Summer 1998: 5 are prime of the album charts and have simply launched the video for his or her new single “Everybody Get Up”. In it, pupils insurgent in opposition to a boring examination; they whack their rulers in unison in opposition to desks to summon the 5 unhealthy boys each instructor and mom of ladies must be scared of. “Ha ha!” Jason “J” Brown laughs as he leads the boys in, carrying a hat to point out he’s the eldest. Spiky-haired, chain-wearing Abz Love, the naughtiest one, turns off the facility to the room. Then in comes the blond one, Ritchie Neville, together with gobby Scott Robinson (who throws an evil little grin to the opposite lads) and baby-faced Sean Conlon (clearly the delicate one). Every has a unique function inside Britain’s greatest new boyband, however their joint identification has been crafted to enchantment to teen ladies for whom the opposite boybands appear too moist, too girly. Three years and 11 High 10 singles later, it’ll all be over.
At present, the grown grownup members of boyband 5 are working an impromptu therapeutic massage parlour. Scott stands over a seated and blissed-out Ritchie, giving his shoulders a kneading. This has piqued the curiosity of Abz, who desires in on the motion; Scott dutifully obliges. J and Sean watch on amused. “We don’t want extra stress,” Scott will say, nearly sternly, in his gruff Essex accent in a couple of minutes’ time. Regardless of their mischievous picture, this was a really stressed-out boyband – in poor health, the truth is, from the 24/7 pressurised schedule of travelling the world selling hits just like the optimistic jam “Keep on Movin’” and rap-rock Queen collaboration cowl “We Will Rock You” to insatiable followers. In the event that they’re doing this once more as a manband, it must be completely different.
They’re now not of their teenagers, however their forties – now in age-appropriate smart-casual black outfits (plus what looks like emotional armour within the type of immovable darkish sun shades for Abz). As Sean places it, “We’ve obtained communication now; earlier than it was all lad banter.” Only a few months in the past, I watched 5 members within the current BBC docu-series Boybands Without end, which chronicled the darkish facet of being in a Nineteen Nineties British boyband. It’s odd, given Scott’s tears on the present over his appalling expertise of fame, to have them right here sitting round a boardroom desk in an workplace simply off Oxford Avenue, grinning and cracking jokes. There’s a boyish hyperactivity within the air, a definite disbelief that each one 5 of them are in the identical room once more to advertise their band’s reunion tour.
Earlier than I can ask my first correct query, dialog descends into evaluating notes on whose fault it was that they broke up in 2001. A impartial assertion on the time gently mentioned the band may “now not do justice” to their followers or one another. In actuality, they had been all having a psychological well being disaster on some stage or one other. In Boybands Without end, the reason for the break up is wrongly framed as being a results of Scott’s breakdown, although Scott says he’s unbothered by the edit as a result of he’s at all times felt deeply chargeable for the breakup. Sean leans over the desk to extra clearly face Scott, who’s sitting subsequent to him, and tells him that that’s loopy, as a result of he has at all times carried the blame on his shoulders. “I used to be the primary one to fall,” Sean insists. “After we did [chart-topping 2001 single] ‘Let’s Dance’, we had been originally of the promotion of the album [Kingsize] and it’s not a great time to have a breakdown from the file firm’s standpoint in any respect.” All of them chortle grimly.
Sean remembers it fairly vividly. “J got here as much as me and he mentioned, ‘You’re not proper mate. I actually suppose you’ll want to get some assist.’ I don’t need to get emotional…” his eyes begin to water throughout this retelling, and Scott offers him a thumping pat on the again. After that intervention, Sean had a short break from the band to get counselling and their staff advised the world that he was resting up from glandular fever. The band needed to movie the “Let’s Dance” video with out him; a cardboard cut-out of Sean bobs up and down within the background.
Shortly after this, whereas Sean was absent, Scott marched into the file label’s workplace and obtained into an escalating bodily struggle with one in every of their staff who refused to let him give up the band, pinning him in opposition to a desk. Simon Cowell needed to intervene, practically punching Scott. Following that was a gathering between Scott and the band whereas they had been preparing for a High of the Pops efficiency; Scott had deliberate to inform his associates and bandmates he was going to go away. “You got here in and misplaced the plot, crying your eyes out – I imply that weeping the place somebody can’t really converse,” Ritchie says to Scott, performing the heaviness of these sobs. “Me and J went out within the hall and I mentioned, ‘It’s carried out, ain’t it?’ As a result of nothing is price that, it doesn’t matter what number of No 1s you get, it ain’t price that.”
