Rolling Stone Article

(September 18, 1997)

With their nonsensical pop hits, "MMMBop" and "Where's the Love," the brothers HANSON hark back to a more innocent time. By: Jancee Dunn
They await at Chelsea Piers, a recreation megaplex on New York's west side: the trio of brothers in the pop sensation known as Hanson, a bodyguard, two parents and three younger siblings. Because the brothers are ruddy-cheeked and hungry from an afternoon of Rollerblading, it is decided that we should get some grub. So together, in golden-haired pack, we travel majestically as one, littlest Hansons leading the way, leaping and diving like dolphins.
The brothers - Isaac, 16, Taylor, 14, and Zac, 11 - take a table, while the rest of the crew settles nearby. The waitress appears. "I'll have a virgin strawberry daiquiri," announces Isaac. "And could we get, like, a couple of orders of fries?" They also order diet soda, a Hanson staple. "We drink it because pop has a lot of sugar, and you know what that means," says Taylor. "Pimples, right." Zac spots a container of sugar packs, rips one open and empties it into his mouth. This is a dubious idea at best. "Bring a huge pile of fries!" he screams at the waitress. Meanwhile, Isaac avails himself of the salt. "If you're waiting for food," he says, "It's sort of like..." An appetizer? "Exactly."
The guys are a little fried because the Hanson machine is on full power. Their sunny, c'mon-get-happy debut, "Middle of Nowhere", with its infectious singles, "MMMBop" and "Where's the Love," recalls the best of good ol' AM-radio pop. It has gone double platinum, having been snapped up by a public weary of grunge and gangsta rap and starved for bubblegum.
What makes Hanson different from their precursor, the pre-packaged New Kids on the Block, is that they're genuine. The Hanson magic was not assembled, it was already there. They clearly love music and one another, and this is reflected on their album. "Being in a band together makes it even better, because we know each other so well." says Taylor, looking warmly at Isaac. "It's like, you're gonna argue, then it's over, and you're still together. What are you gonna do? Walk across the room and pout?" "You still gotta rehearse," says Isaac wisely.
Brotherly support has been crucial during these last couple of months, what with the shrieking mob of girls. ("It's a bit scary when, like, 20 or 30 people are running at your car," says Isaac) and the relentless attention of the media. "We once did 21 interviews in one day," Taylor reports. "Photo shoots are more exhausting." "Like, right now, we would never go on camera now, because we're sweating and everything like that from Rollerblading," puts in Isaac."We've done some sweaty pictures," Taylor says. "I guess you have to do a couple of those at certain points in time," adds Isaac ruminatively.
The brothers are an intelligent and thoughtful bunch. Taylor is easygoing and poised; Isaac, sweet and sensitive; and Zac, despite being a total spaz ("I'm gonna crush your head!" he screams to no one in particular), is extremely sharp. "Ike is a girl charmer," says Zac at one point. "He'll always say nice things to girls. It's just something he does." "None of us have girlfriends," says Taylor, blowing bubbles into his drink. "It would be wrong for me to have a girlfriend, anyway, at this point in time," says Isaac. "Why would it be wrong?" asks Zac. "Because I'm, like, gone all the time." "Oh, OK, for the girl it would be sad," says Zac with the chilling logic of a future Tommy Lee.
The fellas are also so classically wholesome that they make you nostalgic for a more innocent era that never was. "Some people make fun of Hanson," says Isaac, shrugging his shoulders. "But you know what? I don't give a rip." Because the sleaze potential of the music business rivals that of, say, Third World gunrunning or illegal ivory trafficing, the fate of the charming but naïve Hansons is a bit worrisome. They are aware of the pitfalls, however. Drugs, for instance. "It's sad when bands get involved in things like that, but the scary thing is, you know why they do, because it is soooo stressful," says Isaac. "People don't realize how much bands go through to promote records."
