WHAT’s THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING YOU’VE EVER BOUGHT?
Nick: “Probably a gold chain that cost about three hundred dollars,” he told Smash Hits back in 1996. “I bought it for myself.” However, things have changed since that interview. In 1997 Nick got his driver’s license and bought his dream vechicle. “A deep forest green 1500 Chevy step-side truck,” he a told Teen Beat reporter. “I’m thinking about lowering it, dropping it, getting it all phat.”
HOW OFTEN DO YOU SHAVE?
Nick: “That’s a weird question,” Nick laughed when Smash Hits reporter asked this question. “I just shave a small amount, about once a week, I don’t need to shave any more than that really.”
WHAT WAS YOU MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT?
A.J.: “I embarrassed myself when we did a photo shoot where I was dressed as The Riddler in this green spandex outfit,” he confessed to Smash hits. “I mean, I looked like Jim Carrey! Anyway, I went out on stage and introduced our two opening acts dressed like that. The audience went absolutely nuts and all the guys were tripping out – they were, like, ‘I can’t believe you did it!’”
Nick: “ We play jokes on each other,” Nick told SuperTeen. “One time on stage, I found myself singing into a banana! They stuck it on my microphone.” Another time, Nick told BIG!, “We did a number, I danced too wild and was going to do a certain move we practiced. My pants were a bit too big and they were held up by my boxers. So when we landed from the jump, my pants fell down! Swoosh! The whole audience got to see (my boxers) and they screamed, of course.”
Brian: “Once we were performing a song from the new album on stage and I had to sing the first two verses,” he told Live & Kicking. “The dance routine was really difficult and I was concentrating so hard it that I blanked on the words. I ended up just humming along. The others were useless. They were (cracking) up laughing and didn’t try to help me out at all!”
WHAT’S YOUR IDEA OF A GOOD NIGHT AT HOME?
A.J.: “Sitting in front of a log fire with hot chocolate and marshmallows and some mellow music playing,” he told BIG! during a BSB interview. “It’d be great if the moon as shining in, the lights were low, and it was cold outside.”
Nick: “It’d be at my parents’ home. I’d get in loads of food and play computer (games) all night with my brothers and sisters.”
Brian: “I’d have one of those huge movie projectors in a big snugly room with a huge soft couch and beanbags (chairs) all over the floor. I’d make dinner downstairs with the lady of my choice, then we’d go upstairs and watch a movie.” Here is another of Brian’s favorite ways to spend an evening: “If I’m home, I’ll meet my three best friends and we’ll go to the (movies). We always meet a crowd of people we know… We have loads of popcorn’ cause I love it. Then we’ll head off for a meal. I love steaks, fries, and salad. Then we’ll all go back to my house and watch movies and chill out. We get to bed about two A.M.”
DO YOUR PARENTS TREAT YOU SPECIAL BECAUSE YOU’RE A BACKSTREET BOY?
Nick: “No way!” he told Teen Beat. “When I go home, I still do chores. If I gotta take out the garbage, I gotta take it out!”
WHAT’S YOUR WORST HABIT?
A.J.: “I borrow clothes and toiletries and everything from the guys,” he confessed to Live & Kicking. “Then I keep them so long that by the time they get around asking for them back, I’ve worn or used them so much, they don’t want them back anymore. It’s a great trick!”
DO YOU READ YOUR FAN MAIL?
Kevin: “Obviously we can’t read every letter,” he told a reporter at a 1996 Montreal’s Musique Plus Television event. “We’ve set up fan clubs to help us. Usually we pick fans in different countries to help set up and organize the fan clubs. They help us answer all the mail we get.”
WHAT WERE YOU LIKE AS A CHILD?
Nick: “When I was a young child, I wasn’t a very social person. I tried to stay focused,” he told Scholastic magazines. “I wasn’t one of the popular people in school. I was very unpopular. Other kids were more mature than me in a way… Maybe it was the other way around, since I was around grown-ups all the time. Though I liked school, I had to leave it because I was acting and singing. (My classmates) didn’t understand why I left, and they were jealous in a way.”
HOW OFTEN DO YOU NEED A HUG?
Kevin: “I could use a hug every day, but I’m not likely to get it,” he told BIG! during a BSB chat. “It’s something I really miss.”
A.J.: “As often as I can get one! For me, it’s even better than a kiss.”
