Word: pearlman
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...recent afternoon at the O-Town complex, C-Note is huddled inside a sound room harmonizing with a vocal coach, while down the hall, Take Five, a younger-than-'N Sync quintet for pre-preteen fans, is practicing footwork with a choreographer. Pearlman comes in to take a look, and the kids stop to give him hugs and shake his hand. "What's up, Big Poppa?" one of them asks (they actually call him that). "Did you get a haircut, man?" "You look like Tom Cruise," jokes another. Big Poppa beams...
...park shows. The O-Town kids are paid $500 to $1,000 a week until their groups take off and they start making real money. Or not. A reporter jokes that if things don't work out, the boys can always go to work for the Chippendales chain, which Pearlman owns. "Or make pizza," Big Poppa adds. He owns a pizza restaurant too. Meantime, he tries to keep his young charges from the well-known temptations, drugs and whatnot, that come with the music business. "Big Poppa's watching," he says. Like a rich uncle, Big Poppa has been known...
Assembling the right group is a delicate business; as with any ritualized art form, from Kabuki to slasher films, one must follow rules but with a whiff of originality. Pearlman and his staff look at everything--the proportionate size of group members, their height, their weight, their hair color, their personalities onstage and off. Who will be the prankster, like 'N Sync's Chris Patrick? Who will be the lead sex symbol, like Backstreet's Nick Carter? Who can make a credible dangerous guy, the one who dresses more "urban" and maybe even has tattoos...
...Pearlman, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., first made his mark on the world by building Trans Continental Airlines, which leases jets to such celebrities as Michael Jackson and Madonna. In the early '90s, when New Kids rented one of his planes, Pearlman was surprised that a kiddie pop group could afford it. When his cousin Art Garfunkel explained that an act like New Kids could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, the seeds of Trans Continental Entertainment were planted...
Over the course of seven months in 1993, Pearlman found the five members of Backstreet Boys through a series of auditions, chance meetings and familial connections (Kevin Richardson, the boy-next-door one, and Brian Littrell, the older GQ-y one, are cousins). All told, Pearlman pumped $1 million into the group and $2 million more into an entertainment-company infrastructure to support its members before they signed with Jive Records. At the time, alternative rock was still big, the New Kids were played out, and industry wisdom was that bubble gum was over. But all things must return...