At least the Hansons have a rock-solid background. "It starts out with being sane in the first place," reasons Zac, and, indeed, the family is extremely tightnit. Anti-dysfunctional, if you will. Born in Tulsa, Okla., the boys were home-schooled by their mother, Diana. "We couldn't have been the group without doing that, because we were around each other so much," says Taylor. "Not to mention we wouldn't have had the relationship with each other." The young trio started harmonizing around the house, then taught themselves to play instruments - Isaac was axman; Taylor, the key-boardist; Zac, the skinsman. Their father, Walker, was a CPA in the international -finance department of an oil company and took the family to live in Trinidad, Ecuador and Venezuela. During the time, the boys developed a deep love for the Time-Life compilation records spanning 1957 to 1969 - Chuck Berry, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin. The brothers put out two home-made CDs, Boomerang and MMMBop (which had an early version of the title track), and played around the Southwest. In 1994 they landed a manager, Christopher Sabec, after they sang for him on the street outside South by Southwest, the music-biz jamboree in Austin, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Mercury's Steve Greenberg begrudgingly attended a Hanson show at a state fair in Koffeeville, Kan. "I thought, 'This is gonna be a nightmare,'" Greenberg recalls. At the show, he says, "I went around the stage to make sure there weren't any adults playing in the corner and that it wasn't canned. And it wasn't." A smitten Greenberg signed them and promptly hooked the boys up with some of pop music's top songwriters to help co-write (among them, Desmond Child and Mark Hudson). For hip cred, Greenberg cannily brought in the Dust Brothers (Beastie Boy, Beck) and Stephen Lironi (Black Grape) to produce. "When we were signed, it was just kinda like, you saw it in the paper and you just kinda go, 'OK'," says Zac, mowing through his plate of french fries. "It's kinda like, when I turn 12, I'm just gonna go 'I'm 12."
Although the boys are devout Christians (their album is dedicated to "the one who plants and waters and causes all things to grow, to him in whom all things find their purpose"), Middle of Nowhere does not address this. Instead, the lyrics are meditations on friends, feelings and girls - made-up ones, anyway. Take the gentle love song "Lucy." "It's about Peanuts," says Taylor. "Zac is Schroeder." "You know how Schroeder's like, 'Lucy, get off of me'?" says Zac. "I'm doing the part of Schroeder. And how he's saying, 'Lucy, get off my back,' and he regrets it, and, in the end, he really liked her." "A lot of our songs are really just created," says Isaac. "Like, fictional. You know, imagination." As for the bluesy "Madeline," says Taylor, "we had a chorus of 'Here we go, here we go, around again,' and it sounded better with a name." Zac unloads another pack of sugar into his mouth. "I bit my finger, and it came off!" he screams.
A mob of prepubescent girls has descended on the sidewalk near the Fox After Breakfast studio, in Manhattan. Hanson are playing! As the band launches into its bouncy new single, "Where's the Love," the girls, a blur of gangly legs and orthodontics, shriek loudly. Some times it gets so bad that the Hansons have to wear earplugs onstage. Nicole, Jillian and Tara got up at 6 in the morning to travel here from Staten Island, N.Y. "in the 'MMMBop' video, Taylor's wearing a red shirt," says Nicole. "That's why we all wore red." Tara's older sister, the chaperon, comes over to talk. "Lauren!" hisses Tara through clenched teeth. "Get out of here!" This is their gig. "It's really neato, because I got to meet Hanson," says another fan, Stephanie. "I said, 'Hi,' and then they were all like, 'Hi,' and they waved to me!"
Fifteen or 20 New York policemen are here, presumably to prevent rioting. Most are unimpressed. "It sounds like, fuckin' like the Jackson 5 or somethin'," says one. The supple-voiced Taylor, especially, has star quality, but Isaac's Jermaine-like rejoinders show promise, too. After the show, the three take a quick break. "These last two days we've had to get up early for morning shows," says Taylor. "And tomorrow we get up at 4 to warm up our voices for a 7 o'clock radio show. These days, it's kind of sad, but you usually want to get back and go home, and go to sleep." The group is preparing for a tour, but it probably won't happen until the end of the year. "We want to give our fans their money's worth," says Isaac. "It's always so unsatisfying when bands aren't . . . satisfying." (Which is absolutely true, if you think about it.) They plan on covering a slew of tunes from the '50s and '60s. "It's almost a shoo-in that we'll do 'Gimme Some Lovin', and we're almost definitely doing 'Shake Your Tail Feather,' from the Blues Brothers," Isaac reports. But first the guys are heading to Tulsa for a 10-day vacation. "You've gotta pace yourself," says Zac. "You can't just go all-out." They know they're missing out on a normal childhood. They don't care. "All of our friends would just die to be able to do what we're getting to do," says Taylor. "A lot of them have never been to New York or Europe or even out of their home state. And we're getting to - not to mention do what we love to do, which is sing."
So, tired but enthused, they are off to Tulsa, where they will play a little laser tag, go to their beloved arcade and hit the water park. "We're going to go to this lake and rent a house - you know, on of those little apartment things?" Zac says excitedly. "And then we're just gonna unplug the phone."