Backstreet Mom: A Mother's Tale of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean's Rise to Fame, Struggle With Addiction, and Ultimate Triumph (29 page)

Those poor volunteers were bombarded. They took big brooms and
pushed the toys to the sides of the stage, where they could then be
bagged and taken to the boys' dressing room. It was a noble effort that
sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. There were still those diehard girls who saved their toys to throw at their favorite boy while he
was performing. But at least the major threat for broken ankles was
eliminated.

For quite a long time, the boys wrote response letters to each fan as
part of their weekly schedules. Eventually the number grew so large
that it became impossible for them to answer each and every one, so we
responded from the fan club. I still divided the gifts among the boys. We shipped lots of boxes filled with toys, cards and gifts home during those
tours. The luggage bins under our buses filled up pretty quickly, so keeping the toys on the road with us was never a option.

The other thing we found strange was the way the fans responded to
the magazine articles that were written about the boys. For example, if
a boy was asked what their favorite gift was and, say, Alex responded
"jewelry," well forget it! That would be enough for fans to start throwing bananas onto the stage with rings or bracelets wrapped around them.
More than once, my son was pelted in the face or body by a flying piece
of jewelry tied to some fruit. He learned how to duck and be very alert
while on stage. This was especially true if he got near the edge, where
they could better target him. I remember several welts on his forehead
from rings and chains.

One time the boys were asked what their favorite foods were. At the
very next concert, right after the article came out, they were inundated
with boxes of Mac and Cheese for Brian, gummy bears for Howie, and
so on for the rest of the boys. The gummy bears are soft, but when you
throw them hard, they hurt.

What a trip! It got to the point where things were confiscated at the
door before the kids were let into the venue. After all, someone could
really get hurt by some of those things. I was always grateful that they
couldn't bring cheeseburgers into the venues. Alex would have been
covered in them every night. Not pretty.

We also had to make sure that when the boys did interviews they
made it quite clear that they did not want the fans to bring that stuff to
the show. Eventually, it died down, but for a while it was pretty crazy.

Another part of my job was to escort the photographers into the pit
area as the lights went down and the boys hit the stage. Those areas
were usually around forty feet long and maybe five feet wide at bestnot much space in which to move around in the dark. After the first
three songs, security and I escorted them out. Sometimes it would be
quite a circus act as we tried to maneuver both television crews and still
photographers in and out of those small areas. They were never happy
when it was time to leave.

Inevitably, there was always that one photographer who would try
and pull a fast one. They would say that they had permission to take
more photos or that was not three songs or whatever they could come
up with. But when the bodyguards stuck their hands in front of their
lenses and told them in a firm but nice way to pack up, they usually did.

After a while, I developed such a good relationship with the media
that I started getting phone calls directly from them. They would ask me for a special type of interview or some other request. That was how
I learned the media game and got to know the most influential journalists who wrote for the top magazines. I always tried to fit them into the
boys' schedules as best as I could. It paid off well for the boys when they
got rave reviews and the best spots on magazine covers.

Donna was supposed to be involved in the media coverage, but, given the fact that she was thousands of miles away and not aware of what
was happening on the road, I began to make some of the calls myself
with direct approval from the boys. It worked out better that way. The
only problem was the record company. They sent requests to the office
in Orlando and Donna gave them her blessing without ever talking to
the boys or anyone else about changes in the schedule.

That brought about conflicts because it left the boys no free time.
Donna sometimes scheduled interviews on their few days off. That was
when things came to a head. A meeting was called to set things right.

After a couple of meetings with the boys, Johnny agreed to allow
them to see all interview requests before they were approved. My job
description began to change at that point. I became the go-between. For
a while, Johnny helped out by going over the requests with the boys
after the show, but he wasn't always around and someone had to take on
the role so things would run smoothly. The options were to either have
Donna come out on the road and do it, or give it to me. The boys were
dead set against Donna and chose me.

For a while, I was able to juggle my various responsibilities. Eventually, as the shows and media events became larger and more frequent, it
became necessary for me to have some help. The pressure was intense
and at times I felt as though I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Finally, I told Johnny that I was feeling overwhelmed. He sympathized with my situation and talked to the boys. They agreed to hire a
couple of extra people to help with the wardrobe and makeup responsibilities so that I could focus more on public relations and the fan
club. At that time, the drummer in our band had a girlfriend, Angie
Lehman, who was a hair stylist and makeup artist. She was hired to
take on those responsibilities. With that, I was able to breathe a bit
easier.

Many strange things happened during the shows that I, as a parent,
really did not understand. Fans often fainted, which meant they had to
be pulled over the barricades. Sometimes, as they were being carried off
by security, they would miraculously recover long enough to grab for a
boy or to jump onto the stage and run after their favorite.

More than a few times,
security had to run onstage
and detach girls from the
boys during a performance.
The boys liked that so
much that they egged the
fans on. Alex and Brian
sometimes jumped into the
pit between the stage and
the audience and ran back
and forth, touching the
girls' hands as they went.

