Molly: Well lads, welcome back to Australia via television, before I go on to anything else, this a promise and you said that there is no rumour that, that you could be coming down in January or Feburary?

Kevin: No, no rumour, it's a fact, we are coming.

Molly: Because I tell you what, I mean you're probably aware over the years you've been huge in Australia and there was a big disappointment when they thought the band had broken up and was finished and I think the proof's in the pudding with the album going to no. 1 on the Australian chart – first single going to no. 1. Getting back together again, what was it like, you know, how did it happen?

Kevin: We just... we've been keeping in touch with each other during the off period, I'm actually me, Brian, AJ and Howie have been writing songs while Nick was on his solo tour and doing the solo album, we've been writing songs and getting ready to eventually get back in the studio, all five of us and, and record an album. I think the major catalyst was when AJ decided to do the Oprah Winfrey show and we all showed up to surprise him and after the show, we just had some dinner and chatted over dinner, and everybody was in a good place. It was like, yea, we're ready, we all feel ready to do this again.

Molly: It's been nearly 5 years, but I guess the 5 years leading up to that break was just full-on, it was just so hectic, you know, did it take its toll during that time?

Kevin: Absolutely.

Nick: Yeah

Brian: Yeah

AJ: The whole black and blue tour – there's, wasn't a bad tour necessarily, but it was just a lot of negativity surrounding that tour and 9-11 happened, I went to Rehab, a couple of us had some personal things going on, some deaths in our family, there was just a lot of bad juju around that whole tour, and when we finished up in Tokyo in 2001? Yea November 2001, once we finished up in Tokyo we had decided we're going to take about a year off, you know we didn't plan on the break being as long as it was but it turned out to be a well-needed break, we were pretty much spent, we were fried physically and emotionally. We were taking things for granted, taking one another for granted, our fans, the industry. We were just fried and taking the break that we took was good for each of us. It was great for me, I had a chance to work on myself and on my sobriety, Brian started a family, he's a dad. The rest of the guys...

Molly: you're a dad?

Brian: yeah, two boys

Molly: congratulations

Brian: Thank you

AJ: He's a dad, he has two boys. The rest of the guys had chances to do personal aspirations, Kevin went and did, you know Broadway, both in New York and in the west end in London, Nick did a solo tour, Howie was doing stuff with the Lupis Foundation as well as working on his solo record so everybody had a chance to do their own thing. We just kind of grew up and to get back individually because we kind of lost sight of that for a while. You need that to be happy and healthy on the road, you need individually and as well as team work. We're the happiest as we've been right now, we're having a blast.

Molly: As for yourself, it must have been weird being with the boys on stage etc etc and then going on tour, and then going to a more rigid thing, I would have imagined because in theatre there's a direct contrast.

Kevin: There was a big contrast and what intimidated me about the most was theatre, I hadn't done it since 94 I was doing dinner theatre when I met these guys, I was just worried about dropping my lines, I was comfortable with the singing and the moving on stage. It was blast, it was on stage with a fellow Australian – Carolyn Conway on Broadway, she was amazing we had a blast and so when we come to Australia, I want to go see her and her husband and hang out with them for a little bit but I had a great time. It was a totally different kind of satisfaction getting a laugh from the crowd on a line and then being on stage with the guys and then having people scream and applaud your vocal ability and so it was an amazing experience and hopefully I'll get to do it again sometime.

Molly: and Nick being on a solo thing and not having the back up of your family, what was that like?

Nick: It was tough, being by myself and you have to carry the weight, everything on your own, you know there's a lot of responsibility to assume and you know you don't realise like when you're in that situation what it's like until you get to it you know and now being back on stage with them and everything, vocally ...you get a chance to expand and just really do something different but being back with them and being the fact when I started this group when I was so young, you know I was 12 when I got in the band. You know, this is my family to me and you know these are my brothers, it's a great environment and at the same time the more and more I grew up with them, the more I learn things, you know obviously they all have certain things they can contribute you know to make me a better person as an artist. And also I learn too, by being by myself, how to be a responsible person, to do certain things, to actually feel like I'm a stronger link in the chain so I think all round, everything's great, it's incredible, the vibes are great.

