Part 3 (1/2)

At age ten, he looked into the sky and his life changed. ”It was the first time I ever saw a blimp,” he said, years later. ”It told me to have a good year.” The next day he walked to the Flus.h.i.+ng commuter airport to talk his way into riding in one. He hung around the base so often that the Goodyear people eventually hired him as a crew member.

Aircraft became his calling. After graduating from Queens College, he started two New York companies-one to take tourists up in helicopters, another to charter airplanes. They made him a lot of money. In 1982, he pulled out his savings, borrowed money from friends and relatives and, with $250,000, started Airs.h.i.+p International, a blimp company that provided advertising for McDonald's and Metropolitan Life Insurance. Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated called him ”Baron Blimp.” called him ”Baron Blimp.”

Pearlman's flying businesses gave him connections, and not just for life insurance. By the late 1980s, ”Air Lou,” as he came to be called, had spun off a fast-growing charter jet company, which had made a name for itself hauling rock stars from concert to concert-Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and Madonna were among the pa.s.sengers. None of them excited him so much as an unfamiliar name he noticed in a logbook in late 1989: New Kids on the Block. New Kids on the Block. Pearlman discovered the popular boy band was filling stadiums around the world. ”I thought the New Kids must be raking it in if they could afford to pay $250,000 a month for one of our planes,” he later wrote in his autobiography. They'd made $200 million in concert sales and $800 million in merchandise revenues. Their svengali was Maurice Starr, who'd built the smash R&B band New Edition before they sued to break their contract. Pearlman discovered the popular boy band was filling stadiums around the world. ”I thought the New Kids must be raking it in if they could afford to pay $250,000 a month for one of our planes,” he later wrote in his autobiography. They'd made $200 million in concert sales and $800 million in merchandise revenues. Their svengali was Maurice Starr, who'd built the smash R&B band New Edition before they sued to break their contract.

Hmm, thought Pearlman. In 1989, the timing wasn't right for a new boy band-yet. He had to wait for the New Kids to peak. And he had to wait out the postNew Kids era, which belonged to Nirvana, grunge music, alternative rock, and college students. Over the next seven or eight years, the pendulum of pop music tastes would swing back to pop-Hanson and the Spice Girls were ascendant, and Ricky Martin was on the brink of graduating from his his boy band, Menudo. ”You could tell the alternative age was over and the cycle just came back for pop music,” says Paris D'Jon, who discovered the boy band 98 Degrees. boy band, Menudo. ”You could tell the alternative age was over and the cycle just came back for pop music,” says Paris D'Jon, who discovered the boy band 98 Degrees.

With the New Kids on his mind, Pearlman hired an old friend, Gloria Sicoli, an ex-singer with talent-spotting expertise. They tried out forty young men at his house in the summer of 1992. All of them pretty much sucked, except for Alexander James McLean, fourteen, a veteran of local talent contests, musicals, and theater productions. AJ arrived with his mother and sang three New Kids songs to a backup tape while Pearlman watched from a couch. AJ was talented. So was his friend, Tony Donetti, who pa.s.sed the audition-but then Pearlman's people lost his phone number. During a second round of auditions, in the aircraft parts warehouse of Pearlman's company, Trans Continental, Donetti resurfaced as ”Howie Dorough.” He had been using a stage name on his agent's recommendation.

They found more local talent-Nick Carter, then twelve, who had a rebellious look and s.h.a.ggy blond hair and had performed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneer cheerleaders for two years; Kevin Richardson, a model and actor who'd been a Ninja Turtle and Aladdin at Disney World; and Richardson's tenor-singing cousin, Brian Littrell. They'd audition other members, who wouldn't stick around, but these five named themselves the Backstreet Boys after a flea market across the street from the T.G.I. Friday's in Orlando. By May 8, 1993, they were playing SeaWorld, in Orlando, before three thousand screaming girls.

Pearlman contacted New Kids manager Johnny Wright, who with his wife Donna had to hear the Backstreet Boys sing over the phone before agreeing to manage them. For a star-making operation, the Trans Continental home base was surprisingly plain. ”We were living in Orlando in a nondescript office park, where we were doing all our business,” recalls Jay Marose, who signed on as vice president of marketing and promotions after working on a Chicago campaign for Fruit of the Loom underwear. ”My office looked out across an asphalt parking lot at Johnny's office, and the other side was the studio. You would have just driven by. That's what kept us pretty normal. You would go bowling, and the movie theaters would give us free pa.s.ses. There was nothing to do. I had these seventeen-year-olds going, 'What should we do tonight?' We were just sitting around staring at each other.”

