In 1993, five young men from Dublin stepped out of obscurity and into global stardom, captivating millions and selling more than 25 million records worldwide. Yes, it’s hard to believe that 30 years ago no one had heard of Ronan, Keith, Shane, Stephen and Mikey.
Boyzone paved the way for boybands all over the world to reach the mega success that they did.
And now three decades on they look back for the first time in a tell-all documentary, Boyzone: No Matter What that doesn’t shy away from the highs and lows of fame.
VIP Magazine sat down with Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch as they reflected on the documentary as well as their time in the band.
Hi guys! Congratulations on the documentary. Looking back at your career, while making the show did you get a fresh perspective on anything?
Keith: Now, it is a cooler time to like boybands back in the 90s, especially in Ireland, we are such a rock-renowned country. We take pride in our traditional and rock music. Being a pop group a boyband our own age for our peers it wasn’t always pleasant and I think nowadays it is a lot cooler to be in a boyband than it was back then.
Shane: Coming across the 30 years of Boyzone, its heritage and its legacy, watching the story myself I learned a lot and even knowing the whole story I still learned by watching this documentary. It is quite incredible. It is more about the boys than anything else telling their journey and their story. I’m super happy we got this opportunity to delve deep into such a thing called Boyzone.
It really is an incredible documentary. How did you get everyone back together? What was that process like?
Keith: The idea was floating around for a while and we all went to London to talk to the people and all their ideas and how they saw this happening. They made us feel comfortable about the process and the idea. We did it individually, we didn’t do it together. Each interview went on for eight hours and we were very honest. There was no room for you really to not to be honest. I think it was quite therapeutic for us because they reminded us of times in our lives we didn’t want to speak about. It is only when you get the opportunity to talk about things like this do you remind yourself of what you experienced. It was kind of like a nine-hour counselling session, it was happy and sad and joyful and well-rounded.
Shane, it was a tough watch a times, especially when it came to Mikey. Did you realise what was going on in say Mikey’s life?
Shane: No, that is why I say I learned a lot from the other boys. I think us guys, in our own skin, were trying to get through the day by day by ourselves and there wasn’t necessarily any room for anyone else’s emotions. Being boys, we don’t really talk about those sorts of things. It was a super emotional thing to have Mick on screen and his honesty and I think it is an incredible insight into what I never knew about him and we lived together all those years. The smallest, tiniest details even I didn’t know. As a documentary, I find it fantastic. It is an emotional journey for sure and it is a pleasure to be able to look at their journey even though I lived it with them.
You mentioned not being able to showcase your own identities and the band not being a source of joy. When did it stop being fun for you in the band and found you had lost your purpose?
Shane: I think when it comes to identities, let’s call it a manufactured scenario. There were stylists and when the outfits arrived they were like uniforms that looked a particular way. I fought massively for my identity during Boyzone. All of the stage clothes we wore, all of the visuals were super important to me. Within that, we were also losing who we were as a person, as 17-year-old boys from Dublin and that in itself is a difficult place to navigate. It is a hard space to be in. In the band itself, we definitely relied on each other as friends but it was very easy for that space to be tarnished by one comment. We would sit in the back of a van and one fella says something that ruins everything. We were great at doing that. We were great at pissing each other off, we knew the buttons, we knew how to poke him and that is what kind of gave us our own entertainment. We would be rowing all day.
Obviously the media and the stories about the band had a big effect on ye. Let’s talk about the plane crash.
Keith: From the inside out we have always been very grounded. I think Irish Mammies always try to keep their boys grounded. I don’t think we saw the seriousness of the stories Louis [Walsh] created, but people bought into it and believed it and it took us a long time to believe it. The thing about the plane crash was that we lost the right engine but we landed quite safely. It wasn’t a crash it was an emergency landing on one engine, and we had to land out in the middle of the desert in Australia because the pilot had to put the plane down. It was a little stressful! There were no mobile phones back then and we were shooting a video a few days later and we didn’t even realise we were on the front page of the papers after having an airplane crash. Our parents didn’t know it wasn’t true and our families were up the walls. But that was Louis, he ran with stories and kept us current. That is the way the business was back then. Louis was great at manipulating the press and making sure we stayed on the pages.
Looking back do you ever say ‘Oh I wish I hadn’t have done that!’ or did you ever have those kinds of moments filming the documentary?
Shane: I’m very happy to say that when it is released I will have no problem walking out of my front door, because at no point in it was I like ‘Oh god I can’t believe they are showing that’. It is a brilliant documentary and you are only looking at it as your own individual. From looking back to where we started on The Late Late Show stuff, and that’s as bad as it gets. That is just how great it started from that show to thirty million records sold, it is a brilliant story.
Keith: If I could go back in time I would probably tell my younger self to think about what you are saying before you say it. There are often times when we have our own banter between ourselves and if we are sitting in a group scenario with someone recording a conversation, I’d say something that is funny between us but not meant for the public, but it is recorded and becomes a headline in the newspaper. There have been a couple of times I have got myself in trouble with my Mam and my granny for things I was saying. Sure look that’s the business.
Louis promised you the sun, moon and stars, did he deliver?
