OUR STORY 6 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 386.

Chapter Eleven

Souvenirs for

the Soul

The first time we went to South East Asia, recalls Mark, it was such absolute hysteria. We'd sold so many records there. Coast to Coast had taken over as the biggest album of all time in Indonesia. I think it toppled The Bodyguard by Whitney Houston. We were told at the time that the album had sold a million copies and that the black market was usually five to one, so that gives you an idea of how popular we were. As soon as we landed, there were thousands of fans at the airport and that was how it was until the minute we took off at the end of the trip. I loved Indonesia, it was such a beautiful country and the people were so warm and welcoming. The hysteria was something else, though. Bear in mind we'd only been signed just over two years and here we were on the other side of the world, having to helicopter out from the roof of our hotel to get away safely, flying off over the heads of the 5,000 fans camped out below. Strangely, one of the most memorable incidents there was to do with the police and security forces, rather than the fans. They were sharing the security duties between them and it was obvious to us that there was a lot of tension about who was actually in charge. At one particularly mad show, there were about 300 of each, so it was a big presence. Normally after those shows, we'd come offstage and get changed, maybe have a quick chat then head to the hotel. But this time the tour manager came straight over to us as we walked off and said, 'Quick, quick, get in the tour bus, quick!' We didn't know why, but jumped in anyway, leaving our crew to finish up. They said that after we'd left, the police had lined up on one side of the stadium, the security forces had lined up on the other side and basically they'd run at each other and had a massive scrap in the middle of the venue, this huge brawl. And these were the people in charge of keeping a lid on things! We got to meet local dignitaries, princes, kings, crazy stuff, all around the Far East. Perhaps the best night like that was when the Sultan of Brunei asked us to give a private show for him. He'd built an amphitheatre for Michael Jackson to do a gig and we were the next band to play afterwards. Hanging round with the Sultan's family was great fun. He had a personal bowling alley and fun park and we were given the keys, basically, to go on any ride we liked for as long as we liked. All his family were there and every one of them had a beautiful Porsche or Lamborghini or Ferrari, and they let us all have a race around in those. It was like a schoolkid's dream - amazing. And perhaps the best part of it was that alcohol was illegal, so we were just living off the buzz of it. I remember at the time I thought, What other job would enable you to do this? It was incredible. The hysteria for Westlife in that corner of the world hasn't really died down. One time we were back in Indonesia and towards the end of the dates I decided to have a massage at a health spa. It had been a tough few weeks travelling and I felt like a treat. A woman came in and proceeded to do the massage, and it was lovely, very relaxing. Then, as I lay there completely naked, with only a small white towel around my waist, she pulled a phone camera out of her bag and said, 'Mr Mark, can I take picture please?' One of my biggest memories from South East Asia, recalls Kian, was a showcase. Normally, you do these events for the media and the industry. There are perhaps about 200 or so invited guests in some pretty small room and you go in and sing a five-song set, shake some hands and generally charm the people who are considered to be important in that territory. Well, in Indonesia, they like to do things a bit differently. We turned up for a showcase to find over 6,000 people there. It was supposedly a low-key industry function, but it was like the maddest gig you could imagine. There were girls throwing themselves at the stage, being pulled out of the front rows, fainting, the full works. I made the mistake of putting my hand near the crowd and I swear my fingers were nearly pulled out of the sockets. It was nuts. Then this one girl in the front row was dragged out and taken to one side, sat down and given some water. Suddenly, she sprang up, ran onto the stage, raced across in front of us and launched herself onto Mark. He was just standing there by his mic with this fan wrapped tightly around him - two arms, two legs, clamped on him for dear life. Two security men came on, prized her fingers apart and pulled her off like a piece of meat. As they were dragging her off the stage, she was still screaming, 'Mark! Mark! Mark!' It was an absolute classic. Let me tell you about scissors, paper, rock, says Nicky. It's a major part of the Westlife story. We make a lot of decisions using the old favourite game. Got to do a late-night international phone interview? Scissors, paper, rock. Standing in the middle of a Smash Hits front-cover photo? Scissors, paper, rock. Who's got to go first through a gauntlet of 3,000 grabbing hands and screaming girls ...? Yup, scissors, paper, rock. After one of these Indonesian shows, recalls Shane, I remember some fans pinning Kian up against the side of the bus and one girl just ripping his chain necklace off him. It was insane. To me, it felt like the nearest we could get to what you read about Beatle-mania. Given how important it had been for me to keep my family ties close when we signed that record deal, explains Mark, I was gutted beyond belief to discover that for my twenty-first birthday we would be abroad. There was no way around it - it was our first world tour, there were big shows booked and I would be thousands of miles away from home. I was devastated. On the night of my birthday, the crew made up some excuse about having to sign visa forms in one of their rooms and when I got there, everyone had thrown a huge surprise party. I was so shocked! I'd been so fed up I just hadn't seen it coming. They'd taken over the function room on the top floor of the hotel and kitted it out with catering, food, balloons and a karaoke machine. All the musicians had brought their instruments along, because they knew I'd love a bit of a sing-song. It was the best party, I really loved it and it meant so much to me that people had made that much effort. I woke up the next day with a massive hangover, handcuffed to the bed, but someone had lost the key and my hand was all swollen and purple! Still, it was worth it and, besides, I had an easier time of it than one of the tour manager's assistants - she was blind drunk on the floor, handcuffed to a table for about four hours screaming, 'Let me out! Let me out!', when all she needed to do was lift the leg of the table and walk off. We knew South America could be crazy, recalls Nicky. One of the security lads had been told by a fortune teller there was going to be an 'incident'. I wasn't married or had kids at the time, but I took out life insurance and made a will. It shows you how volatile it can feel. Nothing happened, fortunately, although we did have to have armed convoys because we were considered a high kidnap risk - not exactly your Smash Hits Roadshow.

