Baby You're a Star (12 page)

Mumba’s American success brought unexpected dividends. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the music industry that was interested.

Hollywood took notice of this new star. Mumba was invited to do a screen test for a new adaptation of HG Wells’ classic science fiction novel,
The Time Machine
, apparently after a casting agent saw her photograph in
People
magazine. She was offered the part of Mara in the film, while her little brother Omero was given the part of Kalen. By this time, further behind the scenes machinations had led to Omero being signed by Louis. The manager had convinced Polydor to sign Omero. To date, he has not succeeded in making any impact in the charts.

“Louis first saw him perform with Samantha and was impressed with him, and how he behaved on stage and so on,“ says Barbara Mumba, explaining how Louis came to manage her son. “After that really, it was a gradual thing. Samantha had a song with a rap on it and she fought to get Omero on the track because she didn’t want another rapper on it. She knew he could do it. That then led to him doing a Disney special in the States with her, doing the NSync tour around the States last year.”

Mumba is overtly supportive of her young brother. He often travels with her and she uses whatever influence she has to secure him work in the music industry.

Deciding that Mumba should go ahead and act in
The Time Machine
was easy for Louis, despite the fact that her album sales in the US were bound to suffer as she had to sacrifice months that would have been spent on touring and promotion work. “It was absolutely no problem sacrificing sales, because this film is going to be a worldwide smash. It’s going to put her on the map. She even has a song on the sound-track,” explained Louis in an interview with
The Sunday Times
.

Sales were undoubtedly sacrificed for the sake of the film. Mumba’s album reached only No. 79 in the Billboard album charts, and her second single,
Baby Come Over
[the On was dropped from the title for the US release] scarcely charted in the US. Another single,
Don’t Need You To
[Tell Me I’m Pretty], from the soundtrack to
Legally Blonde
didn’t conquer the charts either. Unfortunately, it was released on 11 September 2001.

Mumba could unquestionably have sold far more singles and copies of her album had she engaged in the intensive promotion demanded by the US music market.

“I think the album just did OK and the follow-up singles did alright, but I think she has a career there. I think Samantha’s probably going to end up living in America. Probably end of next year, she’ll go to America. She’s definitely been offered loads of movies. I think she’s definitely made for America but she’ll still be successful here,” says Louis. “Listen, she’s only 19. She’s got a big career ahead of her. It’s all going to happen.”

Louis sees Mumba as the next Jennifer Lopez, a star who can enjoy continued success in both movies and music.

Louis is meticulous in maximising the earning potential of his artists. Mumba was clearly someone that companies targeting the youth market could use to endorse their products. L’Oréal, for example, signed her for a major advertising campaign.

The decision to take the role in Time Machine had certainly affected her success in America. She fared slightly better in the UK, where her third single
Always Come Back to Your Love
reached No. 3 in February 2001.
Baby Come On Over
made it to No. 5 in September, and
Lately
reached No. 8 that December. She still hadn’t had a No. 1 in the UK, and her album
Gotta Tell You
climbed to No. 9 but no further on its re-release in September 2001. Although her performance was respectable, it was not on a par with those of Louis’ other protégés. Polydor decided not to release any further singles from the first album and sent Mumba to Sweden to work on her second album, which was originally due out in April 2002. For undisclosed reasons, the release date of the album was delayed until 2003.

In Mumba, Louis found a completely different artist to any that had previously crossed his path. As Mumba herself has pointed out, one girl is completely different to five boys. A boyband is immediately guaranteed the support of hordes of teenage girls.

Making a star of Mumba was a huge challenge for Louis. He had the capability to turn any boyband into a profitable enterprise if he was so inclined. The only female solo act he ever managed was Linda Martin but Mumba fell into a class of her own. This has posed its own problems for Louis.

“It’s easier to manage boys,” says Louis. “They can work harder. They don’t need any make-up artist, any stylist. They don’t need all these trappings that girls need. Girls are very high-maintenance to manage. They can’t take the work. They get very emotional, missing home, missing boyfriends and all that bullshit. They need stylists, makeup, hair and those people cost a bloody fortune. They’re high maintenance but if they take off, they take off, and the charts are just full of girls at the moment,” he says.

The crucial difference between Mumba and his other clients is that she can’t be controlled as openly as Westlife.