Shane: I think when we left the RTÉ studio after the Gay Byrne show there was no question that he knew what he was doing and we never questioned him. He said “Boys, the sun, moon and stars will be yours” and he did everything to make it happen. Yes, he made Boyzone. There was no question in our minds whether it was going to be successful or not, it just was. That’s the promise of Louis I’ve kind of got to give him credit for that.
If you had to do it all again would you have Loius as your manager?
Keith: If you know Louis there is no point of getting annoyed at him. He could do something like slag you off in the newspaper and you think the next time I see him I’m going to let him know and then when you walk into the room you just end up giving him a hug. Myself and Brian McFadden were doing a showcase down in Dublin for Boyzlife and we were launching the tour and singing our new songs. We were predominantly singing new songs but we did do some Westlife and Boyzone songs but in the middle of the set, and he comes in and goes, ‘Great show lads but you should have stuck to the hits’. He would just cut you with a knife. It is what it is. [Laughs]
Would you have him again?
Keith: Yes, absolutely. Without him, it wouldn’t be what it was. I love him to pieces.
You guys were trailblazers do you think you had a relatively easier ride than what came after you?
Shane: I think we had a harder ride really. The Westlife boys got to stand on our stage and they weren’t travelling around Ireland in the back of a transit and trying to gather your fanbase. It wasn’t easy, but it was also magical those days heading about in a transit van, north, east, south and west of Ireland and turning up to gigs with five or six people there and then it got a little better with 27 people there and then it got better. We earned our stripes at that point, we learned what it was like to be a young hard-working band. So I think it is slightly easier now for artists. Of course, all artists have their troubles but I think it is easier if you have a machine behind you called a record company, the media and all that kind of stuff. You can make things happen a lot quicker, you don’t have to do the grind.
Keith: As I said earlier it is a lot cooler now to like boybands now than in the 90s. Our audience was predominantly female whereas the like of one direction was mixed. Back in our day, guys our age in Dublin used to hurl abuse at us, all sorts of names.
Speaking of, did you see Paul Mescal said that Boyzone was his first concert?
Shane: Even that in itself it takes a lot of maturity for a man to say what he likes, be that a boyband, a girlband which may not be typically popular for whatever scenario. He obviously grew up in a household that loved Boyzone. He was a Boyzone fan by default, we were undeniably on the radio and TV screen in the living room. You couldn’t escape Boyzone, and I think you know inherently he just has that, So lucky.
Shane, you all minded Stephen like the baby of the band, you protected him as well. What are your memories of him?
Shane: He was the most loveable man you would ever meet, he lived life in a bubble like Disneyland almost. He just enjoyed being happy and it was difficult to see him sad and scared. We all minded him; we always had him under our wing always protecting him. He was older than me funnily enough, but he was just like my little brother. I think when he went through the outing of the late nineties of him being gay, it actually gave him a new lease of life and it set him up to that point he was so scared. When we got passed that, the support was incredible from the people, it was beautiful to see and he really flourished from them. He really came alive into the real person he was meant to be. All the West End shows he went into he super enjoyed. He left a great space in my mind of just Joy, I can’t think of Stephen without smiling, it will never be a sad time. Even watching the documentary, he was beautiful. His heart and soul are beautiful. There is no sadness, it is just magical.
Were you aware of the turmoil he was facing especially when he was given that ultimatum about coming out or the story was going to be published?
Keith: I don’t think he was in any particular turmoil, from the beginning we all knew he was gay, it was not like it was a surprise, it was normal for us. Stephen was just another band member and we just lived this normal life. I think the fear side was not that obvious because we never really spoke about it. The reality of it he was gay but no fingers pointed at that for him to be fearful. Until that moment of, “The papers are going to do a story about you”, then it was a big moment. Panic stations for us all, is this career ending? Is this the end of Boyzone? And it was the opposite, it was the most relieving times. He did have to hide a great deal of his life which was difficult but when he came out he flourished and as Shane said he became the person he was meant to be. He was great fun and he buzzed on life. He got camper by the day and just as they said, there were five guys in the band four of us were straight, and one was gay. He had the four of us very camp. He called me Kissy and him Shelia, and Ronan was Rosaline and Mikey, Michaela.
Did he ever want to come out himself?
Keith: It was a very contrived situation as the papers contacted Louis and said they had a story they were going to run with unless Stephen wanted to give his own story. He was forced to come out and he certainly wouldn’t have done it by his own choice, because there was an unknown entity there. We didn’t know if there was going to be support or if it would be career-ending. He was terrified that he was going to jeopardise our career and his career, he was terrified. Ultimately, he had one day to tell his parents, tell the people who didn’t know and then sit down with the journalist and give his story. It was an awful thing to do to such a young and the pressure of it was immense. After that the support from everyone was immense, Elton John and George Michael reached out to Stephen and they invited him to stay in their house if he wanted to get away. On the day in question, we were flying home just for two days. John and Louis never travelled with us, and they met us at the airport and they basically told us the story that was being stitched up that they had to work quickly, and Stephen had to give his side of the story. It was a worrying time for all of us, we had no idea what situation we were in and what to do. It just played out so well, thankfully the response was phenomenal and it paved the way for a lot of other people in the industry who were afraid to come out and be themselves.
Boyzone: No Matter What is coming to Sky Documentaries and NOW on 2nd February
