Jennifer Parker - McBusted: The Story of the World’s Biggest Super Band

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

A CBS COMPANY

Copyright 2014 by Jennifer Parker

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction without permission.

All rights reserved.

The right of Jennifer Parker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47114-065-5

ISBN: 978-1-47114-067-9 (ebook)

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

This book has not been approved, licensed or endorsed by McBusted or their management.

Typeset in the UK by M Rules

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For JB

Thank you for the music

F riday, 14 January 2005, wasnt a particularly chilly day it was a mild 8 degrees Celsius on the bustling London streets outside but the atmosphere inside the stunned press-conference room at the Soho Hotel was as cold as ice. Amid a cacophony of calls from the waiting journalists and a blizzard of camera flashes, the three men hurriedly made their way from the room, having just delivered the worst news of two of their young lives.

The door closed behind them. For the first time in three years, there was only silence. How to find the words to say goodbye?

They didnt even try. Matt and James made their way, glumly, to the car park. It was grey concrete all around, as gloomy and as hard and unforgiving as the choices now before them. They faced each other, the end of everything written in the slope of their downturned necks, in their downcast eyes.

They shook hands, formally, but almost immediately Matt flicked his long, dark fringe styled just on the one side in the emo fashion out of his eyeliner-ringed eyes and pulled James into a massive hug. This wasnt the time for being cool.

This was the end.

James hugged him back, hard. Hed never thought it would finish like this. He pulled his baseball cap down firmly over his eyes, and slipped silently into the waiting car. The door slammed, echoing around the cavernous car park, and the car drove off. Matt couldnt even bear to watch the tail-lights fade away.

Which was why he was so surprised when he heard James call his name at the top of his voice.

Matt!

His bandmate ran up to him, the car in which he was supposed to be sitting somehow still in sight in the distance, travelling at speed and yet James was very much here, now, panting and desperate, and clutching a tour programme in his hand. Matt struggled to compute what he was seeing, his forehead furrowed with the effort. James grabbed him and held his arms tight.

Weve got to go back! he declared vehemently.

Back? echoed Matt. Back where?

James paused for a moment and then delivered the line to end all lines.

Back to the future!

L ondon, 1999. It was an audition room much like any other. Eager hopefuls thronged the corridors, practising scales with gusto and wondering whether today of all days was going to be their lucky one. It was wintertime, and it was the age of the boy band: Westlife, Five and the Backstreet Boys were all riding high in the charts. Each of the young lads waiting nervously in that London studio hoped desperately that he, too, could emulate their success by landing a place in this brand-new band.

One of them was sixteen-year-old James Bourne. Hed brought his guitar with him, as always, and plucked out a melody absentmindedly as he waited his turn to perform perhaps finding the chords of I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys, which had hit number one back in May, a song from Green Days classic album Dookie, or something by his idol Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson was the reason he was here, really. When James had discovered him, aged six, thanks to a tip-off in the lyric of a Bart Simpson record, it was a life-changing moment. Before then, he hadnt had music in his life; though, according to his mum, hed had a rather maddening habit of bursting into song in his pushchair as a toddler.

Discovering Michael Jackson changed everything. Everything. Dangerous, Bad these albums became his cornerstones, and, after seeing Jackson live at Wembley, James had only one ambition in life: he was going to learn to play Michael Jackson songs if it killed him.

It very nearly did. James was a determined child, having inherited his fathers can-do attitude, which had seen Peter Bourne succeed as a self-made man running his own sales business. When James was offered the chance to learn an instrument at his preparatory school, Alleyn Court in Southend-on-Sea, he grabbed the guitar with both hands and played it till his fingers bled literally.

His perseverance paid off. It may have taken a few years, but he got there in the end; and discovered a talent not only for playing Michael Jackson songs but for writing music, too. And he loved performing. Aged ten, hed taken part in a local production of the musical Oliver! and found that, like the lead character, he wanted more. An open audition for the West End production followed, and James had spent two happy years living it up at the London Palladium, playing first Kipper in Fagins gang, and then the starring role of Oliver himself.

But you cant remain a child star for ever, and James didnt want to. As hed grown up, his music tastes had broadened too: he loved Green Day, and the cheekiness of Robbie Williamss lyrics. Soon, hed formed his own band, Sic Puppy, and was writing original material. Aged thirteen, at his new school, the Morgan Academy of Performing Arts, hed met an amazing girl, an aspiring actress called Kara Tointon, who was now his girlfriend. Life was pretty good and he was hoping this audition was going to make it even better.

Soon enough, James was called in to do his best. He went nervously into the audition room, barely noticing a brown-haired boy, also with a guitar, who was waiting his turn, too. All his attention was focused on the powers-that-be who were seated behind the desk. One of them was a confident American man by the name of Richard Rashman, of Prestige Management.

Little did James know it, but that man was about to change his life.

But not by casting him in this particular pop band. James was turned down. He got a no.

So did the brown-haired boy.

Sometimes, when one door closes, an even better one opens.

A little over a year later, in early 2001, there was a knock on the door of Jamess parents house in Southend. James, hearing it, started to make his way downstairs from the top-floor bedroom he shared with his brother Nick, who was eighteen months younger than he was. They were very different, but they got on like a house on fire. The younger of Jamess brothers, Chris, was more like him, but, with a decade between them in age, it would be a few years yet before they could make music together. Sister Melissa, three years older than Chris, completed the Bourne siblings.