However all 5 of them had been emotionally and mentally struggling. “We should always have had six months off,” says Ritchie. It’s a disgrace, J provides, that the business didn’t recognise they had been struggling and assist a hiatus; if that they had, they could have been in a position to have a for much longer profession. “It’s taken us 25 years – I’m not even joking – actually 25 years to have the ability to even get my head round it,” provides Ritchie.
“It’s nearly like we’ve been traumatised,” says Sean, as if popping out of a daze.
“No, we are traumatised,” says Ritchie, with a glance instantly at me.
What they’re traumatised from is price analyzing. Their younger lives modified in a single day in 1997 after they efficiently auditioned in an open-casting name for a boyband with “angle and edge”. They had been signed by Simon Cowell and RCA there after which. Their eclectic pop sound was a brand new mix of US hip hop, supplied by rappers J and Abz, and spikier boyband pop, crooned and sung by the opposite three. They had been thrown collectively to dwell in the identical home by their administration, however their ages meant that Sean, the youngest at simply 15, was cohabiting with J, who was about to show 21. (“So that provides you a gauge of the age [we were] and what was happening in the home – and we type of ran riot…” J says ominously, which I assume means informal intercourse and partying.)
5 had been immediately well-known, their debut album not simply No 1 within the UK however significantly profitable on a worldwide scale. Followers camped out throughout the madhouse, so the band felt consistently noticed; they’d typically do an “SAS job” and fake to be out, simply creeping round at midnight to get some “psychological headspace”, says Richie.
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It appears like the feminine consideration warped their younger minds with paranoia (bar Abz, who grins like a sated cat concerning the unending line of ladies: “It was good to me, and I loved the method”). On the very begin, the remainder of them beloved it, too. Nevertheless it rapidly turned tiresome once they craved regular life, with out being mobbed by followers; in a pre-internet period, they couldn’t even purchase their household items for Christmas. “It made me really feel actually bizarre as a result of I’d suppose all the opposite folks on the street had been considering, ‘Take a look at this fool, who does he suppose he’s?’” J says. Sean agrees, “You bought scared that folks thought you had been conceited.” Then Ritchie provides concerning the touching and grabbing: “I didn’t know if any person was overstepping – clearly sure boundaries, I did – but when any person’s taking the p***, I didn’t have a very good gauge of what that was.”
I went via the entire [experience] with continual insomnia, from about three months after all of it kicked off
5’s Jason ‘J’ Brown
I see how Scott turned the “principal one” in 5’s episode of the BBC sequence. He’s clearly the storyteller of the group, and goes into nice element recalling these incidents that without end altered his psyche. There was the event 5 had been in a Tokyo resort after mini-disc gamers had simply gone in the marketplace. Scott desperately wished one, in addition to the expertise of going into a store together with his personal cash and selecting it. He advised the 2 safety guards exterior his resort door that he was coming out to purchase one however they mentioned he needed to be accompanied by 5 bodyguards. Followers mobbed him and the bodyguards nearly instantly, ripping at their garments. “I am going into the store and I’m searching for a few minute after which the followers, they’re not making an attempt to be impolite, they’re not making an attempt to interrupt issues, however they’re so excited that they broke the store home windows to get to me. And the shopkeeper went, ‘Simply take it, simply take it!’ So I didn’t pay for it, after which I cried in my room as a result of I had stolen this factor. However I had been advised to steal it. And I simply sat there and I cried. And I went, ‘It’s not the one I wished.’ I cried myself to sleep.”
They’d consistently get up and never know which continent they had been on, having to look out the resort or automotive window for clues. J specifically suffered with this. “I went via the entire [experience] with continual insomnia, from about three months after all of it kicked off,” he remembers. “Most nights I used to be getting most three-and-a-half-hours’ sleep. Typically I’d go 4 or 5 days on an hour and a half, after which must rise up at 5 within the morning and movie a brand new video.” It had a diabolical compounding affect on his psychological, emotional and bodily well being.
The band is eager to impress on me that it wasn’t all doom and gloom; there have been moments on this slog that shone via, together with No 1 singles and taking part in Rock in Rio to an viewers of half one million folks. The subtext appears to be that the enjoyment got here from the band’s togetherness, away from the person members feeling alone within the insanity.