Howie: “I love hugs and kisses. I think it’s because I grew up in a big family. Even now I grab my mother and give her kisses all over her cheeks and she’s like, ‘Oh, Howard, pleeeeease!’”
WHAT’S THE SWEETEST THING A GIRL’S DONE FOR YOU?
Kevin: “Probably the coolest thing was when I was really sick and this girl I was dating rang her mother to get a recipe for chicken noddle soup, and she made it for me from scratch,” he told a BIG! reporter. “Isn’t that sweet?”
WHAT HAS SURPRISED YOU THE MOST ABOUT BEING IN THE RECORDING INDUSTRY?
Nick: “The biggest surprise for me was walking into a store and seeing our single on a self,” he revealed in a Teen Beat interview. “I couldn’t believe it – it was sitting next to all these artists!”
Brian: “It’s a lot of work!”
Kevin: “The whole process of how the recording industry and the radio stations and the record companies work, as far as production in the studio. It’s been a great experience and we’ve learned so much.”
WHAT’S THE BEST SHOW BIZ ADVICE YOU’VE GOTTON?
Kevin: “We sang for the Temptations backstage when they were doing a show in Orlando,” he recalled in an UPI report. “(A member of the Temptations told us), ‘The music business is two words – music and business – and while you’re on stage performing your music, you gotta have somebody watching your back to make sure your business isn’t walking out the door.”
A.J.: “At an awards show, right before going on stage, Robbie Williams (former Take That member) said to us, ‘Let me tell you guys a little something: Be true to yourself, never lose sight of what you have, and be aware that it can be gone tomorrow you never know when it could be over.’”
Nick: “Bryan Adams told us we should keep going in the same way we are and not change just because other people tell us to,” Nick revealed in a BIG! article. “He said the most important thing in life is doing what you believe in yourself. Bryan was young when he started, so he should know.”
DO ANY OF THE BAKSTREET BOYS HAVE A SECRET?
A.J.: “I’d like to do a movie with either Geena Davis or Dustin Hoffman,” he told Teen Beat. “And to (play) a bad guy. I would love to be the villain more! I mean, the good guys win, but the villains are the ones everyone likes.”
IF YOU HAD THREE WISHES WHAT WOULD THEY BE?
Brian: “I would wish for lifelong health for me and my family, success in life, and beautiful wife and family,” he told a Musique Plus reporter when they appeared in Canada.
Howie: “Since we’ve traveled all around the world and seen many countries and new faces and new places, I would wish for world peace, seeing everyone live life to the fullest, no hunger, no poverty. That would definitely be my first wish. My second would be to be able to have my family with me everywhere in life. And my third (would be) just to be successful with the Backsreet boys and us to continue the rest of our lives together.”
Kevin: “A long, long, happy career in the music business because I love music and without music I don’t know what I’d do. I’d like to have a nice family, so I’d wish for a nice wife and family someday. And, uh, just health, good health.”
A.J.: “I wish I could own McDonald’ (laughs). No – I wish for the knowledge to press on and be as successful as I can with these four guys, till death do us apart. I wish for a long, long life of heath with my family, to support my family and make sure that they can have their dreams fulfilled, as well as mine. And to keep on doing what I do best and to never quit.”
Nick: “I wish we could have great success with this group, just like the other guys said. I wish I had a long life. And last, but not least, I’d like to say (that) we’ve been around the world and we’ve seen things from bad to good, and just wish for world peace.”
WHAT’S YOUR FIRST MEMORY?
Nick: “Most of my good memories are since I moved to Florida,” he told Live & Kicking. “But I do remember falling out of a tree when I was living upstate New York. I was really, really young, and hiding from my sister B.J., who was playing on the swing. I lost balance, fell and hit my head on the bottom of the tree. I cried real bad!”
WHAT’S THE MOST IMPOTANT THING YOUR PARENTS HAVE TAUGHT YOU?
Howie: “To be honest, to be truthful to myself and to the people out there,” Howie revealed in an online chat. “And that there’s nothing we can’t accomplish in this lifetime, that we should just go for our dreams.”
WHEN YOU’RE ON THE ROAD DO YOU SHARE HOTEL ROOMS?
Howie: “We used to – until we started pulling eachother’s hair out,” he laughingly told a SuperTeen reporter in June 1997 when the BSB was in Los Angeles to film the video “As Long As You Love Me.” “No, we’ve gotten to the point that we’ve made a little bit of money, so now we can finally afford our own rooms. It’s good. We’re with each other 24-7, so we sometimes need just a little bit of time just for ourselves.”
