This is a new interview from the latest issue ( June ) of Australian magazine "Big Hit."
It's been a bumpy ride for the Backstreet Boys to get to "Millennium". In the last year, they've had plenty of personal and professional problems: Cancelled tours, Brian's heart surgery, break-up rumours, the deaths of their main producer ( Denniz Pop ), and Howie D's sister, plus a split with their management.
Brian, AJ and Howie D tell Big Hit how they got through it...
How have you learned to deal with the worship from your fans?
Howie D: It's very hard to deal with the idea that people actually worship us. They put us so high up on a pedestal, we become untouchable. The truth is that we're five normal guys. It's very flattering, though. I mean, which guy wouldn't want a bunch of screaming girls after him? At the same time, it's really hard to understand what's really going on in their minds. We just look at each other as five guys who are very fortunate to be blessed with the talent to go out and perform. To us, it's like a job, just like many of our fans have jobs. The difference is that our job is more in the public eye, but we don't look at ourselves as any better than anybody else.
Brian: It can get annoying at four o'clock in the morning when the fans are calling every room on a certain floor of your hotel trying to track you down. You know, we happen to wave out of a window, and then they count the rows of windows to work out what floor you're on and sometimes the phone can ring every five seconds. That can get very frustrating when you're trying to sleep and you can't take the phone off the hook, because then you'll miss your wake-up call in the morning. Then, when it's time to go to work, you feel really tired and everybody wants you to be all happy and smiling. That's hard.
Howie D: I try to put myself into the fans' situation, think about when I was younger if I was ever to meet a star like Michael Jackson or Madonna. Just knowing that he or she is coming down to the lobby, of course I'm gonna try to get a picture or an autograph, or even try to touch him or her. But if you put yourself on the other side, you still try to maintain a little bit of a normal life while flashes are going off around you and people are trying to touch you and get your autograph. There are a lot of situations when it's hard, because the fans don't allow you to be a normal person. It's hard to juggle the two lives - having a private life and being responsible for being in the entertainment business.
Brian: We remember that there was a time when people went, "Backstreet Who?", but all that stuff comes with the territory. We've been to comcerts together and been really impressed by the other acts. We saw the Temptations ( old '60s group ) once, went backstage and sang for them. We were in total awe because of who they were. But they were cool, like, "Hey, wassup?"
Do you always expect to be recognised, and therefore shy away from public areas?
Howie D: If I go to Disney World in Orlando, I'm taking a chance of being recognised, but there are places where you don't really expect to be recognised. Sometimes the fans catch you off guard, and it's weird when I'm with my family because they're not used to it. When I'm with friends that haven't really been around it and they are there for the first time with me and seeing all these people recognose me, it's like, "Oh my, but that's Howard. I remember when we were in school and we used to pick on each other - and now he's like a superstar!"
How would you describe your relationship with each other these days?
Brian: It used to not be fun, so we wouldn't spend a lot of personal time together, because we came to a point when it was just work, work, work. You get sick of spending 24 hours a day doing the same thing and seeing the same faces. We now have personal understandings and a business understanding.
AJ: When we wake up at six or seven in the morning to go and have make-up and do press, that's business. As soon as the clock stops and we're done, it's playtime. We can go out to clubs or, like last night, we played basketball. All of us went out together with our new management. It's a whole new attitude now.
So how do you deal with arguments?
Howie D: Show business is still a business, and you gotta work hard to play hard. We have business meetings when we decide budgets for tours and who to hire, and if we don't have an exact agreement among all five of us, we use the democracy system and vote on it
AJ: We decide on everything from clothes to tours. It's the only fair way to handle a situation, because we are five different individuals with different personalities. We all have our own minds.
Did any of you experience growing pains?
AJ: Yeah, my leg hurts like hell! I'm all sore! No, I've had my ups and downs like most kids.
What has been the biggest challenge for BSB?
AJ: This past year. It's been really intense for everybody. I mean, we can't really understand what it felt like for Brian to go through heart surgery, but for the rest of us, it was really scary when he was in hospital. We prayed for him and stood behind him 100 per cent. Howie lost his sister to the disease Lupus, and Brian and Kevin lost their grandfather. We also changed management, which shut us down for awhile. It couldn't possibly have been any worse and it was all at the same time! But now the clouds are separating and the sunshine is back.
You also lost your friend and producer Denniz Pop to cancer. How did it feel recording his songs without him there?