Me, Nina and Angie

Alex also liked to jump
on the larger bodyguards'
shoulders and ask them to
walk across the pit area so
he could reach further into
the crowd. Pretty soon all of the boys started doing that and the security
teams had to learn to guess when the boys were ready to jump. They
kept an eye on each other and doubled up on that side as soon as one of
the boys made their move.

At one of the summer-festival venues, the stage had a long runway
that extended about sixty feet into the audience. At one point during
the show, the boys all went to the end of the runway to sing a nice slow
song. Suddenly, Nick stood up and accidentally knocked Howie right
off the end of the stage. When that happened, everything went into
slow motion. We watched in fear as he fell toward the screaming girls.
Security managed to grab him at the last minute and push him back up
onto the stage. Howie suffered no ill effects from the fall, but it was a
close call that could have had disastrous results.

All the boys had accidents and mishaps of one kind or another. There
were so many times during the shows that they had to run off and do a
quick change, or get from point A to point B, that it was inevitable that
things would go wrong. The larger the shows got, the greater the opportunity for things to go wrong.

As the tour progressed, the fans seemed to become more aggressive
in every country. Mobs of girls blocked us from getting into hotels. Sometimes they rushed the elevators when the boys tried to get on with security. The situation became so unmanageable that neither the boys nor I
could enter a hotel through the front doors anymore. We had to go in
through a service entrance or kitchen.

Alex and I have seen the best and worst of many hotels all over the
world. Once you walk through the kitchen of a hotel, you know whether
you want to eat there or not. Sometimes we did. Other times we didn't.

The fan frenzy over the boys became so great that year that every
time the boys performed with local acts, the girls screamed only for
them. Naturally, that caused some bad blood between the boys and some
of the European groups, despite the fact that it happened through no
fault of their own.

Once, the boys and I went to watch another group perform. A group
of girls caught sight of them in the back of the venue and audience
members turned their backs on the group that was performing. They
waved and screamed toward our guys. It was embarrassing for everyone
since the boys had not meant to cause a commotion. We tried to leave
quietly, but the fans would have none of that. In the end, they piled us
all into vans and drove us back to our hotel.

The Backstreet Boys concert went very well in Vienna, where about
50,000 people turned out. The audience yelled for the Backstreet Boys
while all the other groups were on stage. The local television station
taped the show, so we were able to watch it when we got back to the
hotel. We saw how aggressive the girls in the audience became. The
promoter almost stopped the show because of it.

The police and medics thought a girl had been injured, so they just
stopped the music in the middle of one of the boys' songs. The boys
were stunned, but then just kept on singing a cappella. Then the MC
took the microphone from Brian and told everyone what had happened.
It was a mistake and no one was hurt.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We witnessed
that in Switzerland toward the end of the tour. During one of the shows,
a small group of children who called themselves the Mini-Backstreet
Boys asked if they could perform for the boys. Oh my gosh-it was the
best! Those five little boys, ranging in age from six to eight, ran out
onto the stage and lip-synced to one of the boys' songs.

If that weren't cute enough, each one of them was dressed as their
favorite Backstreet Boy and sang his part. We roared with delight as we
watched those little Swiss tikes mimic every nuance. The best part came
at the end of their performance. Our guys ran out onto the stage and
grabbed their mini-look-a-like and gave him a big hug. Of course, the
crowd went nuts and loved every minute of it.

As the boys' popularity increased, we had problems with unlicensed
vendors who came out in force at the venues. They were followed closely
by ticket scalpers. In Europe they didn't have very stiff laws that governed that sort of thing, so we had to contend with it ourselves. I went on a few
runs with security to see how they chased away the unlicensed vendors.

It was rather fun finding them stationed just around the corner from
the venue, especially when we approached them and they hawked us to
purchase a knock-off shirt or poster. As we would get closer, they would
see the backstage passes around our necks and begin to pack up. Suddenly, they would lose the ability to speak any English. We usually had
some local security with us to get over that little hurdle.

It was hard to keep those guys down for long, though. As soon as we
left the venue, they would come back out to sell their fake merchandise.
I even heard that there were a few times when the local security or crew
would try to run them off and they would have the audacity to put up a
fight. They wanted that money too badly to let anyone stop them. During one altercation, I heard that one of our crew lost an eye from being
hit by something. It was pretty terrible. I think the boys helped him out
in some way, but I really don't remember how. Money can do terrible
things to people.

Those types of things happened more and more often. Between dealing
with the fans and the unlicensed vendors-and all of the unexpected crises-it got to a point where it was difficult for any of us to have downtime. With the help of the promoters in some cities and our security, we
managed to find a few fun places to hide for a while. All of the boys really
liked go-carting. That was something we searched for the moment we hit
town, so that we could shut down for a few hours and play.