Baby You're a Star (11 page)

“I think he made a brilliant record. It’s just that the audience, with Westlife coming along and Ronan going solo; they decided to put their money on those two and Stephen suffered from that really. And also the media were the same, because the media decided to back Ronan and didn’t give Stephen the coverage he deserved and made it very difficult.
New Beginning
was a great record for Stephen and it was a shame that the media didn’t give it the attention that I think it deserved.”

After his attempt at becoming a solo artist, Gately took Louis’ advice and sought work in musicals. In Autumn 2002, he was offered the lead role in a forthcoming production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in Liverpool, apparently on the recommendation of Andrew Lloyd Webber. After the Liverpool run, the show was set to go to London’s West End for a six-month run.

The one member of Boyzone that Louis has continued to manage has seen his career go from strength to strength. Keating was always closest to Louis. They shared a similar taste in music and similar views on how to get ahead in the business. Even when Keating was in Boyzone, Louis ensured that he was regarded as a star in his own right.

In 1997, he co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest and presented the Irish National Entertainment Awards, which featured the bizarre sight of him opening the envelope for
Entertainer of the Year
and pulling out his own name. In the following year, he presented the 1998 MTV Europe awards and the 1998 Miss World, and found time to be Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin. He was appointed to Ireland’s Millennium Committee in 1999 and was supposed to produce a celebratory song, but never did. He cited his busy schedule and media criticism as the reasons for this.

Keating released his first solo album in 2000. It succeeded with song-writing contributions from Gregg Alexander of The New Radicals, Bryan Adams, Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, and Pat Leonard, Madonna’s producer. The first single from Ronan,
Life Is A Rollercoaster,
went to No. 1 in July 2000, as did the album itself in the following month. The other two singles from the album,
The Way You Make Me Feel
, and
Lovin’ Each Day
, made it to No. 6 and No. 2, respectively. In total, Ronan sold over 4.4 million copies.

The former members of Boyzone are now deeply divided. In a documentary entitled
Smash: The Boyzone Story
broadcast on ITV, members of the band made it clear they were unhappy about the way the band broke up.

“Myself and Stephen sang the first song,” explained Graham, “which kind of really launched us in Ireland as a band and then after that I don’t know how it happened at all, I really and truly don’t. But for some reason Ronan just started becoming the front person. Him and Louis got on well together and obviously Louis was the manager and the next thing you know Ronan was singing everything.

“And it wasn’t because nobody else could but none of us really know the reason for that one.”

Although Paul Keogh was interviewed for the docu-mentary, he says he didn’t realise how bitter relations between the former Boyzone members had become. “I saw that programme, I didn’t realise that they had all split in their own way. It was sad, because they were close at one stage. I think I’m no longer the enemy. I think Ronan is the enemy now. I think that the dartboard has his face on it now and not mine. I think that’s funny and in a sense that’s not Ronan’s fault. If they had the ability they would be more successful as solo artists and wouldn’t give a damn about Ronan, but it was just Ronan that had the wherewithal to keep going.”

Keogh continues: “The great thing about Louis was he knew what it was. He knew it was pop music and not to take it too seriously and his great ability was to keep the guys together for as long as he did. You could see it coming, you could see that he knew Ronan was the only long-term hope he had and then the other guys saw favouritism, and it was inevitable it was going to split.”

11

MUMBA ONE AND MUMBA TWO

Star quality is a difficult thing to define. Female superstars more than anyone else are different; they glow. Their skin is luminous, their eyes sparkle and their smiles are gracious. They are toned but not muscular. They are svelte, not skinny. They are glamourous, but in a restrained and tasteful way. Above all, they have an ineffable beauty that no money can buy. Carefully applied makeup, a good haircut, some nice clothes and a personal trainer can only do so much. True stars are beautiful. Most women can only dream of being like this; can only gaze longingly at images of modern goddesses on billboards and in glossy magazines. Not Samantha Mumba; she was born to be a superstar.

Louis signed Mumba before she left St. Mary’s school in Drumcondra, a leafy suburb on Dublin’s northside. When she was introduced to Louis, she was already a child star. She had performed with the Billie Barry stage school since the age of three, and made her first television appearance when she was four years old. She was a beautiful and talented child but that wasn’t the only reason she stood out: she was black. Her mother had been an Irish air hostess and through her work, had met and married a Zambian flight engineer.

Mumba’s skin colour lent her an exoticism in Ireland and when she performed as part of an ensemble, she immediately caught the attention of the audience. She was also a natural performer with a good singing voice and a strong stage presence.

In September 1998, when she was 15, she got the lead role in a show called
The Hot Mikado
. While this performance garnered her some good reviews, it was an appearance on the RTE talent competition
Let Me Entertain You
that launched her career. The show’s producer put Mumba in touch with Robbie Wootton, who had managed the Hothouse Flowers and the Black Velvet Band. Wootton also owned The Factory recording studio. He saw potential and set about grooming Mumba into a professional singer. According to Mumba, the manager showered her with gifts and spent thousands on photo shoots. However, she had not signed a management contract.

