Rolling Stone Cover Story 5/27/99

By Jancee Dunn

There is fame, and there is teen-idol fame. The  Backstreet Boys are well-acquainted with the latter, which transcends autograph  seeking and enters a surreal realm where girls will offer up their own internal  organs on the black market for, say, one of Kevin's used Kleenex.

"They try to bribe us with money to get  backstage," says Q, the Boys' longtime bodyguard and possibly the most  beleaguered security man on earth. "They'll say, 'My dad can get you a deal on a  car.' "He sighs. "Little girls will have a tape recorder, saying they're from  newspapers or Fox Kids." In hotels, continues Q, "they come upstairs acting like  housekeeping, or they call every single room in the hotel until they get the  guys."

The Backstreet Boys love their female fans, God  knows they do. They say this repeatedly. It is those fans who are primarily  responsible for the success of 1997's 27 million-sellin', five-singles-spawnin'  album Backstreet Boys. When the girls spaz out, trembling and crying at  autograph signings, it is the Boys who patiently, kindly talk them down. "I'll  say, 'I'm human, it's no big deal,'" says Brian Littrell.

One need not be Phi Beta Kappa to understand the  group's appeal. The Boys' frothy pop and dreamy ballads tell the girls the very  words they can't extract from bepimpled boyfriends: "I'll never break your  heart, I'll never make you cry."

However, what the Boys -- Littrell, Howie  Dorough, Kevin Richardson, A.J. McLean and Nick Carter -- could really use is a  few male fans. Gay men they've got. ("They're cool," clarifies Dorough. "They  know we all, you know, date girls.") There are also the reluctant dads and  boyfriends in the audience. ("They try to act tough, but we see them bob their  heads," says Q.) But the Backstreet Boys want something more.

With the coming of its new album, Millennium, the  Orlando band hopes, finally, to be taken seriously. "I wish people would realize  that we have the goods and we're legit," says Richardson heatedly. He is  presiding over a barbecue at his house. His band mates mill around nearby.  "We're talented, and we're not some flash in the pan. We've been together for  six years."

There is another, more insidious misconception  that surrounds the Boys. Because the group has sold the aforementioned 27  million records and has toured the globe countless times, it would be natural to  assume that each of the Backstreet Boys has himself a Mount Kilimanjaro-size  pile of cash.

Not so. "The truth is that we haven't got that  much money," Carter says evenly. Indeed. Last May, the group filed a lawsuit  against its former manager, Lou Pearlman, and others in his company. Calling  themselves "indentured servants," the Boys accused Pearlman and Co. of keeping  some $10 million in recording and touring revenues since 1993. The Boys,  meanwhile, received $300,000. Total.

The ensuing court battle involved a squad of  twenty lawyers, as well as judges in three different states. In the midst of it,  Littrell endured open-heart surgery. "1998 was our most successful year," says  Richardson. He pauses. "It was also the hardest year of my life."

Let's unravel this by starting in 1993, when the  Backstreet Boys formed under the tutelage of Pearlman, head of the Orlando-based  Trans Continental, a collective of companies that includes charter planes, a  travel agency and Chippendales dancers. In the early Nineties, Pearlman took  notice of New Kids on the Block, the world's most successful act, and heard the  distant strains of -- can you hear it? -- ka-ching.

He set out to recruit a boy band of his own --  and in what better town than Orlando, which was crawling with young hopefuls  auditioning like mad to sing and dance in the various theme parks? McLean,  Carter and Dorough were the first to sign on. Richardson, a transplant from  Lexington, Kentucky, followed; finally, Richardson's cousin Littrell was called  in from Kentucky to complete the lineup.

Their first gig: Sea World. School assemblies and  family package tours followed, and then came opening slots for REO Speedwagon  and the Village People. The Backstreet Boys' first single, "We've Got It Goin'  On," proved otherwise when it peaked at Number 69 on the charts and  sank.

"At the time that we released our album," says  Carter, adjusting his Fubu hat, "Snoop was big, Nirvana was really big, so we  were at the wrong end of the cycle."

Undaunted, Pearlman recruited former New Kids  manager Johnny Wright and dispatched the band to Europe, where teen pop springs  eternal. The Boys promptly became huge in Germany, and the rest of Europe soon  followed. For two years, they toured nonstop.