“I’m very, very headstrong and quite independent. I think that’s why Louis and myself work really well because he would be the exact same. I’m really not particularly dependent on him,” she says.

“I wouldn’t want him to be at all my TV appearances or interviews. I wouldn’t really see Louis in the flesh that often, but I always know he’s at the end of a phone line if I need him. I would hate to have a manager that was constantly with me all the time and in my face all the time and over-involved. I definitely wouldn’t like that, so it works really well.”

To manage Mumba successfully, Louis had to adapt his management style, both in his dealings with the artist, and with the music industry.

“Samantha is real,” says Louis. “You cannot make Samantha say something she doesn’t want to say. You just let her do her own thing. She’s real. People buy into her because she is the girl next door.”

Louis, however, makes the crucial decisions al-though Mumba plays this part of the business arrangement down. In reality, he makes the decisions and holds the contacts that make Mumba a star. He is also cautious about her taste in music and style preferences. He doesn’t want her to become a black star in America.

“I hope she doesn’t try and get too black, that’s all, because she loves all that music. Being too black, you just . . . I like it mainstream, because if it’s too black, it doesn’t sell and I want to sell lots and lots of records,” he says

Mumba likes him because he has made a point of maintaining close links to her mother, Barbara, and involving the family in any decisions he makes regarding her career.

“We have the kind of relationship where he’s like an uncle or a bigger brother,” says Mumba. “He’s really, really over-protective of me and we’ll fight like cats and dogs, but we love each other dearly at the same time. I think at times, it’s a very ambiguous sort of relationship. I would look on him way more as a family friend than as a boss. I don’t even think of him as my boss.”

Her mother agrees. “He’s become a family friend, never mind the business side of things,” says Barbara Mumba. “Neither of them pull any punches. They’re both very straight and they’re both very loyal and those are qualities that they respect in each other. They would never hear of each other saying anything behind their back. If anything is to be said, they say it to each other’s face. They’re very alike in that sense. There’s no pussyfooting.

“Every Christmas without fail, when Louis is en-route to Mayo to spend Christmas with his family, he always passes through our house to have a cup of tea on the way. That’s become a little routine over the past few years. That’s nice.

“I don’t think it’s like ‘oh well, that’s another artist and if it’s not working out, I’ll just replace her with someone else.’ I never get that feeling from him at all.

“From my point of view, it’s been a great thing with Louis from the very beginning that he has involved me so much. While initially the involvement probably was due to Samantha’s age, since she turned 18, he has still continued to involve me. We discuss things regularly,” she says.

In terms of packaging Mumba, Louis could not just reverse his earlier boyband strategy and market her to teenage boys. It is teenage girls who buy pop music so Mumba had to be a role model rather than a heartthrob. She comes across in interviews as articulate and intelligent, excellent qualities in a role model. That said, the definition of role model has changed over the years, hence Mumba admits that she drinks and that she sacked four consecutive stylists. She has also spoken about her sexuality.

This attitude has made Mumba seem “cool”, feisty and independent but ultimately, Louis is still in control. He is far too skillful at manipulating the media to allow any of his acts to make unwarranted comments without his consent. Mumba is allowed to give her own opinions about things because she might just sell a few more records that way.

The openness only goes so far, however. Mumba’s long-term Irish boyfriend was hidden away as much as possible and photographs of the couple together have rarely been published. If everyone knew Mumba had a boyfriend, the marketing machine wouldn’t be able to circulate rumours of celebrity romance. She was reported to be with a slew of eligible bachelors including Eminem (who is also signed to Interscope), Craig David and Dermot O’Leary. She has repeatedly denied any such romances but the stories generated column inches when they were initially made public and so fulfilled their purpose.

Mumba, however, is similar to other Louis Walsh acts is that she is always courteous and polite with fans and journalists.

As her A&R representative Colin Barlow says, “He [Louis] is about how he expects his acts to be and I think that’s good news. I think he’s got good morals in what he expects from his artists. All the acts he works with, they’re all really respectful and really charming people, so I think the morals that he gives his acts are really good. And if they are [badly behaved], he’ll scream at them. And that’s what I love about Louis, he expects high quality from people.”