I love Brazil, smiles Kian. We've had some of our best times there. That time we had to do the radio interview on the roof of the coach was very typical of the hysteria that followed us around. After that mad rooftop interview we finally got the bus out of the crowds and headed off for a TV appearance. Fans were driving alongside us on the main roads, hanging out of the windows of their cars to get pictures. We went into the studio and were walking down a corridor as we were being miked up. The record company guy said, 'It's a very popular slot. Two girls are the interviewers. You'll like it very much. It's called Naked News.' I looked at Brian. Brian looked at me. We walked around the corner and there stood two beautiful Brazilian girls, completely naked but for a thong the size of a small piece of string. Well, it was better than being on Jonathan Ross!

* * *

Next up was America, ponders Nicky. We'd pretty much conquered the UK, most of Europe, to be honest most corners of the globe, and we were doing well everywhere, but we hadn't yet had a crack at the States. We turned up in New York airport really excited. We were all so fired up about taking on the US, but straight away it was a bit like being the Leeds boot boy again - we were like, 'Yeah, we're here, we've had all these number is, look!' and they'd go, 'Whatever. D'you want a cab?' The business parts of the jigsaw seemed to all be in place, says Kian. We were signed to RCA Records and our key man over there was the legendary Clive Davis, who had famously signed Whitney Houston, Aerosmith and Janis Joplin, among many others. He loved the two albums we gave him and wanted to follow pretty much the same plan: 'Swear It Again', 'If I Let You Go', then 'Flying without Wings'. We shot a new video for' Swear It Again', which was a bit daft, to be honest with you. We were all at a carwash with these girls and Shane was sharing an ice cream with one of them. It was a wee bit corny, you know. But at least they were having a go with us. They put 'Swear It Again' out and we then had about eight weeks of touring. As we drove along these endless American highways, we started to learn how very different that market is from the UK. It was all about radio 'spins', airtime, audience share ... Radio ruled every- thing. The single went in modestly but started to climb and climb. It was heading in the right direction. We were very happy to put some graft in on the road. We'd just come from Asia via South America and we were all really exhausted, but excited about being in the States, hanging out in New York, LA, all the famous places. We flew so many times, it was incredible, all these short internal flights. A typical day would involve an early-morning flight to a radio appearance, maybe with a studio performance on air, then you'd jump on another plane and do an afternoon open-air gig at, say, 3 p.m., then you'd race back to the airport and catch a 6 p.m. plane and do another gig, where you were first on the bill, at an evening show. Sometimes we'd be on the same bill as people like Bon Jovi, but literally first on, way before many people had even turned up. We were flying around all these little places in America, places I wouldn't even remember the name of - football fields, small venues, large festivals, everything. We did this sort of schedule for weeks and weeks. One TV appearance was an absolute Westlife classic. We were booked to appear on a home-shopping channel. One of the guys in the record company had had the brainwave of putting us on there. The idea was that we'd sing a few numbers and maybe chat to the host, then they'd sell our CD. 'That was Westlife, ladies and gentleman, and if you buy their CD in the next 20 minutes, you`ll get it for the special price of $7.99, and well even get them to sign it for you.' To be fair, it was actually quite a cunning plan. On paper. The studio was in the arse-end of nowhere and it took forever to get there. We went in and did the songs, did the chat and sat back waiting for the phones to light up with excited buyers. One of the staff kept coming up saying, 'It's going great, you guys! The phones are ringing off the hook!' We were really pleased; we'd been a little apprehensive about this, but it seemed to be working. 'Hey, you guys, more calls! This is just great!' Then, after about half an hour, I said to them, 'Er, excuse me, how many albums have we actually sold?' 'Like 2,000 or something. Isn't that great, you guys?!' 'Great, yeah.' 'Oh, look! More calls!' 'Excuse me, out of interest, how many copies did the number 1 album sell in America last week?' '1.4 million.' In among all the hard work, recalls Nicky, we made sure we found time to party. One night in San Diego we had to go out with a radio woman who had the reputation of being something of a real tough cookie. America was still not really loving us, so we were going all out to win people like her over. We met up with her - a real tomboy - and she suggested going to an Irish bar. 'I hear you Irish boys can drink, is that right?' she said. 'We have been known to have the odd gargle,' I replied. 'If you want to go on the piss with us, we'll have a drinking competition with you, but we're after drinking Irish shots.' She was well up for this and called someone over. We immediately noticed the waitress's accent and it turned out she was from Sligo. This radio woman was like the queen, sitting in this bar loudly ordering a round of drinks. She ordered triple vodka shots and then asked us what we wanted. 'Can we have your very strongest, most potent uisce, please?' I said to the Irish waitress with a grin. 'Only the best stuff, mind.' Uisce is Irish for 'water'. So we proceeded to slug shot after shot of water, downing them like hard spirits, while the radio woman slammed triple vodka after triple vodka after triple vodka down her neck. She was absolutely blazing drunk, I mean balloobered. 