America was still unmoved. "We'd leave Europe,"  says Littrell, digging into some corn bread, "where there were, like, 2,000  people at the airport, to . . ." He makes cricket noises.

During the Boys' lean years, Pearlman claims, he  poured some $3 million into their career, just in time for the musical pendulum  in the States to swing back to pop, thanks to the Spice Girls and Hanson. After  three years in the field, the Boys were pumped. They swooped down on America  with "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)." The sweetly infectious tune (and its  pec-static video) soon hit Number One.

Four singles and the majority of $200 million in  revenue later, the Boys began to chafe under their agreement with Pearlman. "I  swear, in one year we had to have done five tours," says Carter. "The contracts  weren't fair," says Richardson. "And we were kept on the road, and before you  know it, two or three years and millions of dollars go by."

Feeling hosed, the band began to falter a bit in  performance, while the competition in the pop market heated up. The Boys' five  jaws dropped when, in a surreal turn of events, they discovered that 'N Sync,  their main competition (at 6 million records and counting), were managed by none  other than . . . Lou Pearlman. "That hurt our feelings," says Richardson.  "Because for a while it was like, 'We're a family.' Then all of a sudden, 'It's  business, guys, sorry.' We have nothing against . . . that group, personally. It  was [Pearlman's] not being honest."

Now you know the drama; let's meet the  players.

BRIAN LITTRELL: "I've been through a lot  at a young age," says Littrell, 23, lining up a shot at a beloved Orlando  driving range. Indeed he has, and it all began with a phone call from his cousin  Kevin Richardson six years ago. Littrell was a nice churchgoing boy from  Lexington who worked after school at the local Long John Silver's. Littrell also  sang in the choir and at the occasional funeral ("a song called 'Heaven,'  mostly") and planned to attend Cincinnati Bible College. Then he got the  call.

"I guess the guys liked me, because two weeks  later, I'm performing in front of 5,000 people," he recalls in that rolling  Kentucky accent: Ah guess the gahz . . . Littrell, who is courtly and charmingly  low-key, has the smooth voice that you hear taking a lot of the band's  leads.

While the grinding teen-pop lifestyle has turned  many a young talent into a broken, Leif Garrett-esque nightmare, that was the  least of Littrell's worries last May, when he had open-heart surgery to correct  a heart defect he had had since birth.

"After six years of a schedule that was pretty  much horrendous," says his mother, Jackie, "he went for his annual checkup and  the doctors noticed that his heart was getting quite large, like one for a  300-pound linebacker."

"I delayed surgery twice because of the tours,"  says Littrell, smiling ruefully. "I mean, the saddest thing is that I scheduled  open-heart surgery around my work schedule. It was like nobody really cared or  felt that it was important, because the career was moving on."

He stares out over the range. "It's not worth all  that to me," he says quietly. "To be a star and not have my health? Sorry, but  it's not worth it." He strides over and pulls up his shirt to reveal a thick,  red, five-inch scar with two still-healing puncture marks near the bottom where  breathing tubes went into his lungs. "Now I have a manly scar down the middle of  my chest," he says.

Littrell doesn't remember anything that occurred  right before the surgery -- not when the nurses shaved him, nor when his family  gathered around him. "My mom and my girlfriend said I was real cheerful, and  then they wheeled in a transfer bed and said, 'Are you ready to go?' And then --  I just busted out bawling."

He hits another ball, which sails off into the  hazy Florida sun. "Eight weeks to the day of my surgery, I was onstage  performing," he says. Physically, he had healed, but emotionally, he wasn't  ready. "I was sixty-five percent, really. My mind-set wasn't there. But the show  must go on." And so it did, with oxygen tanks at the ready backstage, which  Littrell relied on for the first week or so.

It was around this time that he had an epiphany  about what is important in his life. "Music is my love, but it's my job," he  says. "There's things that used to be taken for granted that aren't now: time  with your family, time to enjoy the fruits of your labor."

Which he is doing with relish -- new Beemer, new  house. Littrell heads to his home, in a nearby gated community. He is currently  spiffing the place up, with the help of his girlfriend, a pretty blond actress  named Leigh Anne. As he nears the place, she calls him to say that fans have  been taking his mail out of the mailbox. Ladies! This is a federal  offense!

