The Face Article

Teen idols are all the same. They're happy enough to take the money and fame, but then they want our sympathy. Next thing you know, they want credibility too...

The van has tinted windows. We can see out, but they can't see in. As it stops on the pavement so we can step out into the revolving doors of the hotel, they start screaming. They know there is someone special inside: the boy with the head scarf that looks like he's about to sign on or pick up a prescription. I watch him standing, too tall for the van, his head bent down, waiting for the door to open. I think about what he told me earlier. " People always want to know what it's like. It is crazy. But it's a life. I used to work in a foreign exchange department in a bank, that was a life too. I had problems then, I have problems now."
The doors open and the screams get louder. By the time the rest of us get out, the screaming has stopped. There are a lot of young female faces that are red and tearful. One girl holds up a banner. The banner says this: 'FUCK ME DONNIE'. Donnie Wahlberg is 21. The girl with the banner is maybe 14.
We are all in the lift now: Donnie, assorted large people with muscles like hillsides, the photographer and me. All the walkie-talkies and tinted windows have made me feel like Paul McCartney must have felt in 1963. To me, it's a laugh. But when I wake up in the morning, I can go home. To Donnie Wahlberg, the deepest, darkest, most dangerous New Kids on the Block, it's a life.
There are rumors that this is a life that he wants to bring to a close. He refuses to discuss whether or not he is planning to leave the group, but he will say this: "This life isn't all you think it is. We've been on tour for three years solid. You wouldn't like to be me. On the outside looking in, it seems like a dream. I think about the way it must look to other people - a big van speeding out of a hotel, screaming girls and some pretty boys inside watching a Disney movie. They're on their way to a show where they will probably earn more than some people make in a year. Nobody knows we haven't slept for four days and we feel like shit."
When he gets up in the morning, some of the more dedicated kids on the pavement outside the Birmingham Hyatt will be sitting on their sleeping bags staring at the revolving door in the vain hope that Joe or Danny or Jonathan or Jordan might slip out to get a Daily Mirror or a packet of Silk Cut. This is unlikely, but they could catch Donnie on his way to the chippy after he's stared himself out of the bedroom mirror of his 28th floor suite.
"I have a friend who is a priest. He told me that every day you should get up, just look at yourself in the mirror. Just think what you have to do. I can't let all this hysteria pull me. If I get up in the morning and I want fish and chips then I'll have them and I will get to that chip shop despite the fans and the photographers."
This curious piece of philosophy is a perfect introduction to the world of one of America's wealthiest young men. As a Rich Kid on the Block, Donnie Wahlberg is believed to be worth 30 million - and that's pounds, not dollars. The group are said to make more from marketing spin-off products, from dolls to bubblegum, than they do from the music. They have a queue of multinational companies waiting to do business with them. Recent sponsorship deals have been with Coca-Cola and McDonald's. During a recent US concert tour, a giant M glowed above the stage. McDonald Wahlberg and his friends have generated an estimated $870 million since 1989. In America last year, they sold out more concert tickets than any other performers including Janet Jackson, Billy Joel and Paul McCartney. That one tour made them around 39 million pounds. But more than numbers, what is really impressive about them is the fact they have broken the poster pop rule which states that groups screamed at by 11 year old girls only last a year or two. Only a self-made decision to switch off the money making machine can stop them now.
We talk for two hours before a show at Birmingham's NEC. Certain things become clear. Donnie Wahlberg thinks too much. He is suffering from a classic case of money-isn't-everythingitis - a disease most of us wish was contagious. He likes chips. The rest is confusing, sometimes endearing and often fascinating. Despite the money and the madness, Donnie Wahlberg bears no resemblance to teeny predecessors like Michael Jackson, Donny Osmond or even Les from the Rollers.
But these things are not the root of our fascination with Donnie Wahlberg. He has money, but so does David Frost, and it's unlikely he will be appearing in The Face. Our fascination stems from the fact that Donnie has become a runaway Beastie Boy somehow stuck with some Walter Softy types who have plastic hair and suspiciously perfect skin. Onstage, Donnie dances like James Brown and Norman Wisdom rolled into one. In spare moments he will pick up a drum stick and smack shit out of a cymbal. At one point I swear I hear him shout, "Make some motherfuckin' noise!", though the audience screams so loudly it is impossible to hear clearly. Cathy, who looks after the group, tells me that most of the stage crew wear earplugs to protect them from the audience.
