Backstreet Mom: A Mother's Tale of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean's Rise to Fame, Struggle With Addiction, and Ultimate Triumph (27 page)

Prior to our entrance, Randy, our soundman Jake and I had come up
with a plan. If Randy gave us the high sign, we would stop everything
and head for the elevator. That was our only way out, safe or not.

From top to bottom, wall-to-wall, fans were everywhere you looked.
They hung over the railing and pushed to get to the autograph table.
Some fainted as soon as the boys entered. The situation was out of hand
long before we arrived. There was absolutely no hope whatsoever of
reining it in. The fans were just too far gone.

As the boys signed autographs, the fans got bolder. The ones that
managed to get something signed refused to leave since they would have
to fight their way through the back half of the crowd just to get out. The
signing lasted about twenty minutes. Girls were crying and pleading to
either get to the boys or to get out. There was just no place for them to
go.

At that point, the crowd began knocking down signs and rushing the
boys. Randy gave me the sign. I tapped the boys and off we went, with
the boys in the lead. They barely made it onto the elevator. I followed
close behind, but the elevator doors closed before I could enter. I began
to panic, but once the crowd realized the boys were gone, they backed
off. As we rode the next elevator to the main floor, I could not help but
raise my head to the ear of the record company rep and whisper, "We
told you so, didn't we?"

Once we reached the room where the boys were waiting, phase two
of the craziness began. To reach our waiting vans on the street, we had
to pass through a narrow crowded exit to the garage and then onto the
street. As several fans chased us on foot, we made our escape, thanks to
the help of the BMG guys and a few skilled drivers.

As WE TRAIPSED THROUGH EUROPE as an opening act, it became obvious
that fans were buying tickets to see the boys instead of the headliners.
The boys were now in high demand with the media. Of course, with
increased visibility came increased fan frenzy.

Amid all the chaos, Alex tried valiantly to keep up with his tutoring.
Graduation was just a few months away and he was determined to receive his diploma with the rest of his class at Osceola High School in
Florida. That was the one shred of normalcy he had left. He wanted to
maintain it at all costs. Yet, as much as I tried to include time for his tutoring, Johnny and Donna
fought me at every turn. Thank
heaven for people like Susan Horton and Kim, his tutors. Without
them encouraging me, I might
have caved in, something Alex
might never have forgiven me for.

In May 1996, he and I flew
home for twenty-four hours so
that he could walk down the aisle
with his classmates and receive his
diploma at the graduation ceremony The school wasn't entirely sure
that he would show up, so he was
the very last in his class to walk to
the stage. But we didn't care; we
just wanted to see him do it.

Mom gave Alex a big party with
a cake. She and Dad were so very
proud of him. We celebrated what
was probably one of the last normal achievements my son would
have to hold in his non-celebrity
heart. 1 beamed with pride during the ceremony and felt a great
sense of relief. Alex had completed a teenage rite of passage.
Against the odds, he had earned
his diploma.

The next morning we headed back to Germany. The boys were about
to start their first headlining tour and they were biting their nails until
they saw Alex come through the wings. Our flight had been delayed, so
he barely made it to the stage. But it all worked out. As usual, Alex's
angel was watching over him.

Alex's sense of pride at having achieved his goal, in spite of numerous
obstacles, was one of the happiest moments of his life. It was one of the
last remaining "normal" moments he would have.

Alex gets his diploma

BY THE SUMMER OF 1996, the boys had broken all records for sales
and had become a household name across most of Europe. Their faces
were on every magazine cover. They were in demand for every major
television show and festival. It was quite similar to what happened to
the Beatles when they hit the United States.

None of the boys could go out of the hotel without a bodyguard. That
made it necessary for each of them to have a bodyguard of his own.
Even if they tried to use disguises, it did not seem to matter. Once the
fans recognized the bodyguard or girlfriend or whomever was a familiar
face next to that particular boy, they followed them. The boys could not
hide anywhere.

While they went out on their next tour, I stayed home and tried to
salvage the U.S. fan club. Over the course of the year that I had traveled
the world with the boys, no effort had been made by anyone in the
office or at the record company to raise the numbers in the U.S. database. Jive seemed perfectly happy to have the boys remain on the other
side of the ocean indefinitely. Alex voiced his frustrations to me more
than once about how he wished they could focus on becoming more
visible in their own country.

