intimate showcases, where reporters can be persuaded to come for a free glass of bubbly if they’ll lend one ear to the new hopefuls crooning at the other end of the room.
ANTONY
The record company had taken a chance and released a CD with only the song’s title on the cover, no pictures. So no one knew who we were. In the car one day with my mum, I heard the DJ asking, ‘Who are Blue? Are they Swedish? Are they American? Are they German? If you know these guys, we need to hear from you.’ Once they realised we were from just down the road and they could just phone us up, it was chaos.
DUNCAN
It was at a Virgin Records showcase party that Nick Lazarus, then running The Big Breakfast show on Channel 4, took a massive chance on us. By then, the bed had become an integral part of Big Breakfast, where the presenters of the show would invite their guests to jump on it, or sometimes in it, for a cosy chat. Nick became our champion, saying, ‘I love the boys, I love the music, I want to break them. Get them on the bed.’ He didn’t just book us for a promo slot, he gave us a whole week. And that’s what we did. That’s when it all changed, when girls came up to us, asking, ‘Were you on the telly this morning?’
ANTONY
Two other blokes who gave us a massive leg-up are TV producers Phil Mount and Michael Kelpie. They booked our very first live gig – singing ‘All Rise’ for SM:TV Live. Around that time, I happened to get off the Northern Line near my home in Edgware, just around school finishing time, and somehow I ended up getting chased down the street, on my own, by people I’d never seen in my life.
How do you know you’ve arrived? For me, it came later, watching telly at home. Only Fools And Horses has always been my favourite programme; I’ve watched it all my life. It was one of the last ever episodes, and Del Boy was reversing into a parking space in the market. As he was driving, Trigger was saying, ‘This way, Del’ and I could hear a song playing in the market background. And I realised it was us. In Only Fools And Horses! That was it.
SIMON
For me, it was appearing on Top of the Pops [‘All Rise’, spring 2001], but I couldn’t enjoy it. I could sing all day behind closed doors with the boys, but when it came to performing live, I had no confidence in my voice. My tone would change; I’d sing some words wrong. The boys always said it sounded fine, but I didn’t believe them. And Top of the Pops was the worst time of all. When I brought myself to watch it back, I realised all the other boys were singing live, but my vocals were from the record. The good news was I was so quiet, the editors had been able to add my voice. The bad news was this was Top of the Pops, the show I watched growing up, filmed at Television Centre, which I always passed on my way to football practice. Why did it go wrong? I had too much riding on it – my mum watching, everyone in Moss Side going to see me. I was convinced they were going to start taking the mickey when I next saw them. Perhaps I was over-thinking it, as I am prone to do.
LEE
The first time I heard us on the radio, we were at a festival, and we all started screaming. It was everything I’d imagined as a kid, all those years I’d sung along to Boyz II Men songs. Now here I was, on the same radio, with people singing along to us. My mum had been visiting a medium all my life, and this lady had told her years before that I was going to be a singer and be in a famous boy band. For myself, I’d dreamed about this moment, and I do believe, if you pray for it, and believe in something enough, it will come.
ANTONY
We couldn’t be brought down to earth at that point. We were on our way to a festival in Brighton with our tour manager, Johnny B, when all four of us heard ‘All Rise’ on the radio at the same time. We’d pulled up to the lights and there was a builder’s van next to us. We could hear our song on his radio, so we all popped our heads out of the sun roof and said to him, ‘Do you like that song?’ What a bunch of berks! He answered, like it was a completely normal conversation to have at the traffic lights, ‘It’s all right.’ We shouted in unison, ‘It’s us!’ He said, ‘Bollocks,’ and drove off. That was when I thought we might have a shot at this.
LEE
A couple of months later, we released ‘Too Close’. We were busy in the studio recording the vocals for ‘Fly By’ when I was invited to go on the radio and talk to the DJ Dr Fox, who was hosting the Chart Show. He said to me, live on air, ‘How do you feel about getting to number one?’ Stunned was the answer.
SIMON
From that point on, it really was a case of, ‘Right, now we’re off to the races.’ That was a heady day. That same time, we’d been invited into our management’s office and given an ENORMOUS cheque for our next album. We were all flying as we walked back into the studio that afternoon, work still to be done. Lee was flying even higher than the rest of us, following his chat with Dr Fox, and he went straight into the booth to record his vocal for ‘Fly By’. That amazing note you can hear at the end of the song was recorded in his first take. It was an outpouring of euphoria that we all share to this day, and it’s so good to know it was captured forever on tape. I looked through the glass at this talented young man singing his little heart out and I thought, ‘I’m so proud of you.’
Eyewitnesses to Tragedy
September 2001
ANTONY
Recounting our memories of 9/11 always seems strange, sometimes uncomfortable, even now. So many people suffered on that day that we will never get to hear about, and yet the four of us continue to be asked for our experiences of it. So this chapter in our lives is shared in the full awareness that our fear, pain and trauma are forever dwarfed by those whose stories we’ve heard, and some whose stories we may never hear. The only comfort in relaying it completely here for the first and only time is hoping it will answer fully all those questions people still naturally want to ask. So, here we go …
As soon as ‘Too Close’ went to number one, we set about preparing to release our third single, ‘If You Come Back’. We were pulled into a meeting in our record company office on the Harrow Road to be told, ‘For this video, boys, we think you should film it in New York.’ As an afterthought, the bosses asked, ‘How do you feel about that?’
I was 20 years old and I’d made lots of hops to Europe by then, but I’d never been to America, and neither had the other lads. We were beyond excited.
DUNCAN
I called my mum the day before we were set to leave. We’ve always spoken pretty much every day, and she always knows what’s going on in my world, so she’d got used to hearing about glamorous trips here and there. Nonetheless, at that point she was working as a nurse in a residential care home, and the thought of her son jetting off to film in Manhattan still seemed absurdly exotic, as it did to me. When we spoke that day, she told me a friend of hers had said the best view of the city was from the top of the World Trade Center so I promised to go up there and take a photo for her to show him.
ANTONY
On 10 September, we flew to JFK International Airport from Heathrow, and we were put in business class seats. It was the first time I’d ever watched a film on a plane. Even by the standards we’d got used to over the preceding months, we were being treated like princes, and we spent the journey revelling in our good fortune.
We arrived there in the afternoon and went straight to a chat with the director of the video. Our videos were always about two things – locations and haircuts. This time was to be no different – all the usual stuff, us glowering at the cameras, singing our different bits – but this time with a glamorous Manhattan backdrop. We went off to have some clothes fittings, some food, general chit-chat, all the time pinching ourselves that we were actually in New York.
LEE