Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It (10 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

DRIVING BLIND

O
N MY 21
^ST
birthday, Kevin Richardson gave me a gift that I didn’t appreciate until more than three years later. When my oldest Backstreet brother handed me the present, I scanned the title and realized it was one of the self-help books I’d seen him reading and talking a lot about. I decided immediately that the contents didn’t apply to me.

I took the gift home and stuck it on a shelf with a bunch of others I hadn’t yet read. I wasn’t much into reading or self-help back then. I was cruising along at high speed, enjoying the lifestyle that came with being a Backstreet Boy and selling millions of records. Those first eight years were amazing.

THOSE FIRST EIGHT YEARS WERE
AMAZING
.

But the other members of the group were older and seemed to be settling down. In fact, a couple of the guys were talking about getting married and starting families. Not me. I’d just hit legal drinking age and figured it was my time to party. I also was enjoying being single for the first time in three years. I’d been dating another singer from the Tampa area, Amanda Williford, whose performing name was Willa Ford, but we broke up in late 2000. I figured since I’d reached the age when most guys were in college, drinking, partying and chasing women, that having that kind of fun should be my mission too.

I didn’t want to stop and think about where I was headed. I just wanted to enjoy the moment and live life as much as possible.

When Kevin gave me that birthday gift in January 2001, we were on our Black & Blue Tour, promoting our fourth album, which like our third had sold more than a million copies in its first week—a record for back-to-back albums. We’d just done a huge concert in Atlanta and were headed to Philadelphia for the next tour date. But first we made a little birthday stop in my hometown.

We celebrated my big day by singing the national anthem at Raymond James Stadium for the pre-game ceremony at Super Bowl XXXV. It was extra special because my favorite quarterback Trent Dilfer, a good friend who used to play for Tampa Bay, was playing for the Baltimore Ravens (and they beat the New York Giants in the game!).

More than 71,000 fans packed the stands and another 84 million watched on television. That wasn’t a bad way to kick off what proved to be a great year for our group. We spent 11 months of 2001 touring the United States, Canada, South America and Japan. The Black & Blue Tour grossed $100 million worldwide, so things were going well financially, too.

We also felt good about our future because we’d ended our contract with Lou Pearlman, who’d been taking a double helping of our earnings. Our contract paid him once as our manager and again as the “sixth member” of our group. We’d been grateful for all “Big Poppa” had done early on to help the band get started and to build our fan base. Over time, though, we all came to see that Pearlman was not the benevolent father figure he’d appeared to be when we first signed our management agreement with him.

Big Poppa was yet another father figure in my life who proved untrustworthy. At first, some fans and music industry people who didn’t know the whole story criticized us and called us ungrateful for severing ties with him. Soon though, his shady dealings became matters of public record because of a federal investigation that sent him to prison.

The way I see it, we had a business relationship with Lou Pearlman and we ended it. We had viewed him as a mentor and a friend, but nothing more. He never made any sexual advances toward me or toward the other band members, as far as I know, despite rumors to the contrary. As young artists trying to launch our careers, we entered into a deal with him gladly, and we ended it even more gladly. I now look at our dealings with him as a lesson learned. He had offered us the opportunity of a lifetime—we had no other access to major labels, recording studios or concert promoters. We trusted Pearlman until we realized that was a mistake.

I NOW LOOK AT OUR
DEALINGS
WITH HIM AS A LESSON LEARNED.

As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” We all make mistakes and we all experience failure. This is especially true when we are young and less experienced in the ways of the world. The music business is complex. It’s also true that no one could have foreseen just how successful the Backstreet Boys would become and how much income we would generate.

LIVE AND LEARN

Our dealings and disappointments with Lou Pearlman taught us to be much more careful about the people we trusted and the contracts we signed. I have no interest in living with regret over that or any of my other mistakes, failures, or setbacks. You shouldn’t either. My goal is to remain focused on the future and the greater possibilities for my life.

