by Shane Filan
My first taste of alcohol was cider with some friends in the woods near Sligo one school holiday. After I had drunk it, I was knocked sideways: pretty ropey! I wasn’t a big beer drinker, but around the age of sixteen I developed a taste for alcopops like Hooch and Corky’s.
I would hang out with my three best mates, Paul, Keith and Brian (who went by the nickname of Brig), in a bar called the Embassy Rooms, which had a snooker hall downstairs. We would always congregate around table seven. We were underage, so I had a fake ID card with my sister’s boyfriend’s details and my picture.
We would play a few frames of snooker then Mark, Kian and Gillian would join us and we would go into Equinox nightclub up the road. It was only 100 yards away and it was always a nervous walk. I never knew if I would get past the bouncer on the door with my fake ID.
When I did – great! When I didn’t, I’d shrug and head for the late-night fast-food place on the same street, the 4 Lights, for their Big 4 Special. All our nights out finished up there. If I woke up in the night hungover, I would sneak down to the café and bury a few cans of Club Orange.
Getting into the clubs got a lot easier when my long-awaited growth spurt finally arrived. I had always loved sports, but now I got big into playing rugby and became a regular for Sligo’s under-sixteens and then the under-eighteen team. Then I made it into the Connaught provincial under-eighteen team. I was a number 10 and they told me I had a great left boot.
But even though I enjoyed the craic of a good game of rugby, music was still my first love. Mark and I would spend our downtime hanging out together and singing Backstreet Boys songs, working out all the harmonies. We would talk and fantasize together, and dream of ‘doing a Boyzone’: becoming pop stars and breaking free of our small-town upbringings to make a career out of doing what we loved.
There was a TV show at that time called Go for It, which let members of the public get up and do a song, and Mark used to talk about going on that. And then one day, I just came out with it while I was talking to Mark.
‘You know what we should do? We should start a boy band.’
2
THE BOYS IN THE BAND
Mark was into the idea from the start. I knew he would be. We were so much on the same wavelength and on the same page when it came to music. Once we had decided what it was we wanted to do, we set about choosing the other members.
We knew we wanted Kian in the group. He was a great performer and he had the look. We could see only one major setback – he hated boy bands.
As I expected, when I first asked Kian, he couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or fall about laughing. By now he had left Skrod behind and was in a different metal band named Pyromania. In fact, I think he was in three bands at the same time. ‘Shane,’ he asked me frankly, ‘are you off your f**king rocker?’
This changed when I played him some Backstreet Boys. Kian is a rocker at heart but so is Max Martin, the songwriting and producing genius behind the Backstreets, and Kian could hear things in their music that he loved.
Plus, like me, he had developed a taste for girls screaming at him in the T-Birds. Yep, he was in.
We quickly recruited three other members. Kian brought in Graham Keighron, a neighbour of his who was two or three years older than us. Graham was a cool lad; he loved singing and idolized the Backstreet Boys, particularly AJ, which endeared him to me straight away.
Michael Garrett was a friend who went by the nickname of Miggles. He was in all the plays with us and was a tall, handsome guy who just oozed confidence. To be honest, Miggles wasn’t the best singer out of us, but he looked fantastic and girls loved him.
Derek Lacey was in my year at school and we used to hang around town together. He had been a stagehand when we did Grease at school but he could also sing a bit and with his little goatee beard he looked like a model, which worked for us. Even in those days, I think we knew what ticked the boxes.
I can’t remember who suggested calling ourselves Six As One. It certainly wasn’t me. I think at the time we knew it wasn’t the best name in the world, but we went with it. We didn’t really have any plans, or any idea what we would do next – until Mary McDonagh took a hand.
It’s amazing, thinking back, just what a big part Grease played in our lives at that time! Around then, Mary was after staging another production of it at the Hawks Well, and this time I got the big part, the Travolta role: Danny Zuko. Kian played Kenickie and Gillian was Frenchie.
