Friday, March 24, 2017

Four For Friday - Drugs And A Yoko - The End Of A Boy Band - Part One

If I had to guess at how many bands I have seen play over the years, it would be in the thousands. Probably not ten thousand, but definitely getting into the upper ranges of four digits. How many of those bands are still together? Maybe 100. OK it could be 200. A lot of the bands I saw were club bands trying to make it big, so maybe they are still together and still playing clubs somewhere. Most just die of natural causes. I know everyone likes to think there are always these nasty fights. Sure, there are those, but most are because the band is going nowhere and someone needs to get a job so someone else comes in and that person gets along with someone else in the band so they break off and do their own thing, leaving the others to do their own thing. You want to make a band last? Start a cover band. Those things last forever. Oh, and they also pay the best. If you can look and sound the part, you will be making six figures a year easy. Oh, and you can make it until you decide you don't want to do it anymore. Cover bands are always popular because you are singing songs every person in the audience knows so they are having a good time. When the audience has a good time they remember it and tell their friends. Anyway, this is not about a cover band. It is about a band that showed a lot of promise. A boy band that by all rights should still be at it today. They had a couple of things going against them. Drugs and a Yoko. A proper, break up the band Yoko.

When I was called, it was by an insurance company. The management company of the band was trying to buy insurance. Why? To protect themselves if they booked a tour and the band split. Whether or not the management company was trying to overstate how much they were going to earn from a tour (they were) was not really relevant. The insurance company could make sure they made their own money. Their big issues was whether the band was even together. They initially thought this whole thing might have just been a scam to make money off the breakup of a band. Schedule some shows. The band breaks up and everyone walks away with a huge pile of money for just pretending they like each other for a few days. Even that would be ok for the company, but they wanted to know so they could charge an outrageous premium and then sell the policy to some other company. They wanted me to go see the band. Meet with everyone and figure out what was really going on.

I knew who the band was before I met them. I had heard most of their songs, but they were a boy band and I didn't really care if they stayed or if they went. There would be someone else to take their place. The band was in a stage I like to call breakup make up. It is the same as a relationship you have been in with someone for a long time. You are so used to being with that person that it is tough to just go cold turkey. Things are much easier if you stay with the person rather than leave. You know what happens if you stay and leaving is the unknown. The unknown is always hard. Well, hard unless you have someone on the side waiting. If one of the people in the relationship is really anxious to be moving on, chances are good, no matter how much they deny it, that they have someone on the side just waiting. You go to call them a week later and they have already found someone. Hell, they might have already moved in with the other person.

If there is not another person, then things take a different path. You might stop by to pick up some of your things. Some ex sex occurs. There are probably texts or other missives where you tell each other how much you miss the other. There are some short lived reunions and then they sputter it out. The intervals between these reunions becomes greater until one day, you both have moved on.

There is nothing different between that and a relationship breakup. You have the member of a band that has already been seeing another record company or manager. Perhaps there is talk of an acting career but the music would get in the way. Boom, one day they are there and the next they have a solo record coming out in a week and the person can't remember if your name is Rance or Lance.

The band I was dealing with had a little bit of both, The nominal front person of the group wanted to do other things. Had done other things. Thought they were better than everyone else in the group and he was being held back. Why did he think these things? People who wanted to make money off him and his Yoko. A Yoko who had dreams of her own. Big dreams. She really had wanted to be a Bachelorette but couldn't even land a spot on The Bachelor. She was hoping for a reality show and was ticked off she missed the band's brief foray into reality hood. She dreamed of being a singer and is still to this day spending vast sums of money which will never be seen again on a career which will go nowhere. Maybe she thought if he was a solo star she could get the reality show and a singing career while always being in every pap photo. She encouraged his acting career because she thought he could be a huge star and then get her roles or introduce her to people who could get her roles. She HATED the other members of the band and they hated her. Remember how much Rachel McAdams hates SJP's character in Family Stone? Yeah, that is nothing compared to this.

Drug use was rampant among the band and hangers on. The only time they were not doing drugs is when they were boozing. Although, often there was boozing with drugs. The thing with the band was they had not been together all that long. We are talking three years or so. They didn't have piles of money saved up. They needed to stay together and go on tour or at least pretend they were going to so they all could get paid.

Coming up on Monday, go with me as I travel to three cities with these f**kers and get drunk with some guys from college who I think now work for a drug cartel.


36 comments:

  1. MontanaMarriott3:16 AM

    I love these old long bi's they remind me of CDAN in it's heyday. I especially love it when Enty reveals them to us on "Reveal Day".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah3:17 AM

    Who is enty;)???