'Jeshus, you Irishhh boysh can drink ...' she stammered as we sank back our last measure of water. The next day the feedback from her office was that she'd had a brilliant time, we were lovely lads and, most of all, we could drink like fish. She loved us. She still didn't add our single to radio, though! I felt like we got our own back on the American record business in a very small-minded and childishly devious way though, later during that trip! I played a trick on a record label guy. I said, 'I'll give you 50 bucks if you can hide this coin anywhere on your body and I can't find it.' He fancied his chances, so while he hid it, I went out to the parking lot and ran all my fingers on the dirty, oily inside of a car's exhaust. I came back and started frisking him all over his face, mouth, ears, hair, hands, and by the time I'd finished with him he was covered in soot. But of course he didn't know that and was just really pleased to win. It was priceless. Well, not exactly priceless - it cost me $50 - but it was worth it! Another time, laughs Kian, we all wanted to go clubbing but we were still underage, except for Nicky. So he went to the front of the queue and spoke to the bouncer, who said, 'Let me see some ID.' Nicky showed him his passport and the bouncer said, 'Alright, come in.' As this guy turned to move the velvet rope, Nicky palmed his passport behind his back to me. Nicky went through and I was now at the front of the queue. 'OK, let me see some ID.' I showed him Nicky's passport, holding it with my hand over his photo. 'Alright, come in,' and again he turned to move the rope. I palmed the passport back to Shane and the bouncer let me through... I swear all five of us got in that club on one passport. We did a lot of roadshows in the US alongside really big acts like Britney Spears and, one time, Eminem. We saw him backstage and he pretty much sneered at us and said, 'Hey, so you're supposed to be the new Backstreet Boys, huh!' and laughed. I thought, Yeah, you motherfucker, we fucking are, mate, so fuck off, but I didn't say anything. There were some encouraging signs in the States - we shifted 250,000 singles in a couple of weeks, something we'd have had to work, say Germany, for six weeks to two months to achieve. We went on to shift half a million and I have my only American disc to show for that on my wall. Part of the problem was, we were having to spread ourselves thin, because while America was pretty indifferent, the rest of the world was begging for us, everybody and their mother, literally. It was nobody's fault, it was just that so many territories were after us. Another complication, albeit later, was that Ruben Studdard from American Idol released 'Flying without Wings', which we felt was our golden ticket. Once he'd put that out in the States, our momentum struggled. Then our key man, Clive Davis, left the record label. The new guy was very enthusiastic and behind us, but we were selling eight million copies of our second album worldwide and we had to go and promote it elsewhere. There were other factors too, some political within the business, but also the climate in America was turning against pop bands. I'm skipping ahead of myself a little here, but a good example was when we did a white label of 'World of our Own' the year after we first toured the States. We'd shot a brilliant video in a disused building in Dublin - we looked good, it was a superb clip and everyone was delighted - and then, because we'd had resistance on the past promo tour, the record label very cleverly put the song out in the clubs and to radio as a white label only, no band name, nothing about us, just the record company logo stamped on the bottom of it. Our radio plugger called us and said the phones were lighting up, people were loving it... But... 'But what?' 'Well, then they insist on finding out who the mystery hit is by and when I tell them Westlife, they literally say, "Oh, a boy band. We don't play boy bands anymore, bye, bye." It was as brutal as that. Mark: The American music industry is a lot more cut-throat than the UK. The executives in the UK have much better people skills. In America, there's a kind of fakeness. It's so transparent but they don't care it's transparent and if you've got a problem with that then you're being unprofessional. Also, during one particularly long trip, my grandfather died, so it was all pretty awful. As you know, he was a very special part of my childhood, so I was devastated. He had been so proud of Westlife, too. I flew back and Ronan Keating very kindly leant me his jeep to drive home. I made it to the funeral and sang a song too. I really wanted to be there to support my mum. It was a big blow. I learned so much from my grandfather, so he will always be with me. That time in America was really tough and broke all our backs. Two of the biggest fights in the band happened in America on that first big tour, recounts Kian. Brian thought about going home after about five weeks, he was pretty fed up. Then Brian and Nicky had a huge fight in a diner one day and Nicky got up and said he'd had enough. He went outside, rang Louis and said he was going home. It was all sorted out, but the tour was too long and we'd been halfway round the world first. It was just a case of being away for too long. Living out of a suitcase isn't easy. In our first year we worked 180 days in a row, without a single day off. It was incredible - several flights a day, all over the world. It was just 'Get your suitcase, go, go, go!' It was all so crazy, recalls Mark, but the word 'no' wasn't in our vocabulary when it came to putting things in our schedule. If you even suggested not doing anything, you felt that you were literally the most unprofessional and ungrateful person. I just felt that, in general, you know. I wouldn't point the finger at the label or Louis or anyone else, it was how I felt. There was always this big desire to impress the record company, to make them think that you wanted this so much. So we didn't get a day off for those 180 days, no, but to be fair we never asked for a day off.