A chance introduction brought Louis into her life. Mumba’s mother Barbara knew Olan McGowan, the A&R representative for Sony Ireland. Through tentative talks with McGowan, who was struck by the teenager’s looks and ability, Barbara Mumba was next introduced to Dave Matthews, the US head of Sony. After the initial coming together, he passed her case to Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe, who had produced most of the Spice Girl’s hits. Stannard and Rowe were eager to work with Mumba and with UK music publisher Kate Thompson, arranged to meet her in Ireland. As Mumba was performing in panto, the group could not meet to talk until late in the evening. They decided to discuss matters over drinks in Lillies Bordello, a Dublin nightclub. Wootton wasn’t present that night but Louis happened to be there.

“Samantha made a bit of an entrance,” recalls the singer’s mother. “It was just one of those things that you actually couldn’t set up if you tried. If you were trying to influence Louis, you couldn’t have planned it better. Louis happened to be there and the producers introduced Samantha. A little while later, Louis came over to me and said he had actually been hearing a lot about Samantha, and had been trying to get in contact already.

“I think when he saw her that night, it sort of clicked. At that point, he just said he was very interested in managing her. But he wouldn’t discuss business in a nightclub, so he’d call me the next day.

“I was like ‘Yeah, OK’, really not thinking anything of it, thinking ‘oh, you know, nothing’s going to happen.’ But he called.”

Louis says Mumba instantly impressed him. The company she was keeping in Lillies Bordello that night also impressed him.

“I said, ‘If she’s with the Spice Girls producers, she must be talented. That got me interested immediately, so I said, ‘I want to manage you,’ just like that. She said to me, ‘But you haven’t heard me sing.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. I still want to manage you. You have it all.’ I just knew there was a talent there.”

He says she instantly reminded him of a young Janet Jackson or Toni Braxton. Until that moment, his inter-national success had come with boybands but he knew Mumba was too good an opportunity to pass up.

For Mumba and her mother, Louis was too good an opportunity to pass too. He had an enviable track record and a bulging contacts book. Although his offer of management was impulsive, he had excellent credentials. Louis left the meeting that night not knowing whether he’d sold himself properly or not. What interested him now was to find out whether he could make a deal.

Barbara Mumba, however, didn’t trust anyone as far as her daughter was concerned. Her only desire was to secure the best management deal possible for her daughter; be it with Wootton or Louis. Barbara Mumba was already a survivor. She had raised her daughter and son, Omero, single-handedly. She was reluctant to move quickly in the fear of making a mistake.

“When Robbie came on board, I told him that I wanted to wait. I didn’t want to just make major decisions that would affect Samantha’s future. I wanted to see how things would go. I just thought, ‘I don’t want to sign on the dotted line with anyone just yet.’ I just wanted to wait and see what happens.

“At that time, everybody was very aware of who Louis was,” she says. “Louis himself didn’t have a profile. There were never pictures of him in news-papers or anything. But this was my daughter and she came first. I wasn’t going to just jump at any opportunity. I had to make sure it was the right thing for her and I just rang around and spoke to a few different people who knew Louis already or knew of him and it was a resounding ‘Oh my God, yes, go for it’. Again, when it’s your child, you can’t just jump blindly into things. Although I had a good feeling personally about Louis, I obviously had to look into it.”

Louis was made aware of the background checks conducted into his business and professional life. It was inconceivable that a concerned mother like Barbara Mumba would do anything else.

“The thing I liked about Barbara is that she didn’t want to be one of these stage mothers,” says Louis. “She just wants to be the ordinary Irish mother, living in Drumcondra. She wants her kids to be famous because they want to be famous. It’s nothing to do with her. The chemistry between Samantha and Omero and Barbara together is quite incredible. It’s a real unit.”

Louis’ credentials were confirmed by virtually everyone Barbara Mumba called. By this time, he had a professional working relationship with most people involved in the Irish music industry. Although there were those who didn’t like him personally, his reputation as a manager was beyond reproach.

“When I was ringing, I was talking to people who knew both Robbie and Louis but I made the decision to go with Louis,” she says. “If you’re going to make a decision like that, you obviously go with the person who can do most.”

Louis didn’t delay in conspiring to make Mumba a star. He circulated rumours of his coup in the music industry. He wanted record labels to be screaming for her signature on a contract. Senior A&R figures in the UK quickly inferred from the noises emanating from Dublin that Louis had found something special.

In the end, Polydor secured the contract with a promise to make her a priority artist. Colin Barlow, who Louis says is the most underrated A&R man in the UK, cut the deal.

The memory of Samantha Mumba walking into his office for the first time is seared in his memory. After Louis had phoned him, knowing he would be eager to see this new talent, he had got permission to draw up a contract.

“He [Louis] said, ‘Wait until you meet her. You won’t believe the way she looks,’ says Barlow. “She walked in my room and looked like an absolute superstar. Then I saw tapes of the talent show and heard her voice. So we actually did a deal with Samantha without any demos or anything, purely on the fact that she had a voice that was really special, and she looked a million dollars, and had a brilliant personality.”

Signing a 15-year-old singer on this basis, without even a demo tape, is almost unheard of in the music industry, but both Louis and Barlow were convinced that Mumba had earning potential.