"This isn't the first time," he sighs. He walks  into his house as his Chihuahua, Lil' Tyke, Ping-Pong's joyfully around the  hallway. Littrell's house is airy and comfortable, backed by a tranquil pool  surrounded by flowers. He proudly gives a tour, including his dark-blue office,  stuffed with gold records, and the bedroom. (Attention, fan Web sites: It has  light-blue walls, a white bedspread and a Jacuzzi encircled by candles in the  bathroom.)

"I'm trying to figure out ways to hang my hat at  the end of the day," he says. "One day I hope to have a pop-gospel hour. Maybe I  don't want to have a solo career one day, maybe I do. I've had a lot of people  say they want to work with me when I'm finished with the group. And I look them  in the face and say, 'I can't tell you if I'll ever be ready.' "He smiles. " But  if I am, I'll call you.'"

A.J. MCLEAN is pointing out his tattoos.  "I have ten," he says. "Each one has a meaning. I started with this one over  here on my arm, which says A.J. in tribal markings. The final one will be angel  wings, and it's pretty much gonna cover my shoulder blades. Next I want to get  one on my stomach -- my lucky number, which is sixty-nine." Now, hold on a  minute. McLean, 21, is the rebel of the group, but it's not what you think.  Sixty-nine is his lucky number. McLean speaks very intensely, occasionally  exhaling a plume of Marlboro Light. He has on a white hat, blue tank top, giant  tan pants. Cologne clings to him lightly. Today, McLean is steering his gray  Ford Expedition to his favorite place: McDonald's. "Yeah, can I get two bacon,  egg and cheese biscuits and one sausage, egg and cheese McMuffin," he hollers  into the drive-through. "And hash browns."

"I've noticed lately that people have been  recognizing me, and I assumed it was my tattoos." He laughs. "It's my damn  goatee. They're like, 'Do you do that to yourself or have someone else do it?' I  do it myself. I spend about a half-hour every single morning sculpting it." He  strokes his chin, which sports a truly awe-inspiring design, kind of a Mandarin  without the colors.

McLean, whose deep, rough-edged voice anchors the  band's harmonies, has always thrived on attention. He loves to be recognized,  loves to go on the band's Web sites and talk to fans. In the seventh grade, he  moved from Kissimmee, Florida ("Really, really wack -- we didn't get President's  Day off from school, but we got Rodeo Day"), to Orlando and landed a role in a  Nickelodeon show the very first week he arrived. He has also appeared in some  seventy plays. "I grew up in the musical theater," he says, mowing through his  McBiscuits. "I always pushed myself. To this day, I take my crap seriously. If,  God forbid, something happened to me where I could not perform, I would rather  die, basically."

McLean is very close to his mother, who manages  his career. His father left when he was four. Two years ago, McLean spotted his  dad's return address on a child-support notice. He drove out and knocked on the  door. "He's like, 'Alex?' I was like, 'Dad?'" They embraced, crying. McLean  looked around his house, incredulous: "There's Backstreet Boys crap all over the  walls."

Since the emotional reunion, things have cooled a  bit. "He remarried, and his wife is pushing him down my throat," says McLean,  driving his rig into a carwash. "If he would do things in moderation, maybe we  could get a father-son relationship back. But being so damn pushy, I just don't  want to do it." He sighs, exasperated. "He calls me every day, he drives me  nuts. I don't really answer his phone calls."

As we drive to McLean's house, he shows me a  picture of his girlfriend, an aspiring singer. "She's me with boobs, basically,"  he says, pointing to a photo of a sexy brunette. "Very cool, very down to  earth."

"My house is like The Jetsons," he says as he  opens the door to a new, gray-shingled abode. "Red-velvet chairs, red rug, a  black-and-white zebra chair. I'm not your ordinary type of Joe Schmo." Indeed,  his house is a riot of color, notably the red-velvet pool table. Two  black-and-white Shih Tzu puppies, Panda and Bear, frolic in the  kitchen.

It's the picture of domesticity, for McLean  confines his raunchiness to the stage. "I would like to show a different side of  me, do a solo show like R. Kelly or Keith Sweat," he says. "In our show, we each  do a solo song. My song is 'Lay Down Beside Me.' It sounds sexual, but it's not.  The chorus is, 'If you lay down beside me/You can get all inside me/I can get  all inside you, too.' But when you think about it, a guy can obviously get  inside a girl, but a girl can't get inside a guy."