The biggest difference between Mumba and Louis’ other acts is potential longevity. Louis knows manufactured pop acts last no longer than five or six years. The market for any individual boyband or girlband is finite. Mumba has an entire lifetime ahead of her.

“He’s her manager, her protector, her mentor,” says the journalist Michael Ross, who has followed Louis’ career. “She will still be making records in her forties, when he is in his sixties, and if they stay together as artist and manager he will learn as much from her as she has and will from him. The next big shift in Louis’ career will not be to become the manager with the greatest number of No. 1 records – he is obsessed by overtaking Brian Epstein’s tally. He will eventually do that. He is too driven, too energetic and too talented not to. But if he is to be remembered as a truly great pop manager, he will have to shift to focusing on quality as much as quantity. Samantha is his route to that.”

12

OPERATION AMERICA

Mumba’s strike into the heart of the American music industry was part of a dual strategy involving Westlife. Although each act was signed to a different record label, Louis harboured sincere hopes for both acts in America. He was convinced Westlife could replicate Mumba’s perform-ance. He saw no reason why this feat couldn’t be achieved. That the band was made up of professional entertainers reinforced this notion. By this time, Louis had developed an extremely close relationship with Westlife. In fact, the relationship was far stronger and professional than his with Boyzone. Westlife, he said, were the perfect boyband.

“You have to get five guys that get on well,” says Louis. “The hardest thing with most bands is making sure they get on well. Some people are going to be more famous, more prominent, better singers and better dancers than other people.”

Westlife had also shown strong endurance and stamina when it came to touring. This was a crucial part of the plan. They not only had the will to succeed, but also the commitment to take on the extra workload of promoting their albums in America. Louis couldn’t risk removing Westlife from the public eye in Europe, as he had with Mumba. For that reason, he made sure the band constantly toured Britain, Europe and Asia, generating millions in concert takings.

Rather than send Westlife to America for a long single period, he arranged for them to tour Europe constantly, then fly to America for a short period, before returning home to tour once again. He wanted the band to build up a strong support base on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously. Westlife released an unending series of records; the band worked constantly to promote their product through tours and personal appearances. Success in America would depend largely on the band’s stamina. Louis saw this as no problem.

He saw the band’s utter determination to make money while they were young as a good sign. It made Westlife an ideal band to take America. Louis figured that the band knew they had only a limited time. Because they knew they were disposable, he calculated that they were capable of using every ounce of energy they possessed to break the lucrative market.

“They are aware that there are other bands coming up behind them and they have only got a certain amount of years to make it,” says Louis.

The band’s second album though was overtly aimed at an American audience and aptly called
Coast to Coast
. Like its predecessor, it was made in collabor-ation with a raft of big-name producers. Louis also brought in American legends to perform with Westlife. The album saw the participation of Mariah Carey, who performed a cover version of the Phil Collins’ song
Against All Odds
. The collaboration didn’t perform as anticipated but the next Westlife single,
My Love
, went straight to No. 1 in the UK, breaking the record set by the Beatles for achieving successive hit records.

In the same month,
Coast to Coast
was released, amid frenzied speculation by the tabloid press, as to whether it or the Spice Girls new album would make it to No. 1. Westlife won and the album eventually sold over 2 million copies in the UK.

Incidentally, Westlife were prevented from getting eight consecutive No. 1s with
Tell Me What Makes A Man
by the actor Neil Morrissey, who released a single in the guise of children’s television character Bob the Builder

Louis continued to hanker for success in America on the back of
Coast to Coast
. After the success of the group’s first album in Europe and Asia, Louis sent Westlife to the US, negotiating a contract with Arista Records over there.

In April 2000, as
Fool Again
reached the No. 1 spot in the UK, Westlife embarked on a four-week tour of the US, and returned later in the year for a further six weeks. Although
Swear It Again
made No. 3 in the singles sales chart and No. 20 in the Billboard chart, which also incorporates radio airplay, the tour could not have been categorised as a success.

Arista did not release any more of the band’s singles. It had been a mistake to launch the band with a ballad. American markets prefer their boybands to be more upbeat. US pop manager Lou Pearlman, for example, generally waits until the first two singles have sold well before throwing a ballad to the fans and seeing how they take it.

