“We’ll make it simple: all of them. That’s a double CD. We’re done,” AJ said with a snicker, looking around the long, rectangular table at the rest of us.
“Okay, no.” Our manager, Jenn, was already starting to sound annoyed. “Let’s not try to dwell on songs,” she told us as we passed a stack of papers around the table. “‘Cause we could be on one song for an hour, and we have limited time.”
“Define what ‘not dwell’ means,” Nick said with a smirk as I slid the stack toward him. He took one off the top and handed the rest to Howie, who sat on his other side.
“No, there’s no time limit. Just don’t dwell,” Jenn repeated. I didn’t blame her for being snippy. I knew we were way behind schedule, mostly because of me. We were supposed to have finalized the track listing for our new album almost two months ago, but that was the meeting I’d missed when I came down with the flu. The rest of the group had met and managed to narrow down the forty-some songs we had recorded to a top twenty, but they’d refused to go any further without me. Now the five of us were faced with the difficult task of deciding which twelve tracks would make the final cut. Looking at the list of songs in front of me, I knew “not dwelling” would be easier said than done.
As the meeting got underway, we went down the list and discussed each song on it, underlining the titles we all loved and crossing out the ones we could live without. All the while, a small film crew stood in the far corners of the conference room, collecting footage for the documentary. I had gotten so used to having them around while we worked, I found myself forgetting they were there. They blended into the background, silent observers of our creative process.
At first, the conversation went well. We came to a consensus on the first five songs listed, of which there were two that we all agreed should go on the album: “Around the World,” the fan anthem I’d co-written with Nick and Howie in Nashville, and “Breathe,” one of the songs we’d recorded in London.
Then the arguments began. We spent at least ten minutes debating over “In Your Arms,” one of the songs Nick and Howie had written with Morgan and Prophet the previous fall, before Jenn finally made us move on. “All right, play ‘Be Your Soldier.’”
We listened to “Soldier,” another one of Nick and Howie’s songs. I liked it a lot better than “In Your Arms.” It was both catchy and clever, with a military-style, marching cadence accompanying its powerful lyrics, which used being a soldier as a metaphor for standing by a loved one who’s been through some type of trauma.
But somebody shot you down,
Right in the middle of a war outside.
Words mean so little when you’ve heard those lies;
You need someone to make you believe, make you believe.
I will be your soldier.
I, I’ll stand and fight until it’s over.
Oh, and if your heart is getting colder,
You know I will always be your soldier.
As a trauma survivor myself, the lyrics spoke to me on a personal level. I knew how lucky I was to have had such a strong support system around me since the accident, and I was determined to pay it forward by standing (figuratively) alongside the people I loved as they fought their own battles.
You don’t have to hide your scars.
I’ll be there when you fall apart
And fix you like a soldier.
You don’t have to go too far.
Baby, just lay down your arms,
Now that the battle’s over.
I looked around the table at my bandmates as they listened to the song. On my left side, Nick and Howie bobbed their heads to the rhythmic drumbeat. On my right, AJ and Brian sat still, appearing to be deep in thought as they stared down at the gleaming tabletop. Over the last two decades, my brothers had each endured their share of hardship, combating grief, addiction, heart disease, and dysphonia. Their scars may have been less visible than mine, but that didn’t make their trauma any less real.
When the song ended, Brian was the first to speak. “The chorus just doesn’t do it for me,” he admitted. “The song is great-”
“But, as a subject matter, I like what the song is saying,” I inserted.
“It’s cool,” Brian continued, “but the chorus, just the ‘I will be your soldier…’” He sang in an annoying, high-pitched lisp, using his hands to demonstrate how repetitive the notes were. “It just doesn’t do it for me.”
“I disagree.” Nick leaned back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head. “I think the chorus actually is good.”
Of course you do, I thought, hiding a smile as I glanced his way. You helped come up with it.
“I actually like the verses.” Howie paused, then looked at Brian. “I hear what you’re saying on the chorus.”