Donnie has been arrested for allegedly setting fire to a hotel carpet (the charge has now been dropped), and can count Public Enemy's Flavor Flav and metal extremists Warrant among his admirers. He is producing a reasonably hard-core hip hop record for his brother Mark's group, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Mark auditioned when the New Kids were first being put together, but he didn't make it. Donnie rapped for his audition and the rest is financial history. He likes hip hop. He listens to Public Enemy, but he is just as likely to play Rod Stewart: "I like all kinds of music, even country and western." Donnie is an odd one. He is the stubble-shaded man leading a group with the word Kids in their name, his journey from fresh-faced adolescence to sullen adulthood is charted in a series of LP sleeves. That's a hell of a way to grow up.
Donnie Wahlberg breaks the mould created for him by Maurice Starr, the producer who masterminded New Edition, and put together the New Kids as a whiter, more lucrative version of the same. He is the puppet who cut some of his strings and started dressing down and acting up. It may not be a mould that matters much to you. But you're not 14 years old, screaming for your life with 30,000 other sex dwarfs, and waiting for Donnie to thrust his groin in your direction. "I think about the parents standing there with their kids sometimes. I wonder if they think I'm a pervert. But that's just what happens when I get on stage. I can't do it any other way. Those young girls don't interest me anyway. The girls outside the hotel look really young. That's not for me. I'm a 21 year old guy; the kind of woman I want to deal with won't be waiting outside my hotel."

Right now, Donnie would like to be dealing with plastic Pretty Woman Julia Roberts whose video he watches on the way to the concert. The van we travel in is the Homeboy Van. In it are Donnie, fellow New Kid Danny Wood and several members of the entourage built like brick shithouses. One seems to be called Robo, the other P-Funk. I see no hypodermic syringes or group sex but, compared to the Walter Softy Van that carries the remaining members of the group, the fully poseable New Dolls on the Shelf, this must be rock'n'roll. There is much morning after whispering going on. It is clear that somebody had sex last night. It's like being in a playground listening to two little boys discussing a knicker flash in the changing rooms.
After the concert, the Homeboy Van travels at a breakneck speed, the Walter Softy Van limping behind. The Homeboy Van bravely volunteers to pull up at the front door of the hotel. The Softy van slips around the back. During the Stage show, while Donnie and Danny pretend to be in Run DMC, the Softies leave the stage for some warm milk and a shoe-shine. "It's not an issue anymore," says Donnie. "We've gotten over the fact that we are different people. At first it was hard to understand why New Kid number one was doing something New Kid number two was pissed off at. There used to be a lot of tension, but now we have a kind of peace."
I ask him if the others embarrass him, and why he always seems to disappear when they do the worst, the wettest and the slowest songs. "That's not how it is," he responds almost aggressively. "It's just that I have no slow songs that I want to sing right now. These people don't embarrass me. They are my friends, and nobody knows what they're really like. They are not what they seem."
"Two years ago I was desperate to justify myself, to distance myself, to establish my credibility. Now I try not to be ashamed of anything we've done. Two years ago, I felt like George Michael when he burned his leather jacket in that video. But I won't spit on my history. I realize it's something I have to deal with. It's a part of growing up in public. Everyone remembers things that only your family and close friends should really know about you. And certain people have certain views that won't change. All the anger I've felt, all the desire to say, 'Wait a minute, don't just look at the dolls and the marketing moves, we're people here'...that's all gone. There's nothing I can do. I want to be respected, but not by stupid people. Now it seems that some people think I'm cool because I was arrested for arson. No, you can keep that. I don't want to earn respect that way."
Pressed, he reluctantly talks about the fire at the Kentucky hotel where he is said to have poured vodka on the floor. The arson charge has been dropped: he is now accused of setting off a fire extinguisher. "The whole thing was a joke. It was broadcast all over the world. The police sold the pictures they took of me. I spent all day at the station signing autographs...a joke." He holds his hands up in disbelief.