I think in the first few years, continues Kian, everybody had a moment when they were like, 'I'm going home, I'm getting on a plane and going home to my three-bedroomed semi in Sligo and I couldn't give a flying shit about all this.' But none of us went. In those early years I had very much a one-track mind; it was all Westlife, Westlife, Westlife. If one of the lads was after going home or even just having a few days off, I was pretty hard on them. 'Come on, this is it, this band is working, we're on top of the world, why would you want to go home? How could you go home? You're in a massive band, selling records all over the world, we're in Mexico, are you stupid?' I chilled out an awful lot later on, but back then I was all one-track. It was naivety on my part. Nowadays, I'd do it differently, I'd listen more to what they were saying, I'd maybe get in touch with people and try to arrange schedules differently. To be fair to the lads, they never complained and always did the work. They were brilliant. But I was naive. Never, not once, did I want to leave the band, says Shane. There were days when I didn't want to be doing it, perhaps I was tired or I wanted to be at home or maybe I was missing my best mate's twenty-first birthday and they were all out in Sligo and I was in the Philippines. Yes, there were days when you didn't want to be there. But never once have I felt I don't want to be in the band or to be a pop star, to live the dream. During the period when we worked those 180 days straight, winces Nicky, I had a hernia! I'd picked it up during my time at Leeds. It's very common for footballers, but I hadn't got it sorted. I used to stand for photo shoots with the band and it would kill me, though, so I eventually had to get it fixed. Even that was hard to organize, because our schedule was so frantic. I didn't tell the label for a while, to be honest. It seemed too inconvenient. We all wanted to crack America, continues Kian, and I'm not going to lie to you - we were all very disappointed when it didn't turn out as we'd hoped. But d'you know what? Looking back with the benefit of hindsight and a good few more years under our belts, it wasn't the end of the world. What's more, I do wonder if we had exploded in America like we were exploding all over the rest of the world at the time, it would have finished us. We never underestimated the graft you needed to do to crack the States, but if we had broken that market, I think we might have become completely arrogant arseholes - because at times it felt like everything that we tried just worked. If America had fallen too, there'd have been no way of keeping us on the ground. We'd have completely different lives. We'd have cracked every major territory in the world within two albums - and don't get me wrong, that would have been brilliant, that would have been our preference - but you have to wonder what the repercussions would have been on our personal and professional lives. Would we have even still been together as a band ten years later, if we'd cracked America back then? I think probably not.

Chapter Twelve

Celebrity Skin

When we first started in Westlife, recalls Mark, it was like an atomic bomb going off in our lives. Suddenly we were on the telly, in the papers, all over the radio, breaking records, having hits, selling albums by the million. Inevitably, you find yourself presented with certain situations, being offered drugs or other temptations. It's the nature of the beast that is the music business. We all come from pretty similar Irish families, a certain type of background. What was brilliant, looking back, was how our families warned us all off drugs. Everyone, just everyone, did. We were kids, we were famous and we were earning a lot of money at a very young age and that's a recipe for disaster. You don't need me to tell you of the high-profile casualties who've fallen into that trap. The people who cared about us didn't want to see it happen to us. Our families warned us off drugs so much that the first time I was offered cocaine, I was absolutely terrified. Coke is the drug of The music business and you can go to certain events and it's everywhere. I ran a mile when I was first offered it; I'd built it p into such a terrifying thing. I laugh when I look back, because I was so naпve to the wider world when we first started that I thought that people would be throwing coke at us on stage at Top of the Pops, that they'd virtually be stuffing it up my nose for me. I pictured photo shoots where they'd bring trays of cocaine around instead of having tea breaks. The reality is I've been offered cocaine perhaps three times in ten years. The other boys may say different, but that's all I've experienced. One of these occasions it was a perfect music business cliche. I was at the Met Bar a few years into Westlife and I was chatting to some people when they asked if I'd like some coke. 'Er, no, thanks,' I said quickly. I was scared of it, I felt like it was such a cliche. The flipside of this was that with our image being so apparently 'clean cut', people assumed we were far more strait-laced than we actually were. Take that first debauched tour as an example! People would initially ask us about drugs, almost to see our response and maybe point the finger, but then as it became apparent that we weren't about to collapse from a crack cocaine addiction, the questions stopped. We didn't do drugs, we didn't fall out of nightclubs all the time and we didn't have punch-ups with photographers, so there wasn't much for them to cover. I always say we're not clean living and we've not crazy bastards, we're just somewhere in the middle. We try to go to the gym, but by the end of January, we stop going as much. We try to eat healthily on the road, but some days we just eat crap. Some nights we get absolutely bladdered, some nights we don't drink at all. Somewhere in the middle. Consequently, the media stopped following us around. It's hardly a big headline, is it: 'Bunch of Irish lads get drunk' Nothing to see, move along! That's very lucky, because we can enjoy ourselves but not get our personal lives torn apart, and For that I am very grateful. I think that you just always have to have your guard up , though- You kind of ... Not fend things off, but you have to stay strong. Sometimes it's not the fame, the money or the circumstances that cause problems, it's just the person. There are people who've been in bands from the age of 17 who are addicted to drugs. I started in a band at that age and I'm not off my tits on drugs all the time. I didn't end up turning into a lunatic, so it's probably in a person's blood from the start. Everyone is