Baby You're a Star (6 page)

By the early 1990s, Louis knew there was a chance he could cut it as a manager in the cut throat business of pop music. He had already come so close. He had the drive and the commitment to make it work. All he needed now was a good idea.

6

BOYZONE

“Louis would appear in your office because he knew everybody, he didn’t need an appointment, he just arrived. He was sit-ting there one day and he said ‘I’ve got this great idea. I have two journalists on board already’.”

Although Paul Keogh is speaking on the telephone, you can sense that he is smiling as he remembers Louis announcing his “great idea”.

It was late 1993 and the managing director of Poly-gram Ireland was as amused as everyone else in the music industry when Louis declared he was forming a new Irish boyband to compete directly with Take That.

“Everybody knew him at that stage. He wasn’t that successful. He was the guy going around bitching about rock bands. That’s how most people would remember him, giving out about Hothouse Flowers.”

Louis was sneered at when he first came up with the idea. It’s not hard to see why. He was a struggling agent, who had managed a few Eurovision acts, and who had failed to make any serious money after more than twenty years in the business. He admits himself he was penniless in 1993. He was perceived as soft, too soft to successfully create and manage a boyband.

There were other hurdles for him to overcome. Ireland was known for producing some of the best creative and successful rock acts in the world. Ireland didn’t produce pop boybands. But Louis was entran-ced by the idea and was openly passionate about taking on Take That.

Working in his favour was a huge network of media contacts. Had he not been broke, and had he not cul-tivated influential journalists as friends, Boyzone might never have happened.

He came up with the idea after watching a concert by East 17 staged at the Point Theatre in Dublin, and had come away unimpressed, and surprised that such a major pop act mimed so much. Shortly afterwards, he went to see Take That, also at the Point.

“I thought Take That were absolutely great,” says Louis. “It was a great show and I liked Gary Barlow. He was the star for me, and if I had been offered Gary or Robbie, I would have taken Gary, because I thought the guy was brilliant. I was a fan of his and I thought they put on an amazing show. I was really excited that night at the Point.”

After thinking about the concert and listening to their records, he came to the conclusion that boybands were more an overall entertainment package than a collection of singers. He was inspired by the notion of creating a band made up of distinct characters, each of whom would appeal to a different audience, and not all of whom had to be strong singers. He began to mull over the possibility of setting up an Irish boyband. The idea became a preoccupation, and soon began to con-sume all his energy. He was determined to assess the viability of his idea.

By his own admission, he was afraid of defeat. “Things were not good for me at the time,” he says. “I remember telling these journalists I was thinking of doing a boyband. I was very unsure about it. I was very afraid of it. I didn’t want to fall and I didn’t have any money. The journalists wrote about it and my phone started ringing and that was it. I couldn’t turn back.”

In November 1993, Louis’ friends in the newspapers wrote stories flagging the auditions. The free publicity worked. Over 300 young men arrived for the open aud-itions for Louis’ boyband. The auditions were held at the Ormond Centre, a giant warehouse situated on Dublin’s Ormond Quay, overlooking the river Liffey. Among those who turned up to try out for the new band were singers, dancers, musicians and actors.

The auditions were time-consuming and most of those who turned up did not have the necessary looks or talent. Louis asked each auditionee to sing a song and dance to the Right Said Fred song
I’m Too Sexy
. Louis weeded out about 50 who were passable and asked them to come back a week later.

“Ronan came in, Stephen came in. I knew Ronan had something. He just sold himself to me almost imme-diately. He was chirpy, happy and he looked the part. He was all eager beaver. So I knew we had him. He sang
Father and Son
at the auditions.

“Stephen was ringing me all the time wanting to be in the band. He was really keen. He sent me a brilliant CV, brilliant pictures of himself. And he was just great on the night, really chirpy. We basically put the band around them.”

After another round of singing and dancing, he compiled a short-list of 10 and invited them to audition for a third and final time. Of the 10, he chose six: Keith Duffy, Stephen Gately, Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Richard Rock, and Mark Walton. Louis had found the boys, but now he had to make them into a band. Before embarking on this project, he decided to ride out the mini-wave of publicity the auditions had generated and wangled the act a spot on the
Late Late Show
, Ireland’s most watched programme.

