Westlife: Our Story. Westlife
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win us any popularity competitions with the boys, obviously, but we loved it.
All the girls from town did fancy those two, Kian’s right, agrees Mark. A lot of them were coming to the show just to see Shane and Kian as the T-Birds, that’s how good they were.
I wasn’t in the T-Birds, but I was still hanging out with everyone in the production. We’d all started getting a bit of a bug for it, it was brilliant. I was seeing quite a bit of Shane by this time and we’d become good friends. One day we were round someone’s house watching Boyzone and Take That on the telly, some concert footage, and that’s when the idea of starting a boy band came up.
It was very much a group thing; I don’t know if any of us would have done it by ourselves. But we were constantly talking about music, singing songs and messing about with pop songs during and after the rehearsals for the various musicals. I realized that although our voices were very different, Shane and me were harmonizing really well. It sounded great. Well, it wasn’t that it sounded amazing, just that it didn’t sound too bad! So we started mucking about with the idea of a boy band.
One day, after we’d done the T-Birds thing, says Kian, Shane came up to me.
‘Hey, Kian, we’re thinking of putting a boy band together for the next talent contest and we’d like you to be in it.’
‘Are you off your fucking rocker? A boy band? Me? I’m in three rock bands for that talent contest. I’m the lead guitar player in one band, I’m the singer in another band and I’m the guitar player and singer in the other band. I can’t be in a boy band!’
That was my gut reaction.
Then I heard some tunes by the Backstreet Boys.
Now, you might think it’s a big leap from listening to Metallica and Pearl Jam to the Backstreet Boys, and I’ll grant you it is. However, the guy behind some of the biggest Backstreet Boys tunes, Max Martin, was a complete metal freak. He loved his rock music and if you listen to those tunes again, you’ll hear all sorts of heavy riffing and distortion behind the pop tunes. Maybe nobody else would agree with me on that, but that’s why I liked what I heard. It got me intrigued. Suddenly, I quite liked the idea of a boy band. I certainly liked the idea of being in a band that was more popular than Pyromania and in the T-Birds I was getting a reaction on stage like I’d never gotten before just singing and dancing.
So I spoke to Mark and Shane about their band.
That was the start of our first boy band, Six As One.
In the New Year, says Mark, the follow-on production of Grease was sold out. Because of the reaction to the T-Birds, it had been arranged that during the interval of the show we would come on as this new boy band. There were six of us: myself, Shane, Kian, Derek Lacey, Graham Keighron and Michael ‘Miggles’ Garrett, all local lads. The plan was to do two songs by the Backstreet Boys, ‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart’ and ‘We’ve Got It Goin’ On’.
We weren’t sure how people would react, but the place went nuts! Really, it was just the most amazing reaction. We couldn’t believe it.
Then Mary suggested that we put on a full concert as Six as One. We rehearsed all day every day for weeks, learning songs by other boy bands. We were really focused.
Come the day of our own show, there were about 500 people in the hall. It felt like about 500,000 – oh my God, it was incredible. The noise they made and the reaction was brilliant. It felt like we were playing Hyde bloody Park! There is actual footage of the gig somewhere and looking at it now it looks really amateur, but it felt so big to us at the time and it was an important starting-point.
It all kind of happened scarily easy. We loved doing it, having some drinks at the weekend and chatting about it too, and there was real ambition there – as soon as that night was over, it was just like, Right, what are we doing next?
Mary McDonagh came to us after that concert and suggested we do some recordings. By this point, we’d changed our name to IOYOU. I’d started to write a song called ‘Together Girl Forever’, which was about Shane’s future wife Gillian, but I said to him, ‘You’re the one who likes her, you write the second verse!’
I was really keen on Gillian by that point, says Shane, so it was great to write a song about her. Some of the lads did the music for it and Mark did the lyrics. It wasn’t the greatest song you’ve ever heard – it was all very simple – but it was another step forward. So we took that song and ‘Everlasting Love’ and another original which featured Graham rapping at one point, and went in to record them.
We were so excited, that was our very first experience of any kind of studio work. It was just a small home studio and the set-up was nothing like the studios we use now, but it was cool. We were singing into mics and listening back and all saying the same thing: ‘Do I really sound like that?’
The songs weren’t written or produced to the level we are used to now, says Mark, but at the time it was all very relevant and important to get us to the next stage. That little phase literally did do wonders for us. Having our own record felt like the biggest deal ever. We all had haircuts done especially for the cover. Mine was hideous, so as soon as I could I went to the local barber and had it cut off!
About 100 people bought the record from the store in the first few days, then a few more days went by and another 100 copies sold, then 500, then eventually, after several weeks, we’d shifted about 1,000 of them.
Suddenly, the word of mouth in town was like, ‘There’s a new boy band and they’re from Sligo!’ It was all very small scale, but people really got into it, they loved the idea. Mainly girls, actually. At the time, the Backstreet Boys and Boyzone were at their peak, so the idea of Sligo having its own boy band – well, all the local girls loved it.
A while later, Mary McDonagh and her associates offered us a management contract which we had to decide whether to sign or not.
It was an amazing time. It was all a great laugh and yet serious at the same time, we meant business. It seemed so quick too – singing in the interval of Grease, then getting our own show, then recording in a studio, then having a record out…Every step, we felt, If it all stops tomorrow, this has already been amazing!
Next thing we knew, we got asked to go on a TV show called Nationwide, a magazine show where one week there’d be a young kid doing stunts on a BMX and the next week there’d be an Irish dancing troupe. That week it was us, singing carols in a local children’s ward. The TV crew came down and filmed us. They liked it and broadcast the clip at teatime and everyone in Sligo seemed to watch it. It was mad. People in the street even started to say hello. ‘Hey, that’s yer man from that band!’
Oddly, despite going on Nationwide and being known as a new local boy band, there was then a bit of an anti-climax, we sort of stalled for a wee while. Shane went to college five hours away from Sligo and we were kinda kicking our heels, like, That was fun. What now?
CHAPTER THREE A GAME OF TWO HALVES
We never wanted for anything in our house, but money certainly didn’t grow on trees, says Dubliner Nicky Byrne. I think my mam and dad, Nikki and Yvonne Byrne, were very proud parents. My dad was a painter and decorator working in an hotel at Dublin airport and my mam was a housewife. I came into the world on 9 October 1978, my sister Gillian is two years older than me and when I was 11 they had a surprise little brother for us all, Adam. No one knew if we were rich or poor, but if I needed new football boots or Gillian was after some new Irish dancing shoes, we got them.
Growing up, my dad was a singer in a cabaret band. Even to this day he sings. Back then he gigged seven nights of the week, working in lots of pubs and clubs around the city. I loved watching him