Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! –New Kids on the Block

Which slacker-rock band covered New Kids on the Block’s ‘Step by Step’ on their 1990 EP ‘Favourite Spanish Dishes’?

Jordan Knight: “I remember a band like that doing ‘Step by Step’. Hold on, let me think…it’s a well-known grunge type of band. Blur? It wasn’t Nine Inch Nails? Soundgarden?”

WRONG. The Lemonheads.

Jordan: “Dammit! Well, it was pretty cool that they did that.”

Ever hear it?

Jordan: “I never heard it.”

Joey McIntyre:  “Yeah, we cried a single tear. Down the right cheek. It was beautiful.”

An easy one: Which rapper once walked into member Jonathan Knight’s room when he was in bed with his then-boyfriend and proceeded to start jumping on the bed?

Jordan: “Well, we know that. We’ve heard that story a million times.”

Danny Wood: “FLAVOR FLAV!”

CORRECT. Public Enemy’s hype-man.  

Joey: “I can only speak to it ‘cause the next room they came to was mine and I was sleeping with my brother Tommy and suddenly Flavor Flav’s jumping on my bed and it felt like an amazing dream but it was real.”

Was this before or after New Kids on the Block performed together with Flavor Flav at the 1991 American Music Awards?

Joey: “It was before, but we’d met him in the basement of a theatre in San Francisco for the first time and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. When he saw us, he said: ‘New Kids on the muthafucking Block!’”

Jordan:  “Every time we were in New York, we would go to the basement of the Apollo Theater and there’d be all the D’s – Kool Moe Dee, Heavy D, Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, so we were in our glory, just hanging out with all these rap legends we love.”

A pre-fame J.Lo was your backing dancing at that 1991 American Music Awards performance. Could you tell then she’d become a star?

Jordan: “Not necessarily, but we all knew she was damn pretty and fine and talented.”

Joey: “She beamed. She had the eye of the tiger and she made a big deal about that trip ‘cause that was the first time she was in LA. At the after-party, she and another dancer had their gowns out and made the most of it and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity, and good for her.”

When Nynuk (the original name for New Kids on the Block) played a gig in a men’s prison in Boston, Massachusetts, what items did you hurl into the crowd to win over the inmates?

Joey: “Marijuana sticks! No, I’m kidding – cigarettes.”

CORRECT.

Joey: “What other question do you want to ask about from FOUR DECADES AGO?! ARE WE GOING TO MOVE INTO THE NEXT DECADE?! SHOULD I GET A SANDWICH BEFORE WE MOVE OUT OF THE ‘80s?!”

Was it terrifying playing in a jail as young teenagers? Metallica famously did it at San Quentin prison, but they were older…

Danny: “And Johnny Cash did it. For us, it was another show, another challenge. We were all game to do it.”

Jordan: “Plus we all had shanks on us, so we weren’t too afraid!”

Joey: “We went there with our local radio station with other acts who we hung out with and liked, but it was a little spooky. It wasn’t your average show. Not to sound all sweet, but it was our local jail, so we might have known a few people in there!”

Jordan: “We did know a few people. My brother-in-law was in there!”

Joey: “Exactly! They’re real people too.”

Which band T-shirt is Jordan wearing in the video of your UK 1989 chart-topper ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’?

Jordan: “[Sarcastically] I am wearing one of my favourite bands…”

Danny:  “He wouldn’t stop listening to them!”

Jordan: “I couldn’t get enough! Bauhaus – is that what you’re talking about?”

CORRECT. The ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ goth-pioneers.

Jordan: “Yeah, I mean…legendary.”

Joey: “Objection! Move to strike that from the record, Your Honour.”

Jordan: “I’ve actually never heard any of their records.”

For a bonus half-point: New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg once walked onstage at a 1991 Wembley Arena concert wearing a T-shirt saying which British TV presenter sucked?

Danny: “Piers Morgan.”

CORRECT. In response to a negative review of the band by Morgan, who was The Sun’s showbiz editor at the time, Donnie donned a fan-made T-shirt emblazoned with: ‘PIERS MORGAN SUCKS’. 