The offices were a sanctuary from the rest of the world, which had started to take notice-loudly. ”The pitch of fourteen thousand girls?” Marose asks, answering his own question with a burst of laughter. Those screams would act as a resume for the band.

Pearlman saw right away that he needed a major record label to take the Backstreet Boys to the next level of fame and money. He used his considerable salesmans.h.i.+p to make contact with A&R scouts and attempt to talk them into seeing the Boys live. Unfortunately for Pearlman, the scouts were deep into alternative rock at the time. It took Donna Wright's voicemail, containing the high-pitched din of thousands of kids at a Cleveland concert, to capture the attention of David McPherson at Mercury Records. Intrigued, he accepted one of Pearlman's numerous invitations to see the Boys live-this time, at a high school in Hickory, North Carolina. At the concert, McPherson had a revelation. Hipsters might be obsessed with Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam, he thought, but this is what kids are really listening to. He signed them to a deal at Mercury, but his label superiors didn't really understand the band, so the Backstreet Boys languished without any hits.

Around that time, in 1993, McPherson made contact with Calder and showed up at Zomba for a job interview. Calder asked McPherson what he was working on. McPherson mentioned a couple of R&B acts he thought Calder would think were cool.

Calder wasn't too impressed. Then McPherson mentioned the Backstreet Boys. ”He was like, 'You know what? Groups like this are big overseas, and this group could help me expand my operations overseas-and, maybe, if they get big, all over the world,'” McPherson says. ”It took a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of A&R and marketing in a climate where you were crazy to spend that on a group like them. A group like that was unpopular, an uncool thing in a business where cool means a lot lot.” McPherson was hired. Mercury bought out the Backstreet Boys' contract for $35,000, then dropped the band. Then the Boys signed with Jive Records, the Zomba imprint that specialized in pop, hip-hop, and R&B.

Clive Calder and Lou Pearlman needed each other, at least at first. Pearlman put together the Backstreet Boys and then 'NSync. Calder had the resources to break them around the world. They weren't best friends, but they had a cordial business relations.h.i.+p. ”One of the reasons they got along was because Clive was always in control. It was a perfect symbiotic relations.h.i.+p,” McPherson says. ”Lou didn't care about the details. He didn't care how many songs were going to be on the alb.u.m and who was going to produce those songs and what outfits the group was going to wear. He had spent so much time trying to get these guys signed-and no one signed them-that when he found willing suitors in myself and Clive Calder, all he had to do was sit back and go for the ride. Man, he was happy! Some people in that situation would try to control this and control that. He didn't care. He just wanted to be there for the pictures and the parties and the accolades and the plaque presentations. He knew Clive was going to take care of the business.”

Calder, McPherson, and their Zomba colleagues had two strategies. First, Backstreet needed songs. Calder sent them to Sweden to record with a group of producers discovered by an aggressive scout in Zomba's Dutch offices. Dag Volle, also known as Ace of Base songwriter-producer Denniz PoP, was among them; Martin Sandberg, who renamed himself Max Martin, was PoP's protege. Backstreet recorded their first three songs, including ”We've Got It Going On,” at the producers' studio.

Next, Calder thought: We have to get them in front of the kids. We have to get them in front of the kids. Aside from the occasional Disney World show, American crowds weren't always interested. After Pearlman booked them to open for a wet T-s.h.i.+rt contest, the crowd pelted them with ice cubes. ”We've Got It Going On” couldn't get on the radio, and it peaked at No. 65 on the Aside from the occasional Disney World show, American crowds weren't always interested. After Pearlman booked them to open for a wet T-s.h.i.+rt contest, the crowd pelted them with ice cubes. ”We've Got It Going On” couldn't get on the radio, and it peaked at No. 65 on the Billboard Billboard Hot 100 chart. They needed seasoning. The breakthrough was in Germany, a country with government-controlled radio that never quite plunged into alternative rock and hardcore hip-hop. The Boys sold out concerts, scored hit videos, and turned ”We've Got It Going On” into an overseas smash. Their success spread around Europe. Hot 100 chart. They needed seasoning. The breakthrough was in Germany, a country with government-controlled radio that never quite plunged into alternative rock and hardcore hip-hop. The Boys sold out concerts, scored hit videos, and turned ”We've Got It Going On” into an overseas smash. Their success spread around Europe.