“It’s just that one little, ‘I will be your-’ That’s the only thing that bothers me,” said Brian.
“But I think it’s a great song for the album because I love what it says,” I explained again. “I can sing this with conviction because it means something to me.”
“I think it’s definitely an album contender,” Howie agreed, nodding. “We could always change the chorus.”
But Nick was adamantly against that idea. “I’m not comfortable with changing the chorus of this song,” he stated so firmly that Howie reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, which just seemed to further annoy him. “No, no, no, no! You don’t have to, like… do that to me.” Nick’s voice rose as he patted the air. “I’m fine. I’m just sayin’-”
“Calm down.” I rested my left hand on his shoulder, unable to resist the opportunity to tease him a little. “You’re getting flushed.” I could see the red starting to creep up the side of his neck.
“No. No, I-”
“Nick’s gettin’ red!” I announced, hooking my fingers under the neck of his t-shirt so I could tug it down and show the rest of the table. “He’s red as a beet. It’s goin’ up to here.” I brought my right hand up to touch my temple.
“No, I’m tellin’ you!” Nick continued, totally ignoring me. “I’m tellin’ you that this is a big song, and people get fuckin’- If it’s not on our record, we’re gonna be regretting it.”
“You got it,” said Jenn, sounding annoyed. “It’s on the record.”
Brian’s nostrils flared. “My point is, I still don’t like it. Whether you change it or not, I still don’t like it.”
“I’ve heard your point,” Nick replied coolly.
“I know, and we see your point,” Brian retorted, referring to Nick’s reddening face.
“That’s a lot of points,” Howie joked.
Jenn attempted to regain control over the meeting before all hell broke loose. “All right, next song is, uh, ‘Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of.’”
“Should we talk about this song a little more?” I asked sarcastically, trying to ease the tension in the room.
Everyone except Nick laughed as Jenn shook her head. “No. Move on.”
I could tell Nick was trying to contain his temper as he looked down at his song list, his lips pressed into a thin line. Of course, it had to be hard for him to hear criticism over songs he had poured his heart and soul into, but it was part of the process.
AJ had stayed quiet during the “Soldier” debate, but he spoke up in defense of “Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of,” the song he and I had written together in L.A. “Of all the songs we’ve written and recorded for this album, this is the one I’m most proud of,” he told us. “It means the world to me, especially now that Ava’s finally here. I’d really like to see it included on the album.”
“I’m right there with you, brother,” I replied, nodding. “This song means a lot to me, too. It reminds me of the pep talks my dad used to give me as I was getting ready for football practice as a kid.” My voice grew thick as a lump rose in my throat. Almost twenty-two years since his death, talking about my dad still made me emotional. “Years later, when I was recovering after my accident, I thought about him and what he would say if he were still alive to see me that way. ‘Show ‘em what you’re made of.’ Those words gave me the strength to keep going, even when it got tough, and I wanna pass ‘em on to my own son. This song could be a pep talk for all our kids.”
“For our kids – and for the world in general,” AJ added. “You know, there’s so much negativity out there. The world needs more positivity! We could send a really positive message with this song.”
Thankfully, the other guys agreed with us – even Nick, who had no children. He didn’t have a great relationship with his dad, either, but he seemed to understand why the rest of us related to the song and didn’t raise any objections to us including it on the album.
We were also in agreement about leaving the next two songs on the list off the album. Then we came to “Light On,” one of the songs Nick and I had written with Dan Muckala in Nashville. Most of us loved it, but, again, Brian had a complaint about the chorus.
“It’s catchy, but it’s a little too repetitive for me,” he said, looking around the table at the rest of us. “I mean, how many times do we sing, ‘Leave a light on’? I might like it better if we changed some of the lyrics.”
“We’re not changing the lyrics,” Nick replied flatly. “The repetition is what makes it catchy.”