As well he might. At the height of the Gulf War, the news of a 21 year old pop star accused of pouring vodka on the carpet was flashed around the world. It shows how absurd things can get. It also shows how breathtakingly famous Donnie Wahlberg really is. And it's odd because I'm not really impressed. I don't feel starstruck as I would undoubtedly be had I talked to Michael Jackson or Prince. He earns enough to be considered in the same breath as either or these people. He keeps telling me he's "just a regular guy". He should really keep that to himself. If too many people realize this, his money problems could soon become real ones. Sometimes it's hard being a homeboy.
Later, we talk about the Gulf War and how he felt that people were treating it "like a video game": "It really fucked me up. I was scared by it. I was angry too. Nobody was taking it seriously. And this whole pro-war thing was so strong in America that if you expressed anything which somehow questioned our involvement they were ready to tear you to shreds. What I said got misunderstood. I was pro-troops and anti-war. These troops are people. They were treated like pawns. The guys in the suits in the White House weren't scared. They won't ever have to be."
I ask if their manager Dick Scott or their producer Maurice Starr - those highly visible Old Kids Making a Few Bob - might have tried to stop him talking about such things. He seems shocked. "I have to say what I feel. I can't live my life for others. I don't want to reach 40 and have to say that the potential damage to my record sales stopped me saying what I felt. And I don't worry about losing fans. Maybe that's our secret, the reason why we're still here. We don't say, 'Let's make a record so the eleven year old girls will still like us.' People seem to think we're such cynical bastards, man."
On the subject of his producer, Donnie is forthright. Starr is sometimes talked about almost as much as the group themselves. He is said to be the puppet-master, and since the New Kids only occasionally contribute songs, his input has obviously been an important factor in their success. Donnie sees it like this:"I have a lot of respect for him, but we haven't made an LP for three years now and we're still here. Do you see him around here anywhere today?" But would the New Kids be able to make a record without Starr? "Yes...but we probably won't."
"I just wish people would give us the benefit of the doubt sometimes. I'm not a doll, I'm not a heart-throb. It's really sad. Nobody treats us as people. Not even our fans. Sometimes it seems that we're the only people who've realized that life isn't all dollar signs and screaming girls. I'm just looking for something real, and it's hard because people would understand more if you just acted like a prick and shouted out demands all the time."
To keep his head from exploding, Donnie has to get away to a world where money means nothing. "I like to get on a motorbike and just ride. I go to LA and borrow my friend's Harley Davidson for a few weeks. I'll be just another biker on the road and then a car full of kids will start following me. That happens a lot."
Or he dreams: "I think about getting on a motorbike with a girl on the back and just riding. Maybe we could head for the beach and end up making love in the sand. That's the kind of thing a dollar bill can't buy... Well, I could buy the bike, buy the girl and buy the beach, but what's that really going to do for me?"
"Sometimes money can work for you. I really like to eat with my friends, just sit around with lots of people. And I like to take care of my family; they mean everything to me. I have five brothers and three sisters. But here's what happens: I bought my mother a house, and when I went home we would still fight like before and it made me unhappy. It's a hard lesson to learn at my age. Most people spend most of their lives just trying to find that one out."

Donnie Wahlberg has learned. Old before his time, it seems he has grown up quickly. Perhaps too quickly. He worries. About what there is left for him to do when the screaming stops. "Sometimes I think what might happen. I could run for mayor and get my ass kicked or I could write a book."
But for now the screaming continues and Donnie has to deal with being a New Kid for the forseeable future. Towards the end of the interview he begins to get defensive about his group. "It means a lot when Luther Vandross, one of the world's greatest singers, says he appreciates what we do. And then you'll get some 30 year old white rock critic who says the New Kids have no soul...I sometimes think nobody understands what we're about." Not even the 11 year old girls? " No, not even the 11 year old girls."
It's Saturday morning. There are more girls outside the hotel than there were yesterday. A porter tells me how one girl managed to get herself a job here a month ago so she could get a pass key to open any of the rooms. She recently left and was found wandering about the 23rd floor last night, pass key in hand. Two old dears with walking sticks emerge from the hotel to take their taxi. The crowd screams. Perhaps they know it could be Donnie off out to the chippy. Perhaps it's because the 11 year old girls have a sense of humour. Perhaps they really do understand.