Similarly, I encourage you to stay positive even when you make mistakes and experience failures. You have to be realistic and acknowledge when you’ve messed up, or fallen short of your goals and expectations. You also have to be aware that there are predatory people who will try to take advantage of you. You can’t ignore the bad, but you can choose to live in the good.

Remember that you have the power to choose a positive attitude even when negative things happen to you. When you do that, you’ll discover that good things can come even from the worst experiences. I tended to dwell on the dark side before I took responsibility for my own happiness and success and believe me, life is much better in the light of optimism.

You can’t ignore mistakes or disappointments, as that’s just not very realistic. But you can’t allow them to throw you off permanently either. So ask yourself, “Who would you rather be?” The person who never gets over mistakes, or the person who acknowledges them, learns from them, corrects what needs to be corrected, and uses the experience to build an even better life?

WE ONLY HAVE
SO MUCH TIME
ON THIS EARTH, AND WE ALL FALL SHORT NOW AND THEN.

Being bitter and negative only compounds the damage, so why do that to yourself? Maybe you messed up. Maybe someone took advantage of you, or you didn’t do all you should have done to accomplish a goal. What I try to do in those circumstances is learn from it, get over it, and get on with it. We only have so much time on this earth, and we all fall short now and then. Sometimes we even land flat on our faces. But we have a choice in what we do next. We can stay down there in the dirt or we can just keep getting back up until the final count. I like option number two. How about you?

THE BLOOPER REEL

So many of us laugh at bloopers on television shows and movies because messing up is a universal experience. We all trip over our own feet at times. We all turn right when we should have turned left. Screwing up in some way, shape, or form is a daily occurrence. We never grow out of that awkward stage. Goofing up is part of life. Yes, you and I will create our own WTF moments until we draw our last breaths.

Life coaches and therapists encourage us to welcome our mistakes and failures because they provide learning opportunities. That’s not always easy, but it’s a good goal and makes a lot of sense. Most successful people will tell you that their greatest achievements were built upon trial and error. Look at scientists—they make a living learning from failed experiments. Mathematicians also work their way through wrong solutions to find the right ones. The best quarterbacks in the NFL rarely complete more than 70 percent of their passes.

Still, I have a tough time when I make mistakes because they often have a negative impact or cause considerable pain for myself or for someone else. Screwing up is embarrassing. You may blame yourself or you may fear others will blame you. Sometimes you might feel like you will never recover from a failure or mistake. Often, people who’ve messed up only make things worse with exaggerated statements like, “My life is over.” Or, “I’m dead.”

Drama doesn’t help. Neither does equating our mistakes and failures with dying. In fact, the only people who can’t make mistakes are those who are six feet under. Making mistakes and having problems is part of living, so acknowledge the truth in that and deal with it. Accept that you will make mistakes and look at them as opportunities to learn and become better.

WHENEVER
I MESS UP
MY FIRST INSTINCT IS TO KICK MYSELF.

Therapists have told me that one of the secrets to dealing with all mistakes and failures is to not personalize them. Honestly, I didn’t know that you could choose to not take a mistake personally. Whenever I mess up my first instinct is to kick myself. Most the time I just want to beat my head against a wall even if it is something as common as forgetting the lyrics to a song.

THE BLAME GAME

So how exactly do you de-personalize your own dumb moves and miserable flops? The answer is simple: by focusing on what happened, rather than who is to blame. Think of it as letting yourself out of jail. If you want to spend a couple of minutes behind bars (I mean figuratively, not in San Quentin or anything), that’s fine, but then post bond and bust out. Examine where you went wrong, commit to making it right or to making a better choice next time, and then move forward.

You don’t need to keep score either. Just drive on. Let the past fade out of sight in the rear view mirror, and focus on the road ahead. You can’t change what happened, but you can control how you respond. When thinking about my biggest blunders and bust-ups I prefer to hold onto this thought: I can use my failures and mistakes as opportunities to get better and be better.