“Fair enough,” said Brian with a shrug. “Then my vote is to leave it off the album.”
“Let’s move on for now and come back to ‘Light On’ later,” Howie suggested as Nick scowled. “If we still don’t all love it enough to put it on the album, maybe we could make it a bonus track.”
“Good idea, Howie.” Jenn nodded, looking eager to keep the momentum going. “The next song on the list is ‘Love Somebody.’”
I braced myself for another argument, remembering how Nick and Brian had bickered about the lyrics of that song in the studio. I knew how much those lyrics meant to Nick, who had written them with his soon-to-be fiancee in mind. It was his favorite track, he’d told me just the day before, and I was sure he would fight for it to be included on the album. But I had no idea how ugly that fight would get.
We went around the table, as we’d done with every other song, allowing everyone to weigh in on it. When it was Brian’s turn, he began, “I like the song, but I’m still not sure about the cavemen line.”
“Oh, great, here we go again,” Nick muttered, rolling his eyes.
“Like, I can see where you’re coming from with it,” Brian continued, “but I can also see people complaining about-”
“Yeah, you bitched about that line before,” Nick interrupted him, “and I said-”
“Shut the fuck up and let me talk!” Brian finally snapped, his blue eyes flashing with a fire I rarely saw in them.
“No, you shut the fuck up!” Nick shouted back at him.
“You guys! C’mon,” Jenn begged, but they both ignored her, continuing to holler at each other like a couple of little kids. At first, it was kind of funny. I couldn’t help cracking up at my cousin, who rarely cursed, dropping the F-bomb on Nick like that. But then, it just got uncomfortable.
“Listen!” Brian cried. “You said-”
“You shut the fuck up!” Nick leaned forward and pointed his finger at Brian. “You shut the fuck up! I swear to God…”
“You said-”
“Don’t fuckin’ talk to me that way!” Nick went on, refusing to let him get a word in. “You don’t get respect outta me that way!”
“I’ll talk to you however I wanna talk to you,” Brian retorted. “You wanna hear everybody around the table… and when you hear it, you don’t wanna hear it! You wanna hear everybody’s opinion. You don’t wanna hear it!”
He had to repeat himself because, the whole time he was talking, Nick was screaming at him. “Don’t be a fuckin’ dick, like everyone knows you are! You understand what I’m sayin’? Don’t be a fuckin’ dick! DON’T BE A DICK!”
“Guys.” I finally tried to intervene as Nick leaned across the table in front of me, jabbing his finger toward Brian’s face. It had been a long time since I’d seen him lose his temper like that. “Guys. Nick. Nick. Nick.”
“Trust me, you don’t want it from me, baby. Trust me,” Nick told Brian, totally ignoring my attempts to get his attention. “I’m not afraid of you anymore!” On that note, he finally lowered his finger and flopped backward in his chair like a sulky child.
“Dude!” Brian cried, clearly taken aback by his last comment. “What, you were afraid of me?”
“Nick. Nick.” The whole time, I kept repeating Nick’s name, trying to stop his tirade. “How ‘bout… how ‘bout we all act like men?”
But Nick continued to behave more like an overtired toddler. “No!” he cried, popping back up onto the edge of his seat again. “He knows what I’m talkin’ about, dude!”
“Okay!” Jenn called out, cradling her baby bump. “That’s enough! Everybody stop and take a breath. Let’s table ‘Love Somebody’ for now and try talking about a different song.”
Nick and Brian both stewed in silence as AJ, Howie, and I shared our opinions on the next song, “Madeleine.” When it was Nick’s turn to talk, all he said was, “I love it. No notes.”
“Well, of course you would,” Brian said bitterly, “considering you get to sing the whole first verse and the first chorus by yourself. You might as well just sing the rest, too, and put it on your next solo record.”
Nick snorted. “Somebody’s jealous.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m just sayin’, this barely even counts as a Backstreet Boys song. There’s only one voice for the first minute-and-a-half of a four-minute song. Where’s the harmony we’re known for?”
