Baby You're a Star (13 page)

Louis is unquestionably a driven character when it comes to his work but manipulating media coverage is not a skill that someone can acquire overnight. Louis learned how to deal with the media when he worked for Tommy Hayden Enterprises. Hayden made it clear that keeping the media on side and generating positive media coverage was one of the most critical factors in the success of an act. Louis has admitted in the past that keeping the press on side in those days often meant delivering an envelope with a £20 note inside along with a press release. This tactic is rarely used these days.

Once Louis became manager of Boyzone, he put the lessons he had learned over the years to good use. He became infamous for concocting false stories about Boyzone and other acts subsequently but remains sanguine about this.

“You give them a story and they only print it if they think it’s going to be a good story or sell papers. I mean, I don’t make up the stories all the time. Sometimes I do. You just give them the story or tell them something about the act.”

“Everybody makes up stories,” says Louis. “We’re just more honest about it. The one everyone talks about and it got totally blown out of proportion was Boyzone making the video in Australia and they had a problem with the plane. I leaked it to one of the papers and it was on the news. It got totally blown out of proportion. It’s nothing nobody else hasn’t done. All the other bands have done it. We’re just more upfront about it. I’d do it again. I’d probably tell their parents the next time in case they heard it on the news.”

He is aware, however, that there is such a thing as over-exposure and is careful not to get too much publicity for his acts.

“People are going to get fed up and say ‘Not that one again. I’m fed up listening to that one again.’ I think Kylie is over-exposed. She’s had one good record in the last few years and she’s totally over-exposed.”

In 2001, Louis’ success in the charts and his clever propensity to generate newspaper headlines caused him to become a hate-figure for the Irish rock fraternity. The success of Westlife, Keating and Mumba provoked scorn; soon it became trendy to criticise Louis Walsh. As his success grew, rock bands came out on the offensive and he was openly attacked.

“Louis Walsh is the worst fucking thing that has happened to Irish music in the last couple of centuries. Phil Lynott is probably fucking turning in his grave,” Mark Hamilton, the bass player with the rock band Ash, said in an interview with
Hot Press
. The band had already set fire to 300 Westlife CDs while on a publicity tour for their fourth album,
Free All Angels
.

“Westlife are just the most bland band on the planet ever,” commented Tim Wheeler, Ash’s lead singer.

“Every single one of their songs is like a power ballad that sounds identical to the last one. It leaves you longing for some real bands, real music.”

Wheeler said it was really Louis they had a problem with, as the pop manager had said Ash would not even sell 500 records. At the 2001 Ivor Novello Awards, while accepting a gong for Best Contemporary Song, Wheeler used the opportunity to launch another attack. In his acceptance speech, he said he would like to stick the award “up Louis Walsh’s arse”. Predict-ably, Louis responded in kind: “I know they[Ash] are frustrated. [Tim] is a dreadful fucking singer. He can’t sing live. I said to him on the way out, ‘I’ll be here next year, you won’t’.”

Ash was not the only Irish rock band that has issues with Louis. Rory Gallagher of The Revs openly criticised Louis and the music he pushes.

Gallagher has went so far as to write an “Open Letter to the Irish Music Industry”. In the letter, he slated the Irish and UK offices of the major record labels for con-centrating on “manufactured” Irish pop acts rather than “genuine” Irish rock acts. These offices, according to Gallagher, “are doing a great disservice to the Irish public and to young Irish musicians. They are insulting us with their mindless regurgitated manu-factured bubblegum rubbish.”

A month after the “Open Letter” was published, The Revs released a single
Alone With You
. Unusually, it was the B-side of the single that received the most press attention. It was called
Louis Walsh
(Says Rock n Roll is Dead), in which the band lampooned “karaoke” pop bands and the soulless DJs that play their music. The Revs had heard Louis announce the death of rock and roll during an interview with the Irish DJ Tom Dunne. It was an off the cuff remark but The Revs decided to make the most of it.

Louis wasn’t perturbed. He didn’t take the criticism from rock bands terribly seriously. He even wishes them well.

“Ash and The Revs and all these, some of these bands are very good. They work fantastically hard. They’ve been pretty successful. Ash have sold about a million albums and I’m not going to slag them off. They’ve worked really, really hard all around America and everywhere. Their singer is not the best singer in the world but they work hard and best of luck to them. It’s tough enough out there,” he says.