Westlife’s failure to capture an America audience didn’t deter the band. They embarked on their first major arena tour in 2001. The
Coast to Coast
tour involved 80 sold-out gigs in three continents. For this tour, they changed their performance style, using extensive choreographed dance routines for the first time. The European tour was a success.

Despite their dedication to hard labour, Westlife did not achieve any notable success in America. Although they hadn’t failed completely; they hadn’t succeeded either.

“It didn’t matter,” says Louis. “They have every-where else in the world. They don’t need America. It’s going to take a chunk out of their career everywhere else, but it doesn’t really matter.”

When the European tour ended, RCA wasted no time in putting out another album to please and placate the fans. Once again, Steve Mac, Wayne Hector, and Cheiron had been churning out the songs, although Westlife themselves wrote five of the tracks on this album.
The World of Our Own
album was released in November 2001, and went straight to No. 1, as did the first single from the album,
Queen of My Heart
.

“They broke all the rules of all the boybands. They are much bigger than Take That or anybody else. Nobody else has ever sold the tickets they’ve sold. They did five Earl’s Courts. U2 did four. Madonna did four,” says Louis.

Although Westlife’s performance in America was partly overshadowed by Mumba, it didn’t matter. The band had proven itself to be a financially profitable product.

“I think I have the most honest relationship with them I’ve had with any band. It’s honest. There are no passengers in the band at all. They have all got talent. I think Shane is the best pop singer I’ve ever worked with. He is the most commercial. Mark is a brilliant soul singer and it’s the combination of the soul singing, and the pop singing that makes it fantastic. Kian is just like a brilliant music man all around. He’s just like a rock guitar player. He plays like 12 instruments. He keeps the whole band together. And then Nicky does so much work off-stage that nobody knows about, and he’s got a great look. He’s a great singer. He’s a great dancer. He’s like the sex symbol of the band, I suppose.”

Of Bryan McFadden, he says: ”We didn’t always get on”. “I didn’t like him at the start. I thought he was a loose cannon. I thought he used to drink too much, I thought he was promiscuous. But you know what, he’s not. He’s a really good guy and he’s totally mis-understood by the media, because he looks like he’s always drinking and having a good time. He did it once or twice in his life and people only know that about him. I think I will be working with him for a long time to come.”

Westlife were not the only product Louis had difficulty with in the American market. Keating was signed to Interscope, which spent $300,000 on a new video for
Lovin Each Day
but it failed to deliver. The single hardly registered in the US. It went unplayed by MTV and sold only 25,000 copies. In fact, Interscope is rumoured to have spent $2 million on launching Keating in the US, but the poor performance of the single caused the record company to drop its plans to release the album
Ronan
over there.

In general, however, Keating’s solo career has been a success. Thus far, he has had three No. 1 singles and two No. 1 albums in the UK. Over 6.4 million copies of his albums have been sold. Yet he still does not enjoy popularity or acclaim in his home country.

Colin Barlow is completely perplexed by this. “I think Ronan has been as, if not more, successful as a solo artist than he was in Boyzone, certainly world-wide. I find it amazing that probably the worst territory for Ronan is Ireland . . . [it’s] just a crying shame that the fact he enjoys life and likes nice things people find offensive in Ireland. We’ve done six million albums with Ronan so far and I think that’s phenomenal, and it’s a shame that he’ll go back to Ireland and not have the love that I think he deserves. It’s a shame, because he’s such a good man and he’s never been an arrogant person or anything. I find it amazing the reaction he gets in Ireland. I think it’s really wrong.”

After his successes with boybands and a female solo artist, Louis was confident that he could conjure up a successful girlband, particularly with the help of John Reynolds, who agreed to act as co-manager. It proved a difficult venture, however, and by 2002 Louis was still trying to kickstart his girlband’s career.

At auditions in the Red Box nightclub in the summer of 1999, Louis had chosen the members of his new group: two sisters, Ciara and Cathy Newell from Galway, and three other girls, Kelly Kilfeather from Sligo, Tara Lee from Dublin and Paula O’Neill from Cork. All were still in their teens. Louis called the group Chit-Chat. For a year and a half, the girls were pop stars in training. They toured with Boyzone, performed at minor concerts around Ireland and appeared regularly on RTE television.