“Dude, you literally sing the harmony in the second verse – AJ’s verse,” said Nick.
“Yeah, but why don’t we have any in the first verse or chorus?” Brian asked. “Y’all keep wanting to add harmonies to my solos. Why aren’t we doing that with yours?”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Do you really want me to answer that? I mean, I think you know the reason, dawg.”
“And why don’t we hear more of Howie and Kevin’s voices?” Brian went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I thought we agreed, way back when we first began working on this album, that we were gonna distribute parts more evenly between all five of us. But Howie and Kevin barely get to sing in this one.”
“Honestly, I’m okay with that,” I spoke up. “I dunno how Howie feels about it, but I like this song the way it is. I like how it builds, starting with one voice, then two, and finally all five. And I love the lyrics, the story they tell.”
“I agree,” Howie said, nodding. “It’s fine. I have plenty of other parts; I don’t need a solo in every song to be happy.”
“You hear that, Brian?” Nick said sarcastically. “Some of us don’t mind letting others have the spotlight for once.”
“Us?” Brian repeated, blinking incredulously. “I hope you’re not including yourself in that, as if you don’t love being in the spotlight, too.”
“Yeah, sure, I love being in the spotlight, but at least I know when it’s time to take a step back,” Nick retorted, rising out of his seat. “You’re just bitter because you’re not the lead singer anymore. And forget parts! What about fucking vocals on songs?”
“I mean, even hearing the demo version, there was only one voice,” AJ pointed out, apparently trying to steer the conversation back to the song.
“Are we gonna talk about that?” Nick continued, getting loud again. “Are we gonna talk about the fact that you don’t necessarily sound as good as you used to? Are we gonna talk about that?”
Brian took a sip of water. “That’s what you wanna talk about?” he replied calmly, twisting the cap back onto his bottle. “Let’s talk about it.”
“And talk about when we get in the studio, and producers come to us to tell us that they got problems because of your fucking voice?”
Brian bristled at that. “Yeah, because I can’t do your job anymore,” he fired back. I knew what he was referring to. On our first album, when Nick was going through puberty, Brian had filled in for him, covering the parts Nick couldn’t sing without his voice cracking. And on our last album as a group of five, when Nick showed up to the studio late, completely fried from partying all night, Brian had picked up the slack and sung his parts then, too.
For a second, Brian’s response stopped Nick in his tracks. He stopped talking and stared at him, looking temporarily stunned. “No, no, no, no!” he stuttered. “This is the truth.”
“Okay, let’s not get personal,” Jenn warned them.
I didn’t like the direction this conversation was heading in any better than she did. “How about speaking from a place of love and not a place of anger?” I suggested, looking up at Nick as he towered over me. Thirty-three years of life had hardened his features, but beneath them, I still saw the face of the thirteen-year-old boy he had been when we’d first met. Eight years older, I had always tried to be the big brother Nick had never had and give him some much-needed guidance. I knew he hadn’t grown up with great role models at home, having been raised in a dysfunctional family by a mentally ill mother and emotionally distant father who seemed to care more about money and fame than their son’s physical or emotional wellbeing. While Nick had grown up a lot in the last decade, I still saw signs of the damage they’d inflicted on him as a kid. It showed whenever he lost his temper like this. Nick didn’t seem to know how to have a respectful disagreement; he’d clearly never learned. Any argument he was involved in that went on long enough would inevitably escalate into a shouting match, at best, or a full-blown fist fight, at worst.
“No, I’m not angry!” Nick insisted. “I’m fucking being real because everyone wants to sugarcoat it!”
“You are angry,” I contended, but Nick just kept going.
“Everyone wants to sugarcoat it! Let’s fucking bring it out in the open!”
“We’re not sugarcoating it,” I said calmly as Nick raged on. “There’s a way to come from a place of love and not a place of anger.”
