Boybands (Aren't) Forever
Remembering a lost 20th Century art form - and its costs
A couple of months back, I wrote about the mildly interesting but not exactly gripping BBC boyband reality series Made in Korea, which allows us, reality stylee, a close-up view of the hard drilling of the hopeful young members of fivesome Dear Alice in the K-Pop discipline.
It was mostly an opportunity to confess how I invented boyband reality TV – back in 1994, years before shows like Popstars and X-Factor. Which of course destroyed the point of boybands.
Now, however, BBC iPlayer are airing an excellent, definitely gripping, possibly definitive new three part documentary series (by Madhouse Productions) titled Boybands Forever, starting with 1990s rivals Take That and E17, and ending with Blue and Westlife at the turn of the Millenium.
All three episodes are well made, witty and watchable, even if you were never a boyband fan, but the first episode is a corker. In part because of the dramatic contrast between norty-but-nice Manchester boys Take That, and proper-norty, Pitbull-owning, East London boys E17. The former, sitting pretty and still performing today, the latter scattered to the winds of outrageous fortune – or roofing, in the case of John Hendy, who contributes to the doc. (And allegedly, royally ripped off by their manager, Tom Watkins, who died in 2020.)
But the real drama is provided by interviews with Take That's forthright, funny, pot-bellied Manc manager Nigel Martin-Smith, who is now sixty-six, and eerie, elfin Robbie Williams, who somehow looks and sounds both older and younger than his fifty years.
Interviewed separately – and probably thousands of miles apart – it feels like they're in the same room, still squabbling, like surrogate gay father and adolescent gay-ish son, thirty years on. And not just because of the clever editing.
Martin-Smith explains that he is participating because he doesn't want the notion that he's "some big, nasty, evil bastard" to follow him to his grave. A notion he believes is propagated by Mr Williams, the youngest and gobbiest member, who walked out of the band in 1995, aged 21, in the middle of their world tour, and who has famously suffered drug and alcohol related problems. Problems he has sometimes blamed on his time in Take That and the alleged lack of care.
All of which is given extra saliency by the recent, apparently drug-related death of One Direction member Liam Payne, aged 31 – probably when this doc was being edited.
Martin-Smith doesn't give any ground, which is admirably plucky. Or horribly insensitive, depending on your pov. "He's smart, is Robbie…'I did drugs because I was in this band where I couldn't have girlfriends, or I couldn't go out… 'That evil twat, Nigel, it's his fault that l'm behaving like a wanker'."
Williams issued a lengthy, statement on social media after the doc aired, which continues to press his contention, albeit respectfully-craftily, that Martin-Smith should have been a less punitive, more loving and understanding father-figure.
‘Your young charge at this time in his life was experiencing his first [mental breakdown]. You didn’t excel in “Man Management” and it was here that, instead of a stern wod [sic] and a pointed finger, an arm around the shoulder and a kind word would have been the best tact.'
It's an argument which Martin-Smith can't win, especially nowadays. In a modern sense, Martin-Smith's failure was that he wasn't gay enough. And perhaps yes, his refusal to give any ground, even after all these years, does rather confirm that his 'Man Management' skills could be better. But they do make for good viewing.
Another reason Martin-Smith can’t win is because it’s a cherished part of the boyband mythology – or used to be, back when boybands mattered – that the manager is an “evil genius”, or Svengali, usually gay, who moulds a group of innocent young chaps to his fancy, and then hawks his fancy to teenage girls. While forbidding them girlfriends.
It's clear though from the accounts of other boyband members in the series, particularly those of Sean Conlon and Scott Robinson from Five, that the pressure of fame took a toll on boybanders, some much more than others.
The pressures were legion: tabloid surveillance and outright maliciousness (represented here by a creepy ex News of the World hack, happy to play the baddie); the relentless, possessive voraciousness of the female fans (who, as a woman music journalist points out, are not fans: they all believe that they are your girlfriend); and the impossible, immovable schedule they were subjected to, first to achieve success, and then to exploit their success before it inevitably evaporated.
As boyband managers know very well, some of whom have assembled-managed several boybands in the course of their careers, if the success didn’t evaporate there would have been no space for a new boyband in the first place.
A successful boyband is by definition hot property. Everyone wants a piece of them - before the third law of thermodynamics does its work. A boyband manager’s job is to create a sense of hysteria around his charges. And hysteria is extremely profitable – but terribly tiring. Especially when it’s someone’s else’s.
And managers, almost by definition, are not generally the kind of people who will hold your hand or send you on a sabbatical. Or at least they weren't back in the 20th Century, long before 'mental health' became the quasi-unhealthy obsession it is today.
A simulacrum in aviator shades of the famous One Direction manager and record label mogul Simon Cowell (65), probably recorded before Payne's death, pops up to explain that "It's in the contract that you sign" that you are always available and that you will have no privacy. "If you don't want that then become an accountant."
On the one hand, this is true. On the other, Cowell does come across a bit like Mr Mephistopheles with a dye job. But then, Mr Cowell is shrewd enough to know that the public wants him to play that role – and of course for many years very successfully played The Sulphurous One on all those hellish talent shows. (I also can’t criticise him too much, as his TV production company once optioned a reality TV format of mine - the closest any of my TV proposals got to being made.)
Boybands Forever also features contributions from Duncan James, of Blue, now aged 46 but somehow looking prettier than ever – and, it must be said, also totally sporno. "Every boyband has a gay member," he says. "And for years I thought it was Lee."
