and somehow it doesn't sound creepy.
"Most of my favorite artists are women-Bj�rk, PJ Harvey, Ani DiFranco," he says. "Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing-we're domesticated apes with a microphone."