“Listen, when producers come up to – STOP!” he screamed at Jenn, who had stood up across the table and started gesturing for him to lower his voice. “When producers come up to us and are saying, ‘What’s wrong with Brian’s voice? What’s happening with his voice?’ and then you wanna sing on the records, dawg, and you sound great on the records ‘cause you can do a fucking little bit of editing… but when we gotta go on stage and sing that shit, we gotta go do a world tour? I mean, this is the kinda… this is all I’m trying to say!”
I understood Nick’s point, but I felt for Brian, who had been doing the best he could in the studio. He couldn’t help the way his voice sounded any more than I could help the way my body worked. I knew he was trying to get better, but therapy could only do so much. Hearing Nick criticize him for something he couldn’t control made me worry about how Nick would react once we started rehearsing for that world tour. Would he resent me for ruining the look of the choreography with my curled hands and paralyzed legs?
“But you take… you take the good and the bad, dawg.” I could hear the tension in Brian’s voice, hear his vocal cords constricting as the words squeaked out.
“No, because-” Nick sighed and turned around, throwing his hands in the air.
“You take the good and the bad,” Brian repeated, almost pleading with him. “We’re a group.”
Hearing the pain in my cousin’s voice brought out my protective nature. “Can you sit down for a sec, Nick?” I asked.
“No, I don’t wanna sit down now,” Nick muttered, looking like a caged animal as he paced restlessly in front of one of the conference room’s large windows. On the other side of it, the sun had sunk low in the darkening sky, its pink and orange glow reflecting off the glass of the tall office building next door.
It was getting late in the day, and I was beginning to lose my patience with him. “Well, here’s what I think-”
“I just want someone to really talk about what the fuck is really going on!” Nick interrupted me, whirling around to face the table again.
“We are! But time out!” I said sharply, finally raising my voice to match his tone. If he was going to act like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum, I was going to talk to him like one. “Sit down for a second and show some fuckin’ respect!”
“No!” he howled. “How about respect me and let me stand?”
“I respect you. Stand up then,” I replied curtly.
Nick rolled his eyes but didn’t cut me off again. Instead, he snatched his water bottle off the table and wandered back over to the window while I talked.
“You’re getting two different arguments here. You’ve busted your ass. I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. Somehow, it got blown up into an argument between you and Brian and a competition over lead vocals. And there’s a lot of baggage here from the fucking past twenty years that is coming out now.”
Nick turned and leaned on the table, pressing his lips together in a tight line as he listened to me in silence.
“And, yeah, we need to talk about Brian’s vocal issues. We need to talk about that. We need to find a way to make it work. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
To his credit, Nick waited until I was finished to speak again. “All I’m saying, Kev, is that we should talk about it instead of trying to pretend there’s not a problem.”
“But we don’t need to talk about it right now. Why don’t we take a break first?” Jenn suggested abruptly. “I don’t know about you all, but I really need to use the restroom.”
“Me too,” I realized, looking at the time on my laptop screen. It had been several hours since I’d last cathed.
“I could use a smoke break,” AJ admitted as he stood up, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket.
“I need another cup of coffee,” Howie added with a sheepish smile. “All those sleepless nights at home with a newborn are catching up to me.”
“Not looking forward to that part of parenthood,” said Jenn as she rose from her chair, rubbing her round belly. “All right, everybody. Do whatever you need to do, and let’s meet back here in ten minutes. We’ll come back to this conversation when we can have it without any more shouting matches. Okay, Nickolas?”
“Why you looking at me?” he asked defensively, scowling at her. “Brian told me to shut the fuck up first.”
Because you kept interrupting him, I thought but didn’t say it. Nick had finally stopped shouting, and the last thing I wanted to do was get him started again.
“Come on, Nicky,” Howie said kindly, slinging an arm around him and steering him toward the door. “Let’s go get some more coffee.”