Calder called an old friend, Stuart Watson. He ran SWAT Enterprises, a consultancy that specialized in breaking acts in Asia. Watson listened to four Backstreet Boys songs and knew they were hits. He demanded Calder send the band to Asia, and Calder agreed. The band did promotional show after promotional show, from Singapore to Korea, and posed endlessly for magazine photo sessions. Using the 1980s publicity plan for teen singer Tiffany, Watson put the Boys in malls. Within three weeks, the band sold 1 million CDs in Asia. Later, a Montreal program director, on vacation in France, heard the band and returned home to put them on the radio. Barry Weiss, Jive's president, set up a Montreal concert; fifty thousand showed up. Girls screamed. Weiss called Calder from the show and held up the phone. Weiss and Calder both knew what was next: America.

”They brought them to Chicago, to the station, on a tour bus,” recalls Erik Bradley, program director for B-96, the Top 40 radio station WBBM-FM in Chicago. ”They came by and met everybody and were so nice and amazingly seasoned for being young people. They sang a cappella in the lobby.” The Boys showed up at a dinner in New Orleans, hosted by EMI Music, and schmoozed with independent radio promoters like Bill Scull of Tri State Promotions in Cincinnati. ”Unlike rock bands, these bands were perfect for radio stations to do promotions with,” Scull says. ”They totally appealed to the Top 40 demographic-fifteen to eighteen to twenty-five years old, the female demo. They were cute and they were fun and they could dance! Every radio station wanted them to show up for the birthday bash, the Halloween party, the Christmas show, whatever. We did all sorts of things with them like that.” The Boys worked their boyish charm all over the place. They broke in America in 1997, starting a rush of debut CD sales that would ultimately total 14 million.

More good fortune arrived for Jive Records in 1996: a fifteen-year-old girl who had recently moved to New York from Orlando, where, with Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, she had been a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club The Mickey Mouse Club. With help from her mother and a local attorney, Larry Rudolph, Britney Spears was aggressive and ambitious and sent a demo tape of her cover of a Toni Braxton song to record labels all over the city. None heard anything even remotely commercial in her voice. Jive, however, was actively seeking a female star to push to the Backstreet Boys audience. ”We were looking for a Debbie Gibson, if you like,” says Steve Lunt, a Jive A&R man at the time. ”[Spears's demo tape] was in one of those karaoke studios where you lay your vocal over an imitation of somebody else's track. It was totally awful. She was singing totally in the wrong register. But when she got to the end, her voice went up to the sort of 'girlie range,' and you heard the kind of soul she had.” The accompanying photos were cute, too.

Lunt took the material to Calder. He agreed to a deal, with a caveat: Be cautious. Be cautious. If Calder didn't hear a hit in six months, Spears would be just another teen with big dreams. If Calder didn't hear a hit in six months, Spears would be just another teen with big dreams.

Lunt went to work. The standard operating procedure at Zomba was to keep everything in-house. Lunt hooked Spears up with a number of songwriters in the company's publis.h.i.+ng division, but they mostly focused on R&B. Finally, in the fifth month, he found Eric Foster White, a pop songwriter and producer. Singer and producer clicked immediately, and White linked Britney with a 1986 Jets tune, ”You Got It All,” penned by Rupert Holmes of ”Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” fame. ”Sweet and innocent and catchy. A little bit R&B but still basically sweet pop,” recalls Lunt, now an A&R vice president for Atlantic Records. ”When Clive heard that in the A&R meeting, he said, 'OK, we've got something.' Up until that, it was in doubt.” Calder and Lunt then contacted Max Martin, the Swedish pop producer who'd worked with Backstreet, and asked him to fly to New York. Spears, Martin, and Lunt went to dinner and hit it off. Martin and Spears flew back to Sweden and, within two days, sent back a demo-”...Baby One More Time.”

”We at Jive said, 'This is a f.u.c.kin' smash,'” Lunt recalls. In all, Spears cut six songs in Sweden. Then she returned to the States and started working the key radio stations. Jive's top radio-promotion executive, Jack Sadder, brought her one day to Star 100.7 in San Diego to talk to one of his longtime contacts, music director Michael Steele. Because Steele didn't have a ca.s.sette deck in his office, Sadder convinced him to listen to Spears's tape in the car. ”We go out in the parking lot. It's just hot as h.e.l.l in Southern California, probably one hundred degrees that day. I get in the driver's seat. Jack's in the pa.s.senger seat. This little fifteen-year-old is in the backseat of my car. I want to go to lunch,” Steele recalls. ”It's '...Baby One More Time.' I go, 'Yeah, this is all right.' We go back into the station, and thirty days later she was No. 1.”