“They were on the
Late Late Show
that Friday, which was a real chance. Who else would have got that chance? So they were in studio, dancing, making pricks of themselves to the Irish public, which every-body laughs at now, but at least they were on the TV,” he adds.

Those five minutes on air have haunted Boyzone ever since. The band hadn’t rehearsed, and had no songs prepared. Instead, they danced to a backing track. What started off as a loose routine degenerated into random lunging and gyrating. Shane Lynch grabbed his crotch repeatedly. Stephen Gately appear-ed to be limboing under an invisible bar. Ronan Keat-ing grinned maniacally. Keith Duffy showed off an oiled torso clad in nothing more than a pair of red braces. They were breathtakingly awful.

The show’s host Gay Byrne thanked Boyzone for their “act” and wished them well, quite clearly believing he would never see or hear of them again.

Louis believed the benefits of the publicity far outweighed the embarrassment. People were now talking about Boyzone. To their credit, most of the band’s members had some stage experience. Stephen Gately had five years worth of vocal and dance training, and had done some acting and modelling. Ronan Keating had been in a band called Nameste, which won the £1000 first prize in a local talent competition. Keith Duffy had played drums in two bands, and had worked as a strippogram. Mikey Graham, who joined the group belatedly, had gone to singing, dancing and acting classes as a child, and had aspirations of becoming a songwriter.

Graham’s induction into Boyzone was precipitated by the loss of two of its original members, Richie Rock and Mark Walton. Rock, the son of showband singer Dickie Rock, was asked to leave after just two months.

Mark Walton also left at the same time. “Mark Walton and Richard Rock we had to drop. Mark Walton, because he didn’t fit in. He was a nice guy. The reason I put Richard in the band is because I thought Dickie was a household name, a man that came from nothing and made an awful lot of himself,” says Louis.

“Dickie came and talked to me twice about it, asking me to give Richard another chance. I think Dickie is a great man, but his son at the time, just didn’t fit in.”

Louis believed it was imperative that the band worked well together and had no compunction in ask-ing the two boys to leave.

“The problem is, the other four are going to suffer. It’s their careers. You only get one chance at this. It’s like having a football team. If somebody is not right, they’re going to contaminate it. It’s like having a bad apple in a box of apples. You have to get rid of it. We had to do that. You’re only as good as your weakest link.”

Mickey Graham, having been the “best of the rest” at the auditions, was chosen as the replacement member. At 20 years of age, he was the oldest of the band members. Keith Duffy was 18, both Shane Lynch and Stephen Gately were 17, and Ronan Keating was only 16.

In the beginning, the group was not particularly dedicated to their new career as pop stars. Louis frequently left them to their own devices. Sometimes, they’d rehearse for 20 minutes and head straight to the pub.

Louis was busy elsewhere, trying to get Boyzone off the ground. He had arranged a photo session with a photographer and was touting the resulting photo-graphs around to everyone he could think of in the music industry. Behind his back he was being ridiculed.

“Everyone was laughing at me. There were all these trendy rock managers. They were all falling around laughing at me, I remember distinctly, as were people at the record companies, saying ‘here he goes again’. They didn’t see the market,” says Louis.

One of those to show an interest, having seen the photographs was Tom Watkins, at the time manager of East 17, and an influential figure in the UK music industry.

Watkins met Louis and the band in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin for tentative talks about getting involved.

“I went over and saw him and the boys and I thought they were all right. It’s difficult to get a bunch together. I don’t think Ronan necessarily shone at that particular moment, apart from that Louis knew he had a great voice.”

Although Watkins recognised that Boyzone could have a future, he did not get involved.

“I’d done Bros, I’d done East 17,” he says. “I really didn’t want to get involved in another boyband unless they paid me a fortune. There would have to be some kind of incentive to want to do it and I said to Louis, ‘Well, if you pay me this, I’ll do it’, and it was just a way of saying No, in a kind way. I went onto to give them all sorts of support spots when they were launching their career and Louis and I would continue on the phone nattering about tactics and politics, and structure, and manipulating record companies. I think that there was no arrogance on my part not to get involved, but I had just tired of that whole boyband thing.”