Molly: AJ, with rehab, was it hard?

AJ: Yeah, you know I mean I didn't expect that would be the outcome but there was no other route to take and you know, one of the things that I've learnt from other artists that I've become friends with that have been sober for 20 or 30 years is in situations like this, you really can't walk around it, you have to walk through it's a life-long process. You know, the boys had you know dipped into their own pockets to have a tour “therapist” so to speak come out on the road for me, to see if that would help, you know, they have tried other methods, you know, they broke into my house, they had, I was missing rehearsal time. There was just a lot of negative energy that I was putting out and of course, what you put out, you're going get back and they were just fed up, they were frustrated, they were worried and very concerned. You know, when you're in it , you don't realise how bad it is and how much you're affecting everyone around you but it was the greatest experience of my life to go to rehab and I commend anyone that can figure out that they have a problem, you know to physically do something about it.

Molly: I was going to say an example of that and Robbie Williams.

AJ: There's a few artists that I know of that have struggled with the same things that I have. You know, they're just regular people who're in this industry and deal with it on a day-to-day basis and you know there's alcoholics all over the world and the main goal of this program is to help another alcoholic and to try to help yourself.

Molly: The five of you getting back, it must have been strange going into the recording studios you know, because, for never gone?, it's not just the will of starting again, you've really re-invented the will with this album. I mean obviously music has changed over the last 4 or 5 years but you've really nailed it in the sense that you re-invented a whole new musical spectrum of the Backstreet Boys.

Howie: Thank you, yeah I think you know, when we started, I think we were a little bit nervous about where we're going to go with our directions. Yeah, I think that's why we collectively said you know let's not think too hard about this, let's just go in and experiment just see what comes out of it all and we demo closed to 50 songs for this album and we truly had a chance cover the spectrum from R&B where we started off to mid-way to the stream to catching up with Max Martin previously on all the past albums and all the major hits. Catching up with him again and actually indirectly we caught up with him and he wrote a song to the table that actually changed the direction into a more pop rock sound. The album that we have right now probably took a shade over the last 6 months of recording process.

Molly: I read somewhere that ‘climbing the walls' which was a spider man 2 thing that that sent a benchmark for this album.

Howie: Exactly, that was the song we cut with Max Martin and he wasn't even pitching it to us, he was actually pitching it to the spider man 2 sound track and the head of our label Clive Davis heard the song on the CD and didn't think it was right for the movie but he thought that it might be something interesting for us and that kind of jump-started the whole relationship back into smoothing things with him and from there going more into pop rock direction.

Brian: I think too Climbing walls opened our eyes of where we need to be. You mentioned the benchmark, that was the benchmark song where we had to, every song that came in after that or the songs that we were writing or producing, we had to re-record after that, it had to match that ability, and when we all left studio after cutting ‘climbing walls' we knew. I think we all had a good feeling, like this is the new Backstreet Boys sound. Because it is more grown up, more guitar driven, more eagle-lets, we like to say that we're on the paths of eagles or something because we're big fans of them as well.

Molly: Being on the first single and complete I mean, it really was then, the taste of what changed the Backstreet Boys. It's standard.

Kevin: It's all stripped down, it's not as overproduced as in the past.

Molly: I love the vocals on this album as well, the vocal seems to have a different approach in harmonies and that you know.

Kevin: It's more simplified.

Molly: Yeah

AJ: Especially with the more pop rock production-wise musically and vocally you know it doesn't really lend itself to a lot of big harmonies like our songs did on our past records and you know there's not a lot of switching up on leads, it's, it can be one person on the whole song and it's just the whole genre has been simplified and the best part about it for me personally because it's all live instrumentation on the record, you could bring that exact sound on a live stage show whereas before you had all these drum loops and these sequence sounds that you couldn't really duplicate live but now it's what you hear on the stage, it's what you hear on the record which is awesome.