I find it crazy that we are often willing to forgive our friends and loved ones for screwing up yet we refuse to forgive ourselves. I’ll write more about the awesome power of forgiveness later. Just remember for now that this simple act has many great uses, and one of the most important is the self-application. If you aren’t at least as good a friend to yourself as you are to others then you need to work on loving that person in the mirror.

YET, I KEPT MESSING UP AND LETTING
MY MISTAKES
DRAG ME DOWN FARTHER AND FARTHER.

Simple to state, tough to do, I know.

For the longest time I beat myself up over every little thing. I was like a one man fight club. There are two wrong ways to handle mistakes. One is to pay no attention to them at all and just keep making them. The other is to get all angry and depressed but not learn from them or make corrections. I did all of the above in my early years with Backstreet Boys.

There I was, living a dream come true. Millions of talented people would have given anything to be in our group. Yet, I kept messing up and letting my mistakes drag me down farther and farther. Many of my screw-ups were understandable or even unavoidable. I was so young when we began touring the world. I entered my teen years—those years when we are expected to make mistakes—as a celebrity pop star who made the tabloids, fan magazines and Internet news every time I flirted with the wrong girl, forgot to leave a tip, or was caught in the wrong club. Tabloid writers and celebrity-stalking reporters made up some of the stuff they wrote about me, but I also made mistakes that the public never learned about.

BAD MOVES

Kevin and the other BSB members saw me drinking and getting in trouble and all they could do was shake their heads. Howie nailed it when he told a reporter a few years ago, “Sometimes the last people you want to take advice from are the people closest to you. Nick was on a journey to find himself. When he was scolded, rather than motivating him, he curled up and crawled into a darker hole.”

…I BEGAN MY HEADLONG
DIVE
INTO THAT DEEP DARK HOLE…

They told me that I had the potential to be a better person and to make more of my talents. They knew I had a good heart and soul, but I wasn’t using my head. The guys warned me many times that my partying was out of control and that I was headed for serious trouble. They worried that I could destroy my career and seriously damage theirs, too.

Yet, when the other members of Backstreet tried to help me, I fought them tooth and nail. Looking back, I realize I should have been much more accountable to them, not just from a business standpoint but because they cared about me as a person. My party-hearty lifestyle stayed under wraps for a long time because I did my drinking and drugs out of public view most of the time. Then, when I finally reached legal drinking age, I began my headlong dive into that deep dark hole Howie referred to.

My downward spiral became news when I was arrested in January of 2002 at the Pop City bar in Tampa. I’d gone there with a group of local friends. We hit it hard and then things got out of control near closing time. We were just a bunch of normal guys doing the things guys do to get in trouble. Of course, I should have been more aware of my responsibility as a member of Backstreet. I should not have been acting irresponsibly or doing unhealthy things, but I was trying to fit in with a group of friends who were not really the best influences. I was a product of my environment at that time. After touring with the group and living in that warped reality of being a celebrity and traveling constantly, I wanted to return to a more “normal” lifestyle, but in truth, the binge drinking, drug use and partying all the time wasn’t really a normal existence either.

THE HEADLINE IN THE NEW YORK POST LATER READ,
“BACKSTREET BOOZER
BUSTED FOR BRAWL.”

My memories of that night are very hazy. As I recall, we were at the bar and getting ready to leave because it was closing time. We were drunk. I yelled something at a bartender that was rude and they kicked me out of the club. People messed with me on the way out, yelling things, and it caused a scene. Once I got outside I headed to the valet parking area. I really was trying to avoid trouble and just get my car and leave. But then this guy came up and started hassling me. He was probably just trying to get me to clear out, but I didn’t care. He was wearing a jacket and I couldn’t tell if he had a uniform on or not, but I later saw that he had a badge. He was telling me to get in this car and I was very, very confrontational with him. I kept asking who he was and why I should listen to him.