Has the blinking APPLAUSE sign ever been more superfluous? The instant Jay Leno introduces Hanson, the Tonight Show studio audience erupts in a torrent of piercing shrieks that even a habitat full of Jack Hanna's monkeys would have trouble stopping.
"I haven't seen this many bra straps in 20 years," a show staffer cracks, surveying the ocean of scoop necks, spaghetti tanks, and baby tees. And this isn't even Hanson's coltish core audience. Network regulations prohibit anyone under 16 from being part of the studio taping. That policy resulted in an angry protest the last time Hanson was on The Tonight Show, as a group of girls took to the streets of Burbank--or at least the avenue outside NBC--to protest their exclusion.
Today, there's no marching or chanting, but several dozen young fans are camped outside the security gate. Meanwhile, backstage in the greenroom, Leeza Gibbons, former Toto guitarist Steve Lukather and other showbiz figures wait around anxiously. None of them will be appearing on the show this evening--they're here with their kids, playing the celeb card for an up-close glimpse of the sibling sensations.
The Tonight Show tempest is just an average day's work for Isaac, Taylor and Zachary--or Ike, Tay and Zac, as their hopelessly infatuated fans call them. Since bursting onto the scene with the blue-eyed, hip-hop pop of "MMMBop" a little over a year ago, life for the three wholesomely hunky brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been a theme park where they're the sole attraction. The band's first major label release, Middle of Nowhere, has sold more than 5 million copies. Scenes of Beatlesque hysteria have been played out from Tokyo to the Mall of America. Heather Locklear and David Spade have both jokingly auditioned for the role of Fourth Hanson. And of course, "MMMBop" has been performed more often than the dolphin show at Sea World.
Now the Hanson scrapbook is expanding by several chapters. This week, the band offers up a half hour of music and conversation as part of VH1's Storytellers series. The show, part of the network's Save the Music program to fund music education in classrooms around the country, includes Q&A sessions with an audience of elementary and junior high students, a revealing explanation of how "MMMBop" got written and a performance of the bands new showstopper, "Gimme Some Lovin'" (a cover of the 1967 hit for the Spencer Davis Group).
But the biggest news is that the boys are going on the road. On June 26, the night before the Storytellers broadcast, fans in Boston will bear witness to America's first official Hanson concert, as the trio kicks off a nine-city tour. After 14 grueling months of interviews, photo shoots, TV shows, abbreviated appearances and , yes, Eggo commercials, the Hansons are looking forward to getting back to their roots (and that's not a reference to hair color).
"We really miss playing," 15-year-old Taylor says. "We were used to doing performances two or three times a week. Then all of a sudden you get signed, and it's more about [promotion] than playing."
Just hours earlier, Taylor recalls, he was reminded of how surreal life has become for his family since fame locked the boys in its embrace. Back at the hotel suite, before the clan headed over to Burbank, Taylor heard his youngest brother, 4-year-old Mackenzie, excitedly exclaim, "Oh, I can't wait to see my friend Jay!" (There are four civilian siblings in the Hanson bunch: Jessica, 9; Avery, 7; Mackenzie; and Zoe, 5 months).
During the taping, all the commercial breaks are filled with desperate cries from the audience of Taylor!, Zac! and Iiisaaac! When the screams die down, the Tonight Show host (Mackenzie's good friend) greets his viewers by quipping, "Welcome back to Teen Talk." Funny thing is, the Hansons aren't even the youngest occupants of Leno's couch on this particular occasion. Actress Hallie Kate Eisenberg, fresh from the talking-parrot movie "Paulie," has that distinction. The pink-tutued 5-year-old tells Leno that where Hanson is concerned, she likes "the little one, Zac," but, to be perfectly blunt, her favorite group is--oh the humanity!--the Spicegirls.
The boys aren't too bummed out by this admission--anything to discourage the perception of Hanson as a little girl's band. Well, not that little. But someone is writing the 2,000 letters that arrive daily in Tulsa. While the brothers are in the unusual position of being a cuddly, kid-friendly band that has also been embraced by the critics, they still struggle to be taken seriously. One reason they recently released 3 Car Garage, a repackaging of their obscure independent album from 1995, is to remind the public that Hanson was doing its own thing long before crossing paths with such celebrated producers as the Dust Brothers.
The other reason is to undercut the bootleg maket; until now, if you wanted to hear Hanson's early years, you were stuck with, as 12-year-old Zac puckishly pust it, "a copy of a copy of a copy recorded off the Internet, put on a bad tape and then recorded on to another tape."
The Hansons know all about the Internet: Regular Web surfers, the boys are both pleased with and disconcerted by the extraordinary amount of bandwidth devoted to their lives and work. Yahoo! lists 405 different Hanson sites, everything from "support groups" for adult aficionados ("we vote, we order wine with dinner, we drive, and we love Hanson," one proclaims) to 16 "fan fiction" anthologies. "People are really wild," Taylor says. "They write these fantasies about how they met us, how they did this with us or that with us--these complete elaborations--like it really happened!"
There's also the infamous "Marilyn Hanson" page, which juxtaposes the boys with the controlversial Gothic rock star. The joke, of course, is that Hanson's image, music and morality are diametrically opposed to Manson's. But Taylor's not buying that. "He's hard-core," says the keyboard player, "but I think he's actually more of an actor."
