First 10 Minutes

Everybody groove to the music. Everybody jam. Aaaaahh!

They began as anonymous American teens, and became a steamy obsession for five continents of fans.

A.J.: Girls would throw condoms, bras, panties... and some of them, I believe had just come off.

Nick: Hehe, it was ridiculous

Gifted, handsome, and hungry, the Backstreet Boys moved posters and pop albums ( )

But their relentless rise came at a terrifying price.

Howie: We were working like literally like 300 days of the year, and it just came to a point where he just couldnt handle it.

Leighanne: He was really scared, and to see him go down the hall you know, not knowing if he was gonna make it.

Brian: It was the hardest time I think in my life that I've ever been through.

Their fans though of the boys as clean cut kids, little knowing that one of the Backstreeters had been driven down a dangerous path.

Denise: ( ) He started looking gaunt.

A.J.: At one point it was Jack Daniels, drugs, and porn on my bus. That was it.

Kevin: And I'm like you know what, I'm done with you, you're dead to me.

They'd made it to the top together, but one boy's torment threatened to drive them apart for good.

A.J.: My grandmother died when I was right into my coke beign, and you know, she died right there infront of me.

Howie: And I think that was the final turning point when A.J. just let it all go.

It's a shocking story you'd never expected to see. The Backstreet Boys Behind the Music.

All: And coming up next, more about the Backstreet Boys.

A.J.: In just a few minutes.

It's March 2005, and four years after the release of their last album, the Backstreet Boys are back... with a fresh mature sound and a hott new single called Incomplete.

( ) The fans old and new.

A.J.: It's a little scary right now because we feel like in some ways we have to kinda start all over again... we've been gone for so long.

Nick: Well a lot of our fans have grown up, and so have we.

The boys know their own act is a tough one to follow. One of the most successful pop groups of all time, they ( ) records world wide, and have inspired more squealing school girls than any band since the Beatles.

Keith: You see girls collapsing and crying. They are sitting there and they're shaking and they, they cant talk, they're trembling. I dont think in history there's been too many other things you can compare it to other than Beatle mania.

Johnny: Hotels hated us because there would be 300 kids in the lobby and we would come through and all mayhem would break out, but thats what it was all about.

Zena: They broke records, they drove girls crazy, they were selling out every single seat in these arenas, and just buckets of cash.

The boys were little more than kids when they entered a whirlwind that could be both exhilerated and frightening. In a ( ) they would endure more health scares and heartbreaks than pop stars twice their age.

Zena: The rewards are great, but the demands are huge. Make no mistake, the Backstreet Boys are paid, but they have not had an easy time with it.

A.J.: It's like hopefully nothing else bad will happen. You know, we've been through enough, so...

The boys' back story begins in January, 1978. When Alexander James McLean was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. Raising in modest circumstances A.J. was facing diversity at age 2 when his parents divorced and his father walked out of his life.

Denise: It was a real bad situation for A.J. because his father would say he was gonna come over, and he wouldn't show up. And that got to be a little traumatic for A.J. as a child.

A.J.: My grandmother was my second mother you know. And she was my everything, you know. All I remember was my mom and my grandparents. That was it.

Encourage by his mom and grandmother, Alex escaped into a fantasy world as a stage performer. By the time he was 12 he had acted in over 70 plays and had become a ( )

A.J.: I was obsessed with puppets.

Denise: He started incorporating it into routines so that when he went to talent shows he has something that was unusual to show that would kinda seperate himself from the other people. It worked.

By 1992, 14 year old A.J. was a regular at the audtions at the theme parks and movie studios in Orlando, where he soon met another hungry young performer named Howie Dorough.

A.J.: ( ) at auditions and we just became friends.

Howie: He had like a hat and glasses and he had this little puppet routine that he was doing. I'm like who was this little pipsqueak up there?

A native of Orlando, Howie was the youngest of five kids in a devout Catholic family. At the age of 4 he had been bitten by the show biz bug, and was soon addicted to the attention of fawning females.

Howie: And I remember the girls were like oooh Howie and they would come over and I was like wow, I can get up on stage, do my thing, have girls around, and it all started from there.

Pollyanna: He'd get attention, and he's still getting it.

In July of '92, Howie and A.J. spied an ad in an entertainment circular that had been placed by an entrepeneur named Lou Perlman. The owner of a charter airline company, Perlman had no experience with music, but he was convinced he could make a killing with a new boy band.

A.J.: There was a article in there talking about a singing group with the New Kids On the Block look with the Boyz II Men sound.

Denise: They were looking for five boys between the ages of 12 and 18 at the time.

Howie and A.J. were the first two hires for the crooning quintet. The group was soon rounded by by a Florida native, Nick Carter and two Kentucky cousins and ex- choir boys named Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrel.

Brian: Now I was just scared half to death and I didnt know what I was getting myself into.

Kevin: My mentality was if we could be a white version of Boyz II Men and we show them our vocal ability, then thats all that matters.

Taking the name the Backstreet Boys the five quickly discovered an infectious mix of pop, blues, and balladry. Holding down part time jobs by day, they toiled on their routine after hours, perfecting their moves in the cavernous warehouses of Lou Perlman's company, Transcontinental Airlines.

Howie: They were just big, with no air. I think they had some of the propellars from the blimps underneath it that they would be blowing on us, trying to keep us cool.

Nick: We worked our butts off. Most of us have come from nothing, but whether or not people believe that or not, we worked.

In the summer of 1993, after months of rehersals and small time gigs, Lou Perlman finally send a demo tape to boy band veteran, Johnny Wright, former manager of New Kids On the Block.

Johnny: A video tape came to me of the Backstreet Boys at a SeaWorld show, and at first my attitude was been there, done that, didnt want to do it again, and until I had my first meeting with them and really heard that they could sing.

Johnny Wright signed on to manage the group, knowing they were a long way from a record deal. First they would have to find some fans, with a grinding cross country tour of dingy malls and high school hallways.

Denise: It was an old broken down crew bus that had seats, no bunks, barely had air conditioning and heat, and we literally went across the country, city to city, school to school.

Nick: We would go into all of these schools and the kids would be like this is a joke, right, this is a joke.