"The Great Unknown Scandal": The Sleazy Tale of the Band's Magnate, Lou Pearlman | The music

IIt's a failure that put an end to the formidable relationships of one of the most controversial music directors of pop. Having already transformed Backstreet Boys into a 1990s juggernaut, Lou Pearlman has become the brain behind 'NSync, designed to compete with his other band.

After three years of uninterrupted work and tens of millions of record sales in December 1998, he invited the five singers and their families to an expensive restaurant to celebrate the ceremony where they would each receive their share of the immense fortune that their career had generated. until there.

Until then, NSync members lived on $ 35 a day: they were amazed at the prospect of becoming instant millionaires. They held their breath and savored the moment when their lives would change forever, putting their hands in a hurry to receive a check for … $ 10,000 each. The ground has collapsed beneath them.

"That's when we knew we were being exploited," says Lance Bbad of NSync, now 39 years old. We immediately started calling lawyers. Bbad and his group mates managed to avoid the wreckage by using a clause buried in their contracts – stipulating that Pearlman had to sign the group under an American label (they were tagged within German Major BMG) – to declare it null and void. The judge in the case was flabbergasted by the complaint of Pearlman, who, according to his contract and ownership of the name of the band, was "NSync, and so are entitled to 90% of their earnings. She ruled for the group and the implosion of the Pearlman empire began.

Bbad, in collaboration with director Aaron Kunkel, created the documentary YouTube The Boy Band Con: The Story of Lou Pearlman to reveal how this extraordinary character became a maker of pop music and ultimately lost everything, listing in detail the damage he's caused, the people he's torn apart. and life has ruined. It's both a disaster movie and a part of recent history.

Luke Hyams, of YouTube, qualifies this as "one of the biggest scandals of the music industry" and says that this documentary, as well as Leaving Neverland and Fyre: The biggest party that did not never produced, appeal to the "natural appetite of the drama" of the public. He adds that the statistics of Backstreet Boys and NSync on YouTube were consulted during the ordering process to weigh the demand for a documentary on these acts. It is the age of documentary-based badysis.

Pearlman joined a long line of svengalis that had infected the popular music industry since the 1950s. He was also the last of this breed, striking and leading the boyband wave of the late 90s that coincided with the peak the record industry, just before the digital world explodes the lucrative business of the CD.

Pearlman used her ostentatious lifestyle to seduce people and divert her attention from her lies. His obsession with airships since his childhood led him to the aircraft leasing industry, which he would have financed by providing an airship of less than $ 3 million, knowing that it would fail. Rent a plane for New Kids on the Block, an ascendant of the time, in the mid-80s, showed him how much money there was in the world of pop, and nurtured his appetite for a part.

After moving from New York to Orlando, Pearlman began to call herself Big Poppa, a man looking for a family as much as he was looking for money. He wanted to be a father figure for the groups he had recruited at open hearings, which he had personally funded, but he also wanted to spend time with younger people in order to let himself go. to the trend of the big ones. As with Tam Paton and the Bay City Rollers, there was a darker side. The documentary shows that Bbadman was telling how Pearlman had given him mbadages: "He was very bady. We always felt like, "OK, I know what you're doing. ""

It also relies on archive footage from Howard Stern's radio show, where Rich Cronin of LFO, who died in 2010, claimed that Pearlman had asked the group to stroke his penis as a "practice" for meetings with German music leaders. have never done it. Innosence's Nikki DeLoach (Pearlman's only female band, who briefly counted among her members a pre-Glory Britney Spears), says he secretly filmed them on her tanning bed on her lounger to show members from her husband a strange liaison ritual. "It seemed like a flagrant violation," she says.

Justin Timberlake is the only Pearlman artist to have transcended his roots with a successful solo career. Bbad said that he had not been asked to participate because "we already had three" NSync members in the film ", which seems a rather fragile reason.Timberlake rarely spoke about Pearlman, although that her mother Lynn Harless appears, humanizing Pearlman. "I think deep in his heart that's what he [Lou] really wanted to be the sixth member of the group, "she says. "I think he wanted these boys to see him that way. And if he did not take advantage of them, they would have done it.

Leaving Neverland, the documentary about Michael Jackson's alleged abuse, echoes. Pearlman realized that the charm of parents was the key to throwing groups under her spell. "What we wanted to show is that the adults in the room were also fooled," says Bbad. If Pearlman had given them $ 100,000 each instead of $ 10,000 for that fateful dinner, would that have changed things? "It would definitely have extended his business with us," says Bbad. "I would have certainly thought that we would have to renegotiate, because even that [$100,000] was ridiculously low for what we were supposed to get at that time. "

When his house of cards and ponzi schemes collapsed around him, Pearlman escaped to Indonesia, but was spotted by German tourists in Bali and arrested by the FBI. His career ended in involuntary bankruptcy and he died in August 2016 in a federal prison in Florida, the state that was his former stronghold. whoever finances them.

"It's an edifying story that we have to remember all the time," says Bbad. "Yes, people can be called much easier and faster these days [because of social media] and the temperature is definitely getting colder, but there will always be people who will try to take advantage of young artists. "

• The Boy Band Con: The story of Lou Pearlman is available on YouTube Premium.