Back With a Vengeance

LOS ANGELES–They were the biggest act in the world. In 2000, their album, Black & Blue debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart with 1.6 million copies sold. Their 1999-2000 North American arena tour sold 765,000 tickets within an hour after it went on sale. Their albums have dominated the charts worldwide, landing at the No. 1 spot in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand.

But after selling more than 73 million records worldwide, the Backstreet Boys all of a sudden went conspicuously missing.

The dawn of the new millennium ushered in a new sound. The likes of 50 Cent, Usher and Justin Timberlake dominated the airwaves. They were sexier and edgier. Music critics called it the rise of the anti-pop. Boy bands slowly faded into the background.

It didn’t help that the boys would find themselves embroiled in a tight legal battle with their former manager Lou Pearlman. It didn’t help that Nick (Carter) would release a solo album (Now or Never). Nick would also find himself caught up with the authorities and a brief and very public dalliance with starlet-socialite Paris Hilton. It didn’t help that AJ (McLean) would find himself going public over his drug and alcohol dependence. Critics were one in saying that the boys were gone.

But the boys–Kevin Richardson, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell, AJ McLean and Nick Carter–are back!

"We were never gone," voiced Kevin, the oldest and most outspoken of the group.

On June 14, the boys will release their first album in five years. Never Gone (released by Sony/BMG) will have 12 tracks (plus two bonus tracks for the international market). The first single, Incomplete was released on April 4 and quickly became the No. 1 most requested song in top US markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Boston. Internationally, the song broke into the top 20 in Canada and Germany.

Never Gone features an array of talented songwriters and producers who include Max Martin (he composed most of the boys’ hits as well as Kelly Clarkson’s current No. 1 hit, Since U Been Gone). Also contributing to the album are Billy Mann (Pink & Sting), John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, John Shanks (2004 Grammy Award Producer of the Year) and Darren Hayes of Savage Garden.

The title track Never Gone, was co-written by Kevin Richardson.

In an exclusive session at the plush Sunset Marquis studio (the same studio where Madonna recorded portions of her re-invention tour), The STAR got the chance to listen to the album a month before the rest of the world can. The album is packed with potential No. 1 hits. Aside from the carrier single, other standouts include the songs Crawling Back To You, a moody, soaring ballad that is distinctly Backstreet Boys; the Max Martin composition I Still….; the reverberating percussions of My Beautiful Woman and the sure-to-be-controversial Poster Girl.

Before the latter was played, the publicist playfully said: "This song is about a girl who seeks the limelight. It’s about a girl who loves glamour and wants to be in the cover of magazines…and it is not about a girl Nick knows."

Yes. The boys are back!

In an exclusive, the boys, Kevin, AJ and Howie, chatted for 20 minutes with The Philippine STAR and revealed more than what was expected. They shared some very personal stories fans of the group will only be discovering now.

STAR: Many people thought the group has disbanded.

Kevin: We were never gone. We just took a much-needed break. AJ focused on his recovery. Brian and his wife had a child. Howie was doing some acting (he appeared with Billy Dee Williams in a movie) and was working on a solo project. I did musical theater in Broadway. I did Chicago. And Nick did a solo album and toured. We all took some time to focus on ourselves for a little while and gained some perspective. We realized we were taking each other for granted, taking the business for granted, taking our success for granted. We just lost perspective because things were happening too fast. We needed to step away from it and appreciate it and get hungry again.

What part did you play in Chicago?

Kevin: Billy Flynn, the role Richard Gere played in the film.

How was the experience?

Kevin: I had a blast!

So, who took the first step, the initiative to gather up the guys again and said: ‘let’s do this’?

Howie: It was all unanimous. We all talked about it.

AJ: We all talked over the break and all five of us reside in California now, He (Howie) lives here now and I’ve lived here five years now. Kevin has been here for like six or seven years.

Kevin: While Nick was doing his solo run, all of us and Brian were recording and getting ready for the next album. We were writing.

AJ: But I think the catalyst to kind of get us back in the studio again (pauses) because I thought that everybody was in a very good place in their lives and I think we were already lucid was me. In November 2003, my mother and I went to Chicago to do Oprah to discuss my recovery and talk about my stint in rehab and what not. The guys came from all over the place. Nick called from London, and they all came out to surprise and support me.

They came on the show?

AJ: Yes and I wasn’t expecting it. That same night when I went back to the hotel, we sat in the hotel and talked for like two or three hours. We pretty much figured that we already need to go back and do it again. We started end of January last year and we just finished last week.

Kevin, When did you start writing the title song, Never Gone?

Three years ago.

I understand that you wrote that for your father?

Kevin: (Nodding), Uh-huh, he passed away in ’91.

How was your relationship with your father?

Kevin: Great! I was pretty, pretty torn up when he passed away. It’s like, you know, like everybody who grows up with their father and mother, you kind of put them on the pedestal and my father was a very, very macho man. He was a man’s man. He was a construction worker. He looked like the Marlboro Man. Ever seen the posters of the Marlboro Man? That was my father — just a big burly guy, a lot of fun — and I was 19 years old. So to see my father go from 220-pound strong man to a 150 pounds when he passed away was very bad. I was angry for a long time. I was angry at God. ‘How could you do this to my family? How could you do this to me? Why is this happening to me?’

But, you know there’s something I realized when my father was in the hospital. There was this little girl next door to my father’s room and she was only like eight years old and dying of leukemia. That kind of made me go (pause), you know what I haven’t told that (to anyone). I mean, your father has lived 49 years and you are 19.