“I don’t know why they slag all the pop bands. It’s probably easy. Yeah, it’s easy. You never see the pop bands slagging the rock bands and the pop bands work harder because it’s harder to sell pop. You have to do a lot more promotion and stuff. Ash burning Westlife CDs? That was a joke! Ash are from Belfast. Westlife broke all the records ever in Belfast. Ash wouldn’t sell a thousand tickets in Belfast. Deep down, I love them for the way they’ve worked hard. They should just get on with it.”

While Louis was magnaminous towards his rock foes, fans of rock and indie music continued to develop a hatred for his methods and the music his acts perform. The vehement dislike from some elements of the public began to worry Keating and his other friends.

“I was at that O2 gig in the Phoenix Park and I saw a banner that said ‘We hate Louis Walsh’,” recalls Keating. “I thought I should say something when I was on stage, and then I thought ‘Nah, what’s the point in bringing attention to it.’ At the end of the day, they don’t realise that they’re giving Louis press and he loves all of that.”

Keating makes the point that few major rock critics or singers target his manager.

“Everyone has these great stories about Louis. I remember Bono telling me the story where U2 met Louis and said ‘Listen, we don’t know about this Paul McGuinness fella. What do you think?’ and Louis said ‘Stick with him. He’ll make it happen for you.’ U2 stayed with him. Louis could have turned around and said, ‘Yeah I’ll manage you, no worries’ but he believed in Paul McGuinness and look where they are today.”

13

POPSTARS

Louis had reached the pinnacle of his career by 2001. Not only those that he counts as friends, but his fans, critics and enemies began wonder-ing if he would consider retiring. That September, he offered a clue when it was announced that he would be one of the judges on the Irish series of
Popstars
. Although he would manage the band, he said it would be his last.

Louis didn’t own the Irish franchise to
Popstars
. The franchise was purchased by an Irish production company called Shinawil in early 2001.

The firm’s managing director Larry Bass reckoned that he would have to involve Louis if he were to make the programme a success.

“I think trying to do a Popstars-type TV show, if you didn’t have Louis in a market the size of Ireland, it might be a little bit of a damp squib, but he would transcend the market and make it interesting and worthwhile.”

Louis was reluctant to get involved in the programme. He didn’t want the publicity. While the public knew the name Louis Walsh, few people knew what he looked like. His anonymity would be gone forever.

“That was the biggest thing he had to get over,” says Bass. “He was really laying himself up for a fall. He didn’t need to do it. He had enough acts.”

Several years before, Louis had been unsure of himself when he started managing Boyzone in the middle of his life, he found that the events which shaped the creation of Boyzone were the most valuable in his life. He had come close to finding genuine happiness. Nevertheless, the lessons he learned during the Boyzone years left him with a desire to face down his fears. “I was afraid to do it,” says Louis, “because I’ve never been on TV apart from the one time I did the
Late Late Show
. To go on, and to have the cameras around, I didn’t really want it and contrary to what people think, the money I got was absolutely buttons.”

He did, however, believe
Popstars
would make great television and eventually agreed to take part. Within a day of his decision, he had convinced Simon Cowell of BMG to offer the Irish Popstars a record deal.

“Cowell said, ‘If Louis is on board, let’s do it.’ That was it, end of story. I don’t think you could do that with other people,” says Bass.

Cowell pledged to spend €2.5 million on grooming and launching the resulting group. Louis also sugges-ted other judges for the programme, the first of whom was his friend, Linda Martin

“When Louis first suggested Linda, he said: ‘In Portlaoise, down in Naas, in Claremorris and in those parts of Ireland, they will relate to her.’ And that’s exactly what happened,” explains Bass.

The second judge was independent television producer Bill Hughes, who made most of Boyzone’s early videos. Hughes was a last-minute replacement for RTE DJ Gerry Ryan, whom the broadcaster pulled from the programme shortly before filming began.

Over 5,000 young people turned up at the
Popstars
auditions around the country. In Dublin alone, there were more auditionees than there had been in all the UK
Popstars
auditions put together. Martin says it was clear that most of those who auditioned had no understanding of the realities of life as a pop star.

“They had this romantic idea about showbusiness. That Louis is going to choose them, he’s going to completely transform their appearance, hand them over to a record company, who are going to catapult them to No. 1 and the CDs are going to sell and they are going to become superstars. They had absolutely no realistic view about the whole process at all,” says Martin.