Taylor's insight into the Alice Cooper of the 90's suggests a savvy beyond his 15 years. But his and his band mates' unique experience--international stardom following a childhood that already included a lot of travel--has resulted in three wise, worldly kids.
For one thing, they've all been able to enjoy certain educational opportunities that no classroom could provide. "How many English teachers would love to be able to take their kids to see Shakespeare's house?" asks Taylor. Both he and Isaac cite Naples and Moscow as two of the coolest places they visited recently. And Zac? "I like Tulsa," he says stubbornly.
Their musical tastes are also more exotic than one might imagine. They cite Sugar Ray, the Verve, and Fiona Apple as recent favorites, and promise that the next album, which should surface sometime in '99, will include several stylistic departures. "Nobody stays exactly the same," 17-year-old Ike says. "You'll definitely know it's Hanson , but we're constantly changing."
"All you can really hope is that the music grow," says Mark Hudson, who cowrote Hanson's "Where's the Love" and produced the trio's Christmas LP, Snowed In. Hudson has a unique perspective: Once upon a time, he and his two siblings comprised the pop group and Saterday-morning TV stars the Hudson Brothers. He knows firsthand that teen idoldom and musical staying power don't go hand in hand. "If you don't grow, the audience grows up and leaves you behind," he says. "But these kids are so talented it's frightening."
Hanson's music may continue to evolve, but one thing that won't change on the next record is the timbre of anyone's voice. Zac is still at least a year away from the ravages of puberty, and since the making of Middle of Nowhere, Taylor has completed his move to a lower register. "It's better because your voice is more expressive," Taylor says. "It's also cool because our voices are very, very similar. We've actually confused ourselves at times. [Ike and I] trade off vocal parts, and then playing it back we'll be like, 'Hey, you did that.' 'No that was you.'"
As such bands as the Beach Boys and the Everly Brothers have proved, there's a harmonic advantage in genetics. And the indistinguishable voices also make a nifty metaphor for a band that is preternaturally friction-free. Says Taylor: "What makes Hanson complete is the face that we work together so well." In the end this communal attitude has nothing to do with blood. "They're so tight, and that's what I love about them," Hudson says. "Where one goes, they all go. Bands and groups break up. A family doesn't."
Hanson's "Weird" video isn't as sinister as all that, but the song's lyrics do seem to call for an outsider's perspective: "When you live in a cookie-cutter world/If you're different, you can't win." Hmmm, that could almost describe one of Van Sant's alienated, love-starved characters. The video itself casts the brothers as ragged, downtrodden figures slogging their way through an urban underworld in a wild, Fellini-esque treatment of the New York City subway system.
While Van Sant gave the video its garish look, the concept was actually Hanson's. The two parties first crossed paths late in 1997, when Van Sant approached the Hanson camp with a vague proposal to somehow use the boys in a feature film. "It wasn't really and idea," the director admits. "I just had this basic concept of,like, Hanson in a movie." When that scheme didn't fly, Van Sant volunteered to turn one of Hanson's songs into a video, but that collaboration never got off the ground, either.
Van Sant had finally abandoned his urge to direct the brothers in something when, to his delight, they approached him with their carefully thought-out vision for "Weird." "They just called me and said, 'Would you do this,'" Van Sant recalls.
So how well do the Hansons really know his work? "They've heard about 'Drugstore Cowboy' and 'Idaho,' but they haven't seen them," the director says."'Good Will Hunting' has a lot of swear words in it, but they did watch that film."
"MMMBOP" (or "Hey, Hey, We're the Hanson's!") Captures the brothers exactly as we want them to be: three carefree, rollicking kids, jammin' in the family room. Directed by Tamera ("Billy Madison") Davis. Style point: Zac's cornrow braids.
"WHERE'S THE LOVE" A glossary of MTV glamorama, including smoke machines, disco balls, and alterna-babes in brightly colored clothing. Directed by Davis. Style point: If everyone had Taylor's rosy cheeks, Revlon would go out of business.
"I WILL COME TO YOU" The band's presence as a luminous, superherolike trinity is contrasted with a procession of lonely, pallid, leather-jacketed types. Directed by Peter Christopherson. Style point: Hipness bonus for recruiting Christopherson, the programmer for the industrial band Coil.
"TULSA, TOKYO, AND THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE" This 82-minute you-are-there compendium is manna from Hanson. A fully authorized, utterly sincere account of the band's adventures in stardom, including celebrity testimonials (Cindy Crawford!) and behind-the-scenes verite`. Directed by David Silver. Style point: what a coup--an Al Roker cameo!
"WEIRD" Hanson is cast as shabby street musicians wandering a New York City subway full of punks, Wall Street drones, and sets of identical twins. Directed by Gus Van Sant. Style point: Props to Taylor. He's the only brother who avoids wearing a floppy fisherman's hat that even Hank Hill would find hokey.
"RIVER" A "Titanic" parody, with the movie's Gloria Stuart as a Hanson fanatic. Directed by Al Yankovic. Style point: The snazzy I love Hanson tattoo Stuart sports.