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Reproduced from Independent 26 July, 1997
Whatever happened to ... boy bands
by Jennifer Rodger
Monkeying around
In 1967, The Monkees told a press conference: "There comes a time when you
have to draw the line as a man. We're being passed off as something we
aren't." "The fabricated four" persuaded their management to let them play
their own instruments.
Twenty years later, ex-Take That singer Robbie Williams's explosive nature
has got him into trouble. He is being sued by his ex-manager for breach of
contract. Allegedly the lad strayed from the boy-band requirement - the
sort of boy a girl could take home to her mum for tea.
I'm a believer
The Monkees were thought up by a television producer who wanted a TV comedy
based on a rock band. Having set out his requirements, 500 applicants were
interviewed. The rest is history: gold records, The New Monkees spin-off
show, the reunion gig this year. Admitting to not playing on the records
didn't do The Monkees much harm, but it altered the pop industry. The
importance of marketing and image was fully realised. When The Bay City
Rollers burst on the scene, they hadn't even released a single but were
introduced to 10,000 girls through a mailing list supplied by a teen-girl
magazine.
The Hit Factory
By the Eighties, Stock, Aitken and Waterman took pop firmly into their
business hands. With their insistent beats and vocals, their songs
infiltrated your brain and the pop charts. Anyone with the right face could
front the music, like the tea-boy Rick Astley, the East End hairdressers
Mel and Kim and soap stars such as the Minogue sisters.
Gaps in the market were filled. Bros targeted yuppies' aspirational whinges
of "When Will I Be Famous", Wham! represented the fun-loving boys from the
DSS, E17 were the white homeboys from Walthamstow and Take That the five
types of lads who were somebody for everybody.
Take That
By now jokes like: "Knock, knock. Who's there? Bros. Bros who? That's
showbiz," illustrated that the game was up. Bros had 10 Top 10 hits but
then went bankrupt and fell into obscurity. George Michael faced three
years of silence and £3m in a bid to be released from his record label and
forge away from the teeny-bopper image. East17's Brian Harvey and Take
That's Robbie Williams were similarly dismissed for behaviour inappropriate
to their image.
Maybe today the formula has changed with The Spice Girls. Ben Myers, a
writer at Melody Maker, says: "The Spice Girls are obviously manufactured,
but this is accepted. It may be that after 10 years of boy bands, we are
just glad to have a band that will mention politics."
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