AJ: It wasn't the same. I still remember the phone call. We were on tour in Canada, and I got a phone call at 6.30am from our tour manager, who said that Denniz had passed away. I couldn't say anything, I felt numb. He was like a second father to us. He took us under his wing and basically moulded us musically along with his and our musical talent into the Backstreet sound. He's gonna be missed and we dedicated the album to him.
Brian: I'm sure he's proud of us, and looking down on us, because we continue what he started with the people he worked with. The success will carry on because we're still in good hands.
When you finished the album, were you anxious or confident?
Howie D:I think both. We are very confident about the material on the album, we put a lot of work into it and we think it's the strongest album out of the three - we're very proud of it. We're a little scared about it though, because of the pressure that went along with it. Life for us last year was a little rough, and to get the album done on schedule was tough. We have a new management now and a lot of people working on our staff have changed. We've had some personal problems to face as well, there were a lot of things preoccupying us, but we were able to focus, finally, and get the album done. We had to push the tour back for a number of reasons, but we hope everybody will still be there for us on the upcoming tour and we hope they will support the new album.
Was the original tour planned too soon?
Howie D:We feel it was, but that was down to the previous management.
Brian: In this business, you can get kind of ahead of yourself. You try to work fast enough to serve your success level. And our success level was climbing quickly. We were very fortunate to be in that position, but at the same time our relationship with our management was unbalanced. We were busy with our careers, travelling around and pursuing this dream of ours, but at the same time we were losing touch with reality, losing touch with what was important to us. So we got our priorities straight and decided that what was more important to us was to have a positive, strong record, and that's what we made time for.
AJ: I think this album, is probably our best and tightest group album.
How do you feel about always having to explain that the group is not breaking up?
Howie D: Every time they see a group, a young group especially, they always think that they'll have a life span of one, maybe two years, and one or two albums, then they'll split up and maybe one or two of them will go solo. I think we're here to prove that groups like us are still able to exist after two years. Sure, you may have individual things here and there that you might wanna do within a 10-year span, because you can only do so may tours before people go, "OK, here's another tour again". I mean, we also want some variety in our lives. So you might do a movie, or some modelling, like Kevin. We were all very supportive of each other when we wanted to do that. But when it happens, everybody expects us to break up.
AJ: No matter where we are, we can't be in every place. Thank God for all the success we've had in the last six years, but when we're in a certain country and we don't have time to do pictures and press for other territories, the press starts making up things: "Oh, Howie's doing a $2 million movie", "Brian is leaving the group" or "AJ is directing videos", all these crazy things. But as long as we're in the press, it's OK. I would be worried if nobody talked about the Backstreet Boys ever again.
Brian: It's funny, but when you're on the way up, the press portrays you in a positive way, it's all uplifting and people are very supportive, because they like to see somebody be a success and work hard to get there. We've definitely worked hard for the last six years to get here, but at the same time, when you get to a certain level, it's like, "Hmm, let's pull this one a little this way or that way". God forbid they can't have a life outside the group. But everybody has an individual life. We all go to sleep in our own beds - if we're home in Orlando. There's life outside of BSB. We have to have that escape and not be subjected to questions all the time.
So how do you deal with all the rumours?
Brian: We can only do what we call "damage control". When we hear stuff that's not true, we try to tell people the real story. If you hear information, and it's not coming from us, it's not true. There are things out there that are true, but most of the stuff is so far-fetched, like we're breaking up or a thousand other things on the internet that are completely false. You can't damage-control everything, so we try to get the major ones.
How do you transform your success into something you can be comfortable with?
Brian: Well, you're gonna have five different outlooks, it's gonna be about what all of us is about. We've all had different experiences in life, and we have families and friends that keep us in check and keep us grounded. There's life outside of BSB, even if we deal with the band 99 per cent of the time.
Which one of you has changed most in the last six years?
Brian: We all have. Not necessarily physically, but mentally, we have all grown up.
AJ: We're all maturing and growing. I mean, Nick was 12 years old when we started. He was about 97cm and now he's 188cm! We all help each other out. We say, "Your hair looks good like this or that". Or, "Maybe you should try this". We're spending the best years of our lives together.
Howie D: Sometimes our parents join us for our business meetings, and the other day my father told me, "I'm proud of you son, because over the years you've grown up and you're able to make your own decisions now. You've learned so much about this business." And it's true.
