As well as all the pop music around me growing up, I was always singing along to Motown songs, the masters like Marvin Gaye, as well as The Eagles and Elton John. Later, I admired groups like Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men. They’re completely different from each other, but what these two bands shared was harmony. For that to work, you can’t have four voices all doing the same thing, you have to find your own spot, and that’s what we did: Duncan was low, Antony was husky, I was up high and Simon just sounded rich.
SIMON
Err … Duncan was actually breathy and husky, kind of rocky but with a soulful twist to it. Antony had been impersonating George Michael for so long, he had a soft, silky thing going on – back then, anyway. And I still remember the first time I heard Lee sing; I thought, ‘I’m going to make a lot of money with that boy.’
DUNCAN
I was stunned. My first thought when I heard Lee sing was, ‘How can a voice like that come out of a person like this?’ (Sorry, Lee, but I do mean that as a compliment.) He had this most incredible, rich sound that was really high, but also strong and powerful. At the time he was 16 and spoke like someone from the market, and it didn’t add up for me.
My second thought was, ‘How can I possibly compete with it?’ I was confident in what I had, and I’d been in a boy band before where I was the lead vocalist and basically sang everything, but now I realised it was game on.
LEE
Nobody has ever pushed me the way Ray pushed me. When we recorded ‘If You Come Back’, it felt like 1,000 takes. I was there for days, and I hurt. But, through Ray, I felt connected to Motown, and that was all I’d ever wanted. So I kept going.
SIMON
I was the weak link vocally, but I brought the writing, and the benefit of knowing your place in the industry. I’d been a tea boy in my cousin’s band once upon a time. I’d seen conflicts, arguing over songwriting, and I knew what harm it had caused, so I came into the band with that knowledge.
DUNCAN
Simon was just cool. He brought an urban element to the group. He gave us an R&B feel, that edge we needed, otherwise we’d have just been three white boys trying to sing soul. Instead, we ended up with this blend where we all got opportunities to shine. The format became me singing the first verse, Antony singing the second verse, Lee doing the choruses, and Simon providing the bridge, with a rap or whatever he had up his sleeve.
SIMON
I felt fortunate I could bring that to the table. I’d been rapping for years, listening to other musicians, making up stories, finding rhythms. Never expected it to find a home in a boy band.
ANTONY
I was shocked when we started working in the studio. I thought you’d go in, record a song and go home. I had no idea you’d be there for 11 or 12 hours, going over just a tiny part of it, again and again. Often I felt completely out of my depth, and I never felt good enough compared with the other three. It was funny because this was what I’d always wanted to do, but once I got there, I couldn’t relax and enjoy it. Instead, I was in a state of continual anxiety all the time, thinking: ‘Are they going to throw me out of the band? When are they going to say I’m not good enough?’ On the outside, I stayed being the cheekie chappie I’ve always been, doing silly voices, having a giggle, but deep down I was worried, and that lasted for years. Every time my phone rang and I saw it was someone from the record company calling, I was convinced this was the day they’d decided I was the weakest link, goodbye.
SIMON
Antony was the most confident of us all, easily – always the first one in the club, the first one to get a girlfriend. When he was single, he bossed it like a lads’ lad. When he had a romance on the go, he’d behave like the world’s first boyfriend. He was very black and white, and he knew himself from a very early age, while the rest of us were still experimenting.
DUNCAN
The record company adored Ant. Our manager, Daniel, told me early on that they loved his face, the fact that he looked like a bit of a boxer, somewhere between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. He’s Greek but he brought an Italian vibe, the tougher look the group needed.
ANTONY
I definitely wasn’t your typical pop star. Duncan was a mini-Brad Pitt, Lee was cheeky but sweet, Simon was so cool … I was … evolving. Marmite!
DUNCAN
‘You do the talking,’ were my instructions from the record company, and so I did. Growing up, my conversations at the dinner table hadn’t been your typical arguments with your brothers and sisters as I’d spent all that time instead with my grandparents. They’d been through two World Wars, and were proper old school. My upbringing with them had made me old beyond my years, and aware of what I could and couldn’t say. It was like I’d been media-trained in my childhood.
And don’t forget I’d been a holiday-resort entertainer in a previous life, which was all about keeping people happy. My night-time duties then had been talking to people at tables, never leaving anyone out, keeping everyone happy. So, now I was in a band, I just carried on doing that. The label was blatant in bending us to their different ideas for each of us – Lee, the cheeky boy with the voice of an angel, Simon, a very pretty black man, street boy Antony, and me, all floppy and friendly, with my long hair, talking to everybody all the time, channelling my inner Redcoat.
SIMON
We were all tokens, there to fit an image. Remember how nobody looked at Justin Timberlake properly until he began singing and moving? Well, the same thing happened to Lee, and it made me laugh. He wasn’t considered a pretty boy until people heard his voice, and then they started looking at him differently because of how he sounded. And pretty soon, they started looking at him differently because of the stuff he was coming out with in interviews. Whether singing, speaking or sharing his ideas about life, love and the universe, he was always pretty unusual.
LEE
I’m dyslexic and I have ADHD … oh, and I’m left-handed. So there’s a lot of unusual stuff going on inside my head, which sometimes pops out. I’ve always had a lot of nervous energy – I have to be doing stuff, I can’t sit still for very long, and my attention span is shorter than a gnat’s. And I’m just not conventional. But who’s to say what’s normal – shall we go with eccentric? I’m happy with eccentric.
A couple of years ago we were all travelling together in a minibus in Berlin, and everyone started discussing whether I was medically diagnosable or just everyday bonkers. It seemed everybody had a different opinion, until I ended up having to chip in, ‘I am actually here.’
SIMON
There’s no doubt we were objectified by our bosses, and later by fans. But that’s what you sign up for. ‘Once you sign this piece of paper, your lives are not your own,’ I was told. I was prepared for it, and I knew how lucky I was. We all did. And we thought, ‘If we really want this to be our dream, we need to stick at it, and we need to stick together.’
It may have looked manufactured because of our different looks, but we had a rare understanding between each other. None of it was fake and I think it was that genuine kinship that people responded to.
Duncan was always the clip-board man, our self-designated liaison officer with the management – like a