AJ, Jenn, and I all followed them out of the conference room, then went our separate ways. AJ walked toward the nearest exit while I wheeled myself to the men’s room. “My poor bladder’s about ready to burst. The baby’s been pressing on it for the past half hour,” Jenn puffed as she waddled alongside me, hurrying into the women’s room across the hall.
I was glad I would never know what that felt like. But my head was beginning to pound, which told me my own bladder was probably getting full – either that, or Frick and Frack’s fight had given me a migraine. To be honest, I was glad to get away from both of them, although I felt a little bad about leaving Brian sitting at the table by himself after listening to Nick berate him like that. The tension between those two had been building since our trip to London last summer. One of them was bound to have snapped sooner or later.
Oh well, I thought as I maneuvered my wheelchair into the stall. Better now than later. We might as well hash this all out here tonight, before the tour rehearsals start, before we have to ‘go on stage and sing that shit,’ as Nick so eloquently put it.
By the time I finished my business and rolled back into the conference room, the sun had gone down, and the sky outside the windows was dark. But we still had a lot left to discuss and at least ten more songs to make a decision on. At the rate we were going, we would be there all night.
I checked my phone to find a text from Natalie: How’s it going?
Not good, I texted her back. Probably gonna be at least another hour, maybe longer. Pressing the send button, I looked up to find both Brian and Jenn still bent over their phones, probably texting their own partners. As we waited for Nick, Howie, and AJ, I shifted my weight by tilting my wheelchair back onto its anti-tip bars, trying to take the pressure off my sitting bones. I couldn’t wait to get home and lie down in bed next to Natalie.
“You okay, cuz?” Brian asked quietly.
I nodded. “Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah,” he echoed hollowly. His answer wasn’t very convincing, but I didn’t call him out on it. He clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about what was really bothering him. I hoped that would change once the rest of the group returned. Because Nick was right about one thing: We did need to talk about it.
Gradually, the other guys trickled back into the room. AJ sat down next to me, reeking of cigarette smoke. “Where the hell are the other two?” he wondered, glaring at the two empty seats on my other side as he took out a pack of Trident gum. “I’m ready to wrap this thing up and go home to my girls. It’s getting close to Ava’s bedtime.”
“Mason’s too,” I murmured before remembering the three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Lexington. It was already past ten p.m. back home, and my son was probably sound asleep. I regretted missing my opportunity to call and tell him goodnight.
AJ unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it into his mouth. “Want one?” he asked, offering me the pack.
“Sure, if you don’t mind unwrapping it for me,” I replied. “Thanks.”
“No problem, buddy.” He slid a second stick of gum out the pack and folded back its foil wrapper before placing it in my hand. I put it in my mouth, savoring the refreshing flavor of peppermint as it tickled my tongue.
Nick and Howie came in a couple minutes later, carrying paper cups of coffee. Nick still looked sulky, but at least he seemed to have calmed down some. He didn’t say a word as he slumped back into the seat next to me.
“Who wants snacks?” Jenn asked with a perky tone of forced cheerfulness, refilling the two large platters on the center of the table with popcorn and pita chips. “Baby and I are getting hungry.” She spooned some hummus onto her small plate of chips.
Howie helped himself to a handful of popcorn, but he was the only one who did. For the first minute or so, the rest of us sat in stony silence, staring down at the table as we listened to Howie and Jenn crunch. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak.
Finally, I cleared my throat. “All right, y’all. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.” I looked at Brian, who was hunched over, his chin propped up with one hand. “Look, you know I love you, cuz. And I wanna be as supportive as I can. I mean, not only are we group members and business partners, but we’re family.”
He nodded, the ghost of a smile flickering across his face.
“So I have your back, and I wanna have your back, and I wanna be supportive,” I continued. “I think, personally, I’m a little frustrated because I feel like I don’t know where you’re at, what has happened lately with your therapy. I asked you about it last month, and you answered, but I feel like you never really offer up any information until somebody asks – and, you know, not everybody feels comfortable asking you directly. It might help open up the lines of communication between you and Nick – and all of us, really – if you shed some light on what you’ve been doing to try to take care of this vocal issue instead of keeping us in the dark.”
