Blimps, Boy-Bands, and Buggery: The Sordid Tale of Lou Pearlman

Remember the almost magical surge of “boy bands” that suddenly swamped the airwaves like a tsunami of clumsy vocal harmonies, recycled New Edition dance moves, and ambiguously-gay camraderie in the late 1990s? The Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, LFO (Lyte Funky Ones)…? I can’t recall how many people said these postpubescent power-balladeers looked and sounded so alike it wouldn’t be a surprise to discover they were manufactured somewhere in a factory.

Well, the factory was in Orlando, Florida, and its president was a jovial fella by the name of Lou Pearlman, a.k.a. “Big Poppa.”

Big Poppa published a book in 2002, entitled Bands, Brands & Billions, in which he made himself out to be a sort of Donald Trump figure who rose from skid-row in Flushing, Queens, to become first the head of a blimp empire–yes, an empire built around renting out blimps–and later, a musical empire responsible for launching the careers of the Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, and many other typical boy bands. Lou Pearlman was like a short, white Don Corleone sitting at the controls of an imperium built on blimps and boys.

Too bad he was 1) swindling everyone who even loaned him a buck for his blimp biz; and 2) was a little more into the boys than the bands.

From the very beginning, people remarked how odd it was for a blimp-industry executive to be diversifying into boy bands. In fact, insiders raised questions about Pearlman’s motivations almost from the moment the Backstreet Boys was formed. The group’s initial co-manager Sybil Hall and her partner, a singer named Phoenix Stone—he had been one of the original Backstreet Boys before starting his own company—remained close to Pearlman as co-investors in the band. “Basically this was an excuse for Lou to hang around with five good-looking boys,” says Stone, who now runs a record label with Hall in Los Angeles. “He was along for the ride. What he liked to do was take boys out to dinner.”

There were allegations of bathtowels being whisked aside, inappropriate rubbing of abs, even the showing of pornographic movies. A week at Big Poppa Lou’s place was a lot like a weekend at Neverland, with passed-around Jesus Juice, and all manner of “boyish camraderie”

Needless to say, once the Orlando heat became a bit too much for tubby Lou to take, he amscrayed to parts unknown, fleeing the country with a pile of debts and a whole stack of sexual misconduct allegations racked up behind him.

He was discovered, quite by accident, by a 32-year-old German computer programmer who spotted him in Bali while on vacation. To cut a long story short,

F.B.I. Agents attached to the American Embassy in Jakarta appeared at the Westin the next day and led Pearlman away; he had been registered under the name “A. Incognito Johnson.”

“Today, Lou Pearlman sits in jail, waiting to be legally buggered for the buggerings (financial and, perhaps, physical) that he handed out as a businessman, no doubt wondering why the hell he could have possibly used an alias as stupid as “A. Incognito Johnson.””

Mad About the Boys [Vanity Fair]