different and reacts to things in different ways. It is a weird thing for your ego to deal with, Your day-to-day life is made up of so many jobs - singing in front of thousands of people, doing interviews, radio, TV, visiting sick kids in hospitals, travelling abroad for charities, having a private life, it's such a mix. Consequently, you might find yourself being adored by several thousand people who worship the ground you walk on one minute and talked down to like you're worthless or have no feelings the next. It's confusing and you have to work hard to stay grounded. Trying to look at the excess and temptation, objectively, being in a pop band rather than a rock band probably helps. When we started, there were only a few pop magazines, Smash Hits, Top of the Pops magazine and so on, and you were hardly going to read about the latest singing heroin addict in those pages. Plus, coming from Ireland, as I've said, we'd seen so little of the drug culture, and because we go back to Ireland so much, that extracts us from the 'scene', especially in London. Maybe the media has changed since we started. I know if Britney had been doing drugs way back then, no one would have known about it; now it's on the front page of every celebrity magazine. Maybe I'm just reminiscing, but I do think the media have focused more and more on that aspect. Some magazines have definitely changed the tone of their coverage. I forget how many times I've seen a picture of some celebrity stumbling out of a club with white powder up their nostrils, all shot in perfect close-up by a waiting pap. Maybe the reality talent search shows have exposed more of the behind-the-scenes side of it, or maybe it's become more acceptable to dig deeper? I don't know the answer, I'm just thinking out loud. But it did seem a bit more fun and carefree when we first started, and I'm grateful for that. It seems very different now. That change is tough on new bands; it's a much harsher climate than we had. I'm not ashamed to say that I have never taken drugs, interjects Shane. In fact, I'm very proud of that. It's one thing I promised my mum. When I joined the band, she said, 'Don't get involved in drugs, whatever you do. You can drink and have a laugh, whatever, but don't get messed up on drugs please.' I've personally been offered cocaine twice. It's not something I look at as being cool. It's sad. You can get hooked up on it and then you're fucked. I've got a beautiful family, a dream job - why would I want to mess that up by taking drugs? Westlife has this clean-cut image - the men in suits and all that - but you know now that there's a lot more to us than that. However, one thing I am happy to say we never did was play around behind people's backs on the road. Remember, Nicky and myself have been with our partners since this all kicked off. And nowadays Mark has Kevin and Kian has Jodie, and we just don't mess about. Of course, there were temptations, especially in the earlier days. There was temptation in every field: if you wanted to do drugs, you could have very easily sought out pretty much anything; if you'd wanted to sleep with loads of girls, you could have done that very easily. They were there for you on a plate in every different shape, size, colour and nationality - you choose, like. I was never interested. I'd been in a serious relationship for two years before the band started and, in my opinion, Gillian was the perfect woman for me. So why mess about? Some blokes always think the grass is greener, but that's a fool's game. Travelling the world and being in a high-profile pop band, of course you see beautiful women all over the place and of course you might think a certain girl is very pretty or attractive. But that's all I would think. I'd never be such an eejit as to go behind Gillian's back. I actually don't think I could do it. Nobody is worth the risk of losing what I have with Gillian, nobody. Besides, I have the biggest conscience in the world when it comes to my wife. I just can't keep anything from her. I'll rush in from a tour and say, 'You'll never guess what so-and-so said...' Playing the field has never interested me, and that's being straight up and honest with you. The only temptation I gave into was drink and parties, but even that was our way of letting off steam. Some bands might read that and think not shagging groupies in every country isn't very rock 'n' roll, but that's their choice. It isn't mine. It's not just drugs that are part and parcel of the music business and celebrity, says Mark. There's a huge focus on appearance and image, and that has been something I've had to deal with over the years. I felt under pressure about my weight for a long time. Once somebody from the Westlife camp went into my hotel room and took all the sweets out of the mini-bar. It got quite petty. It wasn't until about halfway through the band's first ten years that I decided I had to let all of this go. By then I was used to being seen by some people as 'product', I was used to being spoken about as fat - nasty stuff like that. I didn't like it though. But I knew that I wanted to continue with the dream, the band, and if that was to happen, I had to stop worrying about these things. Part of the reason I tolerated it for as long as I did is that I don't like confrontation, I didn't like telling people to not do things, I didn't have the confidence in myself to say, 'Fuck you, don't talk to me like that, I'm an adult, I'm a human being.' People would say things, my face would drop, I'd go red and walk away. Don't get me wrong - in the grand scheme of life, I'm very aware that this isn't as hard as many, many things that people go through. All I'm saying is it certainly wasn't pleasant. I got to the point where I realized that if I was going to continue to do the band, I had to accept that there were less pleasant sides to the industry, fact. Then, once I let go off all that, not only did I enjoy the band much more, I also realized that these comments, these people, these attitudes had toughened me up, which in the long run had helped me. Anyone who has worked with us from Day One will know how different I am now from back at the start. No one more than Louis will tell you that. The temptations and the pressures on your appearance are just two aspects of being in a famous band. The 'celebrity' itself is another. One of the most exciting experiences of my life, without a doubt, was when we went to a Versace launch party. It was packed with celebrities, which was cool, but what was really great fun was being followed by the paparazzi afterwards. We were in a people carrier driving back to the hotel and there were loads of photographers