He heads into the kitchen, throws a bag on the  counter. It's the remaining sausage McMuffin. "For later," he says.

HOWIE DOROUGH speaks softly, because he's  in church -- specifically, the Catholic church in downtown Orlando that he grew  up attending. "I was baptized here," he says. "I sang in the choir. I had my  first Communion here. Hopefully I'll get married here."

Sweet-natured Dorough, 25, tries to attend church  every Sunday: "My mom's Puerto Rican, and my dad's Irish-American. There's no  more Catholic that you can get."

The Orlando native has been in the business since  he was six, doing commercials for theme parks and the like. He took jazz, tap  and ballet classes, and got his big break as a Lollipop Guild Munchkin in a  local production of The Wizard of Oz. Dorough would bump into A.J. during his  rounds of theater auditions. "I was so close to getting so many things, like the  Mickey Mouse Club and Menudo," he says. "I was always used to performing in  front of people."

Good thing, because audiences were tough in the  Boys' early days on the junior high school auditorium circuit. "The guys would  heckle us," moans Dorough. "We'd say, 'You think you can do better, come on up  here.' We'd sing a cappella and we'd have them sing along with us. When it was  their turn, we'd just drop out, let them sing by themselves. It embarrassed the  heck out of them."

Unlike some of his band mates, Dorough does not  live in a gated community, so his house gets a fair amount of visitors. "My  parents are very cool about it," he says, shifting around in his pew. "They'll  let them in and take pictures with them." Dorough plans to buy his parents'  house for them. He's also dabbling in real estate, developing condos on the east  coast of Florida. "I'm trying to be smart about the money we're earning," he  says.

As Dorough is talking, Q the bodyguard is  discreetly making his way over to his charge. Q leans in close.

"Your car's being ticketed," he says in a low  voice. "If you want to get out of your ticket, write this to Kristina with a K."  He hands the incredulous Dorough a piece of paper. "I'm dead serious," says Q.  "The cop is out there waiting for you. You're welcome."

"He's really going to let me out of this?" asks  Dorough.

"Kristina with a K," replies Q.

NICK CARTER, proud new homeowner at the  age of nineteen, bustles around his Tampa house, tidying up. He Windexes the  counters and shoves a box of Cookie Crisp cereal in the pantry. Nick is tall  (six feet one inch) and, surprisingly for the group heartthrob, pretty  shy.

Four pugs have the run of the place (what is it  with the little dogs?), cheerfully peeing on the rug. Nick embarks on a house  tour: a gleaming black Prowler in the garage, a five-by-five-foot TV courtesy of  his record company, a white dining room with pastel chairs and a glass case  filled with Beanie Babies. The room that he has spent the most work on is  undoubtedly the bedroom. Is that a neon glow coming from underneath the  door?

The white bed is flanked by round neon  sculptures, reflected by the mirror behind the bed. To the right is a six-foot,  clear-plastic palm tree, filled with water and tiny orange bubbles. To the left  is an abstract neon figure. "Kind of Miami Vice," says Carter.

Carter says he's a "modern-day hermit. A lot of  people don't recognize me, and I don't care." He dearly loves to play video  games. Lately he's been kicking it old-school with some antiquated Nintendo's he  found. Carter is the youngest of the group. "When we recorded the last album,"  he says, "I was going through a . . . transitional stage. I wasn't impressed  with my voice. So I'm really happy with what's come out on this  album."

Like Howie and A.J., Nick had a showbiz  background: some Phantom of the Opera here, some amateur talent competitions  there. He was offered a contract in the Mickey Mouse Club, but then the Boys  came a-knocking. Carter was thirteen.

The reason for the band's success, says Carter,  is that "each one of us is extremely talented. A lot of groups might utilize one  or two of the group's voices for the lead vocals. We use every single  one."

Carter leans forward. He has a question: "Is  there any way that you might be able to not name the actual place that I live?"  Carter has already had to move once. The other day, somehow, a girl got his  phone number. "I said hello, and she said, 'Ohmigod, is this Nick?' I said, 'How  did you get this number?' She goes, 'I can't reveal my sources.' No matter what  you do, somehow they get a hold of it." He shakes his head. "It's crazy," he  whispers.