Popstars
is a franchise, which follows the same formula in every country. In the course of the 13 part series, thousands of entrants who auditioned were whittled down to 32 finalists. These were taken to a hotel in Portumna, Co. Galway to practise their singing and dancing skills for a week. They also had other important pop star lessons; playing five-a-side football and practising yoga in a darkened room. The 32 were reduced to 12 and then to six. Once the band members were picked, they were moved into a house in Co. Dublin.

The show made Louis famous. He became a house-hold name. Any notions that he wouldn’t be recog-nised in public evaporated. The show exerted a force over his personal life. He could no longer walk down a street without being pointed out. Strangers said hello and asked to shake his hand. He became as famous as his clients, something that he privately felt deeply uneasy with.

Popstars
became far more high profile than anyone ever imagined. While the film crew was filming, one of the six contestants chosen to participate in the band was caught lying about her age. During an introductory interview, Nadine Coyle said her year of birth was 1985, making her 16 years-old and ineligible for the programme. All
Popstars
contestants had to be 18 years old. She had been the first contestant chosen for the final band.

“She sang absolutely like an angel. Now she couldn’t dance to save herself but that’s something that you can teach people. But you can’t teach people to sing like that and she had the looks and everything else so she was the ideal candidate,”says Bass.

Her deception provided the titillation that Popstars required and catapulted the audience ratings. Louis’ persona was exposed even more. It made grim but compulsive television. Coyle became famous as the popstar who never was. Footage of her lying was broadcast at inordinate length.

“All we tried to do was tell what happened,” says Bass. “We did nothing more than show the chain of events as it happened. We weren’t trying to demonise her or say it was right or wrong. This is what happened and that’s all we did. We let the viewers make their own minds up.”

Louis, however, disagrees. “I had no control over it and it was the highest rating show of the series. Over a million people watched it . . . I was just worried about her and her family because she wasn’t going to go for the UK show then because she was damaged. She was still damaged from, you know, ‘liar Nadine’ and all that sort of thing. She did nothing that no one else wouldn’t have done. It was great for the show but it wasn’t great for her.”

With Coyle gone, the judges decided on 20-year-old Sarah Keating from Galway as her replacement. The final line-up of the group was fixed: Kyle Anderson, 19, from Belfast; Liam McKenna, 19, from Tyrone; Emma O’Driscoll, 19, from Limerick; Andy Orr, 21, from Dublin; Sinéad Sheppard, 19, from Cork; and Keating. The band were called Six. Once he became the group’s manager, Louis started putting a record deal together.

“Literally from day one,” says McKenna, “there were obviously things we were really concerned about. The whole thing with Nadine. To be honest, we had to just trust him because we had no choice.”

After the programme had finished filming, Louis launched Six in January 2002. He appeared very proud of his new charges; Six was already the first
Popstars
act to have signed a record deal in another country.

Louis had asked Pete Waterman to produce the group’s album, although Waterman makes it sound like a favour. “I said, ‘You know Louis, I don’t know what
Popstars
means in Ireland. It sounds a joke to me, but you know what, if you think that much of it, I’ll do it. I don’t understand this
Popstars
programme and I don’t understand how you break an Irish Popstars act in England.

“But you know what, it doesn’t matter. If you believe in it, I’ll believe in it.’ And that’s the way it works.”

In the eight weeks between the time the group was chosen and the day it was launched, its members underwent intensive training in Ireland, the UK and Sweden. Louis had already chosen the song that would be Six’s first single, a cover of the 1972 Guys and Dolls hit
There’s A Whole Lot Of Lovin
.

Waterman wasn’t convinced by the choice. “I never look back as fondly as Louis looks back,” he explains. “He’s got a fantastic memory for old songs but unfortunately, he still looks at them with the same love as when he first heard them. When we came to do the Six record,
There’s A Whole Lot of Lovin
, that was Louis’ idea. Now, I’ve done the original! I couldn’t see what Louis was talking about.”

Once the single was released in February, it went straight to No. 1 and eventually went six times platinum in Ireland. It was the biggest-selling debut single ever released by an Irish artist. Six were a success, for the time being at least.

Not everyone was keen on the idea of such an overtly manufactured Irish pop band. Ronan Collins, a former showband musician and an RTE DJ criticised the new group on live radio, describing the single as “a mediocre pop song from 25 years ago, that is being made even worse now”. He also said it was “lacking in creativity, imagination, any kind of musicianship, and the singing is awful.