As Calder predicted, Backstreet and Britney fed off each other in the marketplace. Pearlman had a piece of the Backstreet Boys, and as they became more successful thanks to Jive Records's machinations, their manager became richer. ”Baron Blimp” left blimps behind-his public company, International Ltd., had crashed twice and the stock had dropped from $6 to 3 cents per share-and threw himself into music. Trans Continental grew fast, spending tons of money on studios, training, and touring. Pearlman's Orlando lifestyle became extravagant, as he would later chronicle in a promotional videotape called Lou Pearlman Living Large Lou Pearlman Living Large. The t.i.tle was especially catchy given Air Lou's heft. He lived in a $12 million mansion down the street from ex-Magic basketball star Shaquille O'Neal. He also lived in a Mediterranean mansion in suburban Windermere, off Lake Butler, where he kept boats and Jet Skis. He rode in a blue Rolls-Royce with a chauffeur. He made political contributions to Republicans, owned a small piece of the local arena football team, the Orlando Predators, and showed off a diamond-studded Rolex to guests. He was single and, though he didn't even drink, he couldn't get enough of entertaining. ”He was arrogant and thought he was the smartest guy in the room, but he could be very charming,” says Bob Jamieson, ex-head of RCA Records and, later, its parent company BMG North America. ”But there was always an element of him that made you second-guess. You felt uncomfortable.”

It's hard to imagine a more successful act than the Backstreet Boys circa 1997, but Pearlman needed something else. ”You can't make money on an airline with just one airplane,” he told the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. According to Pearlman, it was his idea to begin auditions for a second group-but this is where the story starts to get ugly. And full of contradictions. According to Pearlman, it was his idea to begin auditions for a second group-but this is where the story starts to get ugly. And full of contradictions.

In Pearlman's version, he auditioned five new boys, beginning with Chris Kirkpatrick, an Orlando doo-wop singer and Outback Steak-house employee who yearned to form his own band. Kirkpatrick had a friend of a friend named Justin Timberlake, who had a shockingly deep baritone for a teenager and an impressive resume, from Star Search Star Search to to The Mickey Mouse Club The Mickey Mouse Club. Fellow Mouseketeer JC Chasez and a mutual friend, Joey Fatone, joined within a few weeks. Justin's voice coach brought in Lance Ba.s.s. Together, the boys scrambled letters in their names and came up with 'NSync. The auditions and 'NSync's name were all Pearlman's idea. Timberlake's mother, Lynn Harless, had another version of the story, which vehemently contradicted Pearlman's recollection. ”[Pearlman] did not 'select' the members of 'NSync,” she would declare in a court affidavit. ”The members of 'NSync found each other.... Mr. Pearlman did not 'audition' these singers; we all did. The name 'NSync was not Mr. Pearlman's idea but mine.”

A feud between the two Trans Continental groups-soon to be the world's biggest pop stars-set in. ”We brought in another brother and they saw it as an abandonment,” said Johnny Wright, who became manager for 'NSync, which was OK with Backstreet until their new rivals followed their blueprint in Germany and Asia and became just as famous as their predecessors. ”And that ended up putting me in a position I did not want to be in where the groups are now competing head to head in a race to the top.”

The idea for a second superstar boy band-whether it came from Pearlman or not-turned out pretty well commercially. But there were cracks in the foundation of Pearlman's boy-band empire. The first came from the Backstreet Boys themselves. They were tired. They acted less like boys and more like pop stars. Professionals. Professionals. They showed up in Pearlman's office one day in August 1997 with entourages-girlfriends, brothers, uncles. The They showed up in Pearlman's office one day in August 1997 with entourages-girlfriends, brothers, uncles. The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal reported ”name-calling” that day and quoted Johnny Wright: ”The meeting was not on a positive note.” In May 1998, at the height of their success, when they'd earned his company $200 million in revenues, the Boys filed suit against Pearlman. They insisted they had earned $300,000 during the same period Pearlman made $10 million. They called themselves ”indentured servants.” They were also, sources told the media, a little miffed at having to compete with 'NSync within the same management company. Pearlman settled with the band. They got more control over recording, merchandising, and touring. Pearlman saved face-or so he told the media later. He negotiated a sort of monetary ”sixth Backstreet Boy” role for himself, and in 1999, the reported ”name-calling” that day and quoted Johnny Wright: ”The meeting was not on a positive note.” In May 1998, at the height of their success, when they'd earned his company $200 million in revenues, the Boys filed suit against Pearlman. They insisted they had earned $300,000 during the same period Pearlman made $10 million. They called themselves ”indentured servants.” They were also, sources told the media, a little miffed at having to compete with 'NSync within the same management company. Pearlman settled with the band. They got more control over recording, merchandising, and touring. Pearlman saved face-or so he told the media later. He negotiated a sort of monetary ”sixth Backstreet Boy” role for himself, and in 1999, the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal estimated he took in $20 million of the band's overall profits just in that one year. ”It would be nice to have them as my five sons,” Pearlman said. ”Instead, it's five sons with lawyers in between.” estimated he took in $20 million of the band's overall profits just in that one year. ”It would be nice to have them as my five sons,” Pearlman said. ”Instead, it's five sons with lawyers in between.”

