What it’s really like to meet your idols

REBECCA Wallwork was so obsessed with New Kids on the Block she truly thought she’d marry Joe McIntyre. In the end, they changed her life.

The homemade jacket finally being signed.

ON THE first day of Year 11, I wagged school so I could go into the city with my friends. We were going to meet our idols, the New Kids on the Block.

We’d waited for three years for the biggest boy band in the world to finally come to Australia. School could wait. We wore our homemade knock-off New Kids jackets, and we each bore gifts that we planned to give our favourite New Kid; mine was a bottle of Paco Rabanne aftershave for 19-year-old Joe McIntyre (the baby of the group).

We were just 15 and we didn’t have a plan for how exactly we would meet the New Kids, but we parked ourselves at a table in the lobby of the InterContinental Sydney and waited. There was one scream-filled sighting of Jon Knight (the shy one) sneaking back into the hotel with his hood up before security booted us and the other fans outside, where we stood on a corner singing The Right Stuff for morning TV cameras.

You may have heard the saying, “Never meet your idols.” It never occurred to me not to try and meet my idols — although cautionary tales are no match for a teenage girl who believes she will not only meet but one day marry her favourite singer in her favourite band.

The boys of 15-year-old Rebecca’s dreams.

In the ensuing 24 years since that day outside the InterContinental, I have been to 23 New Kids concerts. But this is not a story about being a groupie. And yet, the most obvious word for what I am — “fan” — doesn’t seem to cut it. Fan doesn’t encompass the amount of joy these five men have brought to my life, or the way they have influenced my career.

I did not marry Joe, but I did become an entertainment journalist and move to the United States, things I am not sure would have happened had I not been a hardcore New Kids fan who one day theorised that the only way to meet her idols was to become a magazine writer.

New Kids on the Block parted ways in 1994. I was in uni by then, but I still believed that if I met Joe, he would recognise me. He would feel my appreciation and love and would realise that I was special. He would know me.

In 1998, I was working at Interview magazine in the US and learned that Joe was working on a solo record. Even better, he was going to be at a movie screening in TriBeCa. Sitting in my cubicle in SoHo, I squirmed with excitement. That was a short walk from my office! I was now 21 years old and working at a cool New York magazine. And I was about to meet Joe in a situation that didn’t require screaming at him from behind a wall of security guards. This was my chance!

Outside the TriBeCa Grill, next to the cinema, a crowd of twenty-something women milled about. My heart was pounding. He was as familiar to me as a T-shirt you’ve worn into the softest comfort, but this situation was startling new. I had seen him in 1992, but in tears, from the front row at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Now, that 15-year-old inside me was jumping up and down in my skull screeching, “It’s him! It’s him!”

Finally, it was my turn to shake his hand. “Joe, I’m from Australia,” I blurted, desperately wanting to set myself apart from the other girls there. “Oh yeah?” he said, not looking up from the CD he was signing. When he did make eye contact, it was brief, flashing me his toothy smile before he moved onto the next girl.

The disappointment was sharp. That was it? My big moment was entirely unremarkable for Joe. He was charming and polite, but he hadn’t recognised me. Even worse was the realisation: Of course he didn’t. How could he? Why would he?

The shock was like learning there was no Santa. I felt an uneasy mix of happiness and humiliation as I watched him disappear into the building. There was only one thing to do. I went inside the TriBeCa Grill with my new friends, and I ordered a sundae and a beer.

I went on to meet Joe a few more times, sometimes as a fan but more often as a journalist. I interviewed him and his fellow New Kid Jordan Knight (the handsome one), and was amazed that I was able to open my mouth and have well-formulated, interesting questions tumble out.

I got a kick out of feeling like I had transcended the status of “fan” and made it into a world where we were connecting as artist and media professional. As if that somehow was more “real” than the artist and fan relationship.

When the New Kids reunited in 2008, seeing all five of them on stage again after a 14-year dry spell was one of the most thrilling moments of my years of fandom. Sitting down to interview all five of them backstage in Philadelphia was surreal. Wow, if I turn and look at all of them surrounding me, it has the same effect as being on a tilt-a-wheel, I remember thinking.

Rebecca interview New Kids in 2008.

Focus, concentrate, don’t freak out. I also found myself wondering if I had become a journalist with the sole purpose of one day getting to be in exactly this spot. Um, so what do I do when this interview is over? Retire?

I did not retire. In fact, I just wrote a book about the New Kids and their multi-platinum album Hangin’ Tough. It comes out in April and part of me is still in shock that the 15-year-old who chased their minibus across Phillip St in 1992 made it this far.

Here’s the thing, though: it’s taken me 24 years to realise that my happiest place is not sitting in front of them with a tape recorder, or having one of them recognise me at some industry event or even writing a book about them. It’s back on the other side, as a fan, where the real joy lies.

Last year, I splurged on one of their fan VIP packages, where I got to go backstage at their Florida show and get photos with the guys. By this point, my book was done, so I was free to simply show up sporting that homemade jacket from when I was 15 and be a fan meeting her idols.

The homemade jacket finally being signed.

The pressure was off — I didn’t have to appear cool and calm or concentrate on asking the right questions. Even after all these years, I felt as giddy as I did the first time I met Joe. For so long, these five guys had been unattainable pin-ups and here they were, joking around, giving me hugs and laughing at my ghetto jacket.

Last June, as the last bars of Hangin’ Tough rang out in the stadium and confetti poured down from the ceiling, I stood just feet away from a corner of the stage screaming my lungs out. When Donnie (the ‘bad boy’) came over to the edge of the stage, I held up my homemade New Kids jacket and tried to catch his eye.

I was just one girl in a million. One fan, no more special than the rest. Donnie finally met my eyes and acknowledged my cheers. He drew his hands to his chest and made a heart shape with this fingers. He nodded and I nodded back. Blockheads will understand.

The day a teenage Rebecca could only have dreamt of.

Rebecca Wallwork’s book New Kids on the Block: Hanging Tough will be released on April 21 by Bloomsbury.

Originally published as What it’s really like to meet your idols