When the Backstreet Boys take to the main stage Sunday during San Francisco's Pride festival, the aging boy band will be performing in front of a crowd 10 times the size of several venues they have been hitting on their current North American tour to promote their new album This is Us, BSB .
Depending on the weather, the crowd at Pride could number 200,000 people watching the main stage. Wednesday night (June 23) the Backstreet Boys performed at the 15,000 capacity Energy/Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah. Even if the Pride audience only numbers in the 100,000s, it will still dwarf their other West Coast performances.
The group's two shows in San Francisco this weekend at the Warfield on Market Street have a capacity each of 2,250. In Reno the band was booked into an 1,800-seat venue. The biggest crowd the band has recently played in front of was 50,000 people in Japan.
"We have been playing before 5,000 to 10,000 people in the states. In the biggest times of our career, we played before hundreds of thousands of people. So this is kind of bigger," band member Nick Carter said about playing San Francisco Pride in a recent phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter from the back of his tour bus in Detroit. "We are excited. We want to take this opportunity to be able to show people we still exist and we are still here."
The band shot to stardom in the late 1990s when it consisted of Carter and four other members: A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell, and Kevin Richardson. Richardson left the group in 2006, while the remaining quartet has struggled to produce another breakout hit. Carter said he and his bandmates don't expect their Pride performance will jettison them back to the top of the pop charts.
"We are not looking at this as an opportunity to blow ourselves up again. We are really comfortable where we are at touring," said Carter. "We would like people to hear our music a little bit more. We keep producing great records."
What the group is hoping for, said Carter, is that performing at Pride will lead to radio stations playing their newer music.
"All we want to do is get one song back on radio," said Carter, who added that "yes, the gay community gets behind stuff they like very much. I would be lying to say we wouldn't want [the Pride audience] to put their support behind us and help this little pop band the Backstreet Boys, who people think are dead, make a resurgence. If it happens, it happens."
There is precedent for a San Francisco Pride gig giving a boost to a performer's career. When current international sensation Lady Gaga stepped on the stage in front of City Hall in 2008, hardly anyone had ever heard of her and her music had yet to break onto radio station playlists.
In a 2009 interview with MTV News, she said that radio disk jockeys at first "didn't want to play my music on the radio. We fought and we fought and I played every club. I had chicken dinner with every program director I could get my hands on."
Then came her big break in 2008 when, at the last minute, she was added to the main stage lineup at that year's San Francisco Pride. Despite having her mic and music cut off in mid-song because her performance went past Pride's allowed time on its sound permit, Lady Gaga [born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta] credits her appearance with helping launch her into mainstream fame.
"Being invited to play [San Francisco Pride], that was a real turning point for me as an artist," Gaga told MTV News.
Pride's global reach draws top talent
In this multimedia world, it isn't only the people gathered in the Civic Center for Pride who are part of the audience. Through Twitter, Facebook, LGBT blogs, YouTube, and international news coverage of Pride, it is possible to reach a global fanbase for anyone who steps foot onto the main stage.
And that, said main stage producer Audrey Joseph, is part of the draw for musicians who agree to play San Francisco Pride.
"I do promise these artists the visibility and exposure that comes with performing at our Pride," said Joseph, a longtime events producer and former record company executive. "Our coverage of Pride goes out on CNN. It goes out everywhere."
Unlike other pride festivals that charge an entrance fee and can afford to pay music acts top dollar to perform, San Francisco Pride has a limited budget to work with in booking talent for its main stage due to its being a free event. Joseph said Pride works with its hotel, airline, and ground transportation sponsors to sweeten the deal for artists to come perform.
What makes it an easy sell, though, is for performers having the chance to reach hundreds of thousands of potential fans, both straight and LGBT. It is a sweet aphrodisiac for groups looking to relaunch their career, promote a new album, or merely show the public their support for LGBT rights.
"We thought this was a great opportunity to share our music with everyone, from gays to everyone who wants to hear Backstreet Boys music," said Carter.
In recent years some of the powerhouse acts to grace the main stage have included Cyndi Lauper; the B-52s; Dead or Alive; Crystal Waters; En Vogue; Third Eye Blind; Jennifer Holliday; Jimmy Somerville; and Joan Baez.
"I tell them we have 600,000 people coming through the door throughout the day. And at any given time there are between 100,000 to 200,000 people in front of the main stage. Even if you are bad, someone is going to comment on your act," said Joseph.
It is no accident that lesser known performers are also slotted into the lineup. Each year numerous acts submit demo tapes in hopes of being selected to play Pride.
"You try to break in new artists. You have to give people a chance on the stage," said Joseph. "San Francisco Pride can make or break you."
Irrespective of what post-Pride bounce their performance may bring, for many artists just standing before the audience that day is reward enough.
"It is an honor, especially in this city knowing how many performers live here," said Ben Holder, part of the queer electronic duo Ejector, which he started with his friend Ricky Terry in late 2007. "The word we keep using is thrilled. We are bouncing off the walls."
The two, best known for their song "Get Out," have performed on one of the minor stages at Pride in the past and last summer played at the Folsom Street Fair. Their main stage appearance Sunday will fulfill a dream they have had since 2002.
"Before we moved here we saw Dead or Alive play on that stage. We both turned to each other and said we want to play that stage," recalled Holder, who turns 40 next month.