chasing us. We were speeding along and they were pulling up alongside us, making us slow down, hanging out of the windows and sunroofs shouting, firing their flashes and banging on our windows. It was so exciting. It was almost like watching someone else, someone famous, getting photographed. It was brilliant, I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. We were in a famous band, partying courtesy of Tommy Hilfiger and being chased by paps afterwards - what's not to enjoy?! Sometimes celebrities seem to want to play down the fun side of being well known, though. Worse still are celebrities who complain about press intrusion when they behave in a way that invites the media into their lives. If I was sick of paparazzi chasing me, I wouldn't put on a three-grand suit and go for dinner at the Ivy or to a film premiere in Leicester Square. If you don't want to be photographed, then don't go to the premiere, don't go to a famous restaurant where photographers are camped outside. You see people coming out of notorious clubs and restaurants, holding their hands up and looking all flustered, like 'I'm just having a quiet night out, I want to get to my car and not be noticed,' yet all the time they are striking a pose in the latest Jimmy Choo shoes and virtually vogueing to their limo. It's ludicrous! If you want a quiet night out, go to your local club or restaurant where there won't be any paps. You might get a few people asking for an autograph or whatever, but you won't get in the papers the next day. And that is exactly why those sort of fame-hungry celebs don't do that. Being photographed is their lifestyle. It's what they do. They want to be in the papers the next day. But you can't have it both ways. Britney Spears must have a bizarre life. She probably had a laugh the first few times she went out and was chased by the paparazzi, just like we did. But then, unlike us, it happened again and again and again, and maybe, before she knew it, it became part of her reality. Now she can't even go for a coffee without 25 photographers following her. That's scary. I can't imagine having that in my life. On the odd occasion when I've been photographed looking a little the worse for wear by the papers, I've just laughed. It's like a glorified version of your mates texting you a camera-phone picture of you drunk asleep under a bar stool somewhere, only this way about four million people see the photo! You've got to laugh, really. Apart from when you go to the park with your friends and take your shirt off, only to open up a celeb mag a few days later to see a picture of yourself leaning over for a sandwich with about 15 stomachs and four chins... I remember once, says Kian, a big producer asked us if the fame wasn't there, would we still do our job? All the lads have their own views on this, of course, but for me the answer was this: if there were one thing I could change, it would be the fame. I don't do Westlife for the fame. Now fame gets you into places and has certain benefits, of course! We've had some amazing experiences as a result of being famous - no one would deny that! However, I wanted to be in a successful band, rather than just a famous one. I wanted to be a performer and sing rather than just be famous. Fame is not the way the world should be; everybody is equal. You might be surprised to know that until I was 23 I still lived in the box room at my mum and dad's house. Well, it wasn't exactly a box room, it was a converted garage. I had all our silver, gold and platinum discs plastered all over the walls. Going back to live in Mum and Dad's converted garage was a great leveller. The boys went out and bought all these beautiful BMWs - they love their cars - but I gave me dad six grand and he went out and got me a lovely little Fiat Bravo - to replace my old Ford Fiesta! I'm playing it down a bit here, because I did buy a fancy car soon after, a lovely BMW 3 series. My dad killed me. I drove up the road in it and he was standing at the front door and said, 'Why did you buy that? It's such a waste of money.' He was worried I was going to blow my earnings, he was looking out for me, because we hadn't yet had that much money come through. He was just being a good dad, just looking out for me. He'd never known what it was like to have a few quid, you see. He loves me to buy nice things now he knows I am more secure. When we were kids, we used to go down to the beach and play. On the way there was a cul-de-sac with five big six or seven-bedroomed detached houses that everyone in the area admired. Many years later, when Westlife was massive and I had made decent money, one of them came up for sale, a seven-bedroomed house with three-quarters of an acre and mountains in the background. It was stunning. I bought it and moved my mum and dad and the whole family into it. That was an amazing thing to be able to do. Every time I go back to Sligo I always catch up with my best mate, Jason Gorman and his wife Ciara - all throughout the band experience, his friendship has been important to me because you need a group of people who are not involved in the Westlife world. Sligo is an amazing place. When you're just a kid it's your whole world and you don't realize there is anything outside of your town. Yet travelling the world with Westlife has actually made me appreciate Sligo more, not less. I love it. I see it as a warm, happy place full of really good people. When I'm travelling, I'm forever showing people photographs of Sligo - the scenery, the area. I love it and going back there is always a great pleasure. Shane: To be honest with you, in Sligo I never really got bad reactions from people. It's one of the reasons I built my house there and one of the reasons I still want to live there. We are Westlife and people are proud of us in Sligo; obviously there are jealous people too, but in general Sligo is a place that is definitely behind us and the people are proud of us. I'd like to think it's definitely helped Sligo as a town. We've been given the freedom of Sligo, the keys to the city, which was just fantastic. If you go to a pub there, everyone chats with you, it's completely natural. Perhaps because we are there a lot it makes it all seem perfectly normal. In Dublin, you might get a few more stares - 'There's yer man,' all that - but that's only because they don't see us every day. I'm still best mates with a few lads from when I was a kid, so that not only helps me stay grounded, but it also means Sligo is still a place where - apart from close family obviously - I have proper friends. A few fellas in particular have always been amazing to me, unbelievable mates: Keith Moran, Paul