BACKSTREET'S Back!!!!!!! Interview

JOHN NORRIS: A year ago, when I spoke to you guys here in New York, you were just coming off of a Wal-Mart tour. Now you're in Radio City Music Hall. It must be nice playing at a legendary place.

NICK CARTER: It's a lot different than Wal-Mart.

BRIAN LITTRELL: From parking lots to Radio City.

NICK: What we were actually able to do was go into each individual city and just take our time with the people. We went into Wal-Mart and we signed stuff for them, so it was really personal, that was the best thing about it.

KEVIN RICHARDSON: Thanks to the cooperation of the radio stations just giving our music a chance; and letting the people hear it; and requests; and MTV, you guys coming along and pumping our videos, everybody just really.

NORRIS: How are things going with the tour?

KEVIN: Great. The crowds are incredible, the response is incredible, the energy that we get from the crowd.

NORRIS: And you've got three opening acts tonight?

ALL: Yeah.

NORRIS: Is that for pretty much the whole tour? And one you're pretty acquainted with (referring to Nick's brother), how did that come about?

NICK: I think, it was just the fact that I had presented it to the guys. My little brother has been doing some stuff for a little over a year or two, and it was...he's a great little performer so they said it was all right. He has an album out over in Europe so me and Brian actually wrote a song on his album, for his album, so that's kind of how -- besides me being his brother -- that's how we got acquainted.

NORRIS: Comparing U.S. and say, European crowds, it has been said that American audiences are a little more tuned in to the music, they're not just screaming from start to finish, they're actually listening.

NICK: Definitely, I feel that that's when you're up on stage, you can tell that they're listening, but then it gets to a point sometimes where they just go bezerk still, but that's cool. We love that, but yeah, they're a little more focused and listening and I think that's just all the music America's had in the past and in the present and everybody's just very wise towards music.

A.J. MCLEAN: As well as the language barrier, which is obviously going to constrict our European fans from understanding what we're really saying. They still sing along, which is kind of cool to watch a bunch of girls in Germany sing every single word to our songs. They might not know what it really means, but here in the U.S. the fans are a little more attentive as to what's going on around them.

KEVIN: Also, here, they're not as crazy, they're more laid back. In Europe they tend to get a little more hysterical, especially in the countries...When we went to South America for the very first time, we went to Chile and they were, how many, what 2,000 people at the airport and outside the hotel there were 7,000 people and we thought Michael Jackson was staying there or something. It was crazy.

NORRIS: Now, obviously summertime is a big touring season here and certainly there are rock tours out there and they're hip-hop tours, but when you guys; Spice Girls; Hanson; artists with that orientation--fan-based, are doing as well as you're doing, what's happening in music do you think?

NICK: I think it's a cycle that's coming back around or has come and is staying for a while.

HOWIE: Pop music's coming back.

BRIAN: That's just the way that I feel about it personally. There's just phases and there's phases that come through just like rap and when the Backstreet Boys first hit the market in '95, people were like, "who, what, what kind of music is this?" and it was a shock. And that's why we were like number 68 or 69 on the top 100 and now we've had four singles that have been released off the album and look at it, it's just amazing.

BRIAN: And those are songs that we recorded three or four years ago. I was like 19 when we did some of the records. I'll be 24.

NORRIS: So you mentioned pop making a come back and yet for some reason, tell me if you have any thoughts on this, I think they recently had a chart of the first-half of the year and the Backstreet Boys album is the number three seller in this country for the first half of 1998, and there were people in the office like, "Wow, I didn't know it was that big." And a group like the Spice Girls get more mainstream media attention than you guys, do have any thoughts as to why?

HOWIE: We're not here as much. When the Spice Girls came into the States, they hit it really hard. We've been spreading ourselves so much around the world that I guess there's still a hunger for the Backstreet Boys because we're not around as much on TV, and what's been covering us has pretty much been radio. That's what's been carrying our success. It's a gradual, slow approach we're taking with America and so hopefully we'll have long term careers instead of being a quick flash.

A.J.: We want longevity and we want the respect from everyone as musicians and as artists.

NICK: We want to be like one of the big groups, hopefully like the Beach Boys, the Eagles or something like that. That's our goal as a group.

NORRIS: A lot of people forget that a group like the Beach Boys was a teen phenomenon when they first happened. And you talked a lot of broadening the fan base and eventually evolving. Do you see signs of that happening, or is that just hope at this point?

