The New Kids on the Block are wrestling. This is not archival footage from the late '80s or early '90s of the teen-pop heartthrobs as frisky youngsters airing on a TV screen. This is the freshly reunited group of fully grown men live and in person putting one another in headlocks.
It isn't entirely clear if they are mugging for the photographer snapping a few shots backstage at the annual Kiss 108 summer concert or just, you know, wrestling, like men who've known one another since grade school are prone to do.
"When we found out we were going to do [the Kiss concert], I was just tickled pink. Because there's just so much history here for us," Joey McIntyre says during an early morning group interview after the body slams have subsided.
Indeed, the quintet played the hometown radio show several times during its Hangin' Tough heyday, back when the superstars hawked lunch boxes, set young girls swooning, and sold 70 million albums. The New Kids were slated to return to the show before the members amicably parted ways in 1994 as exhausted and rich 20-somethings eager to explore life beyond synchronised choreography.
"We felt like if we did that show, it was going to open up another whole chapter and we just decided to close it there," says McIntyre, who's still babyfaced at 35 and takes pains to point out that only he is tickled pick and that Danny Wood would never use such a phrase. Wood, who at 39 has morphed into the group's most muscle-bound and tattooed member, laughs and shakes his head in agreement.
"The best thing for me," pipes up Jordan Knight, retaining his resident dreamboat status at 38, "is that my son's going to be able to come and see what his daddy does onstage in our hometown."
Knight's son isn't the only one curious about NKOTB version 2.0. Since announcing its reunion on the Today show this spring, the group has booked a sold-out arena tour and watched its comeback single, the breezy Summertime, hit the Top 40.
This month, the quintet will release The Block, its first album of new material since 1994's ill-fated Face the Music. The second single - a silky, ultra-contemporary club jam called Single featuring hotshot songwriter-performer Ne-Yo - began its chart ascent (at number 86) last week.
Sharp suits
Clad in muted blacks and grays - later they will change into sharp black suits and, eventually, Celtics jerseys for the show - the men sit on a couch backstage, completely at ease both with one another and back in the centre of the maelstrom.
When McIntyre reports that there have been no big arguments since the reunion began nearly a year ago, Jonathan Knight immediately barks playfully "Shut up!" (It's one of the very rare instances in which the 39-year-old "quiet one" voluntarily speaks during the interview, although he, like the others, does much nodding and laughing.)
Even though a successful reunion required all five members, the unspoken leader of the newly reformed group is clearly Donnie Wahlberg. Wahlberg was the chief contributing songwriter on The Block, financed the start of its recording, and was the driving force after years of being the primary holdout.
Some have wondered why Wahlberg would choose this moment to return to the fold when his acting resume has blossomed to include roles in such critically acclaimed big and small-screen projects as Band of Brothers, Boomtown, the upcoming film Righteous Kill with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, and the commercially successful Saw franchise.
Wahlberg, who exudes a funny combination of round-the-way earnestness and rebel bluster, is not a fan of this line of questioning.
"If people think that I'm that smart and that talented and that great, why would you then turn around and discredit what I did before?" he asks with a touch of exasperation detectable behind his shades.
"It's not like I have a chip on my shoulder, but it probably did fuel me a little bit. In other words, I didn't gloat. I never felt like, ‘Yeah, right on, I'm great and the New Kids aren't'. It was more like I'm that same guy from the New Kids. And if you think I'm a hard worker and really talented now, why would you think I was a complete idiot at the age of 21?"
Still young
"We're still young and we're still very in touch with what's going on music-wise," says Jordan Knight, who also released a solo album with the label. "So we wanted to be teamed up with a company that's at the top of their game and who has a radio staff and a promotions staff and know what they're doing."
"We're investing a lot in this: time, energy, and resources," says Martin Kierszenbaum, president of A&R for Interscope. "There's a lot of things to do in this world. And we wouldn't be doing that if we didn't believe in them long-term."
In order for the band to avoid the slide that most reuniting acts face, it's got to connect and if someone thinks you're just doing something just to do it, it won't work," says Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst at Billboard magazine.
So far it's working for fans Alexis Lomen and Kim Carlton, both 31, of St Paul, Minnesota. The pair has been comically documenting their excitement about the New Kids reunion on the blog Project NKOTB. They plan to attend at least four shows on the tour and were in the throng of nearly 8,000 who mobbed a recent appearance by the guys at a Best Buy in the Mall of America.
