Entrevista a Joe Mc Intyre en News Cincinnati.com

Older Kids back on 'The Block' with tour
By Chris Varias • Enquirer contributor • June 26, 2009

In 1999 Joey McIntyre came to Bogart's for a solo show. His band, New Kids on the Block, had broken up five years earlier. But what took place in that club was something of a microburst of New Kids mania. The memory that lingers from that evening involves many adult women in the crowd reverting to their days of '80s teenage-screaming fandom.

Ten more years have passed, and nothing has changed. Last year, Joey and the other four New Kids cut a new album, "The Block," that peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard chart, and the band has extended the reunion into a summer tour.

McIntyre shared his thoughts about the band's past and present before playing Riverbend this weekend.

Question: Has fan reaction to the comeback been what you had expected?

Answer: We never took anything for granted in show business. You can feel like you have gold in your hands, and it just doesn't happen. I'm passionate about everything I do. So many things have to come together for something like this to pop. It's like catching a wave, and we all did, us and the fans.

Q: When rock histories are written, the New Kids will be remembered as a boy band or a bubblegum act. Can you make a case for your music to be given a second listen, that it's better than that?

A: That's definitely not my life's goal. I don't feel the need to defend it. I think that it's fun music. I'm proud of what we've done. We're not the Beatles. I think our legacy is as performers. We came out emulating the Temptations and the Jacksons and New Edition, the performance value of that. When I think of the New Kids coming up and what we wanted to attain, it was all about performing and entertaining, and how do we turn it out? How do we get them off their (behinds)? That's our legacy.

Q: You mentioned New Edition. Do you think New Kids are unfairly measured against New Edition? Both are boy bands from Boston formed by (producer) Maurice Starr, but New Edition came first, so you guys were looked at as a white copycat.

A: There wouldn't be a New Kids without a New Edition. I believe that wholeheartedly. Before I was in New Kids, I would watch New Edition and would get chills up the side of my arm because I loved what they did. A year or two later, I'm on stage working the same circle as those guys. We took a lot of hits that other groups, maybe New Edition, didn't take, because we were white and we were singing R&B. So it goes both ways. All I know is we played at the Apollo Theater, and we turned it out.

Q: The use of backing tracks during live concerts is prevalent these days. Do you have to be careful with that, since the New Kids ran into a backing-vocal-track controversy your first time around?

A:No. You'd be surprised. The reality is everybody's got tracks. It is an art, making those tracks. You look at producers, like Timbaland, the stuff that he does. You can't capture that with a band. We don't look over our shoulder for anything. We're proud of what we do. That thing was a locomotive back in the day, and we were teenagers, just hanging on, doing the best we could.

But it's a new day now. When you come see the show, we're solid performers. There's nothing phony about what we're doing on stage.


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