Larger Than Life

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Nov 26, 2000 Source: The Straits Times Submitted By: lynnz_bsb With a world tour and slickly-packaged media onslaught that dredges up the word Beatlemania shamelessly, the Backstreet Boys borrow a plane from Saudi Arabia's defence minister in their quest for global domination. VALERIE KHOO caught the boys in Sydney last Sunday and filed this report for Life! FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD schoolgirl Abbey Munro has not been to the toilet all day. And now it is 5 pm, she is hot, has been on her feet for 12 hours, and is being squashed by the weight of the 10,000 people standing behind her who would give anything to be in her position. She has scored a front-row centre spot to witness one of the most hyped music events in years. The Backstreet Boys world tour. Five boys. Six continents. One hundred hours. A marathon journey consisting a luxury jet, clever media stunts and frenzied crowds reminiscent of 1960s' Beatlemania. ''We've been waiting here for so long,'' says the teenager, who has travelled almost 1,000 km from Brisbane to Sydney with her sister, Laura, 18, in the hope of glimpsing their idols. ''We've been fans since they first started and we're so excited about today.'' Around them, the crowd is being pumped by Backstreet Boys' new album, Black And Blue, blasting from giant speakers in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall. Music videos play on massive screens dominating the stage. Teenage girls are crying, overwhelmed at the prospect of seeing the objects of their affection. And the St John's Ambulance crews are coping with girls who have collapsed from exhaustion, dehydration or simply too much excitement. A bus with tinted windows pulls up and deafening screams drown out the music. False alarm. It is just a group of Japanese tourists checking out the mayhem. There is a groan of collective disappointment. But one second later, the boys' new single, Shape of My Heart, comes booming from the loudspeakers and they are hyped again. The crowd - mainly teenage girls with the occasional reluctant parent in tow - knows all the words. They are singing, rocking and waving their arms - just like a regular stadium concert. Except the act has not even arrived yet. Abbey is high on adrenaline, delirious that her Sydney trip has already paid off. That morning, she met her idols on the tarmac of Sydney Airport as they got off their luxury 737 jet. While some stars slip into the country incognito with only a limousine or two to herald their arrival, the band is not shy about having ''Backstreet Boys'' painted in giant letters along the length of the plane. Just in case you are wondering who is inside. ''We got to the airport at 6 am and saw a black-and-blue double-decker bus. So we figured that had to be theirs,'' says Abbey. ''We were the first ones there and the security guards asked us if we wanted to blow up the balloons to decorate the bus. Of course we said, yes!'' To reward them, security let Abbey and Laura - and a handful of other early-bird fans - meet the band members as they got off the plane. They exchanged hugs and signed autographs. Meanwhile, the rest of the screaming hordes were behind wire fences, only able to admire the boys from afar as they drove past. En route to Sydney's famous Bondi Beach, girls are running alongside the bus, shrieking with excitement if they elicit so much as a wave from the boys. ''Nick!'' ''Brian, I love you!'' ''AJ! Show us your tats!'' The crowd at Bondi is not as big as you would expect from an over-hyped media tour. At 10 am, it is too early for the trendy beach crowd, who are still nursing hangovers over. Nevertheless, scores of little Nippers - young children learning surf life-saving skills - abandon their swimming instructors in the water and flock to the growing crowd when they hear who are about to arrive. In the middle of the throng is 24-year-old Singaporean student Angeline Eng, who is studying in Sydney currently. ''I just live around the corner and was on my way to the shops when I saw the crowd,'' she says. ''I figure I may as well stick around and see what all the fuss is about.'' Unlike the fans holding posters and wearing Backstreet Boys T-shirts, she is pretty blase about the whole circus. But as soon as the band arrives, the crowd goes crazy and she gets caught up in the hype, reaching out to the boys as they walk past. Howie D. She touches him. Nick. Touch. Kevin. AJ. Brian. Touch. Touch. Touch. There are arms everywhere - everyone wants a piece of the boys, or at least to lay a mortal finger on these manufactured demi-gods. Within seconds, it is over and they are whisked away in sleek minivans to their next appearance on this whistle-stop tour. Following a ridiculous schedule, the Backstreet Boys are visiting Stockholm, Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro and New York, spending 55 hours in the air and 45 on the ground. ''We wanted to do a round the world trip,'' says Kevin Richardson, the oldest Backstreet Boy at 28. ''We're fortunate enough to have respect all over the world and we're one of the only groups at the moment who could probably make a trip like this right now, except maybe for Madonna or U2 or the Stones. We're lucky and want to be able to look back on this in 10 years and say, 'Hey we did it, we were like the Beatles'.'' The boys and their entourage are jetting around on a luxury plane, but Brian Littrell, 24, reveals that it is not really theirs. ''It actually belongs to the Defence Minister of Saudi Arabia,'' he says. ''He has a whole fleet of them and he let us borrow one for a bit of spare change. We can't afford our own plane so we had to rent one.'' While lapping up the adoration of the hormonally-charged girls, the boys are also seasoned media pros. When hordes of paparazzi line up to take pictures, the band members know exactly how to pose and, in perfect synchronicity like the opened-mouthed clowns at amusement parks, move their gazes slowly from left to right making sure every photographer gets a good shot. They are veterans now. As Florida school boys, Nick Carter, 20, Howie Dorough, 27, and AJ McLean, 22, kept bumping into each other at local auditions. Forming a vocal group, they roped in Kevin and his cousin Brian and released their first single, We've Got it Goin' On, in 1995. Now, four albums later, they have sold 51 million albums worldwide and their star status warrants police escorts, beefy security guards, and mass hysteria. Pitt Street Mall is their final stop in Sydney and local radio stations have publicised the event so much that the crowd has swelled to record numbers. Shopkeepers have never seen anything like it. Most have shut their doors - or simply packed up and gone home - in case the masses get out of control. The MC hypes the crowd even more - taunting them with promises that the boys are only minutes away. By the time they arrive to sing an a cappella version of Shape Of My Heart, most girls in front of the stage are sobbing with emotion, unable to believe that the boys on their bedroom walls are just metres away, looking at them, winking at them and smiling - yes, directly at them. After flirting and crooning to the crowd, the boys are gone and the whole thing is over. Slowly, the masses disperse, clutching their Backstreet Boys posters, holding onto presents they did not get to give their idols, or leaving minus the bras they threw on-stage. Abbey is still riding high. 'This has just been awesome,' she says. 'We can't believe we got to meet them. I've already called all my friends and they were speechless. I can't believe that this has happened, it's all I've ever wanted. It's like a dream come true.' As the Backstreet Boys head to the airport to fly to Cape Town, where the scene will be repeated all over again, a young fan picks up the crumpled poster she lost during the frenzy. Abbey heads off to find a toilet finally. And a middle-aged father scratches his head as he turns to his daughter and asks: 'Backstreet who?' Comment on this item. Recent Comments Submitted by: nikelir Submitted by: utilizera Submitted by: peto4ok Submitted by: Louise Submitted by: James Submitted by: Greg Guepy Submitted by: Mark Submitted by: Eugene Submitted by: David Submitted by: Michael Pollitt Click here to see more comments. Comment on this item. Next Item: Backstreet's Back (and they're looking for album sales) Alright! 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