The faint smile had faded from Brian’s lips, which were pressed into the thinnest of thin lines. “I’m sorry if you feel like that’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, sounding slightly defensive. “I haven’t been trying to hide anything from y’all. It’s just that there hasn’t been anything new to tell. Yeah, I’m still going to therapy twice a week and doing my vocal exercises every day. I wish I could say it’s made a noticeable difference in the way I sound, but the truth is, it hasn’t. I have good days and bad, good moments and bad, but I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much better overall. And, believe me, that’s hard for me to admit. It’s hard for me to talk about.”
I could hear the tension around his vocal cords increasing as he spoke. He sounded choked up, like he was on the verge of tears.
“To be honest with you, let’s face it: it’s the pressure that I put on myself of what I was, what I am, and what I’m gonna be,” he went on, his voice wavering. “The frustrating part is… is I’m the one that has to live with it, and I’m the one that has to hear it each and every day. You guys… I could talk to you till I’m blue in the face, and you’ll never understand it. I don’t expect you to understand it. But I’ve had to accept the fact that, unfortunately, there’s no quick fix for what I’ve been dealing with.”
I nodded. In a way, Brian was right: I would never fully understand what it felt like to be in his shoes. But I could certainly relate to the struggle of losing abilities I had always taken for granted and the stress and uncertainty of knowing that, no matter how hard I worked, I would most likely never get back to the way I was before. “Look, I get it. And I know you’re living it,” I acknowledged. “But not a day goes by that I don’t think about you.”
“We’re not trying to do an intervention on you,” Howie added, “but it’s almost like… like a person who’s going into rehab, where you almost need to take this really serious and have somebody working with you, like, every day.”
His words reminded me of how we’d brought counselors on the road with us during the Black & Blue tour to try to combat AJ’s worsening drug and alcohol abuse. But, ultimately, that hadn’t been enough to help him. Instead, it had all come to a head in Boston, where we’d been forced to stage a real intervention and convince AJ to do his first stint in rehab.
Of course, Brian’s situation was completely different from AJ’s, but I could see the point Howie was trying to make in comparing the two. Brian needed time to seek more intensive treatment for his vocal conditions, just as AJ had for his addictions. Unfortunately, our schedule didn’t leave him much room to do that. Our calendars were rapidly filling with all the upcoming events we had planned: our twentieth anniversary celebration, the Walk of Fame ceremony, various promotional appearances and fan events, the album release, the start of a world tour, and the cruise. Once we started rehearsals the following month, we were going to be working almost nonstop for the rest of the year. But maybe what we really needed to do was slow down, take a step backwards, and talk about whether or not the timing was right.
“And here’s my thing,” I said. “You know, I think we should put the brakes on. Let’s stop performing live until some of this shit, we get it worked out. Let’s let you do your therapy; let’s let you experiment with whatever the doctors say.”
“But I don’t wanna stop the train,” Brian protested. “This is the thing. This is a huge year for us, and I have to be in tip-top shape somehow, someway. I apologize if my bad performance takes the stock down, which is true… but I can only do what I can do to be best for me right now. Because the weight for me at the beginning was, I had to fix it for you… and for you and for you and for you and for you and for you.” He looked around the table, pointing to each person in turn. “Then I woke up one day, and I thought, ‘Damn. You know, I really need to just fix this for me.’ Because you can’t fix alcohol abuse for me,” he added, his gaze landing on AJ. “It’s for you.”
“Right,” AJ replied, nodding.
I couldn’t argue with that logic. It wasn’t our place to tell Brian what to do, and I certainly didn’t want to put any more pressure on him. He already had the weight of the world on his shoulders. If we started canceling performances or postponed the tour because of his condition, we would only be making it worse. The best thing we could do was support him in whatever decision he made, the same way he and the others had supported my decision to rejoin the group. If we could work around my disability, we could do the same with Brian’s dysphonia.