As we now know, that member turned out to be Duncan – who was what you might call a late bloomer, sexually. But today he seems extremely relaxed and in command of his powerful, inked, pumped, depilated sexual personae. Duncan, and I mean this in the best possible way – and I have no doubt he will take it that way – looks like a top-class gay porn power bottom. Who also happens to be a hugely famous and accomplished pop star.
There are also contributions from members of Westlife, and their manager, Louis Walsh. But I was never very interested in Westlife, even though they were very much my type – as in: Irish and male. But crooning ballads delivered on barstools are really not my thang. Walsh (72) is as unlikable as ever, but with added elderly cantankerousness.
Mock him as I might, Walsh is much wiser than me, and respected the tastes, or at least consumer power, of the invincible and eternal demographic that is teen girls, nans, and grans. The Holy Trinity or golden triangle of record sales.
Blue's manager, Daniel Glatman, who was only 25 at the time they were formed in 2000, also contributes, providing interesting background on their formation and cultivation. But it was his account of what happened when the band eventually dropped him after achieving huge success – as they tend to do, the ingrates – that struck me most.
Undeterred, he thought he would just start over again and put together a new boyband. But he discovered that the world had changed. To have any hope of success, boybands now had to get on the new reality TV talent shows. "And Simon Cowell didn't allow managed acts on his shows."
In the new Millenium, boybands were no longer assembled by single, seat-of-their-pants Svengalis with a certain sensibility and spark, spotting trends before the record business itself. Now it was via the vast focus group and exposure of reality TV, but with the public themselves paying for the privilege of providing that focus, dialling premium rate lines – putting their money where their heart was before there was even a single or album to buy.
And presiding over it all, a manager and record company mogul with a TV monopoly.
That boybands are no longer the mutant offspring of a mysterious, mostly unseen “puppeteer”, working behind the scenes, but rather a completely processed corporate product, conceived, produced, and marketed via vertical integration is a bit sad. Even if it was probably the only way that they, and pop music, could (just about) make it into the 21st Century.
But I would say that. After all, I’m a bit of a boyband manager myself. If more Dr Frank N Furter than Mr Mephistopheles. My acts, ‘Metrosexual’ and ‘Spornosexual’, were global hits, if perhaps more with men and boys than with teen girls. I’m still waiting, however, for my 20%.
So, in other words, I was the world’s worst boyband manager.
Before we leave the world of boybands, possibly forever, I should mention it was fascinating to hear Martin-Smith admit that, as a theatrical agent in Manchester in 1990, seeing the new assertive sexuality being expressed by women at Chippendale shows he decided to make a pop equivalent.
Young dancers Jason and Howard, male model Mark, and aspiring theatrical cheeky chappy Robbie (who claims here that he only got the gig, after a lacklustre audition, because he winked at Martin-Smith as he was leaving), assembled around the prodigious singer-songwriter talents of Gary. To distract from Gary’s prodigious squareness.
I had always seen Take That as singing baby Chippendales – or Chippendales for teen girls. This was confirmed by my experience when I went to see them perform at Wembley Arena at their peak and in their prime, and leather chaps, in 1994 – most particularly by the assertive appetite of the teen girls audience (who will, many of them, now be grans):
They are hungry for masculine meat. Their banners proclaim their ravenous intentions: GIVE US A SNOG, ROB, and A QUICKIE IN THE DARKIE, MARKIE. To quote someone else from Manchester: They want it now and they will not wait, for they are too lovely and too delicate. I sink even lower into my seat. But I flatter myself – these girls aren't interested in stringy old steak like mine; they want prime, pumped, waxed, tanned, moisturised boy-flesh.
And it was certainly how the party of teen girl fans (and their mums) from Swindon that I spoke to that night saw the boys:
Who’s your favourite? ‘HOWARD!’ ‘ROBBIE!’ ‘MARK!’ ‘JASON!’ they all scream at once. ‘Mark’s brill ‘cos ‘e’s so short an’ sweet an’ lovely an’ ‘e looks like you could do anything you like to ‘im.’ 'Howards’ ace ‘cos ‘e’s gorgeous, ‘cos ‘e’s got pecs, an' ‘cos ‘e’s got a BIG PACKAGE – ‘e’s REALLY, REALLY, WELL-ENDOWED!!’ How do you know? ‘You can’t miss it when ‘e comes on stage!!’ they hoot. ‘It just about pokes yer eye out!,’ adds Lucy’s Mum, helpfully.
(I personally hadn’t noticed, Howard’s BIG PACKAGE. But perhaps I was too far from the stage. Or maybe I am just too ladylike.)
So I can’t understand why everyone in Boybands Forever seems to have decided to pretend that Take That’s historic first promo video, in 1991, for Do What U Like, in which they wear leather jackets and studded codpieces, display their smooth, pert, prone buttocks, have jelly and cream smeared on their nakedness by attractive young ladies, while generally displaying enormous amounts of spunky energy and a bottomless need for attention, is bafflingly “odd” and “weird”.
Although a bit amateurish and low budget, and, despite all the dessert, the opposite of slick, with a CNC chorus that does sound a tad dodgy today (‘No need to ask me/ do what you want’), particularly in the context of the mental health of boybanders, it is the Ur-text of Take Thatness. (In much the same way as this famous 1993 TV appearance is the Ur-text of Boyzonery.)
It is also, of course, screamingly gay - and much more so than the Chippendales ever dared to be. Even and especially if no one in Take That was.
In short, it was the visual template for the slutty finale of that legendary 1994 tour, and is probably the most contemporary of all the videos they made in the 1990s.
Proffering as it did a glimpse of the sticky future of masculinity.