KEVIN: Definitely. In Europe and all over the world where we first started out three, four years ago with our music, our fan base is much older than it is here in the U.S. and when you first hear about the Backstreet Boys, and whatever stereotype you want to have, once you come see a show, once you listen to the album, you might have a different viewpoint of where we're coming from. I'm a 26-year-old and I like the music that we're doing and I think that our music can appeal to everybody. As we grow we want our music to grow, and I think that's the art behind it. Groups like New Edition started out with a young, young fan base and they grew when they made the transition with Bobby Brown, and Johnny Gill -- he took them to another level. They got a much more mature audience and I think it's just about growing and evolving with the cycles of music -- just like Madonna's done, just like Janet Jackson's done, and just like Michael Jackson's done. They all start out with a young fan base. Whenever we're asked that question about if our music is for younger people or older people we always bring up -- because it's a true statistic that we can be proud of -- that has been in the top three of the adult contemporary charts for over six months. That's incredible.

BRIAN: And "How Do I Break Your Heart" was just the number one most added to adult contemporary. So it's just like in a lot of the views, we take time. Kevin and I were looking in a magazine yesterday talking about the reports. You see people that are in the business that really take time to listen to a song to have an objective point of view about it and everything else they've heard up till then. They were saying about that "this song will do for the Backstreet Boys what 'End of the Road' did for Boys II Men." I was like, yeah, let's see it, that's great. How much better could it get because that shows the growth slowly but surely.

NORRIS: Speaking of evolving, now that you're older and if the fan base is evolving, do you feel constrained to fit into a certain image, a certain perception of the wholesome kind of image that -- I see A.J.'s broken out of?

A.J.: I think as time goes on each of us has had an opportunity to grow into their own person as well as to grow as a team. You see people everyday, kids younger than us and kids our age constantly changing with the times. Kids are going to be experimental just like me. I'm not doing anything drastic like drugs and drinking -- that is totally ix-nay -- but changing my hair color or doing something like a tattoo or something like that is just a way of me expressing me. But when people come to our shows, hopefully they're coming to hear the music first. Hopefully, when they listen to us on the radio, they're listening to us, they're not going, "OK, this is what they look like, I don't want to buy something because of this or that." They're listening to the music first, it's not about the image.

KEVIN: And we're not professing to be perfect, we're just five young guys trying to have fun and be successful and doing something that we love.

NORRIS: I won't name the band that you guys hate being talked about in the same sentence as, however, I knew Donnie Whalberg, and I knew that he had a steady girlfriend for a couple of years during the time that he was in New Kids, and yet he never copped to that once on camera. So my question is, if there was a steady relationship going on, you wouldn't tell me if there was, would you?

KEVIN: If there's one worthwhile mentioning, like if we've been together long enough, and it's important enough that I want to profess it to the world, then I'll do that. But if she feels comfortable with it, if she wants her private life, then...

A.J.: You have to realize you're not taking away from your private life, but her private life. If she's walking out in public and people know her and they relate her to as "Oh, that's A.J.'s girlfriend," it could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. But I think if it's artists that are together, sometimes that's looked upon differently than an artist that's with someone who's not an artist.

NORRIS: If she was she could probably handle the attention a lot better.

A.J.: Exactly, and she would be used to being in the lime light all of the time.

HOWIE: It takes a special person that's for sure.

A.J.: A person that wants to put up with our schedule. We're all just looking for that certain one, it's just, we haven't found someone that can put up.

NORRIS: So, there's nothing to this engagement thing then, right?

BRIAN: Oh man, I cannot get away from that! The past three days people have been saying that, everybody just flipped out.

NORRIS: So, where did that come from then?

BRIAN: I have no idea. I have no idea. One of our managers came into the dressing room just day before yesterday and said, "Brian, how do you want me to address this," and I said and I quote, "I am not engaged," end quote. So, I'm not. If I was I'd be faithful and you would see a ring on my finger, no actually I wouldn't , so...

NORRIS: What can people who haven't seen the show yet here in the States expect? Is it all the hits, are there some covers in there?

A.J.: It's one cover, it's all the hits, it's all the singles, stuff from the next album.

HOWIE: We take a little time out to do a solo, hear what we individually sound like.

KEVIN: Some stuff from the European album that people haven't heard as well, if they're really avid Backstreet fans they probably have the import and they've probably heard it before.

HOWIE: We have a really cool stage, a six-piece band, a little bit of pyro here and there, and great lights.

NORRIS: Night after night, do you guys ever have to psych yourselves or is it like, to avoid putting it on the automatic pilot every time you hit the stage, is every night a different night?

A.J.: Every crowd...like when we're right there and the band kicks in with the intro and we're waiting backstage for our grand entrance, it's just like a grand entrance. By the way the crowd's reacting, by just hearing the band, if the crowd's screaming it just gets your adrenaline flowing. We're playing off the crowd, the crowd's playing off us. Every show's different. It's like playing our very first show, we never know what to expect, something different happens every night.