Louis recalls a different story. “He (Watkins) wanted to do a deal. He wanted to control the whole thing but I wouldn’t let him,” says Louis.

Boyzone were not to have the heavyweight backing of Watkins but Louis persisted with other leads and persuaded Paul Keogh of Polygram to sign a three single distribution deal.

Louis has said it was extremely difficult to get any record label to Boyzone but Keogh insists it wasn’t like that. “That’s a myth, that Louis had to work really hard to get the record company to sign them. I put up quarter of a million pounds very quickly, so there was no struggle from Louis’ point of view.” Keogh has since left the music industry and runs the international marketing division of JCB in the UK.

“Keogh basically signed the band because he liked the look and he took a chance,” says Louis. “He was one of those guys who would take a chance. He was one of the few Irish record company guys that wanted to be successful, didn’t just want to keep the local stuff on the shelves. Most of the other majors are just warehouse managers. They almost don’t want to have a local act because then they have to work it. It means their bosses in England are watching them.

“He took a chance. Mind you, we did pay for the recording of the record. But he did package it very well because he was quite a good marketing guy. He had come from Budweiser. He liked the pictures and he took a chance and he said it would be a bit fun,” says Louis.

Now he had a distribution deal but he had to find a suitable song, and a producer willing to record it. Ever a fan of pop hits from the past, he decided Boyzone should record a cover version of the Detroit Spinners’ song
Working My Way Back To You
. This was the song that had knocked Johnny Logan from the No. 1 spot in Ireland back in 1980, which was possibly why it had stuck in Louis’ mind.

Few in the music industry took him seriously. Producers, in particular, ignored his calls seeking help.

“I was ringing promoters and record companies. Simon Cowell wouldn’t take my calls. I was ringing every first, second, third-rate producer. Nobody would talk to me. I couldn’t get anybody. I had no money. All I had was an office,” Louis recalls.

The uncertainty he faced became even more disquieting in those weeks. Word quickly spread that Louis was desperate. From then on, the industry was even more reluctant to entertain him. So far, he had failed to make any impact at all. In his calmer moments, he would talk to a few close friends and anxiously recount the tribulations he was facing. It was an unnerving time where his confidence was tested.

He was still determined and kept calling any contact willing to take his telephone calls. He was terror stricken at the thoughts of failing. Eventually, he was directed to a producer called Ian Levine at the Tropicana recording studio in London. Levine agreed to cut the record.

This was great news but there was a snag. The recording would cost £10,000, which Louis, who was virtually penniless, didn’t have. Louis did not know what to do next. He turned to John Reynolds, the owner of the POD nightclub in Dublin, who he had known for about ten years. Reynolds used to work for his father who owned a ballroom in Co. Longford.

“I used to book Louis’ bands over the phone but I actually never met him,” says Reynolds. “I didn’t meet him for about six years. Then, when I was in college in Dublin, I used to call into his office almost every evening on my way home. I used to learn more in his office than I did all day in Trinity College.”

By early 1994, Louis and Reynolds were good friends. The two were part of a close-knit circle, who confided and trusted in one another. Reynolds remembers that Louis had talked at length about his idea for the previous six months.

“I actually, in a very strange way, thought he would do it,” says Reynolds.

“One day I was in Café Java on Leeson St. with my then-girlfriend, and Louis rang me and said ‘Where are you? Café Java? I’m going to come down to you and ask you something.’ So, he came down and he said, ‘You know, we’ve done the auditions and the guys were on the
Late Late Show
, but we can’t get a record deal. Do you want to be involved?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to’.

“He said, ‘John, I’ll take care of all the music and you take care of the business stuff, and we’re going to need money to shoot a video and record a video.’ That’s basically how it started. There wasn’t any highfalutin negotiation. I think it lasted maybe ten minutes. The following Friday, Ronan picked up money from me and they recorded the first single in the UK and the rest, as they say, is history.”