KEVIN RICHARDSON, on the other hand,  definitely has to move. It's a shame, because he has spent two years renovating  his Orlando home, and it's a beaut -- a symphony of gleaming woods and deep  colors. "I like wood," says Richardson. "Wood is very grounding." He walks out  to the pool, to his favorite spot: a group of wooden benches. "It's kind of sad  I have to move," he says glumly -- but, you see, he has been discovered. "People  come by when they're on vacation."

Richardson is having the Boys over for a barbecue  later, so he takes a load off by the pool. At twenty-seven, he is the oldest of  the group and the one who frequently takes charge. Hazel-eyed and intense,  Richardson grew up on a farm outside of Lexington, where the family raised their  own cows and pigs. Richardson's mom, Ann, recalls that her son got the  performance bug early, at the camp that his father ran. "He began to do little  skits and sing when the camp had its show-time nights," she remembers, "and the  girls would start hollering."

Kevin also cultivated his love of singing in his  church choir. After he graduated from high school, he played keyboards and sang  in a band called Paradise, which did covers of Bobby Brown and Journey tunes.  One day his father suggested that he explore the career opportunities in  Orlando. Richardson and a buddy left that night, packing up an old El Camino and  heading out. "We had, like, $400 between the both of us," he says.

Richardson became a guide at the MGM Studios and  got himself an agent. He coveted a job in one of the Disney shows: "Say, the  dancers and singers at the Beauty and the Beast show - you could make really  good money." Eventually he landed a gig as a Ninja Turtle.

When Richardson's dad got sick with cancer, the  singer moved back home for a year. After he died, says Richardson, "something  was just calling me back down to Orlando." One night he was working at a party  as an "atmosphere dancer." Let him explain: "It was a convention, and I was  hyping the crowd, trying to get little old ladies to get up and dance and  stuff." At the party, he met a woman who directed him to the Backstreet Boys  audition. "I definitely think the whole thing was fate," he says.

The band, now four guys, continued to audition  people. "I saw two people, and it was pretty bad," he says. "It just made me  sad. And I said, 'You know what? I have a cousin who can sing his butt off.'" He  called Brian, and the band was set.

In addition to his singing career, Richardson  does the occasional modeling. Last year he and his band mates got a call from  Donatella Versace to attend her fashion show in Milan. He and Howie couldn't get  there fast enough. Richardson ended up walking the runway. "That night at  dinner," he drawls, "I'm sittin' next to Naomi Campbell, with Donatella on the  other side of me." The next night was his birthday, so Versace and Kate Moss  serenaded him with a cake.

The boys have arrived at Richardson's pad. They  grab plates and load up on barbecue while Carter talks about Eminem's  record.

"You got it with you?" asks Richardson. "Let's  check it out. I heard he was a lunatic."

"He is," enthuses Carter. "He talks about killing  his wife. Details. Chopping her up, putting her in a bag. You gotta hear this  track, man. You're gonna freak out."

They defer listening and instead gather around  the kitchen table to discuss Millennium, which they helped write.

"There are a lot more acoustics on this album,"  says McLean.

"It's a bit edgier, harder," says  Dorough.

"It's a step in the right direction, but it's not  too extreme," says Littrell.

"It's going to differentiate us from everybody  that came out after us, if you know what I mean." His favorite song is called  "The Perfect Fan," which he wrote about his mother and which is backed by his  high school choir. "She bawled like a baby when she heard it," he  says.

Their world tour starts this summer in Europe.  "We've got David Bowie's set designer," says Richardson. They are also pumped  about a video for the first single, "I Want It That Way."

"We want to do a very pricey video, a very classy  video," says McLean. "A three- or four-day shoot, the best possible  director."

Yes, the Boys are filled with a fresh enthusiasm.  "Ever since we've been with our new management, since January 1st of this year,  we are very happy," says McLean.

"A weight has been lifted off our shoulders,"  says Richardson of their new handlers. "They have our health and our sanity in  mind, as well as our success."

After the tour, the Boys will take some time off.  "We're not planning on splitting up," McLean chimes in. "We are planning on  doing something solo eventually." He cites New Edition, whose members spun off  occasionally though the group never broke up.

But for now, they are rarin' to tour -- and to  enjoy life. "I remember [former New Kid] Jordan Knight telling me, 'It's all a  blur,'" says Dorough as his band mates bob their heads in agreement. "At the  time, I couldn't even imagine that happening. It was all very fresh, and I loved  every single thing that happened." He laughs. "Now I understand what he was  talking about."

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