“I actually think Samantha is one of those people that comes in your office once every 10 years. She’s that special and her career, if we do manage it properly, could go on to make her one of the world’s biggest stars, not just in the UK,” says Barlow.

Signing Mumba so quickly wasn’t the only out-of-character move made by Barlow. Before the deal had even been signed, Barlow asked Mumba to go to Sweden and record some tracks with Anders Bagge, yet another one of the Swedish producer/songwriter contingent. She happily complied and, accompanied by her mother, flew to Sweden to do a little recording.

Bagge also began coaching her in songwriting techniques. Once the deal with Polydor was signed, Samantha also signed a publishing contract with Warner Chappell. According to Louis, she gets at least a 20 percent cut of the publishing royalties on every song she co-writes.

Although Samantha evidently had star potential, it was only potential. Like Westlife, she had to undergo vocal and dance coaching to bring her performances up to international pop star standards. She also worked with stylists and hairdressers to build an image that would define Samantha Mumba as a brand. She also had to learn how to promote that brand with lessons in dealing with the media. Meanwhile, work on her debut album was progressing nicely.

There were other problems though. Even though Mumba was officially signed to Polydor, she had committed herself to performing in a Dublin cabaret venue, the Red Cow Morans Hotel with the comed-ienne June Rodgers. Despite objections from the record company she performed as promised.

“We felt that you don’t start off your career by letting someone down,” says Barbara Mumba. “When she was asked to do it, she was very happy. So she went ahead and did the summer season and Omero was actually on the same show.”

Meanwhile Barlow hired reputed producers including Steve Mac, who had worked with Boyzone and Westlife; Rodney Jerkins, the musical inspiration behind Destiny’s Child, Jennifer Lopez and Aaliyah; and the well-known R&B team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who produced for countless artists including Janet Jackson and Mary J Blige. The company decided Mumba should have a distinct image. Both her look and her voice dictated the style should be R’n’B-influenced, in the American style. Louis agreed with this analysis and oversaw the creation of Mumba’s new image.

Her album was completed in May 2000. If she hadn’t met Louis, she would have been preparing to sit her Leaving Certificate Exams. Both Mumba and her mother believed she could always go back to her studies but she would probably have only one chance of making it in the music industry.

Gotta Tell You
was her first single and went straight to No. 2 in the UK charts, and reached No. 1 in Ireland, where it was the biggest-selling single of the year. Louis had another solid gold success on his hands.

Her second single,
Body II Body
, made No. 5 in the UK that October. Her album
Gotta Tell You
only went to No. 17 in the UK charts when it was released in the same month as
Body II Body
. This was a poor showing given the success that greeted Boyzone and Westlife.

The album might not have made it to No. 1 but it did attract the attention of some big-name record label bosses in the US. Jimmy Iovine of Interscope was one. After hearing the album, he visited Dublin to meet with Mumba and Louis and signed her almost immed-iately. With the full backing of Interscope, Mumba had a far better shot at breaking the US than Boyzone ever had.

Iovine and Interscope had both ambition and un-limited financial resources.
Gotta Tell You
was remixed by Teddy Riley, Michael Jackson’s producer, and shot to No. 1 in the US Billboard charts. While this was spectacular enough for Mumba, considering she was still just 17, it was a life-affirming moment for Louis. He had wheeled and dealed his way to getting one of his charges a US No. 1, the holy grail of modern pop music.

“It was incredible,” says Louis. “It was like a dream. Her very first record . . . I’ll never ever forget it.

“Iovine had worked with U2 and all that. He’s probably the most powerful man in the music industry in America. He’s got a great bloody team around him.

“One of his team, Brenda Romano used to call me and I used to think she was giving me bullshit about Samantha’s record,” says Louis impersonating an America accent, ‘It’s on fire. It’s on here. It’s on in LA. It’s on Kiss and Love FM’ and I just said ‘Ah yeah, know the story’. But Brenda Romano made the record happen in America. She and her husband, Chris Lopez in Inter-scope, they do all the radio in America. It’s the only way you break radio in America because it’s such a powerful big country, 2,000 stations. MTV is important but Samantha’s record went on radio and it was ‘on fire’ and it was massive and they loved her. It was like a dream.”

Mumba’s No. 1 had catapulted Louis to further heights within the music industry.

Tom Watkins, Louis’ role model, greatly admired this achievement. “It’s considerably different in the United States. I think he had a lot more success being Irish than I probably did, because he had that charming kind of necessary game that they wanted. Culturally, the Americans are incredibly different and they handle their music in a completely different way and you can only applaud Louis that he manipulated this No. 1.”

America loved Mumba. In November 2000,
Time
commented that “Teen pop queens of late have been manufactured in a despairingly limited variety: blond and blonder, bland and blander. Samantha Mumba, 18, is a refreshing change.”
USA Today
said Mumba was like a mix of Britney, Beyoncé and Macy Gray. Publicity like this helped nurture the growth of Mumba’s profile in the US. Interscope used their influence to open every door they could for the young performer. They placed her as a presenter on the
2000 Billboard Awards
, and an appearance on the
2000 Radio Music Awards
, shortly after her No. 1.