Joey: “His old buddy Piers! He was a real jerk to us.”

Jordan: “Yeah, he was our frickin’ arch-nemesis.”

He won NME’s Villain of the Year Award in 2020…

Joey: “We want to congratulate Piers. In the same way that New Kids have been able to do it for so long, he’s been able to do it for so long and keep the same consistency that he brings to our culture and society, so I’m glad he’s getting awards. Congratulations!”

Danny: “Yeah, and he was just wrong because we’re still here.”

Jordan: “You know, he was a real dick. He can just suck it. He was a serious dick.”

Joey: “Newsflash: Piers Morgan still sucks!”

There’s your upcoming tour T-shirts sorted: ‘PIERS MORGAN STILL SUCKS!’

Danny: “You bet!”

Donnie and Danny wrote Marky Mark (aka Donnie’s brother Mark Wahlberg)  and the Funky Bunch’s 1991 album ‘Music for the People’. In the 2013 film Don Jon, which actor raps along to its lead single ‘Good Vibrations’?

Joey: “OK, so we’re STILL IN THE ‘80s!”

Danny: “Gordon Joseph-Levitt, whatever his name is – that dude?”

CORRECT. Close enough. Joseph Gordon–Levitt.

Danny: “I saw that one.”

Joey: “HEY, CAN WE TAKE A PISS BREAK BEFORE WE GET TO THE ‘90s?!”

That song appeared in the first episode of Yellowjackets…

Joey: “It’s in everything. ‘Good Vibrations’ is massive still. Like Piers Morgan, it’s still going.”

Any chance of Mark Wahlberg ever joining you onstage to perform it?

Joey: “No. He never did, and it’s probably never going to happen, he’s busy. Maybe someday!”

Which Motown legend was your manager/Svengali Maurice Starr originally intending on pitching New Kids on the Block’s 1989 single ‘I’ll Be Loving You (Forever)’ to?

Joey: “What?!”

Jordan: “I know! Smokey Robinson.”

CORRECT.

Donnie Wahlberg: “Sorry I’m late!”

Joey: “Oh, you’ve missed a doozy! An old-school UK interview! Just keep it up. We want your best stuff ‘cause Donnie just walked in!”

Donnie’s acting debut was in the 1996 Julien Temple-directed crime film Bullet opposite the late Tupac Shakur. Name the character he plays.

Donnie: “Big Balls.”

CORRECT. Any memories of Tupac (who died the month before the film was released)?

Joey: “[Referring to NME’s accent] Bull-et? It’s buh-lit! [Whispering] We’ve just spent half an hour on the ‘80s and now we’re in the ‘90s… I’ve never heard of the movie Bull-et. I’ve heard of Buh-lit. Not Bull-et.”

Donnie: “Tupac was great. We had already met a few times before. He was going through a lot at the time in the press, so we talked about our careers and journey and how to deal with that stuff. He was really committed as an actor. He took it very seriously. He got into character and jumped right in. That was my first movie and the people who are really dedicated and committed were the ones I gravitated towards.”

How many New Kids on the Block songs contain the word ‘girl’ in the title?

Joey: “Are we including our new album which I know YOU CAN’T WAIT TO TALK ABOUT by the way?!”

 Yes, technically…

Joey: “Oh, we are including that?! [Pauses] Do we have a song with girl in the title on this album? It is our most mature album.”

Donnie: “No, no girls in the titles on this one.”

Jordan: “I’ll say seven.”

CORRECT. ‘Be My Girl’, ‘Cover Girl’, ‘My Favorite Girl’, ‘Please Don’t Go Girl’, ‘Stop It Girl’, ‘Valentine Girl’ and ‘Big Girl Now’.

Donnie: “OK: now I have a question for you. How many New Kids songs have the phrase ‘oh oh’ in some form in the chorus? We’ll get back to you on that, but I’m guessing it’s more than seven! [Laughs]”

2008’s ‘Big Girl Now’ was a duet with Lady Gaga, recorded before she blew up…

Donnie: “We recorded her vocals as a reference for maybe another artist to sing but she did such a phenomenal job that we decided to keep her on the record even though she was unknown because we all just thought she was so great. So we weren’t surprised to see her success.”