Adding to their frustration was the fact that they were totally wiped
out from the relentless pace they had been keeping. I could see the
exhaustion on their faces and hear it in their voices when they sang.
They were beginning to taste what it was like to be in the public eye and
what that meant in terns of maintaining one's privacy. Sadly, they learned
all too soon that it meant that you gave up your right to have any.

We still lived in our original, three-bedroom apartment in Kissimmee, Florida. The only difference was that it seemed as though the entire world knew our address and phone number. When we traveled, I
spoke to my parents periodically and they told me stories about getting
phone calls in the middle of the night.

The European fans who traveled to America were bold enough to
come to the door to try and get a glimpse of Alex's room or to see if he
was there. For a while Mom and Dad were really good sports and tolerated all that crazy behavior. They even stood at the door and talked to
the people and answered their questions.

After a while, the phone calls got crazy and they became concerned.
We changed the phone number and made sure the front office knew not
to tell anyone what apartment we lived in. Although we lived in a gated
community, that did little to dissuade the fans. They lay in wait for someone to drive in and then they rushed in behind them.

I was baffled as to how the fans knew our address and apartment
number. Then I learned that the information was printed in a magazine
article that had been published some months before. I was furious when
I found about it and asked some of my friends in Europe to locate the
magazine. I was amazed when I finally saw it. Pictures of our building
and our exact address were in the magazine.

The accompanying article was based on an interview that we had
given to journalists who had come to our home with the explicit understanding that our address would not be printed and they could only
print the pictures of the apartment that we approved. They were so nice
while they were interviewing us that we were surprised to learn that the
story had become some sort of expose by the time they returned to
Europe.

When I saw the article I immediately got in touch with the journalist
and told him not to expect a lot of cooperation from me in the future. Of
course, he was apologetic, but the damage had already been done. That
particular journalist eventually went to work for a higher-end magazine
that was more credible and we did work together again. But I did ban
him for a long time.

The article resulted in numerous incidents with fans. Once, I was in the
apartment taking an early morning shower as my niece, Kelly Cline, stuffed
envelopes in the back bedroom. As I walked out of the bathroom to go
across the hall into my bedroom, Kelly's voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Stay where you are," she said breathlessly. "There's someone in the
window."

"What?" I blurted out, running into the bedroom and peeking back
out towards her.

"I just opened the blinds to let in some light and there was someone
standing at the window with a video camera."

"Are they still there?" I asked.

She banged on the window and yelled at them to leave-and they
did!

At that point, we were both beside ourselves. I was mortified. That
window faced the basketball court and a path that led to the back of the
building. After that day, I made sure that the blinds in the back room
were always closed.

How terrible it was to have to think about something so trivial. It got
to the point where I could not answer the door myself or fans would
start screaming and crying just because I was at home. They automatically thought that if I was there, so was Alex-and they would have an
absolute fit.

Another problem we faced during that time was the constant battle
between Jive and the boys' management. Jive was ecstatic over the boys'
sudden rise to international fame, but they seemed unconcerned about
the boys' health and mental state.

Young celebrities are like children caught between two battling parents. But in this situation the prize is not custody of the child but, rather, who ends up with the most dollars. They book appearances,
interviews, promotional tours, events, autograph sessions, whatever they
can. No one ever considers the welfare of their "meal ticket." They just
keep working them until they drop. Then they move on to their next
cash cow.

Johnny and Donna were the first ones in our group to buy homes,
cars and expensive jewelry. They were quick to take credit for the band's
success and rarely thanked anyone working for either of them. I was, of
course, just a thorn in their side. I would have been tossed out early on,
if it were not for my persistence and the love between my son and me.

Management screw-ups invariably were blamed on Jive or someone
else. It was a constant tug-of-war between management and the record
company, and also between Donna and Johnny as a couple. They never seemed to be in agreement anymore. And Big Poppa added a third wheel
to the operation by strolling in and out of the scene whenever it was
convenient for him. He opened a new restaurant and he signed more acts
to his Trans Continental record label, which he kept telling us was created just for the Backstreet Boys. One of the new acts was *NSYNC, a fivemember group that looked and sounded like a Backstreet Boys clone.