By Karl Quinn
Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam
Netflix, ★★★★
This fascinating three-part documentary series charts the rise and fall of boy band boss Lou Pearlman and the 30-year-long scam he perpetrated not just on the acts he created and managed – The Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC (a line form whose 2001 single Pop provides the show’s title), O-Town and more – but on a couple of thousand unwitting investors.
If you’re familiar with the story, this is an engaging rehash. If, like me, you have only the faintest sense of it, the series unravels as an intrigue, a mystery, a shell game. You think you’re watching one thing, but suddenly realise your attention has been misdirected, and something else entirely is going on.
Lou Pearlman with the Backstreet Boys. Credit: Netflix
Pearlman – cousin of Art Garfunkel (as in Simon and) – first emerged in the mid-1970s as a helicopter taxi operator in New York City, and then in the early 1980s as a purveyor of blimps. With the backing of former Luftwaffe pilot Theodor Wullenkemper, he purchased a dirigible and lined up a sponsor (jeans brand Jordache) and was ready to launch what was effectively a new medium for promoting brands into the sky. Unfortunately, on its maiden voyage, it caught fire and plummeted to the ground.
And so, you might say, the crash-and-burn template of his business career was set.
In an audacious move of which Pearlman (who died in prison in 2016) would perhaps have approved, the makers of the series match real footage of him with AI-generated voice, citing excerpts from his book Bands, Brands & Billions. It’s self-serving but insightful, and ultimately ironic as it reveals in retrospect things about his business practices that were only dimly apparent at the time.
“Business is about building things,” AI Pearlman says. “It’s about developing talent. It’s about connecting with people and working with them to build something that will last long after we’re all gone.”
In truth, Pearlman used glossy promotional stunts such as the blimps and the boy bands he founded to attract investors to his Trans Continental group of companies, promising exorbitant returns. The hit songs, money-making tours, private planes, lavish parties, mansions and jewellery were all evidence of how well he – and, by extension, his investors – were doing.
Except they weren’t. It was all a facade. Everything was funded by borrowings, false accounting and outright lies. It was a massive Ponzi scheme. He rode wave after wave of debt to fuel the spending.
Only when he reneged on a debt to a lawyer who had represented him in court and was entitled to a $16 million fee for winning (Pearlman paid him one-tenth of that) did the facade begin to fray. And only when journalists started asking more challenging questions than “What’s the secret of your success, Lou?” did the whole tapestry of lies begin to unravel.
*NSYNC, featuring a young Justin Timberlake at left, were among the groups founded and managed by Pearlman.Credit: Netflix
The series benefits enormously from having people close to Pearlman telling the tale as they understand it, even if most profess to have had no idea what he was up to at the time.
Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean and Howie Dorough, *NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick (sadly, there’s no Justin Timberlake), Erik-Michael Estrada of O-Town and Michael Johnson of Natural all speak of the man they called Big Poppa with a mixture of fondness – he did, after all, make them – and betrayal.
“In all of this,” says Johnson, an especially reflective witness, and one clearly still bearing deep emotional scars, “there is a level of success that has never been seen in pop music history. But the fact that all of this was financed by people’s life savings is disgusting.”
Contact the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and Twitter at @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.