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New Kids On The Block (NKOTB) |
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For once, all the rumors are actually true.
“The Right Stuff”
really is — at long last — returning to your block. Thankfully, this
time, it’s all happening in the right way too.
New Kids On
The Block — five now fully-grown men who forever defined what the
modern boy band would look and sound like — are back together for
the very first time in nearly a decade and a half, and currently
hard at work on their first new album since 1994. That still
untitled album should be released sometime this summer, preceded by
the New Kid’s first new single since the Nineties, and followed in
the fall by an already hotly anticipated international concert tour.
On a March afternoon, Jordan Knight, Jonathan Knight, Joey
McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood are gathered together,
hanging tough all over again in a small Los Angeles studio looking a
little older, but still youthful, fit and anxious to not simply
celebrate their musical legacy, but also add something new and
personally meaningful to it. In the late Eighties and early
Nineties, while still teenagers themselves, New Kids on the Block
became a phenomenon, selling over 70 million albums – including the
back-to-back international number one efforts, 1988’s Hangin’ Tough
and 1990’s Step By Step — and a series of crossover smash R&B, pop
hits like “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” “Cover Girl,” “Didn’t I
(Blow Your Mind This Time),” “Hangin’ Tough,” “I’ll Be Loving You,”
“Step By Step” and “Tonight” — as well as countless number of
concert tickets, t-shirts and even lunchboxes to primarily female
kids around the world. Then under the guidance of producer Maurice
Starr who had previously brought the world New Edition, the New Kids
made a tremendous impact on the culture very quickly.
“I
think history has looked upon us fondly,” say McIntyre. “I wouldn’t
say we were important, but people do now see our place in pop
history. We’ve read that we ..begat the boy bands” like Backstreet
Boys and N’Sync. And in a way, those groups have all made us more
contemporary. They made us younger in a way by putting us in their
generation. But hey, what about New Edition? There would be no New
Kids without them. And of course, the Jackson Five begat New
Edition. So I guess we were really just the first white boy band.”
These days, four of the five Kids have kids themselves, as well
as assorted careers and lives of their own, and so their decision to
reunite had been an adult if joyful one that they’ve taken very
seriously. That’s why this time around – even with the assistance of
a great new team including Interscope Records and the Azoff
Management team, it’s the original Kids themselves who have taken
charge of their own destiny with new music that they found and
funded themselves.
“We’re not kids, we’re just the guys now,”
Donnie Wahlberg says with a smile as he takes a break from the
recording sessions that started this past winter and have taken on a
momentum of its own this spring. Long the hold out from any sort of
New Kids On The Block reunion, Wahlberg – who has enjoyed
considerable success as a constantly working actor in the
intervening years – has long made it clear that he had absolutely no
interest in simply cashing in on the Kid’s good name. “We’ve had so
many offers from so many people over the years, but I’ve always
protected the asset,” he says. “We never sold the New Kids house to
anyone. And until we got together in a recording studio in Orlando
two months ago, I haven’t even been in the same room with these five
guys for fifteen years.”
And this time, it’s the boys – make
that, the men – in the group who are in charge.
“We took the
initiative instead of going out and asking for help from a label or
anyone,” McIntyre explains. “We just started recording because we
wanted to and because we were ready. We started doing this from the
ground up –just us.”
The brand new New Kids album was really
sparked when Wahlberg was in New York for a costume fitting for the
upcoming film Righteous Kill that finds him living out another
life-long dream by acting in a film alongside two of his greatest
heroes, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino as well as 50 Cent. Finding
himself around the block, Wahlberg visited the office of his
longtime music lawyer who handed him a demo tape of a young
singer-songwriter name Nazeree. Since the days of New Kids — and his
time producing hits in the early Nineties for his brother Mark as
Markey Mark and The Funky Bunch – Wahlberg has been handed a
mountain of demos in his time and he took the offering with
absolutely no expectations.
Putting the CD on while driving a
few days later, Wahlberg heard two songs that spoke to him
powerfully. “I got in the car in Boston on my birthday and I popped
it in,” he recalls. “ The first song was called ..Click, Click,
Click’ and from the minute it started, it just grabbed me. I kept
waiting for this kid to falter, but he never did. Not only that – I
immediately recognized that Joey McIntryre is going to love this
record, Jordan Knight is going to love this record and I love this
record. The music speaks to all of our sensibilities, but they’re
all totally different. It was hip-hop and honest enough for me. It
was soulful enough for Jordan and pop and unselfish enough for Joe.