NORRIS: I remember last year you were telling me the one kind of nice thing about having not really broken in the States yet was that you could come back here and at least sometimes you could walk the streets and maybe there were girls camped out at your house, but they were European girls. So now you have all the Americans after you too, is it like now you can't go anywhere?

A.J.: It's getting there. I couldn't go see the premiere of "Armageddon" back in Orlando. I tried to go out to Pleasure Island back in Orlando and I had 30 Brazilian girls that recognized me, I had a bunch of U.S. girls that recognized me. It was weird. But it's weird because it's like about a year ago, before we released the album here, there were a couple of girls here and there. We might leave to go over to Chile or go over to Europe for a couple of months and come back and it has grown twice or three times the size, it's just like now staying in our hotel in New York, it's just like the fans outside the hotel came from two to five to 30.

BRIAN: When we do Miami Arena and they drive five and a half hours back to Orlando following our bus, 15-car caravan, which the state police have to divert to different exits to get away from us, that's when it hits home.

HOWIE: It has definitely grown, like I said in Philly, like they said in Miami, places like that and also even back home it's like now even the American fans, it seems like they're getting in touch with the European fans and conversing back and forth to find out our addresses, so they get pen pals all over the world and tell each other where they are.

KEVIN: We have some European fans here on vacation touring with us. They spent their vacation following us around the different cities like from Germany, England, Canada. It's really cool, see signs "Germany in the House."

NORRIS: So was, Brian, there any question that this U.S. tour would happen with the surgery happening and everything, were you confident that this tour would come off as planned?

BRIAN: The U.S. tour was actually supposed to be a little sooner. It was supposed to

be about a month sooner, but I delayed my surgery twice due to the fact of the European tour, got the doctor's OK, not my mom and dad's but the cardiologist's OK to go ahead with it and I decided to do that for the sake of the group and what we had already scheduled and stuff.

NORRIS: So when was is postponed, was it last year that you had it postponed?

BRIAN: I was supposed to have it in February, then it got moved like a month later and that was when the European tour was setting in and some people kind of freaking out a little bit so I decided to back it up. So with the U.S. tour happening, they planned the U.S. tour around my surgery so everybody had down time, everybody was flying all different places of the world recording with producers, demo and stuff for the new album, so they didn't have time off.

NORRIS: So you've had this since you were a kid, but did you get worse recently, is that why you had to have the surgery?

BRIAN: Well, kind of what happened in the small little story...I was born with it, they found a heart murmur when I was six-weeks-old, they monitored it my whole life, I took really bad ill when I was five with a staff infection I wasn't supposed to live. Thank God I did and made it through that. Here I am, I became a Backstreet Boy, they monitored it, when I turned 18, Kevin called me, "Hey, why don't you come to Florida and sing with these guys that I know." Poof and here we are.

NORRIS: Growing up, did you have to watch your activities, sports or dancing or anything like that?

BRIAN: No, the doctors said I probably would but they said if I survived my infection when I was five that I probably wouldn't walk or do anything. Picked up a basketball at the age of six and that was kind of my sport but it's...God's been really good to me. I've had a lot of gracious years and the past two and a half years of traveling, of a lot of stress and a lot of different things, has taken a toll--it kind of just snuck up on me and I wasn't really having any symptoms or anything but I went to...I was full speed ahead like everybody else and then next thing you know, I was supposed to be in surgery for 45-minutes and I was under for two and a half hours because they found another hole that nobody knew about so, here I am.

NORRIS: I would imagine that puts everything for you in a whole new light.

BRIAN: Good family, and these guys were behind me so, here I am. You learn. I think I grew up a lot. I think within the six months that I was battling trying to get back on my feet knowing what was ahead thinking pretty soon I'm going to have to turn back on again and just like you said that automatic pilot, I'm going to have to be on stage and what's going to happen. So I had a lot of scary thoughts with that, but here we are a week into the tour and...

NORRIS: Have you had to change anything, are you guys concerned?

A.J.: He said he didn't really want to miss the U.S. tour, so we were just trying to figure a way to work around it to make...to get him situated first and then the tour can happen whenever but priorities are priorities and health comes first for any of us so...because it could happen to any of us, because we're all under the same schedule, granted Brian has a lot worse of a situation, but it could happen to any of us because the schedule was getting more and more tedious and it ain't gonna get any easier but it still, it's getting to be more and more fun, but it's getting more and more difficult as it goes on.

BRIAN: The one thing I've learned is to manage that time. When we need to eat, leave me alone. I'm sorry, leave me alone. I want to eat because the doctor said I got to eat and at the age of 23 they were even finding fatty deposits in one of my arteries because of all the McDonald's that we eat.

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