Mary also had an interesting suggestion for us. Why didn’t our new band come on and do two songs during the interval at the Hawks Well show?
She didn’t need to ask us twice. Six As One vanished off to Graham’s house for some fevered practice. We also took to rehearsing in the Carlton Café when it was closed, as the high ceiling and tiles gave it some great acoustics.
To be honest, we put just as much thought into what we were going to wear for the gig. We all used to go to a local clothes shop, EJ Menswear, and the guy who ran it, Eamonn Cunningham, gave us a load of free stuff for the show.
In fact, our entire plan for the gig was basically to be the Irish Backstreet Boys: the Backstreet Boys, Sligo division. Our set consisted of two Backstreets’ songs: ‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart’ and ‘We’ve Got It Goin’ On’.
So when the Grease interval came around, I ran backstage to get out of my Danny Zuko costume and into my Brian Littrell gear, and we all waited in the wings. Mary came onstage and introduced the new local boy band, Six As One… and the screaming started.
It was wild. Word had clearly got around about our previous T-Birds turn, because the Hawks Well was packed out with girls and they were screaming their heads off. Were they taking the piss? Being ironic? They didn’t seem to be!
The two songs went down fantastic, and to be honest, Danny Zuko went through the second half of Grease in a bit of a daze. After the show, the six of us wandered back out to the front of the theatre to see our parents and the foyer was full of girls, waiting for us, yelling out and even asking for our autographs.
It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. It was like we were proper pop stars: my head was spinning. When we got home that night, all I could think was, ‘Jeez – we’re famous!’ For the first time, suddenly, our dream felt possible. If Sligo liked us this much, maybe other places in Ireland might do as well?
The short gig had been Mary McDonagh’s idea, but she had been just as taken aback as us by the hysterical reaction we’d received. She could see that Six As One had got something going on, and she suggested that we should do a full show at the Hawks Well in our own right.
For the next few weeks, the six of us rehearsed every minute we had, learning a whole load of cover versions including Take That’s ‘Everything Changes’ and ‘Relight My Fire’. Mary and a guy from the Hawks Well, Stefan, helped us to choreograph a few basic dance routines. We were so serious and intense about the whole thing, and the show went down so well – we were basically singing into a wall of screams.
It was amazing. Deep down, I know we were all thinking: Is this really happening? Is it a dream?
My romantic life had also been looking up. By now I was sixteen, and I had actually managed to stay with one girlfriend for more than a few days. Her name was Helena, and she was a lovely girl; she even came home to meet my parents. She was one of Gillian’s best friends, and still is.
Yet after a good few months together, Helena and I split up and suddenly there I was: young, free and single again. With my new-found local fame I could probably have enjoyed a few flings, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, I was finding myself more and more drawn to Gillian.
I had always really liked Kian’s cousin, and increasingly I was noticing how well she dressed, what a good dancer she was, how pretty she looked. We were still going to Equinox regularly with Kian, Mark and the gang, and often I would spend the whole evening chatting with Gillian. We would always look for each other.
Nothing happened between
us, partly because at the time I still thought she was just a really good friend, but largely due to the fact that Gillian had a boyfriend on the other side of Sligo. Sometimes she would vanish halfway through the evening to go to see him. When she had gone, I would really miss her.
I guess sometimes things are so close at hand that you can’t see them. One Friday night at Equinox, Gillian and I spent all night talking, messing around and drinking Sex on the Beach cocktails. Lying in my bed that night above the café, my head was so full of her that I couldn’t fall asleep. It was five in the morning and I was still lying there awake, with my eyes like saucers, thinking about Gillian.
The next day I was walking through town with a friend and by chance we bumped into her. I can still picture what she was wearing: maroon corduroy trousers and a pair of runners. As I went over to say hello, I started sweating; my heart was pounding, and I could hardly speak.
What was happening here?