You were 19. What were you doing then?

Kevin: At that time, I was living in Florida and working at Walt Disney World.

Were you trying to be a singer then?

Kevin: Yes. I was playing in some band around town in Orlando doing dinner theater at night and working at Disney during the day. Then I got a call from my mom. They didn’t even tell me he had an operation to remove it (tumor in the colon) until they knew he was in trouble.

How did it affect you?

Kevin: It made me very strong. It actually desensitized me also a little bit. I’m like a hard old bastard now, sometimes. (The rest of the boys break out in laughter).

Old bastard, what do you mean?

Kevin: I just meant that I don’t have as much compassion. I feel like it hardened me a little bit. It made me grow up very quickly and it kind of hardened my heart a little bit, I think. But I still cry at the drop of a hat anyway.

How is the rest of the group’s relationship with their own fathers?

AJ: I don’t speak with mine.

You don’t?

AJ: I was gonna get married three years ago and my fiancée and I were talking about it and (pauses) basically, growing up, my mom and grandparents raised me. So I was a little jaded growing up (AJ is an only child). My family tells me horror stories about my dad being a pathological liar, being alcoholic and I just got jaded. My fiancée was like, ‘Well, why don’t you give him a second chance? Fly him out to LA and talk to him and get his side of the story.’ So I did that and I just still couldn’t believe him. I think about it everyday and it’s unfortunate because he still smokes, still drinks and I think about the day that will inevitably come when he passes away (pauses). It’s like, I just don’t know if, hopefully by then, we have reconciled our differences because it will be weird if he passed away and I went to his funeral and we haven’t reconciled. It will be unsettling for me.

Just recently, over the last five years, I lost both my grandparents. Each of us in the group actually lost someone very, very dear to us. We’ve all been through it. Howie lost his sister in ’98 and Brian and Kevin (they are cousins) shared a grandfather whom they lost. Nick lost his grandmother. It’s inevitable but sometimes it still shocks you.

Are you still affected by this strained relationship with your father? Did that contribute to what you went into rehab for?

AJ: It didn’t help. Kids are very integrated but kids are like a sponge. They absorb everything they hear and see and I kind of locked it up in my mind until I went into rehab and they (the treatment coach) made it resurface. It was very interesting talking about it and getting it out and, who knows, as I get older and grow up more and learn to forgive and forget I may make a second attempt to reconcile my differences with him. But I love my mom and dad (referring to his stepdad since his mom remarried). I have a stepsister older than me. She’s a tough New York chick and she will kick anybody’s ass for me. She’s a real sweetheart.

Aside from the title track (Never Gone), you have another song that the group composed and will be coming out in the International CD.

Howie: Yes, Rush Over Me (Another bonus track, Song for the Unloved will be included.)

Which is more fulfilling, composing or performing?

Kevin: You know it’s very fulfilling to write. We write all the time. All of us do. And obviously, we want to make the best record we can and we have access to some of the greatest writers and producers to collaborate with and we learn from each and every time that we work with them. So there is still a lot to learn.

The sound of the album is very much different from what you did before.

Kevin: There’s more live bass. More live guitar. I think that when we did our music in the ‘90s (there) was a lot of sequence, drumbeat, a lot of synthesizers, a lot of keyboards.

Are you targeting the teen market of today?

Howie: We are targeting everybody.

Your last album sold over a million copies in its first week of release. Do you feel the pressure to top it?

AJ: No. It’s not really about the quantity. It is about the quality of the record. To know that we did this record for us issomething that we are proud of. If it doesn’t sell anything then we will be disappointed.

Kevin: But, we don’t think there’s any way we could come near to a million in the first week because downloading is so popular and we’ve been out for five years and the economy is not the same as it was then. Things have changed a lot and were comfortable with where we are at and were happy..

Howie: This week out, Bruce Springsteen is number 1 with 200,000 copies (sold) and that’s number 1!

How the boys got together was through an audition. What if back then the opportunity for Backstreet Boys didn’t come along and American Idol was there, would you have auditioned?

BSB: Probably.

What do you think of the show?

Howie: I think it gives the perception to the public that anybody can be a star.

It gives out a false impression?

Howie: To me, I think everybody deserves a fair shot and nobody should ever be denied the chance to become a, you know, superstar. So I think, when it comes to our group, we really worked hard. A lot of us paid our dues in the early days. We worked in warehouses.

Kevin: In this business, there are true artists and poets who write their own lyrics. They write their own music and they produce their own stuff. And then, there are recording artists. They are great entertainers and they are great singers.

In 2001, you did the cover of Rolling Stones magazine with your pants down. What was it about?

(The group chuckles).

Kevin: It was fun! It looked like, I mean, we were showing literally this much skin (Kevin stands up and points from his leg down to just below his knees).

Howie: Yeah. We all have very nice legs.

Kevin: I don’t know about my legs. My legs are like match sticks.

AJ: My legs are too big.

Howie: But we were just having fun in the photo shoot.

Do you listen to other boy bands?

BSB: No.

AJ: I used to like some of Take That’s stuff back in the day but that’s about it. We listen to good music.

Kevin: We listen to good music. It doesn’t matter what genre.

Do you have plans of going to Asia for a concert?

BSB: Yeah. But right now we (only) have some dates in January (2006) in Japan.

Are you gonna be stopping by the Philippines?

Howie: That’s what we’re hoping. We would love to.

Kevin: And this time we are gonna hit the entire world.

You are not gonna be gone again right? Never be gone?

Kevin: Nope, Never gone again.