As he had done with Boyzone and Westlife, Louis proved that he could be brutally determined in his quest to turn out the perfect pop group. Just as Chit-Chat was about to go before the cameras for its first television appearance in January 2000, Louis decided that the fivesome should become a foursome. Paula O’Neill was out because she “just didn’t fit in”, according to Louis. He maintained that Paula was more suited to performing as a solo singer.

Paul Conroy of Virgin signed the group shortly afterwards with a three album deal worth £1 million. The group’s name was changed to Bellefire, because Virgin executives believed Chit-Chat was too reminiscent of an adult chat-line.

With the record deal signed, Louis and the Bellefire girls could concentrate on preparing songs for the group’s debut album. Again, Louis found a respected pair of producer/songwriters to work with. Greg Fitzgerald and Tom Nichols had already worked with major female acts such as All Saints and Kylie Minogue. With the album ready, the band headed off in early 2001 to support Westlife on a European tour and followed this with the release of their first single,
Perfect Bliss
. The single was well received at home and made No. 2 in the Irish charts. Unfortunately, it didn’t get any further than No. 18 in the UK. Virgin was happy to keep Bellefire on its roster, however, as the group had brought life to an old pop cliché by making it big in Japan.
Perfect Bliss
had shot to the top of the Japanese charts in August 2000.

Virgin decided to capitalise on this success by releasing Bellefire’s album in Japan as quickly as possible. The album was called
After The Rain
. It was presented to the adoring Japanese public in October 2001 and quickly sold over 125,000 copies. A follow-up single from the album,
Buzzstyle
, was released in Japan in November and also reached No. 1.

In the same month, the Bellefire publicity machine in Ireland was cranked up with the screening of a docu-mentary on the girls and their bid to become pop stars.
The Next Big Thing
, made by Frontier Films and shown on RTE, even generated a little controversy as Virgin sparred with the production company over the inclusion in the film of comments made by Louis. While being interviewed for the documentary, Louis said that only Kelly and Ciara were really good singers and the other two had no hope of a solo career after Bellefire. Virgin wanted the comment cut out of the programme but Frontier Films kept it in.

Bellefire’s next single, a cover of the U2 classic
All I Want Is You
, was not released until March 2002 in Ireland and April 2002 in the UK. It made No. 5 in Ireland but just as the group’s first single had, it went only to No. 18 in the UK. Virgin was not happy. In May, just after Paul Conroy had left the company, Bellefire were dropped. The girls discovered this news when someone showed them an article in
The Sun
about it while they were on their way to record their first performance for
Top of the Pops
. Disillusioned by the hard-edged nature of the music industry, Tara Lee left the group and was not replaced. Louis says he has “nothing at all bad to say about her”. He acknow-ledges that she is “gorgeous looking” but says “she just didn’t want it.”

Although Virgin was unconvinced of Bellefire’s potential, Louis remained ebullient. He was sure the trio of Cathy, Ciara and Kelly could still make it. By July, he had succeeded in negotiating a new record deal for the group.

“They’re signed with Christian Tattersfield in East West Records, one of the brilliant A&R men in the UK, different than all the pop guys; signed David Gray, signed Morcheeba, works with the Corrs, works with Oxide and Neutrino. Great guy, sees them totally different to anybody else, signed them.”

Louis believes that Tattersfield is the “major ace card up the sleeve” and says he is going to take Bellefire in a new direction. “The music he’s sending me, it’s very unusual sounds, almost American, kind of Avril Levigne type records, with a touch of the Madonna new stuff as well in it. He is a real A&R man.”

The group plans to release its debut album in late 2002 but the girls have a lot of work to do to rebuild their own confidence and to convince the fans they are worth support-ing. At an appearance in the free O2 in the Park concert in Dublin in August, Bellefire was roundly booed by the crowd. The group had spent most of the rest of the summer gigging on the Pop Party Tour in various Butlins camps around the UK. Bellefire’s prospects may well have sunk too far to ever be resuscitated. If Louis can make a success of them now, it will be one of the greater achievements of his career. As ever, he is supremely confident. “Virgin have got them ready. They’ve spent the money. They’ve educated the girls,” he says.

In 2001, Louis became a household name in Ireland, not because of his acts but because of his increasing tendency to publicly attack his critics and the vehement way he dealt with his opponents. Rarely a day passed without his name being mentioned in the press. It often seemed that it was part of a grander strategy of media manipulation.