“Fair enough,” I said. “If you wanna keep the train going, then we’ll get on board – right, fellas?” I looked around the table as the other guys bobbed their heads in agreement.
“Absolutely,” said Howie. “We’re with you all the way.”
“That’s right. You know we’ve always got your back, Rok, no matter what,” AJ added.
But one member of the group had yet to weigh in. “I haven’t heard Nick say anything.” Brian turned his head toward Nick, who had been sitting next to me the whole time, sipping his coffee in silence. “I’ve heard everybody else talk.” Brian’s bright blue eyes seemed to burn right through Nick like a pair of laser beams as he stared at him, waiting for him to respond.
The rest of us braced ourselves for another argument. Jenn dipped another chip into her plate of hummus. Howie rocked back and forth in his chair. AJ picked at the tar-stained skin around his black-painted fingernails. I chewed my gum, hoping Nick wasn’t about to launch into another attack on Brian.
But when he finally spoke, Nick was much more subdued than before. “When it comes to your point of view on ‘for yourself,’ I completely accept that, and… you do what you gotta do,” he began calmly. “You know, I think that there is a fifty-fifty thing here, though, as well. I’ve gone through this before in this group, all right? When I was overweight… when I was drinking and doing drugs… when I was being a maniac… it affected the group. And I got confronted by you guys, everybody, docked thousands of dollars for not showing up on time. I had to get better for you.”
“AJ did, too,” Howie put in. “We’ve all had to in different ways.”
“AJ had to, as well,” Nick went on. He was getting fired up again, his voice growing louder and more emotional. “And that’s all I’m trying to say. And I’m passionate about it because I’m still pissed off, all right?”
“But, Nick, it starts with you, period,” said Brian, gesturing toward him. “It starts with you, okay? Yes, it’s reflective, but it starts with me. Okay? So, this shit happens to be about me. So let it start with me first, and then let it filter.”
“I want you to get better. I really do,” Nick said sincerely, his voice softening as he looked directly into Brian’s eyes. “I genuinely want you to get better. All right? I want Michael Jordan back. I really do. I always felt like it was Jordan and Pippen in this group, and I really did. And I thought you were Michael Jordan.”
A lump rose in my throat as I looked from Nick to Brian, who was massaging his own throat as he listened. I remembered when the two of them were thick as thieves. The Jordan/Pippen comparison was a good one, considering Brian and Nick used to play basketball together any chance they got. Frick and Frack – best friends, both on and off the court. Nick had looked up to Brian back then. But, of course, things had changed as they’d gotten older. Brian had grown up first, gotten married, and started a family. Nick, a head taller but five years younger, had remained a reckless, rebellious man-child for most of his twenties, moving from one bad relationship to another, all while swearing he would never settle down with a wife and kids. Yet, even on the Never Gone tour, the last time I’d gone on the road with the group, Nick and Brian were still our MVPs. Just as Nick had always been the most popular member, making the fans scream louder than they did for anyone else, Brian had always been our most valuable player, singing the most lead parts and nailing them almost every time. Together, those two had commanded the stage, a seemingly unstoppable duo. But I could already tell that things would be different this time around.
“And I miss that voice again,” Nick went on. “I miss it. And I believe you can have it back. I believe you can. I believe you will get it back. And I believe us as a team… we, the five starters-” He looked around the table, tipping his head toward each of us in turn. “-that we can do it, but we need Michael. And I know it’s gonna happen.”
I swallowed hard, hoping he was right. I wanted Brian’s old voice back almost as much as I wanted my old body back. But in the back of my mind, I remembered Nick telling TMZ, “Nothin’ can keep Kevin down for long. I know he’s gonna walk again.” He was wrong then, and he might have been wrong again now. But all we could do was keep believing in Brian and hope for the best.
***