Keavney, Brian 'Brig' Heraghty and Anthony 'Chicken' Gray. They've never let me down and when you have a job like mine, proper friends are very hard to find and trust. My brother-in-law Cathal is an amazing mate too. My friends are all priceless and I feel lucky to know them. It makes life in Sligo more normal and much richer... You need your best mates around to keep an eye on you while you are home, says Nicky. My lads, Colm Costello, Shaun 'Skinner' O'Grady, Paul Irwin and my bro-in-law, Mark Gallagher, keep me on my toes. Paul always winds me up saying we should wear balaclavas because we've robbed so many people's songs. How do you reply to that? Occasionally, continues Shane, you do something, though, that you know will cause a stir. It's part of the fun. I remember one time the band all just really fancied going to the cinema. We do get on very well as a group of lads. Even with all the complications of being in Westlife and the arguments that can cause, we still love to go out and have a blast with each other just as mates. We had a day off from some tour dates in Scotland and there was a shopping centre near to the venue with a cinema in it. We all really wanted to see Mission Impossible III, so that's what we did. Looking back, I can imagine how it would have looked, like some video shoot. These big double doors opened to a cinema full of people, and Westlife strolled in, all together, in a line. Everyone stopped and stared. People were virtually choking on their popcorn! I agree with Mark, says Nicky, we've generally had a good experience of the media and being well known. It's changed over the years. In the beginning, we could do no wrong, every album we released, it was like, 'The boys have done it again!' It seemed that we were really taking the world by storm. Smash Hits and Top of the Pops magazine loved us too and at the time they had enormous circulations. We had front covers, huge features; we'd win all the awards you could think of from them. It was blanket good press. Then a little further down the line, we started to get the odd bad review, and I have to be honest with you, we were shocked. Then certain magazines came out and the whole tone of celebrity coverage changed. Some of the editorial teams never liked Westlife, and boy, can you tell. The only time we seemed to be in some magazines was if we were being criticized. Either it was for dodging a paparazzi shot or it was just a straight slag off. Fortunately, OK! and Hello have always been kind to us. However, when I did my wedding pictures in Hello in 2003, I couldn't have imagined the trouble it would cause. The Irish press were pretty harsh with me for selling my wedding pictures to an English magazine, what with my father-in-law Bertie Ahern being the Taoiseach, the Prime Minister. Worse still to them, the wedding wasn't in Ireland. I'd never even thought of it like that. It was a very lucrative offer and what that meant to me and Georgina was that we could afford to throw the most fairytale wedding for all our family and friends. We hired the Chateau d'Esclimont, just an hour away from Paris, had a free bar the whole weekend and invited 400 guests, no expense spared, and that could not have happened without the input of the magazine. On the day, we had our own private photographer, John Ryan, and a DVD made of the entire event. It was all beautiful. As a couple, we had an amazing wedding day and we were giving ourselves and our families a day to remember, so it felt like a happy medium. But the Irish press caned Georgina's dad. They caned us as a couple too. They turned on me and all of a sudden the reports about the wedding were very harsh. Our PR lady, Joanne Byrne, had a very demanding job and was getting it from all angles, from everyone. She did a great job. The media said the security was a shambles, people were booing outside - this was all bullshit. But worst of all, as Georgina drove through to the wedding in a blacked-out car, one of the press shouted at her and called her a whore. That's not right, never will be, regardless of circumstances. I have a few regrets - maybe we could have been a little more open with the rest of the media than we were; maybe we could have explained the exclusive deal and said, 'Sorry you can't be there on the day, is there some other way we can help out?' We had an exclusive deal for the reasons I've explained and we were always going to honour that, though. And, to be fair, I don't think we deserved the battering we got and, for a while, it killed me. I remember at the end of the year, one magazine ran a feature called 'Heroes and Zeroes of the Year' and I was the 'Zero' for marrying the Prime Minister's daughter outside Ireland. What annoyed me the most was that the showbiz editors who slaughtered me actually knew me; they'd interviewed me for years and, I thought, were friendly. But I was only 24, so I had a lot to learn and I took certain lessons away from the wedding in that respect. I didn't speak to some of these people for a year or so, I was so pissed off. But then I watched how Georgina's dad dealt with journalists who wrote bad things about him, terrible things sometimes, almost every day, but he kept his dignity amazingly well through it all. Eventually he stepped down in May 2008 after 11 great years as Taoiseach. I was sad for him, but on a personal level pleased for him that he would now be able to enjoy his family more and come on those holidays with his grandkids and kids that he'd had to miss over the years in office. Also, he has achieved so much for Ireland - peace in the North, a booming economy, etc., etc. Ireland is a far better place now than when he took office and I think he will be sorely missed. Likewise, Louis was saying, 'Move on, forget it, get on with it.' and he was right. Eventually, I did move on from what was a very difficult period for me and Georgina. I tried to see it from the journalists' point of view and spoke to a few of them. They said they'd been under pressure from their editors and our wedding had been a big story to cover. I've even had drunken conversations in Dublin nightclubs where I've said, 'You bastard, how could you write that?' and, to be fair, many of them have apologized: 'I shouldn't have written that, Nicky, but the pressure was on, we needed a story.' So we've all moved on. That's the way it has to be. I've done lots of interviews with these people since and it has all blown over now, I've been 'forgiven', it seems, but it was a shock to the system and it was the only time I'd ever been singled out like that by the media. It isn't pretty. Mind you, you have to laugh, because sometimes you find yourself wishing they'd