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tricia133:22 AM

    West life-Brian McFadden/Vogue Williams(his ex wife)?
    Doesn't say FB but they sisnanbed in 2012(year they married)

    ReplyDelete
  4. sandybrook3:23 AM

    Just to throw out a guess 98 Degrees

    ReplyDelete
  5. Salaam3:24 AM

    O-town?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tricia133:32 AM

    * disbanded

    ReplyDelete
  7. Just4Fun3:40 AM

    I don't think O-Town & the Bachelor overlapped. Bachelor first aired in 2002

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ms. Anne Thrope3:42 AM

    O-Town is still around & touring. They're playing a show near me I read yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ms. Anne Thrope3:43 AM

    I did a Scooby Doo "HUH?" when I read they were still around lol

    ReplyDelete
  10. TheDude4:20 AM

    Band is The Wanted. Had a brief E reality show documenting their lives during album recording. The member in question Tom Parker.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Jessica4:21 AM

    Willa Ford, Nick Carter, and the Backstreet Boys. Did they do a reality show? I know Carter did with his family.

    I remember her horrible, "I wanna bad", desperate. Looks like she does Lifetime movies now.

    ReplyDelete
  12. TheDude4:22 AM

    Max George. Not Tom Parker.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Salaam4:43 AM

    And O-Town first disbanded in late 2003, so there were a couple of seasons of overlap

    ReplyDelete
  14. Guesser4:52 AM

    The Backstreet Boys are performing in Vegas even now. He does say they aren't together now. So far, I like the Wanted guess, they just disappeared.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Guesser4:58 AM

    Enty is the nick name for the blogger who writes this. He uses it on his Twitter and email,short for entertainment lawyer. If someone calls him Entern, it means the writer is believed to be a ghost writer, which, while he denies he has them we who have been here forever know better.

    ReplyDelete
  16. XRaySpex5:03 AM

    Can you please get it into your head that Yoko did NOT break up the Beatles? Paul & John did. I'm so fucking SICK of that sexist, misogynist crap.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Guesser5:07 AM

    I suppose Enty means licence cover bands, most of the cover bands I know of get steady work, but they have to keep their day jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  18. SarahS5:07 AM

    100%%%%%%%%%%%%%%!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  19. 8====D KermitGosnellKnobjob5:57 AM

    I agree, yoko is disgusting on her own, and disbanding the beatles would be one of the only good things she has ever done in her life.

    ReplyDelete
  20. There was actually a blind item about this website where the writer said it was currently on the 3rd enty and he was trying to sell it too.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Daryn6:31 AM

    He left them in 2004

    ReplyDelete
  22. SindlerColl7:38 AM

    You can't make it as a cover band playing in bars. But if you dress nice, play hits and have a great singer you can start getting wedding and party gigs and make a lot of money

    ReplyDelete
  23. This made me think of a childhood friend of my younger brother, Bill. Rudy Childs produced a documentary in 2012 about band from Maryland that 'almost' made it big.
    It's called: 'Tension: 25 Years Underground' by Rudy Childs.
    He won an award for it.
    It's on YouTube I believe.
    It's a well done documentary about how they started and why they fell apart.

    ReplyDelete
  24. First thought was The Wanted. They had that reality show where they moved to LA, and one of the member's bossy girlfriend moved in with them. She was arrogant and annoying.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Max started dating some model after the show ended, then she later dumped him, probably because he was going nowhere careerwise. This fits.

    ReplyDelete
  26. texasrose9:25 AM

    The Backdoor Boys are still together.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I never seem to guess the lengthy ones but The Wanted was my first guess. Didn't one of them go out with L.Lohan?

    ReplyDelete
  28. Shortie10:39 AM

    Too long, not interesting enough to warrant this much verbiage.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Can't disagree with your stance, but you can't deny she's a crafty one and she DID get into John's head.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Never heard of the Wanted but for some reason I automatically assumed this was about One Direction

    ReplyDelete
  31. Scandi Sanskrit3:38 PM

    Enty, if you've seen 1,000+ bands play in your lifetime, you'd see a band once a week for nearly 20 years straight (there are ~52 weeks in a year). So you saw a concert (or at least a band perform at a studio) how many times per week on average? FFS. What are you smoking?!

    ReplyDelete
  32. TinyTot3:56 PM

    The Wanted/ Max George and Amy Willerton.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Star*ucks12:04 AM

    The wanted max was with lilo and nina agdal before they broke up

    ReplyDelete
  34. I worked in the music industry for many, many years. There were years when I went out six nights a week, seeing multiple bands play (one club at 9, with two bands, then another club at 12, with another couple of bands). And then there are the dog and pony shows by labels, where you could see all the bands play a couple of songs each. So, yeah, I believe someone in the industry could see that many shows.
    Leave Yoko alone. Paul McCartney wanted out of it. Nobody made him do anything he was not interested in doing. So did John. Things changed.
    and finally, this story was a tad long winded and not clutch the pearls worthy.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Scallywag7035:04 PM

    Siva Kaneswaran and Nareesha McCaffrey.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Enty said it's s foreign born band so it must be The Wanted. The youngest one has the most success & seems to be the only normal one. And btw Yoko did cause the breakup if the Beatles. She was a conniving evil woman who stalked John & showed up st his house when his wife Cynthia. was away visiting relatives with Julian. Yoko did lots of drugs with John & coerced him into leaving his wife & child. She's a deplorable person. She wouldn't even help John's 2 younger sisters after his death & wouldn't give them the house they grew up in. She tried to keep Julian's inheritance from him as well. She's disgusting.

    ReplyDelete