Backstreet saw ”Big Papa,” as he called himself, as anything but fatherly. ”Here were some guys that sold twenty-plus million alb.u.ms on their first record and barely had anything to show for it,” says Peter Katsis, senior vice president of music for the Firm, which represented hard-rock bands Korn and Limp Bizkit and took over the Boys' management. ”Each guy maybe had a nice house in the Orlando area and a couple of bucks in the bank-but certainly nothing reflecting what they should have been able to make.”

The Firm inherited the Boys' Into the Millennium tour, planned for late 1999, and its managers were shocked at the behind-the-scenes disarray and B-level concert professionals they inherited from Pearlman's company. ”Total Spinal Tap Spinal Tap s.h.i.+t,” Katsis recalls. The stage was to be five feet tall. The show was to include nine wardrobe changes. ”So,” he asked, ”these guys are going to s.h.i.+t,” Katsis recalls. The stage was to be five feet tall. The show was to include nine wardrobe changes. ”So,” he asked, ”these guys are going to crawl crawl under this five-foot-high stage to do under this five-foot-high stage to do nine nine wardrobe changes?” Katsis fired a lot of people. The tour sold 765,000 tickets in just a few hours, filling every venue on the docket for thirty-nine cities. It drew 2 million fans in the end. wardrobe changes?” Katsis fired a lot of people. The tour sold 765,000 tickets in just a few hours, filling every venue on the docket for thirty-nine cities. It drew 2 million fans in the end.

'NSync didn't take long to catch up with the Backstreet Boys-in terms of both CD and ticket sales and and friction with Lou Pearlman. Big Papa marketed them in the Boys' image, as a singing-and-dancing team starring the Friendly One, the Cute One, the Rebellious One, and so on. Like the Backstreet Boys and a lot of young, inexperienced stars at the beginnings of their careers, 'NSync signed a contract that allowed their manager to make tons of money off their success. In early 1997, JC Chasez realized the band was selling millions of records in Germany as well as boxloads of T-s.h.i.+rts and other merchandise throughout their European tour. The band complained, demanding accounting for CD sales. On August 1, Pearlman gave each member a paltry advance of $10,000. Chasez contacted a lawyer relative, who looked at the band's contracts and found problems. She referred them to an experienced music business attorney, Adam Ritholz, who had worked for CBS Records and represented singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb and R&B star Maxwell. friction with Lou Pearlman. Big Papa marketed them in the Boys' image, as a singing-and-dancing team starring the Friendly One, the Cute One, the Rebellious One, and so on. Like the Backstreet Boys and a lot of young, inexperienced stars at the beginnings of their careers, 'NSync signed a contract that allowed their manager to make tons of money off their success. In early 1997, JC Chasez realized the band was selling millions of records in Germany as well as boxloads of T-s.h.i.+rts and other merchandise throughout their European tour. The band complained, demanding accounting for CD sales. On August 1, Pearlman gave each member a paltry advance of $10,000. Chasez contacted a lawyer relative, who looked at the band's contracts and found problems. She referred them to an experienced music business attorney, Adam Ritholz, who had worked for CBS Records and represented singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb and R&B star Maxwell.

Ritholz studied the contracts. He learned Trans Continental took 50 percent of the band's CD royalties, 50 percent of T-s.h.i.+rt and other merchandise sales, and 30 percent of touring revenues-a far greater share than the standard manager's 10 to 15 percent. He requested more doc.u.ments from Trans Continental's attorneys. He learned Pearlman had formed 'NSync Productions Inc., listing his home as the place of business and giving himself the power to make decisions on behalf of the band. The band was reluctant to go against its Big Papa but demanded a meeting with him at a Trans Continental office in May 1999. They were there all day-maybe ten hours. Pearlman lectured the band. His lawyers tried to scare them: If they continued along this path, they'd endanger their careers. If they continued along this path, they'd endanger their careers. One by one, each member of 'NSync stood up and walked out of Pearlman's office. One by one, each member of 'NSync stood up and walked out of Pearlman's office.