be more interested, not less! One time we were in India for an awards ceremony and had been asked to wear Indian gowns for the red carpet. We thought it was a great idea. We could see these shots with us wearing all the traditional gear being flashed all over the world. So we organized the costumes, complete with shoes that curled up at the end, and headed to the event. You can imagine us sitting in the car dressed like that, going, 'Don't laugh, this will be cool, this will be cool.' Anyway, when we got to the awards, there was no red carpet; in fact there was no carpet at all. There was just one guy standing there with a small camera. We were determined to get the picture regardless, so we got out of the car, walked over to him all smiles and he just went 'click' once, nodded and walked off. Celebrity is also strange, says Mark, because if you're well known, you meet other celebrities and that can be even stranger than speaking to fans. And there's this weird pecking order in the magazines. It's funny when you read about A-, C- and Z-list celebrities. It makes me laugh. Who decides what you are? Beckham's an A-lister, I guess, by most standards. I often wonder what we are. I don't care, but it makes me giggle to think about it. Sometimes we are A-list, perhaps at music awards, things like that; other times, we are definitely C-list, or worse! I think we flit between levels, which is a lot of fun. Celebrity is a very funny thing, though, even when you're involved in those circles yourself. As you know, I usually don't feel self-conscious when I sing in front of almost anyone, but there was one time when I was struggling to sing properly because of who was there. It sounds weird because I have sung with Mariah Carey and in front of the Pope (Shane will tell you about that in a minute), Stevie Wonder, the music-biz legend Clive Davis, all sorts of famous people, singers, 'faces'. Yet the one time I really found it weird was in front of a band you wouldn't expect: the Arctic Monkeys. I'm jumping ahead of the story a little bit here, but it shows you how weird 'celebrity' can be. We were performing at the South Bank Show Awards in 2007, and it was crammed with A-list names. We walked on stage and I noticed the Arctic Monkeys were sitting at the table right in front of me. I happen to be a big fan of theirs anyway, so ordinarily that would have been exciting, but as I was performing - and doing a very difficult song vocally - it was really weird. The Arctic Monkeys are very cool. They have immense credibility. They're an amazing band. We've never had the kind of critical acclaim that they enjoy. They can't put a foot wrong, no one would argue with that. I was standing up there thinking, They're cool, they're young, I love that band... We started singing and my voice, literally, just went, 'OK, Mark, I'm going to totally fuck you over right now!' They were sitting ten feet away from me and I was really, genuinely struggling to sing. Now Shane, he will sing in front of anyone, he just doesn't worry, he's got supreme confidence. In fact, if he were standing in front of a band and thought they were sneering at him, he'd sing even better than ever just to piss them off. I'm not like that. I wish I was, but my confidence is more fragile. And that situation was made worse by the fact that it was a room full of people who weren't Westlife fans. They hadn't chosen to be there to see us. My confidence has improved hugely over the years and it's rare for me to struggle with it now, but that night at the South Bank Show Awards was a funny example. More oddly, an actor called Gerard Kearns, who plays Ian from Shameless, was there and, that bothered me a little too. Robert de Niro could have been in the audience and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but the Arctic Monkeys and Gerard completely unnerved me. I've thought about why it bothered me so much and it's because I just wanted to know, in myself, that I was good in front of people who were good too, you know what I mean? Things like that make my day. I would have been delighted to have gone up there and done my best and it killed me that I'd done far from my best. The weird thing is I can do a really good vocal in front of ten million people on TV and I'm like, 'OK, cool, no problem,' but that night I was more nervous in front of the Arctic Monkeys and the guy from Shameless because they're people who I admire. I don't actually watch loads of soaps, but another time I felt awkward was when we did a charity rounders match in Hyde Park. I ran to one of the bases and when I looked up, there was Tug from Home and Away. For some reason, I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. See what I mean? Celebrity is brilliant but weird! I know when I was really star-struck, remembers Kian. Let me tell you about the time we were backstage at the Irish Music Awards. It's basically the Irish version of the Brit Awards. We were hanging out at the bar behind the scenes at the Point in Dublin. I was sitting there with three of my mates from Sligo, having a beer and just taking it all in, when Bono walked in. 'Hey, lads, that's yer man, Bono.' He started walking over to where I was sitting. Shit! He got closer and as he walked right past me, he said, 'Hey, Kian, well done tonight, my brother.' I was gobsmacked. Trying to be cool, I said, 'Alright, er, Bono. Cheers. Thanks very much, man.' Getting carried away with the moment, I then said, 'Hey, Bono, these are me mates from Sligo,' and all me metes said, 'Alright, Bono, how's it going?' 'Alright, lads, how's it going?' He walked off and we sat there for a moment in silence. 'That's yer man, Bono, virtually me mate he is,' I said, pint in hand, feeling like the king of the world. All my mates did the same, sitting there, swigging their drinks, saying, 'Yup, that's Bono.' Then we saw the Edge coming our way. Shit! 'Hey, Kian, nice one tonight, my man.' I was so blown away they even knew my name. I wasn't 'yer man from Westlife', I was Kian from Westlife. I couldn't believe it. Then Larry Mullen Junior came over and approached Nicky, asking if he could say hello to a friend of his and called Nicky by his first name to. Madness, absolute madness. Not everyone's so good with names as Bono, points out Nicky. I was on holiday in Cyprus and these two kids came up to me, all shy like, and asked for my autograph. I was happy to oblige and they ran off back to their mom, really excited. It was nice - how can you not enjoy seeing that? Later that day, their mother came up to me and Georgina at dinner and said, 'Thank you so much for taking the time to sign an autograph. They thought you were David Beckham.'