They agree that Summertime was a little too cutesy and retro for 2008: "I was happy to hear new music, but I was like, really, can we do something a little more progressive?" Carlton says with a laugh. But they give the thumbs-up to the sleeker Single and think it bodes well for the album as a whole.
"If they're trying to get a broader audience than what their fanbase was the first time around, I think that's probably the way to do it," says Carlton.
Although they giggle about their "dorkaliciousness", neither woman feels any shame about their resurfacing New Kids love.
"They were such an important part of our lives in that time period that I've never been embarrassed about it," says Lomen, who as an Emerson student in the mid-'90s went on a guided tour of the guys' homes and Wahlberg's fav
ourite Stop & Shop thanks to a local friend. "I never felt the need to justify something that was important to me."
That pride, says Wahlberg, is the ultimate goal for him and his band. "It would be nice when this is all said and done if we could look back at this second incarnation and say, ‘That was cool, that was a great album, and a great tour'," Wahlberg says. "And it would be nice if the fans could do that, too, and say, ‘You know what? We weren't dumb kids after all. We really invested our time and our love and our energy into something that was worth it'."
Childhood dreams reignited
So this is how childhood dreams are shattered. You fly all the way to Los Angeles to meet the band who provided the soundtrack to your adolescence, the people who performed in the first concert you attended, the men who gave you knots in your tummy and first made you aware of the concept of romance - and you end up talking to them about the credit crunch.
Jon Knight, one fifth of former teen-pop sensations New Kids on the Block, wants to know about house prices in London. In Boston, where he has worked as a real estate agent since the group disbanded 14 years ago - leaving a trail of broken hearts - they are still astronomical, despite the economic downturn. A two-bed flat, even in the rough end of town, will cost half a million dollars. But he is worried that things are changing. He recently made a loss on a property. He sighs.
I sigh.I present them, in slightly stalkerish fashion, with a programme from a past tour and Jon Knight, his brother Jordan, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood fall around in a mixture of giggles and embarrassment.
They wonder why they are wearing eyeshadow, and perms, and trousers above their waists, but Donnie, in one picture wearing a pair of boxers on his head, says their costumes "were about as out of control as it got."
"I don't think, when these pictures were taken, that any of us were mentally able to grab hold of anything," says Jordan. "It was nuts. With that kind of success comes a lot of intensity. It was a blast because we were, what? 15, 16, 17. But at that age you do need a few moments to yourself."
"And also, it was always kind of frustrating because the fans were usually about 12 and I couldn't do anything," says Joey. "Now they have rooms in the hotel that they have paid for with their credit cards whereas before they were all waiting outside - but I'm attached with a baby and I still can't do anything about it."
Indeed, a lot has changed since the high-waisted trousers and the perms. They have aged well but it is impossible not to cringe at the New Kids moniker. Donnie and Danny have children of the age they were when they started in the group -
Donnie's 16-year-old son plays guitar in a death-metal band and "refuses to play with me because he doesn't do pop". On tour, they won't be sitting on stools but nor will they be breakdancing on their heads - they tried their new moves the day before this interview and are feeling it when we meet. The music industry, too, is a different beast. I bought their first album on vinyl but now it is rare to meet someone who buys CDs.
Taking back the baton
"The lifespan of an artist is about as fast as it takes to log on to the internet," says Danny. They are aware that if they were starting out now, they would probably have to take part in a television talent show to make it, "and that's quite difficult," says Donnie, who admits to a bizarre passion for "that Paul Potts dude [who won last year's Britain's Got Talent]. But maybe we would actually have been more popular now, because the music business is predominantly made up of what we were always accused of being - manufactured."
That is perhaps the reason for their reunion. It has absolutely nothing to do with the success of Take That, obviously. "Ha! No," says Jordan.
"I handed over the flame to them back in the '90s at the Smash Hits awards, when I presented them with the best band statue or something. We're in cahoots with them. We call them up and say, ‘You're touring this year? OK, we'll do the next one'."
They are clearly passionate about what they have created, and it is endearing. "We wanted to invite our fans back to the table and if anyone else wants to join us they can," says Donnie.
"But we're not here to have a party with people who don't like us. It wouldn't make sense for me to walk past you to get to two people who were never into us." And with that, all talk of the credit crunch is almost forgiven.