Focus on top talent a change from Pride's early days
The main stage at Pride didn't always attract nationally known groups. Forty years ago the collection of artists who performed are now largely forgotten acts.
Perhaps the most famous early performer who rocked Pride was Sylvester James. The hometown drag diva, known simply as Sylvester, became a disco superstar and died from AIDS in 1988. Sylvester and His Hot Band played the 1977 Pride fair.
Other early Pride entertainers in the late 1970s included Gwen Avery, a black lesbian blues artist from the Bay Area; gay folksinger Stephen Grossman; and Sweet Chariot, a women's rock band. It wasn't until the 1980s that producers of the main stage started turning to acts with more household names, as well as artists in the emerging gay and lesbian music scene, to play at Pride.
In 1985 Sylvester returned to perform along with his onetime collaborator Jeanie Tracy, who became a star in her own right with her hit remake that year "Don't Leave Me This Way."
Throughout the 1980s lesbian-owned Olivia Records had many of its recording stars play at Pride, including Alicia Bridges and Diedre McCalla. In the 1990s the pendulum began to fully swing toward landing well-known artists.
Andy Bell of Erasure, who will play Sunday, first performed at Pride in 1990. Gay pop punk band Pansy Division often played their hometown's Pride during the decade. In 1996 Martha Wash shared the stage with local acts.
Then came a seismic shift in the approach to the main stage lineup with the hiring in 1997 of former Pride Executive Director Teddy Witherington, who had run London's Pride festival during the first half of the 1990s. Witherington came onboard with the express purpose to land top talent each year for San Francisco's Pride.
"Definitely, it was one of the things I think the San Francisco Pride Committee found attractive about me. I definitely had a track record of being able to work with and secure entertainment at very little or no cost," recalled Witherington, now the executive director of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.
One of his first big gets was Chumbawamba, a British group who broke onto the American charts in 1997 with its hit "Tubthumping." Witherington knew them from his days across the pond, and when he learned they had a Bay Area gig lined up in June of that year, he invited them to also play Pride.
"They are wonderful people. They said sure. They did an acoustic set," recalled Witherington.
He said for many artists performing isn't about the money, and therefore, Pride's lack of funds to lure top talent to San Francisco could be overcome.
"Really, it is a question of knowing what is important for the performer. It is not really about money. At a certain point it is about the experience," he said. "People go on stage for a reason; it is about getting that experience with the audience and a San Francisco audience is a great audience. There is also a certain energy you get from a big audience at a live, free, outdoor event."
Teaming up with Joseph, who at the time owned Club Townsend, which was home to world famous weekly gay dance parties Saturday and Sunday nights, also helped Pride land big name acts. Joseph would book them to perform at her club, thus helping offset the cost of having sought after talent perform on Pride's main stage.
"Everyone could get something out of it: the audience, the club, Pride, the performer. Everyone was happy," Witherington said. "Audrey is a pro and it was fabulous working with her."
Joseph has one overriding stipulation for anyone not a drag queen who performs at Pride.
"There has never been anyone who lip synced. No one is allowed to lip sync on my stage," said Joseph.
Memorable moments
The collaboration between Pride and Joseph led to some memorable moments, such as when Lauper sang for Pride and then did a gig at Joseph's club where she came out dressed in a bear costume. Pointer Sisters June and Bonnie disappeared for a time with the limo Pride had provided them when they came to sing in 2003.
After Joseph's club closed in 2002, it became harder to find a financially feasible way to lure big name acts to play Pride.
"When the club closed there wasn't anyone in the community willing to take on that expense," said Joseph. "Now Pride has to foot the bill on its own. And because our Pride is a free event, I have to haggle and wheel and deal to get any talent to come."
Some of the bigger stars will likely remain out of reach for San Francisco Pride. Joseph said her wish list has included Queen Latifah, Pink, and Melissa Etheridge.
"Even if a star like that played for free, their riders are more money than we have," she said, referring to certain provisions a performer will ask for in their contract.
Witherington came close to booking several big name acts, such as Boy George, the Pet Shop Boys, Sinead O'Connor, and Liza Minnelli, who performs in Livermore tonight (Thursday, June 24). But he said something always derailed the negotiations and prevented them from committing to play Pride.
"It is almost like a planetary alignment. It has to be the right year, the right schedule; you have to get the right airline sponsor and hotel. If all these pieces fall into place it kind of happens," said Witherington.
As the LGBT community has come of age over the last 40 years, it has proven to be a tastemaker when it comes to popular culture. Therefore, reasons Joseph, it is to a recording artist's advantage to target the queer community.
"These big stars pander to the straight community. It is about time they pander to us," she said.
The supportive feeling can be mutual for both the LGBT community, buoyed by seeing international stars coming out for their gay fans, and the artists themselves, who are at times hounded by the entertainment press and welcome the adulation.
"The same way gay people put up with all the things they put up with in society is similar to what we share. The comparison is when it comes to music community people who shun us. They try to shut us down; they don't want to hear us no more or the music we do," said the Backstreet Boys' Carter. "It has nothing to do with our music. It is just an image in their mind that is just unfortunate. It is just how people are.
"We hear it all the time, people making fun of us by saying Backstreet Boys is gay music. You can kiss our ass," added Carter. "We have a gay following and gay fans as well. We are just going to do what we have been doing and create music that is happy for all genres and all types of people."