You had a cartoon series, your faces adorned every piece of merchandise possible – can you relate to that Lady Gaga/Taylor Swift imperial-phase level of success?

Donnie: “Sure, we were very successful and had a meteoric rise to fame which I think gives you a better understanding of how difficult it can be. It takes a lot of energy, effort, and work to do a stadium tour, to carry that weight of expectation and to try to deliver – which we can relate to. But I wouldn’t compare our level of success to Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or the artists of today; they’re on all-time superstar levels. We have might have flirted with that level success, but we can only marvel at those ladies.”

In 1992, Saturday Night Live parodied New Kids on the Block in a sketch singing a song called ‘Girl You Are Wicked Awesome’. Can you name which comedians/actors played you?

Donnie: “I know Adam Sandler portrayed me.”

Joey: “I think Jason Priestley played me.”

Jordan: “Mike Myers was me.”

Donnie: “Danny Wood was [played by] Rob Schneider. Was Dana Carvey Jon? And Chris Rock played the host Arsenio Hall.”

CORRECT. It was a spoof of the time you went on The Arsenio Hall Show to defend yourselves against accusations of lip-synching. Did you find it funny?

Joey: “I thought it was kinda lame. It wasn’t exactly funny. If I was objectively speaking, it wasn’t the funniest skit. Those are talented people up on the stage, but I didn’t find it incredibly funny, but it was nice to be on an iconic show. It wasn’t the most well-written script, but we’re still flattered. They spelt our names right. That’s all that’s matters!”

Any New Kids on the Block pop culture references you’ve enjoyed?

Danny: “In the movie It, and my poster is in the locker of It: Chapter 2 as well”.

Donnie: “We didn’t know we were in It so much. When I took my sons to see it, they were like: ‘Oh, wow, look dad!””

Which rapper namechecks you on his 2000 third studio album?

Danny: “Eminem?”

CORRECT.

Jordan: “No? He did?! I don’t remember him ever saying anything about New Kids. What was the reference? Let’s look it up.”

On the track ‘Marshall Mathers’ from 2000’s ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ (in which he sings: ‘New Kids on the Block sucked a lot of dick / Boy-girl groups make me sick’)

Donnie: “It’s fine. That was cool. We don’t control what other people write and honestly, none of us had even heard that song until you just mentioned it, so it didn’t matter to any of us.”

Joey:  “Timing is everything. It’s nice to still be around and everybody can look back on that stuff….lightly…and with a wink and a smile.”

Donnie: “We’re not offended. It’s fine. We like Eminem.”

Joey: “And we like you too. We like you the most.

Jordan:  “Really.”

Tell us about your new album ‘Still Kids’. When did you realise you wanted to record another album?

Donnie: “We always figured we’d do another album at some point. The fans – the Blockheads – would often ask, and we did a song a few years back with Rick Astley, Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue [2022’s ‘Bring Back the Time’] and it really inspired us to start writing again and that lit the spark to lead to a new album.”

There’s a reworked version of the album track ‘In the Night’ circulating online that is a duet between NKOTB and Kylie Minogue…

Donnie: “We were thinking of releasing it later as a surprise, but now somebody’s leaked it. We’re all massive fans of her. She’s great. We wrote it, and sent her the song. It was surreal. She’s a super-talent. We didn’t even know if she would actually even hear it, but she had it for one day, and sent it back with her vocals. She’s fantastic.”

Any other surprise collabs in the pipeline?

Donnie: “No, apart from the ones already on there [with DJ Jazzy Jeff and Taylor Dayne], the New Kids priority was to collaborate with each other on this album.”

The verdict: 9.5/10

Donnie: “What question did you guys get wrong? Don’t I get a chance?!”

Joey: “We were busy mud-slinging for the first hour!”

New Kids on the Block’s new, eighth studio album ‘Still Kids’ is available now via BMG. 

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