Monday, November 15, 1999
Hot time tonight for Backstreet Boys fans
Latest, biggest of boy bands genre
BY LARRY NAGER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Kristen Hoffmann and Abi Carlin have been counting the days until they get to see their favorite band.
(Josh Biggs photo)
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Take some cute young guys, preferably ones who can sing and dance. Form a boy band, make some records (and videos and a Web site). Girls go wild and your bank account booms.
That's been a dependable pop music success formula since the '50s, when teens were first targeted as a huge, untapped market. Tonight, the Tristate is ground zero for the phenomenon, as the biggest boy band of them all, the Backstreet Boys, blasts into a sold-out Firstar Center.
With a record 30 million albums sold in two years, the Orlando-based quintet is the all-time champion boy band. Tonight's 16,000-plus seats were gone in shorter time than a Sabrina episode. All 765,000 tickets for the “Millennium” tour sold out in less than a day.
Backstreet Boys perform in Montreal last week.
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Even up against big tours like Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band reunion, the Backstreet Boys held the two top spots in Amusement Business' most recent box office chart. And all that massive cultural upheaval comes courtesy of adoring teen-age girls.
“There's no one else out there I want to see. This is the concert I want to see,” said Abi Carlin, 14, a student at Lakota Freshman School.
Like Abi, American girls since the 1950s have had their favorite boy band — from Frankie Lymon & the Teen-ag ers, to the Beatles, to the Jackson 5, to New Edition, to New Kids on the Block. Social historians say it started with the development of teens into a distinct cultural group in the post-World War II economic boom. Boy bands weren't far behind.
“There's certainly nothing new about the Backstreet Boys. ... You can go back almost 50 years and find exactly the same thing,” said Dr. Joe Austin, assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University.
Their older sisters, parents and grandparents may have seen it all before, but for the Backstreet Boys' thousands of young Tristate fans, that excitement is as brand new as their first kiss.
“I think that's so cool to finally see them in person. You just listen to the music over and over again, and to actually see them sing the music you've been listening to so long ... ” said Abi, a Backstreet Boy Fan since 1997, when they first topped the U.S. charts with “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).” Tonight's concert will be Abi's first, an experience she'll share with thousands of other girls, all screaming themselves hoarse.
That rite of passage dates to the earliest days of teen culture. “Before the Second World War people did not make things that were specifically for (teens) to buy,” said Dr. Austin. “One of the things that Frankie Lymon and those guys did, they were the first producers of ... music that was particularly aimed at young people. ... The Backstreet Boys have since been inheritors of (that).”
It's a trend that can be traced to Cincinnati in 1954, when “Seventeen,” the first specifically teen record, was made at King Records.
Regional country-pop singer Boyd Bennett had cut a couple of records for King, promoting them at area shows. A popular act at high school proms, he wrote a song for his young fans with such lyrics as, “Seventeen, hot-rod queen, cutest gal you've ever seen.”
It was a very radical idea at the time.
When he brought the first demo recording and sheet music for “Seventeen” to King owner Syd Nathan, Mr. Bennett recalls, “He threw it in the wastebasket. He said, "Don't ever bring crap like this in here. ... Kids don't have any money to buy records.'”
Mr. Bennett persuaded King's second-in-command, Henry Glover, to release it in March 1955. “Seventeen” became a nationwide hit, landing at No. 3 on Billboard's pop chart.
“It started the fad,” said Mr. Bennett, who today owns a medical supply company in Dallas. “Eddie Fisher came out with "Dungaree Doll'; Dorsey Burnette came out with "You're Sixteen'; there was "16 Candles.' There was just a deluge of teen-age records.”
But Mr. Bennett was past the teen-idol age limit.
“I was 31 years old, and we were playing to kids. I was an old man to those people.”
Teens wanted stars their own age. And many concerned parents in white-bread, '50s suburbia found those older acts — particularly those older black acts — too threatening for their little girls. “That's one reason rock was met with incredible resistance from parents,” Dr. Austin said.
Younger groups were deemed safer, more acceptable. When the Beatles matured from the mop-top shaking Fab Four to the mind-blowing innovators of Sgt. Pepper's, the Monkees took their place in teen-age girls' hearts (and according to a recent TV movie, the Partridge Family sitcom was sold as a less-threatening Monkees).
In the early '70s, when Motown groups such as the Temptations and Four Tops began dealing with serious, urban social issues in edgier musical settings, the Jackson 5 emerged as the cuter, more kid-friendly alternative. Featuring a preteen Michael Jackson, the Jacksons became one of the biggest boy bands of all time, selling millions of records, launching a popular TV cartoon series and paving the way for Michael's dominance of the '80s charts.
“The Jacksons were really safe,” Dr. Austin said. “They didn't seem to be about anything other than, "Let's dance around and sing songs about love.' They were a young black vocal group that was not scary at all. It was OK to have pictures of them on the wall.”
That trend continues.
“Rap is the other side of the Backstreet Boys,” he says. “Both of them are aimed at the same consumer group for the same reasons, but one of them is seen to be scary, and one of them is seen to be kind of trivial and OK.”
It's become an accepted part of growing up with MTV and the Internet. Along with nonthreatening, first-concert experiences, boy bands provide many young fans with their first unrequited crushes.
For those girls, “first” is what it's all about. Backstreet Boys was first in the current wave of boy bands, including 'NSync and Ohio's own 98`. To Backstreet's fiercely loyal fans, all other boy bands, past and present, are irrelevant. In the beginning was the Backstreet Boys — Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, Brian Littrell, Howie Dorough and A.J. McLean.
“I have two older sisters, and New Kids were like their favorites, but I don't care about them,” said Backstreet fan Kristen Hoffman, 14.
Kristen's a concert veteran, having seen Cher and 'NSync this year. She has since changed boy-band allegiance. “'NSync acts more cocky when they get in front of people. The Backstreet Boys just seem more real, really down-to-earth. I'm really excited about seeing them,” she said.
Almost as excited as her best friend and schoolmate Abi, who'll be sitting next to her tonight.
“I can't wait,” gushed Abi. “About 60 days ago I marked it on my planner, and I've been marking it down every day since.”
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