After the band broke up, Scott obtained married to his associate the very subsequent day, a straight life swap for stability together with his spouse and future household. The others fell aside with out that construction. “Jesus, straight after the band, for 3 years I used to be sat in a lounge, frozen, consuming an excessive amount of, utterly misplaced,” says Ritchie. “I used to say, ‘I really feel like I’m a rowing boat within the sea with no oars or sail.’” Sean compares their scenario to being in early retirement. “I had that at 20 years of age: I had some cash within the financial institution and sufficient to not work,” he says. “In your thoughts there was no Everest, as a result of no matter I do it’s not going to be greater or higher than 5. And also you’ve nonetheless obtained an ego and wish success at that age, so it’s a very troubling, conflicted time.”
What was distinctive about Abz’s scenario is that he was the one one who didn’t need the band to finish. His turbulent life after the break up is properly documented within the media: drug habit, isolation and paying for associates; chapter; suicidal ideation; going chilly turkey. “I assumed we went onerous within the band – I went rock and curler after the band… that life simply pulled me in,” he says.
5 tried to reunite a couple of instances to various levels of success. In 2020, when Scott, Ritchie and Sean obtained again collectively and went on This Morning, viewers made predictable jokes like, “They need to change their title to Three.” Clearly, it wanted to be a cultural second like this, wherein, they collectively insist, nobody is being dragged alongside, extra reluctant than the others; they’re all hungry for a correct second probability.
We internalised that angle, considering, ‘Oh, we’re probably not doing something significant, it’s not impacting anybody’s life, it doesn’t actually imply something, it’s not actual music.’
5’s Sean Conlon
It wasn’t till they had been approached by Louis Theroux’s manufacturing firm to make Boybands Without end that all of them began to contemplate what a reunion may appear to be. Scott booked an Airbnb and the members met, frolicked, shared some drinks and laughs, and determined the time was proper. Scott reached out to Simon Cowell concerning the bodily scuffle (no onerous emotions there, he insists) and far to their amusement, the man on the label that Scott fought with, Rob Wicks, is now their new supervisor.
Abz has been extra reserved for many of our interview, content material to let the others converse, however when he’s lastly nudged into speaking he focuses on the constructive, the current. “What I really feel like I need to say is how proud I’m of those guys and the way courageous they’re to place themselves into this atmosphere once more,” he says in his sturdy London accent.
They’ve reassessed their music – the identical music they used to apologise for within the pub when males approached them to ask, “Aren’t you these guys from that boyband?” or started singing “Carry on Movin’” to them. “The business’s angle in direction of this 90s period of pop was, ‘It’s bubblegum pop, it’s not going to final, it’s superficial,’ particularly after the wave of indie bands earlier than that,” explains Sean. “We internalised that angle, too, considering, ‘Oh, we’re probably not doing something significant, it’s not impacting anybody’s life, it doesn’t actually imply something, it’s not actual music.’ It additionally ties again to why we had been so overworked and pressured – due to that mindset. The main focus was on making as a lot cash as doable and shifting as rapidly as we may. On the time, nobody would have anticipated that, 25 years later, there would nonetheless be curiosity within the band and our music.”
Now any private embarrassment over their music has gone; all say they adore it and discover it joyful and distinctive. It’s made them view their followers in a totally completely different method as properly. “I can see that the followers are actually real, it did contact them,” Sean provides. “As a result of I was like, ‘Why are they going mad about that track when it’s not that nice?’”
Until Calvin Harris calls them up and asks in the event that they need to make a “summer season banger”, they’re in all probability not going to make new music. “Lots of instances, folks don’t need that, do they?” says J, pragmatically. “They need to hear all of the bangers they keep in mind.”
The main focus is solely on having essentially the most enjoyable as doable at reunion reveals they promise might be like an enormous faculty disco. “It’s concerning the hits, the tour, reconnecting,” lists Sean. Then Scott says, unironically, “Carry on Movin’.” One among them provides, “Tickets out now.” It’s been practically 1 / 4 of a century however they nonetheless keep in mind the sport that the pop machine requires – this time they’re ready to play it.
Tickets can be found now for 5’s ‘Keep on Movin’ 2025 Tour’ which begins this autumn