It just had it all. I spent the next few hours driving up to girls
at red lights and playing them the song. They said, ..Is that your
song? I said ..Not yet.’”
After years of blocking any
reunion, Wahlberg was suddenly energized and drove to Jordan
Knight’s house that night and played him the songs, “I told him.
..Jordan, this could be the moment right here.’ Jordan heard
..Click, Click, Click’ and he loved it. Then I emailed them to Joe
and the same reaction — and more importantly his wife cried. So I
pulled out my checkbook and we started going.”
What had
started was more like a mission than a comeback.
“See what I
discovered is that the self-respect I have as an actor was hard to
have in music,” Wahlberg explains. “Parts of what we went through
were kind of prefabricated – though the whole New Kids machine only
started once we got the ball rolling. It was grass roots before
that. Maurice Starr was the guy behind our success, but we were in
it from day one. So over the years, I’ve often thought I’d like to
experience the group with that feeling of self-respect — instead of
just the fame and hysteria, so it’s not about just getting something
back, but about really doing something.”
In the months that
followed, Wahlberg and the other Kids would collaborate closely with
Nazaree, who turned out to be a New Kids fan since childhood, as
well as other gifted producers and writers including Bryan-Michael
Cox, Emanuel Kiriakou, RedOne and Fernando on an new album that
blends the melodic soul of vintage New Kids with a decidedly
contemporary, hip hop feel.
“Donnie was right,” McIntyre
explains. “The new music we’re making reignited this whole thing so
it’s not just cashing in on pure nostalgia for the old days.”
Of the group’s demise back in the mid-Nineties, McIntyre
explains, “We were just fried. What happened to us in the span of a
couple years was mind-blowing, and no one really knew what it was.
We were learning as it went. A lot of groups today know the mold and
plan accordingly. We didn’t start out with the idea that in two
years we’d be playing stadiums. So by the end of our touring
obligations in like 1992, we just want to go home. We had moved on
and then music had totally moved on. Grunge happened. Rock and roll
came back. We never slammed the door shut – we just sort of walked
away. And at that point, we weren’t exactly going to hold a press
conference because no one really cared.”
“It’s the thing
about being in a boy band,” Wahlberg says. “In some ways we were
much more in control than people could ever imagine back then. But
in some ways, you can’t control anything.”
In the studio
today, all five seem to be getting along and contributing something
to the whole.
“I think the thing with us is that we always
hung onto the fact that we were buddies first,” Joey McIntyre
explains. “This wasn’t a cattle call or a reality show. The point is
this wasn’t a business first. It’s wasn’t even a business second.
This was a business last. And in the end, we stayed friends and
didn’t judge each other two much, which could get frustrating. But
the pay off for that is that almost 20 years later, we can get
together, hang out and have fun. It’s different now, it’s a little
more planned out and professional, but we’re still a bunch of guys
who love doing this and want every show to be our best.”
Now
that the five Kids are standing together and planning to hit the
road with a new show, simply reviving the old hits isn’t enough.
“No, I want this to be redemption — but not for us,” Wahlberg
explains. “I want it to be redemption for the fans. I want them to
feel entertained, to feel treated to something special. And I want
them to be so satisfied by what they get that they’ll realize they
weren’t crazy all those years ago — that they put their heart into
the right place back then and that it was worth the wait to come
back again.”
Make no mistake; the New Kids intend to play all
the familiar hits – along with some brand new ones too. “Our old
songs aren’t necessarily standards — they were pretty sweet — but
it’s going to be fun in a live show. People come to hear that music,
so we’re going to sing it with basically the same sound. We’re not
doing a reggae version of our three biggest hits because when I see
that, it pisses me off. Even I’m like ..Spare me.’ We have something
like ten top ten hits, which is amazing. So if we do those and five
new songs, we’ll have a hell of a show. We will give the people what
they want to hear.
So what will a New Kids On The Block
concert look like in 2008?
“ We’re still young, we’re still
hot,” McIntryre answers with a laugh. “Our fans are between 25 and
35 now because they were really young then. They’re still very
attractive — and very legal. So it’s going to be a girls night out.
I know my wife’s going to be there every step of the way, but it’s
still going to be fun.”
Yes, the wait has been a long one,
but it won’t be much longer now.
“The snowball is getting
pretty big,” McIntrye adds as he and his four old friends get back
to work. “And it’s heading down the mountain now.”
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