Molly: The album itself comes out as a huge success and certainly in Australia as well. So the thought of ok you've done that and now we're going on a tour. Was that daunting?

Howie: I think you know being away for 4yrs we've missed you know getting back and performing in front of our fans I'd say the first couple of weeks we're a little rough and we hadn't danced in 4yrs while getting a bit older, doesn't shake as well as what we're used to in the old days, the recovery times were hard enough for all of us but we got back in the swing of things. We got back with some of our previous choreographers, we actually went into what I call like Backstreet Boot camp where we actually been training for a good month and a half, we worked out like 3 times a week with a trainer in LA. Just to get us back into the swing of things with cardio and everything but it was good. It was good for us mentally and physically and good for us to bond together and we put together a great show and I think we feel very proud that now we trying to take on the world now.

Brian: I was just going to say, that we also made a commitment, we made a commitment to our fans, we made a commitment to each other and that was the first day that we stepped into the studio to make the never gone record we knew that hopefully that if we were modestly successful, it would follow a tour so we knew that those days were coming so we were excited about it.

Molly: I was interviewing a few of you quite a few years ago when Guns & Roses it a were huge, right and Slash was telling a story of how when the tour end he would sort of exit and everyone would go their own way, he would stand there thinking where do I go you know. Did you miss each other at that time? Was it a gap there, you know?

AJ: Definitely, we've been together for 9yrs straight touring, we've been together collectively for 12 yrs as a band but touring for 9yrs straight you know you eat, sleep and live each other's lives 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, but you know most of us have made the move to the west coast so some of us would hang out, go out to dinner, you know we all talked not as much prior to the first year, everyone kind of took a break the first year doing their own thing and needed some time apart which was healthy for everybody. I flew out to Nashfield. Some of the guys went and saw Kevin when he was doing Broadway, a couple of us went and saw Nick when he was doing his solo tour. We all just didn't, we didn't just say ‘the heck with you guys, you know and go our own ways but yeah as a family.

Nick: You bring up that when you made that comment about Slash and stuff like that and you know how he feels. You know I've talked with AJ about this numerous of time and it's like you know we feel like we're just pulling our hair if we're not on the road, we're back home just sitting twiddling our thumbs, we're not working or doing something. The fact that we have built something and done something together have been very powerful with one another, I think the love of music and the things that we've done together are able to exceed many boundaries and limits and it's something special I think, what we hold is something special is different than a lot of people around the world you know. And I think that it's great to be able to be back on the road again and to be able to do these things.

Molly: As I said it was so hectic for those years, that I presume that when you took the break, you were so massive, did you really have time to think about how big you were, you know?

Kevin: We didn't really know how massive or how successful we were until we stepped out of and took this break and looked through old scrapbooks and looked through old newspapers clippings and watched old videos of shows we were playing in front of 90,000 people on the stadium. We really couldn't cause we were so in it and so busy - show, show, show, television shows, concerts, recording new album, television shows, recording album, you know when you're in it I didn't think we had a chance to appreciate it as much. That's why this time it's much sweeter.

Howie: I don't think we would have lasted if we were to have kept going.

Molly: Yeah, with the Broadway thing and ok between this show together, did you use any of the things you learned from Broadway, the tricks of that side into the show?

Kevin: Some of the stuff we do in our new show is similar to some Broadway stuff, our choreographers that we're working with, they have, they've worked with us in the past and they've choreographed Michael Jackson, Madonna. They're great guys, with us in the past some of our choreography was a lot like, almost aerobics, almost aerobics, exercising, entire show, boom from beginning to end, this is more simplistic, more smooth, more like Fred Astaire move, more theatrical. We do a segment in the show that's very much like a tribute to the old doo ahh days when the temptations in the show rides. You know that type of choreography so I would say in that aspect it's more theatrical in some elements. I didn't bring that particularly to the table in Broadway but it does, they do kind of link together.

