Boyzone Farewell Tour: Gettin' the band back on the road
As the Boyzone Farewell tour kicks off tomorrow, , who literally wrote the book on the band (Oh Boyz), recalls life on the road with the group in the 1990s
Seeing Shane Lynch’s vitriolic outburst on the Late Late Show last November when Boyzone dropped in to promote their Thank You and Goodnight farewell tour might have shocked host Ryan Tubridy and quite a lot of Boyzone fans, but personally I wasn’t at all surprised — not because it was Shane but because a part of me couldn’t help but feel just a little bit sorry for him.
Being the daily music correspondent with the Evening Herald back in the 90s meant that my life at that time pretty much revolved around reporting on Ronan and the boys and Scary Spice and Co, while I later joined Louis Walsh on the judging panel when Westlife were being conceived (ladies, you’re welcome).
This was the undoubted era of the manufactured boy/girl band and for those with the nous, it was a very lucrative, if highly risky, investment. Back in the mid-90s it was estimated to cost €1m-plus to successfully launch one of these bands. That figure could be easily quadrupled now — as could the crazy amount of money to be made from a successful act. However, if X Factor has proven anything it’s that no amount of money or industry specialists are going to guarantee someone becomes an international recording star even if they win the competition and get the coveted 12-month recording contract handed to them.
The majority of those X Factor “winners” are quietly dropped a year after they’ve been fleeting household names and, truth be told, you’d probably be hard pushed to remember who they are or what they even look like at that stage anyway.
What you might not realise is that for the band members themselves, it is serious hard slog within a defined window of opportunity that demands very long days, projecting a boy-next-door image (the advent of the Spice Girls alleviated this somewhat for the girls), round-the-clock media campaigns and the innate ability to constantly look and sound energised and happy… but most of all, back in the 90s, being straight and available were the most important factors.
In 1993 when Boyzone were formed Facebook wasn’t even dreamt up yet and the internet was still in its infancy so a lot of publicity hinged on radio interviews, a regular presence in all the teen magazines (Smash Hits in particular due to its coveted annual awards), appearing on Saturday morning TV shows, and topping the charts so you could appear on Top of the Pops as often as possible.
Fans of Boyzone, Spice Girls, and Westlife have grown up now and, as adults, are far more likely to be in a position to afford the €100-plus price tag per ticket these upcoming “farewell” concerts will cost. One can’t help but feel, therefore, that the reformed acts will essentially clean up before they finally call it a day and go back to their everyday lives again.
However, this doesn’t alter the fact that reforming the band in your 40s for a farewell tour requires you to once again inhabit the role you were known for in your twenties before you had your family or partner and before you’d forged your own career as an individual with the final say on what you will and won’t do.
There are recognised hierarchies within these acts. Touring also requires you spend at least a year on the road with people you aren’t used to being around 24/7 anymore — people more successful than you who are used to having the spotlight to themselves.
Also doing it as an adult where your management have to treat you as cognisant grown-ups instead of effectively running the show for you is a very different ballgame.
Victoria Beckham fought long and hard to shake her pouting Posh Spice persona and, in my own humble opinion, is a wise woman to sidestep the reunion tour with Scary, Ginger, Sporty, and Baby — she is a respected designer as well as being half of the Beckham brand and is worth €380m in her own right as a non-singing, non-dancing, talking, creative woman — she would have a whole lot more to lose than her former bandmates if the proposed reunion tour turns out less than “zigga zig ahh!”.
The last time I saw the designer in the flesh was on the set of Spice World where I, along with selected international press, had been invited to take part in a “press conference scene” set outside the Albert Hall. It was a very clever management ploy to guarantee international coverage for the film while at the same time issuing us all with gagging orders until a specified date prior to its release. We all had to sign contracts and were paid the princely sum of one pound so they could legitimately order us about for the day.
The three- or four-minute scene took an afternoon’s shooting with all of the girls having hair, make-up, and minute wardrobe malfunctions attended to every few minutes. I had some canine puppet from Smash Hits magazine sitting on my shoulder pretending to bark questions while Posh pouted for all she was worth (which, one imagines, was a great deal less than she is today).
Writing the Boyzone book, Oh Boyz, in conjunction with photographer Kyran O’Brien in aid of Crumlin Children’s hospital back in 1996, was an eye-opener for me in terms of appreciating what “living the popstar life” actually meant.
Used to interviewing the boys by phone or in rather nice hotels, I had a rude awakening when I spent time with them on their UK tour and got an insight into what actually went on behind the scenes when they were on the road.
It was gruelling.
Manager Louis Walsh summed up the entire business rather succinctly when he said to me at the time: “Get in, grab every opportunity to make your money, and get out early.”
Radio station interviews as early as 5am or 6am were a regular occurrence and they weren’t done by phone and there were always invited press hungry for interviews before and after soundchecks and during dance rehearsals, fans to be met, competition winners — all this before you even stepped on stage, after which you were more often than not on a tour bus to the next tour location or bundled on to a late-night flight for TV appearances somewhere in Europe.
The pace was relentless and through it all the guys kept smiling and looking absolutely thrilled to see each new person who walked through the door. Which would be quite important considering they were footing the bill for the flights and accommodation of each and every invited media representative brought in to get them ever more lucrative exposure.
The cars they raced around in during those formative years were leased and they were on a strict weekly allowance while their management aimed to make them more popular than sugar-coated corn flakes.
I recall getting the red-eye flight to London on the day Westlife were shooting the video for ‘Flying Without Wings’ — arriving at the studio bleary-eyed around 9am, I was amazed to find the band were already busy at work with an army of people nervously hovering over soundchecks, lighting, camera angles, dancers, band choreography, timing, and make-up.
They would sing a few words, maybe a couple of lines of the song, before someone shouted “cut!” and it was played back, checked by around seven people, and repeated over and over and over until everyone on the team was happy. I was fascinated and monumentally bored at the same time.
By 11am I was exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep. if anyone had told me I’d ever have something in common with inmates in Guantanamo Bay I would have laughed — apparently ‘Flying Without Wings’ has been played on a loop there as a form of torture. I still get twitchy every time I hear it.
That being said, I was aware that no fans watching the finished glossy masterpiece would have any idea just how much patience and hard work had gone into making it. After an early-morning start, Shane and the boys were still going through their lines and steps as the cameras rolled on when I gratefully crawled into a cab at 7pm.
So yes, having witnessed first hand the schedules that manufactured bands work to and the pressure they are under from the day they sign on the dotted line, I do feel quite sorry for the untamed, unfiltered racing car driver that is Shane Lynch. For the year ahead, he will once again be “one of the others” in the band and he’ll have to tow that line again.
That being said, one cannot help but feel that filthy lucre aside, the Boyz are looking forward to doing this tour as grown-ups and, most significantly, as a real band where they are the ones calling the shots before finally bowing out with healthier bank balances and an itch that has mercifully been scratched.
Gone are the ridiculous outfits, the overly choreographed dance routines, and the need to appear available to screaming, hormone-driven girls (and boys). Management aren’t running the show this time. Ronan, Keith, Mikey, and Shane have earned the right to return a la Take That — older, wiser, pretty boys turned into handsome men with a natural ability for ballads and one last trip down boyband boulevard.
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