WHAT’S THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING ON THE ROAD?
Brian: “It’s being away from home and not having a girlfriend,” he told BIG! “We don’t get time to meet girls, chat with them, and then go out on a date. It takes me a while to get to know a girl, so it’s really hard. Our schedule is so busy that I can’t find time to date!
Nick: “I miss my brother and sisters,” Nick told BOP!
Kevin: “I like trying foods from different places,” he told Smash Hits. “But after a while I miss some good American food.”
A.J.: “You’ll be in one city in the U.S., and you have to fly to Spain for one day,” he told a Teen Beat reporter. “You don’t get enough sleep.”
Howie: “You get jet lag a lot,” he told Teen Beat. “Sometimes, when you finally catch up, you take off again, so your body never gets balanced.”
WHY DO YOU THINK YOUMADE IT BIG IN EUROPE BEFORE AMERICA?
Howie: “America just wasn’t ready for us,” he told USA Today. “Rap and Hootie and Blowfish were really big. We decided to take advantage of Europe. America is the final frontier. It’s our home country and it’s very important. We took a backward approach. This is the cake. All the rest is icing.”
Brian: “It’s a bit easier in Europe,” he told a press conference. “(In Europe) there is a lot more mixed taste in music.” And to a Scholastic magazine’s writer he explained, “Breaking in the U.S. has a lot to do with timing. When we first released ‘We’ve Got It Goin’ On’ in September of 1995, which was over two years ago, the music scene was very alternative… When we came out, pop music wasn’t really very strong. There was also a lot of heavy R & B and rap – Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr.Dre. Now you have the Spice Girls and Hanson – it does open a lot of doors for the music scene to come back around. ‘Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)’ was our forth single off our European album and it was our first number one hit… I think a lot of success comes from keeping things simple. ‘Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)’ is so simple to sing a long to, it’s a radio – loved song!”
Kevin: “I think the fact that it happened everywhere else first was good for us,” he told a Scholastic magazine’s writer. “I think it prepared us a little for what it was like to be in the limelight, and do interviews and TV shows. I think it helped us grow a lot, and I think it improved what we do. I’m actually glad it happened overseas first.”
DO YOU HAVE A GROUP RITUAL BEFORE YOU GO ON STAGE?
Brian: “We have a group prayer – We all join hands and have a prayer,” he told Teen Beat. “It’s more or less a focusing point, with us saying, mentally, what we have to go out there and accomplish, what we have to do. We pray for safety, that no on in the audience gets hurt or falls, because when you’re dealing with a lot of people, sometimes it gets out of hand.”
A.J.: “We usually sit and eat dinner together and talk about all the important details,” he said at a press conference. “Then (we) change together and put on a little powder, if it’s necessary to hide a small flaw. About an hour before we go on stage, we warm up our voices and bodies. There was this one time, when we didn’t have to warm up first, and after the show, we were really sore. So that’s very important. But the most important thing is our ‘group pray.’ We don’t go on stage unless we’ve done it… We thank god for giving us yet another day, and for (allowing) us to do what we so desire.”
Kevin: “We do a lot of a cappella singing together and warm up about thirty minutes before we go on stage.”
WHO’S THE BIGGEST SCAREDY – CAT OF THE GROUP?
Howie: “People always jump on me and I’m like ‘Ahhhh.’ I’m always jumpy, but not so much that I’m scared of the dark,’ he told BIG! magazine. “Brian’s scared of heights so he doesn’t like going on roller coaster rides – but he’s no scaredy-cat.”
Nick: “I’m always scared on planes,” he told Live & Kicking. “I hate flying. I think I get better the more often I fly though. None of the others get scared, but they don’t try to help. They just ignore me.”
Brian: “Nick is scared of the dark!” he told TV Hits. “If we’ve been to see a scary movie or something, and we’re sharing a room, if the lights are off when we walk in, he’s like (whispering) ‘It’s dark in here, isn’t it?’ And he’s not being funny or anything. He means it!”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU ALWAYS BRING ON THE ROAD WITH YOU?
Kevin: “I always bring pictures of my family,” Kevin told a Teen Beat reporter. “My father, my mother, my brothers, and my god baby. I don’t really bring any goo luck charms, not really.”
A.J.: “I used to bring my blanket – the blanket I had for fourteen years! I went to a hotel in North Carolina and I think the maid thought it was a rag – because it looked like a rag – and threw it away!”
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