Molly: This album is going to be around for a long time but when you say ok we're going on a tour, how do you choose the songs that you've performed in the past from what you wouldn't do?

Kevin: Basically, we each all have our favourite songs, some of them were single, some of them were not singles. So we know we said on top with our management and with each other. You know, me as a music fan, when I go to see Madonna or Prince or Michael Jackson or whoever I want to hear the hits but at the same time, there are songs that were hits from Prince, or Madonna that were never single so that was kind of hard, but basically we're doing all the songs from this hit album and then we're adding in 9 new songs from the new album out of 12.

Molly: With the new single, just want to know, the video, now you must've had fun with that, who came up with that idea?

Kevin: What happened is Max, you want to tell the story to BB3: Max the producer were working with us at the time, he's like check this part out, I love this part. There's a breakdown, and boom a breakdown which I could believe and Max jumped off his chair and started doing this air guitar thing, he's like, I was like totally eighties moment right there and than next he's talking about – it'll be cool to do a video like an eighties rock band.

Nick: There were 2 songs in contention for the single to do it which was I still and then this one.

Kevin: I think this one the music tour works better for because on the course it was really a belting and then there was that breakdown. We're just really talking and then the next video we're going to do, why not do something fun, you know we've done videos where we've been dark and serious, we've done videos where it was just regular performance video in a concert or we've done videos where there was a story line. We did a video where it's kind of like the Matrix type thing so we've done all types of videos and we want to do something funny, lots of tongue and cheek and so people out there know that we don't take ourselves so seriously.

Nick: And also our artistic side is kind of screaming out too. We want to do some stuff where I mean we're at a point in our careers too where we can teach us, to do things that are fun and obviously we've had a lot of success in the past and I remember when we did Backstreet's back that was our concept that we had written along with Joseph Kann and this one we just decided Kevin wrote a ... for it, we were on our way back on the plane and we came back to Tokyo. He wrote it out and we took it in our hands and I feel a lot of times you don't really get the full potential of what things can be and how good it can actually be. Like if somebody just hands you a treatment and says to go ahead and you know not really feeling it as much and a lot of times we've taken chances and had a lot of luck in that department.

Brian: and some of our best videos in the past have been where we're not playing ourselves, we're playing somebody else. Backstreet's back and we've got a chance to act and be something that we're not.

Molly: Brian, you being a dad now, I mean you must look at it in a different light of how the grow up of what they will follow, you know?

Brian: I do a little bit, I used to look at fatherhood, as that would be a point in my life where I would probably not want to travel around as much and be home more but I think the roles have been reversed because my son has added more inspirations to my life and made me want to work harder and beyond the road and beyond the tour, so he knows his daddy works hard for him and provide for him like a husband and a father should cause that's what my dad taught me. It's just my job,

Molly: I don't want to bring it up but I thing a lot of girls were very relieved when you and Paris...

Nick: It's the first time someone has actually said that, it was a point of my life that I had to go through as much as these guys are sitting especially AJ sitting there warning me don't do, what are you doing and I'm like ‘no, no' so you're kind of like have to experienced things by yourself often and learn and it taught me a lot, it taught me a lot, it taught me to really just wait, you never really know somebody until you've know him for a long time you know and I feel like a whole different person now. I feel like someone who's grown tremendously and now she's just a phase in my life.

Molly: You know, I tell you what, you should be very proud of this album cause it's a great album. It's a great album, and it is great news that you're coming down and I tell you what Brian you're going to be in a lot, lot of trouble, I swear to God. Don't hold this against you.

Kevin & Nick: We're on the schedule, we are coming.

Molly: Listen, thanks for giving us the time, we're here in Portland, far away from Australia and you're about to do a show and I thank you for the time and I'll really look forward to you coming down and when you're in Melbourne I'll put a prawn on the barbie...

Guys: Great.