Just about everyone has freaked over some scary thing at one time or another. And although the boogeyman seems terrifying and totally real when you’re little, you can probably laugh about just as you scoff at the monster in your closet these days. But have no fear! You’re in good company. Even the Backstreet Boys, who suffer the occasional lapse of stage fright and still manage to spend their evenings performing for crowds of screaming fans, have had their times of big-time terror. But, like you, now they laugh about those little things that, years and years ago, were so very scary. Here, BOP goes one-on-one with the Orlando, Florida-based five to find out what used to give them a panic attack.
A scary song,
basement beast-
not funny in the least!
"When I was really, really little, my brother used to scare me with KISS," Kevin Richardson embarrassingly admits about the '70s hard-rock hand. "I was terrified of those guys with all that scary makeup. I was probably like 6 or 7." Okay, timeout. Can you picture a young Kevin freaking out over four guys in black and white face paint and big leather boots? It's pretty funny, but not according to this scared survivor.
"They had a song called ‘God of Thunder,"' the 26-year-old singer continues. "My brother used to get a kick out of saying, 'All right. Don't do such and such or I'm going to call the God of Thunder tonight and he's gonna come and get you."' We bet little Kev’s mom never knew that four rowdy rockers were responsible for her youngest son’s sweet and obedient ways!
While growing up in Lexington, Kentucky not far from his cousin Kevin, Brian Littrell had his own freak show going on. This 23-yearold admits he was scared of the dark. I had [monsters] everywhere," he horrifyingly recalls of what might still be lurking back home. "Oh, man, I remember I would always think that down in the basement of our house it was always really dark down there. I would wonder, when I was sleeping upstairs in my bed, like, what was back there. I'd seen some pretty scary movies, and back then, [they] freaked me." Those were only movies, silly! See, nothing ever happened ... at least not yet.
Forget after
dark-it's all
about a shark!
As for Nick Carter, he wasn't bothered by gruesome fright flicks. After all, he knew the horror film was just make believe. No, he was scared (and still is) of something far more life-threatening and real. "The number one fear I have, even though I am a scuba diver and I've had a license for a long time ... I could never stand sharks," he confesses at the ripe old age of 18. But that's not all! "I would never sky dive," he tells BOP. "Because there is always that one out of a hundred chance that your parachute won't open, and that scares me to death. I don't feel like falling straight down." But what if he became a Navy SEAL (a back-up career of interest) and the fate of the country was lying in Nick’s hands to jump out of that plane? "If I wanted to be a Navy SEAL, I guess I would have to conquer it," Nick admits, as a brave servicemen would. He'd just need to keep an eye out for all the sharks while he was coming down.
From a floor
creak to no
voice to shried!
"I was scared of being alone [when I was younger], 'cause I always had everybody around me since I had such a big fancily," Howie, who is the youngest of five children, reveals to BOP. "Then as my brothers started getting older and they were doing their own things and [my sisters] had boyfriends, they weren't around the house as much." So what’d this lonely boy do to fight off his fears? "I'd have all the lights on and everything," the 24year-old now admits. "The house is an older house that has wooden floors, and, well, sometimes they cracked in the middle of the night."
Aaagh! Who wants to be all alone in an old house with creaking wood floors anyway! No wonder Howie was scared. It must have taken its toll, because even now, Howie still craves company. "And now I don't like to be alone," he says. "I mean, I'm always asking the other guys, 'What are you doing? You want to do something?’ I’m so used to having people around me." Do you just feel like giving Howie a big hug now or what? One person who would have benefited from a big hug a few years ago was A.J. McLean. This 20-year-old's worst fear of losing his voice actually came true!
It all happened in London, England, he begins, "in the middle of our tour with another act. I got tonsillitis and lost my voice and I thought that I couldn't sing. I really wanted to push myself to sing this one night at the Royal Albert Hall."
Being the pro that he is, A-J. performed anyway. "If I missed this one chance to sing, I would have been devastated," he shares, "so I got scared because it hurt. Then we got a doctor to look at me and he said, ‘Ah! ‘And he backed off, and I was like, 'What?' And he said, 'You have tonsillitis, boy! ‘That was the scariest thing that happened to me." Wow! Luckily for the Backstreet Boys, A.J. didn't do any permanent damage to his singing voice-now that would've been scary!