The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History by Tyler Gray

Author:Tyler Gray [Gray, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

BYE, BYE, BYE

Lou didn’t wait for the boys to actually earn him a giant wad before he blew it.

In 1998, as *NSYNC and Backstreet dominated U.S. pop sales, he relocated to, and centralized all of his entertainment endeavors in, the Trans Continental Media complex on the outskirts of Orlando, a $6 million recording and multimedia playground he dubbed “O-Town,” a nickname for Orlando. His boys practically lived there—whether using the on-site gym equipment, drilling dance moves on stages fully rigged with sound and lights, or recording in lavish studios (where Kenny Rogers and Deep Purple would later lay tracks). The place buzzed with visiting media, and the boys were trained by PR professionals on how to handle them. Part of the successful image Lou was paying for involved schooling his artists on what to say and how to look when cameras and tape recorders were rolling. Lou had a vision of turning his two smashing successes into a pop music factory. He hired vocal coaches, choreographers, musicians, and technicians for the computer and musical equipment. Tutors helped his young artists finish high school. All of the peripheral things no one, including Lou, could have imagined at the outset were taken care of with a stroke of the pen and a bottomless bank account. “The time I was with Lou he backed up everything he said he’d do,” Wright said. But along the way, no one slowed down the Trans Con tour long enough to ask exactly where Pearlman was getting his cash. “There used to be a running joke, because Lou used to go to Atlantis [casino] all the time,” Wright said. “We’d say, ‘Where’s Lou? Oh, Lou’s going to make payroll this week.’”

In reality, Lou had done his best to run Airship International into the ground—literally, by crashing four blimps, and figuratively, by breaking promises and defaulting on payments due to Julian Benscher, who had once eagerly partnered with Lou in the airship industry and what he believed to be a thriving airline business. After spending a million dollars on the formation of Backstreet Boys and watching Lou lose interest in the lighter-than-air and airline businesses, the ones Benscher considered to be the core of Lou’s operations, Julian had begun in 1996 to untangle himself financially from Pearlman. He owned the major assets of Airship International, which had disappeared as a public company. It was renamed and retooled as a different public company before completely fizzling. Lou had been the best man at Benscher’s wedding, but then their friendship, much to Julian’s surprise, fizzled, too. “I thought he was a really close friend,” he said. “He obviously truly didn’t value my friendship. After I got married, Lou basically ignored me. I think I was a threat to his story.” It didn’t help that Wullenkemper, Lou’s German mentor and father figure, had actually followed Benscher’s blimp empire building closely, even remarking on a visit to Benscher’s home—with Pearlman in the room—that he should have gone into business with Julian instead of Lou.

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