“The only ones who get any fame – and probably ultimately will get anything out of this – are Louis Walsh, Bill Hughes and Linda Martin,” he said.

Louis heard the show and his blood began to boil. He telephoned RTE and was put on air. He proceeded to insult Collins from a height.

“This is a bit rich coming from a failed showband star,” he said. “You’ve done everything and you’ve failed at it all, and you hated
Uptown Girl
as well, Ronan. Get a life. You’re not going to make a name on our backs. Cop on, you’re a failed showband star, man. You lived your whole life doing bad cover versions in Dublin nightclubs. You’ve never been on
Top Of The Pops
. We don’t even care if you play the record or not.”

By allowing his temper to get the better of him on national radio, Louis had made a mistake. He rapidly came under fire from all directions for his comments.

In an attempt to salvage the situation, Louis made a cloying apology to Collins on the
Late Late Show
a few days later. “I only did it because I care about these six people [Six]; because they’ve sung, they’ve danced, they’ve cried, they’ve laughed. I really care about them,” he said.

“Ronan is a great musician, he’s a great DJ, he’s a great person,” said Louis, adding that he was “mortified” when he listened to a tape of the argument.

Commenting eight months later on the episode, Louis says: “It was hard work and it was blood, sweat and tears for us as well as them and then for somebody to go on national radio and just dismiss it! I was like, ‘Why is he doing this?’ I got on and I just told him what I really thought and a lot of people didn’t like it.”

RTE was happy with the success of the series and the new pop group. The television station had spent over €400,000 getting the show on air, now it needed
Popstars
to perform well in the ratings.

Louis benefited from the television series. When Louis was trying to launch other acts, much of his time was spent trying to convince the media to publicise the new group or singer. Before the line-up of Six was even finalised, the target audience recognised their faces and believed they had to come to know these young people a little. An hour of prime-time television every week for 13 weeks and endless column inches devoted to the concept, the process, the entrants, the judges, the music and the intrigue was more publicity than Louis could dream of. Furthermore, he made sure that his other acts were not forgotten amid the
Popstars
mania. He mentioned them on camera and invited a number of his artists to meet the auditionees. Among those who made guest appearances on the show were Bryan McFadden and Kian Egan from Westlife, Samantha Mumba and Ronan Keating.

There was no let-up in the publicity once the band had been launched. If anything, it went into overdrive. Six departed on an immediate promotional tour of Ireland, during which they even visited Kiltimagh where Louis’ brother owns a pub and music venue. They performed up and down the country and attended “meet and greets” in countless record shops. The new stars also appeared on television as often as possible.

Louis pushed the band to the extreme. They were subjected to blanket media coverage. They were made available to the media. After one interview was finished, they were asked to do a second. Perhaps for the first time, Louis subjected one of his acts to too much press.

Linda Martin, who was appointed tour manager for Six, says Louis did everything possible to boost the group’s fan base. She remembers one occasion where Louis brought the fans to meet the band.

“Our dressing rooms are fairly private places but all of a sudden, the door bursts open and it’s Louis. He’d picked up a gang of fans from around the arena or in the street. Suddenly you have a dressing room full of people. In one case at the Point last year, the dressing-room was full because he had packed it with people all looking for autographs and eventually I said to one woman, ‘Who are you with?’ and she said ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know who they are. He sort of pushed me in.’ She just got caught up in the melee that was moving in. That’s what he does and if Six would say ‘What are you doing?’ [he says] ‘Don’t you want to sell albums? I’m getting fans for you!’”

Success in Ireland had come relatively easy for Six. The big challenge for Louis and BMG was to break the act internationally. Even as
Popstars
came to an end on Irish television, it had already been sold to stations in South Africa and New Zealand, where the Six single would later go gold.

Building a fan base in foreign territories was nice but Six had to succeed in the UK for BMG to recoup its investment and for Louis to maintain his reputation.

Shinawil and RTE were initially in talks with Channel 4 but the show was ultimately purchased by ITV, which decided to show an edited version of the series during its Saturday morning children’s show SM:TV, beginning on 20 April. BMG planned to release the first Six single in the UK on 5 August, just after the series ended. The single was never released, however, and there are no plans to launch Six in the UK until early 2003 at least.

“We’re waiting for the right time to put it out because we can’t put it out in between all the
Pop Idol
stuff because it’ll just get lost,” says Louis. “We should have put it out after the CD:UK show.”