Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It Page 8

  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.

  My friends were yelling, “Do what he says, he’s a cop!”

  I was so drunk. I didn’t realize he was an officer until it was too late and he slammed me up against the vehicle telling me that I was under arrest. People from the bar were laughing at me and it was this big scene. It was so embarrassing.

  After the cop said I was under arrest, I tried to act tough to impress my friends. At first, I thought being arrested was sort of cool, but once you get thrown into the backseat of a police car and they lock the door, you realize what’s really happening and your view quickly changes. This was just another example of my not caring enough about my responsibilities and not learning from my mistakes.

  I realized that I’d lost control of myself and I remember crying on the way to the station. I was so embarrassed. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t do this.”

  The headline in the New York Post later read, “Backstreet Boozer Busted For Brawl.” The tabloids portrayed me as doing everything from grabbing a security guy by the neck to exposing myself—none of which was true.

  The police charged me with a misdemeanor of “resisting arrest without violence” apparently because “drunk and belligerent” wasn’t a category. My memory of that night is fuzzy, for good reason. The Tampa police said they asked me to quiet down more than ten times and I refused each time. They claimed that they gave me a three-count to get out of the bar and I still didn’t leave. So they handcuffed me and put me in a squad car.

  I was ashamed, of course. I defended myself on MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL) and on other occasions, saying that I just didn’t move quickly enough when an officer told me to clear out of the bar. I apologized to the Tampa Police Department, the members of BSB and our fans. Basically, I was just trying to uphold my reputation and do whatever damage control I could. TRL host Carson Daly said being arrested would probably help my reputation. I guess Carson thought I needed to rough up the Backstreet Boys’ image and be more of a bad ass. I’m pretty sure Carson had me on to help his ratings, but on some level, I thought maybe he was right and something positive could potentially come of this mistake. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn from it. I just kept compounding my problems by continuing the same unacceptable behavior and messing up. No internal alarms went off for me, despite what the other guys in Backstreet said. I rolled on, repeating the same self-destructive pattern for quite a while longer.

  The previous summer A.J. McLean had entered rehab. But A.J. did something that I refused to do. He acknowledged his mistakes and began correcting them. Now, he’s human and he’s slipped up a few times, returning to rehab again in 2002 and more recently in 2011. My heart goes out to him. I have nothing but admiration and empathy for his efforts to face his demons. A.J. and I have discussed our shared battles many times. He has helped me more than he will ever know. I’m incredibly grateful to him.

  ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

  After the incident in Tampa, I could tell that my BSB family felt I’d let them down and that I was hurting our relationship. As the “baby” in BSB, I never wanted to disappoint or harm our group in any way. But my responsibility to the others was something I couldn’t seem to handle for the longest time. Even though I loved my “job” and my bandmates, I kept messing up. I was self-sabotaging, in part because I didn’t feel like I deserved the fans’ respect and affection. They loved me, but I didn’t much love myself at that point.

  Some of it was just the typical rebelliousness most young guys with a lot of energy and a false sense of immortality experience. This was around the time I asserted my independence as a member of BSB by opting to stay with The Firm management group after the other members left that agency. I also decided to make a solo album, which turned out to be Now Or Never. The other guys weren’t happy with those decisions, but I was angry at the world. I had it in my head that music was the way to vent that anger.

  THEY LOVED ME, BUT I DIDN’T MUCH LOVE MYSELF AT THAT POINT.

  I really wasn’t concerned about the repercussions of my actions or the feelings they’d stir in others. I was very selfish. I actually felt resentful toward Backstreet because I’d spent so much time and energy on my career, I believed I was missing out on other things. I didn’t appreciate all that being in the group had done for me. I was more focused on what I thought I’d lost.

  I wanted to write songs about my feelings and use the solo tour as an outlet for them. I went on the road and did just that, screaming at the top of my lungs as I sang track after track from my album. I don’t know how the audience felt, but it was very therapeutic for me. The first single released was “Help Me” and though I didn’t write it, the chorus reflected my state of mind:

  Help me

  Figure out the difference

  Between right and wrong

  Weak and strong

  Day and night

  Where I belong and

  Help me

  Make the right decisions

  Know which way to turn

  Lessons to learn

  And just what my purpose is here

  The songs on my Now Or Never solo album truly helped me to get over those feelings of resentment and anger. It was like writing a diary and then reading it to thousands of people. I wanted everyone to know what I was
going through. I wanted them to hear my pain. It was the only way I knew how to fully express myself. It was sad, really. I was this overweight, unhealthy solo artist who was sweating profusely and wearing clothes on stage that I could barely fit into. It was heart-wrenching. I almost ruined my relationship with BSB over it. I was so mentally unhealthy at the time I wouldn’t let family members come around me.

  I WANTED THEM TO HEAR MY PAIN.

  Then again, if I hadn’t done the solo album and expressed those feelings, I might never have been able to distinguish what was good in my life from what was bad. I discovered that a lot of fans related to my pain and anger because they had gone through similar challenges. They could feel my angst and so many of the lyrics hit home for them. The album did well, but I wish I had been more prepared for that solo venture, more responsible and healthy. I think I could have appreciated the experience more and made the most of the opportunity it represented.

  I did learn from many of the mistakes I made during that time though. For example, I discovered that I wasn’t prepared to handle the workload that comes with a solo career. I didn’t have a plan and I wasn’t comfortable in a position that required me to direct people and be the leader. I thought I could just cut some songs and let my manager do all the work, but that’s not the way it is.

  In some respects, I’m glad that my solo career didn’t take off with that album. Who knows what might have happened? I might not have made the decision to change my lifestyle and behavior. Things worked out with Backstreet. I’m much happier and healthier now than I have been in many years and am thrilled to be celebrating 20 years of hard work and success with the group.

  I was stepping out in a lot of ways during that solo period. It occurred right around the time my parents finally divorced. I had a lot of mixed feelings about that. My father and I had developed more of a friendship than we had previously, but I was uncomfortable when he asked me for money and advice. Aaron’s efforts to assert his financial and career independence also forced me to choose sides. Naturally, I sided with my brother because I’d been through the same issues with our parents as he’d gone through.