‘N Sync is the Sound of Young America
In recent weeks, ‘N Sync have been having lots of fun, making a dash up to Number Three on the Billboard album chart – a few spots ahead of the still red-hot Backstreet Boys. The spark that ignited the ‘N Sync fire couldn’t have been more wholesome: an hour-long Disney Channel special during which they rode roller-coaster simulators, checked out the NFL Experience at Disney’s Wide World of Sports and, oh, yeah, played music. Just a few days ago, their American debut album of pop-y R&B – featuring the current smash “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” “I Want You Back” (not the Jackson 5 song), and ‘N Syncified covers of Bread’s “Everything I Own” and Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” – went double platinum.
‘N Sync are happening in a major way, and even a non-teen male can see why – they can sing, they can dance, they’re cute, and they have an almost archetypally accessible boy-next-door quality. Indeed, spending time with this fab five is like taking a sampling of young Caucasian male America after all the ugly, fucked-up ones have been helpfully filtered out for your protection.
That ‘N-Sync’ing feeling is wholesome but not boring; one senses that these ambitious young pros are more interested in getting high on the Billboard charts than on anything else. They all wear bracelets with the letters WWJD on them, standing for What Would Jesus Do? (In comparison, New Kids on the Block were shock rockers who read Malcolm X, and one member even lectured a visiting journalist on how to get a blow job). They are notably well-behaved, amiable Everyguys who generally communicate in the standard gangsta-lite “Whazzup!” lingo so dominant among those who have grown up in the hip-hop era. Still, this is America, and even in malls there’s room for some variety, so we get Joey’s residual get-outta-here New Yawkisms and Lance’s somewhat more refined, Southern-gentleman persona.
Their appeal is testified to in just about every letter being opened right now by Joey’s parents in a nearby building – and about 1,500 new pieces of mail arrived today, including one from fourteen-year-old Leilani from Pomeroy, Washington, who tells the group that she likes volleyball, tennis, rollerblading and, of course, ‘N Sync and that she hopes to be a toxicologist after she graduates from high school.
The remarkable success story that has been built in Orlando – with a bit of old-school showbiz capitalism – has been put together by a fascinating, unlikely partnership between former New Kids road manager Johnny Wright; his wife, Donna Wright; and Louis Pearlman, a cousin of Art Garfunkel’s and a colorful entrepreneur in his own right.
“Lou and I and Donna used to joke all the time that we were going to turn Orlando into the next Motown, but we were going to call it Snowtown – because we weren’t doing it with R&B acts, we were doing it with pop acts,” says Wright, the group’s hands-on manager, taking a break in his impressive office, across the parking lot from the studio. “I guess you could say Backstreet Boys are the Temptations and ‘N Sync are the Four Tops.” If the goal was, as Wright says, to build “a mini-Motown,” it’s getting less mini by the minute.
This is all a long way from the days in the Eighties when Wright was a nineteen-year-old disc jockey on Cape Cod who played some of Maurice Starr’s records. Starr called to tell Wright that he was running a talent show and that if Wright could come up with $1,500, he could get a piece of whoever won it. Wright couldn’t come up with the dough, and the group that went on to win the contest was New Edition. So when Starr later called to see whether Wright would drive a van with his new group, called New Kids on the Block, around the Boston area, Wright jumped. “What was supposed to be three days ended up being four and a half years,” he remembers.
All the time he was road-managing New Kids, Wright was also studying the business from New Kids manager and former Motown executive Dick Scott. Then, in the post-Milli Vanilli era, New Kids fell apart amid allegations that they didn’t, in fact, have the right stuff. “There was a witch hunt going on back then, and anybody who didn’t write, produce and play instruments themselves was a target,” Wright says. When New Kids took a break, Scott moved him over to work with the Europop act Snap!, with whom Wright learned the international market firsthand.
Tiring of the Boston snow, Wright headed to Orlando with Donna in the early Nineties. They kept hearing about Backstreet Boys, a five-member boy group in the New Kids tradition – but having been there, done that, Wright wasn’t interested. Fortunately, Donna – with whom Wright had run a teen-oriented nightclub on Cape Cod – encouraged him to be more open-minded. She went to meet with Louis Pearlman, who had founded the group, and persuaded Johnny to check it out. Louis Pearlman – who likes to refer to himself as Big Poppa around his acts – grew up listening to a cappella music. He picked up guitar at age eight and eventually played in his own horny rock-soul band, which got as far as opening for Donna Summer and Kool and the Gang, before giving up music to pursue his education. He attended Queens College (Jerry Seinfeld was a classmate), got an MBA, then started law school. Borrowing seed money from his uncle – Cousin Art’s dad – Pearlman went into business in aviation, his second love. He began leasing used planes and before long was chartering luxury jets to the likes of Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. His empire expanded when he got into the airship-advertising business – i.e., blimps. More recently, Pearlman became a restaurateur and the owner of that famous all-male flesh factory, Chippendales.
