Rushfield - American idol: the untold story

CREATOR

I n a nation where every child dreams of being a star, it was a moment millions had imagined for themselves, but few would ever come close to experiencing. Six months before, Fantasia Barrino had been a high school dropout. Functionally illiterate, she was struggling to overcome a background of abuse and raise her child alone. At seventeen, Diana DeGarmo was a high school junior, a former Miss Teen Georgia, and a popular performer in local pageants.

On the face of it, these two young women had nothing in common. And yet, on May 24, 2004, they stood side by side while an audience of thirty-three million, second only to the Super Bowl, watched them compete to be the third champion of American Idol.

When the little singing contest had debuted as a summer replacement on the U.S. airwaves, it was packed between reruns and low-cost filler. The promise that the show would be a game changer for the Fox network, that it would find Americas next pop star, produced a hearty round of guffaws from the countrys media critics. Three years, two stars, and millions of records later, no one was laughing.

American Idol had completed its conquest of the American airwaves.

With the eyes of the nation and its superstar panel of judges upon them, Fantasia and Diana competed for the biggest prize America has to offer. The currency is fame, and its bigger than money, more desired than power. This wasnt Survivor handing out a cash reward to be squandered before the year was out, or The Bachelor bestowing dubious promises of romantic bliss. This was stardom, genuine, durable stardom, the coin that participants in church choirs and high school plays and beauty contests everywhere yearn for.

Before the result was announced, Fantasia and Diana joined the previous winners in a swelling rendition of The Impossible Dream. The lyrics were no hyperbole, however. Not tonight. Not for the two finalists whose lives had been transformed in mere months, not for the Dallas waitress who had become Idol s first champion and Americas biggest pop singer in years, and not for the judges who sat in review and had themselves become enormous stars, their blunt verdicts transforming our cultural tongue. If there was to be another member in this illustrious group, it would be the show itself, which, in a few short years, had achieved the truly impossible, building an empire in a tottering industry, the likes of which had not been seen for decades.

As unlikely as the story was, even more unlikely were its origins, half a decade before, and a world away, at the bottom of the globe.

I F A MERICAN I DOL was to be the show that changed entertainment, it seems appropriate that the road to its creation should have begun with the man who, as much as anyone in our age, changed the face of civilization: South African President Nelson Mandela. And it seems appropriate that it started on a day Mandela himself called one of the greatest days of my life.

The day he met the Spice Girls.

November 1997: The pop group had been summoned to perform a private concert at the Mandela residence to entertain thirteen-year-old Prince Harry, who had accompanied his father on his first trip abroad since his mothers death some three months earlier. The event was a huge success. Girl Power Engulfs a Worshipful Mandela was the headline of the Calgary Herald. Nelsons Really Really Spice proclaimed Londons Sunday Mirror . Mandela was, as reported, charmed. Prince Charles was charmed. As for Harry charmed doesnt even begin to cover it.

This intersection of politics and pop occurred when the Spice Girls were all-powerful, dominating a recording industry that was at the height of its success, the fall to come not even a rumor. In their three years together, the Spice Girls had been transformed from a semi-ludicrous collection of out-of-tune Bananarama clones into the most successful female group in history. Their first album had sold an unbelievable (even for those golden days) thirty million copies, making them arguably the most explosive British band debut since the Beatles. In fact, the single Wannabe debuted in America at number eleven, at the time the highest-ever U.S. debut by a British act, beating the previous record held by the Beatles for I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Industry insiders had estimated that the Spice Girls empire, which included a perfume line, deals with Pepsi and Cadbury, a PlayStation video game, a collection of dolls, and an upcoming film, would earn nearly a billion dollars before the decade was out.

But it had been a lot of work. Dashing from recording sessions, to filming endorsements, to their current yearlong world tour, the Spice Girls had been in perpetual motion since they had exploded onto the pop scene. Hes been flogging them to death, a source close to the group said of the workload their manager had placed on them.

So on this magical night, flirting with a man who survived decades in prison to liberate the majority of his nation from their chains, the thought may have occurred to the young singers, why couldnt the Spice Girls be liberated?

And when the Spice Girls envisioned breaking their chains, they saw them held by the man the press had dubbed Svengali Spice, their manager, Simon Fuller.

At that moment, Fuller was in Italy recuperating from back surgery. He had planned the Spices world tour with the double benefit of capitalizing on a loophole in British tax law that allows citizens a break on taxes provided they go a full year without stepping foot on British soil. He had made extensive plans to spend the year ahead traveling with the band, as well as overseeing the empire from his homes on the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean. However, just two weeks after the Mandela evening, watching from his recovery bed as his troop picked up an armful of trophies at the British MTV awards, Fuller received a phone call. His bandthe band whose empire he had built from nothing, whose five monikers were known in every corner of the planet, whose success had turned into not just a recording career but a genuine multimedia empire that band would no longer be requiring his services. The Spice Girls were sacking their Svengali, Simon Fuller.

There must, he thought, be a better way.

Already a legendary minence grise in the British music world by the time he was in his early thirties, Fuller had risen by seeming force of will, shunning the traditional routes for advancement at the major labels and finding his own way up the ladder. Succeeding in a music industry that he found snobbish, cut off from its public, and obsessed with cool over popularity, the thirty-seven-year-old had pulled off perhaps the biggest coup of any independent manager. Now, it seemed, he was right back where he started.

The few profiles that have been written on Simon Fuller give the impression of two completely different people. On the one hand, theres the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain, the shadowy creator of a vast international multimedia empire who lives a life divided between seven homes on four continents; the ruthless negotiator and the Spice Girls mastermind whose interests today extend from sports (managing the career of David Beckham) to fashion (a joint venture with designer Roland Mouret and a stake in a modeling agency) to films (producing a project featuring heartthrob Robert Pattinson titled Bel Ami ) to the perhaps most elaborate Internet launch in history.

Then there are the other reports from those who know him, who repeat terms such as low key, soft-spoken, courteous, and down to earth. These reports talk of a man who, while living at the epicenter of Planet Earths pop culture, shuns the limelight and hasnt sat for a formal interview in the better part of a decade.