Easy: I was falling in love. Suddenly, I was totally besotted with Gillian. We had been great mates for five years, but now I didn’t want to be mates any more – I wanted far, far more than that. But I didn’t dare say anything to her. After all, she had a boyfriend.
After the success of our full gig at the Hawks Well, Mary had a few ideas to take Six As One forward. One was that she thought we shouldn’t be called Six As One. Mary suggested we become IOYOU (pronounced ‘I owe you’). I wasn’t sure this was an improvement – in fact, I thought it was shite – but I had no better ideas, so IOYOU it was.
Mary also asked us to go into a local recording studio and make a CD single. F**k, yeah! Even a few weeks ago, the idea of being in a band and playing gigs had seemed like walking on the moon – now, here we were making a record!
It seemed important that we didn’t just do cover versions so Mark and I started trying to write our first song. It was called ‘Together Girl Forever’ and it was a love song. Well, actually, it was a song about Gillian.
After I fell in love, I hadn’t dared to say a word to Gillian about how I felt, but I hadn’t stopped going on about her to the other lads in the band, particularly poor Mark. He and I sat on a bench in Peace Park, by Sligo Cathedral, writing lyrics for ‘Together Girl Forever’.
Mark shoved the pen and paper at me. ‘You write it!’ he told me. ‘You’re the one that likes her!’
‘Dreams are for believing and some day they will come true,’ I wrote. ‘That we would be together, no one else but me and you…’ It felt good and cathartic to write it all down.
We recorded it in a poky little home studio in Sligo and it was such an adventure as the six of us crammed in there. It was the first time we had worn headphones and sung into mics, and we all kept basically asking each other the same thing: ‘Do I really sound like that? Jesus!’
We did ‘Together Girl Forever’, ‘Everlasting Love’, which Mark had written, and a song with Graham doing a rap. Mary arranged a photo session for the sleeve picture in The Mall, the local art centre, and we all got special boy band haircuts. EJs fitted us out with some black suits.
When we got the CD a couple of weeks later – ‘Together Girl Forever’ by IOYOU – I couldn’t stop looking at it, and played it to death. In truth, it was pretty simple, basic music, but it seemed such a big deal. I remember thinking, If we don’t get any further, at least we’ve done this. The single went on sale in The Record Room, the local record shop, and about 100 people bought it in the first few days, the vast majority of whom were related to us. We dared to dream that it might make the Irish chart but in the end it sold about 1,000 copies, nearly all in Sligo.
We did a couple of little gigs around Sligo. At the same time, I was still playing rugby and even got invited to trials to play for Ireland at youth level. However, it clashed with an IOYOU gig. There was only going to be one winner, and it wasn’t rugby.
Mary managed to get IOYOU on the telly. That Christmas we went to the local hospital and sang a cappella Backstreet Boys’ songs to sick kids to try to cheer them up. An evening news programme, Nationwide, filmed us, so we got twenty seconds on national TV.
This was all grand and pretty exciting but at the same time I knew I had decisions to make about my future. Coming up to my seventeenth birthday in 1996, I left school. In line with my usual academic mediocrity, I had to retake my leaving certificate.
Maths and computer studies were the only subjects I was any good at, and my sister Yvonne, who was by now a fully qualified teacher, took me in hand and gave me extra grinds. She worked me hard and the night before my maths exam we were up until the early hours.
I went into the exam after only three or four hours’ sleep and did great: I got an A, which was rare for me and totally down to Yvonne. At least it meant that I had a couple more options as I tried to work out what to do with my life.
My mum and dad had always been supportive of my music and acting but I knew they’d like me to get a trade under my belt. IOYOU was fun but small-scale and we were making no money out of it. I knew that a boy band was what I wanted to do more than anything, but in my heart I also knew it was a fantasy.
I had to study or get a job.
I decided that if I was going to college, I should spread my wings and leave Sligo. I applied to, and got accepted by, the Limerick Institute of Technology, 140 miles away, to study business and accountancy.
In truth, I was going reluctantly. I still longed to make a go of music, and I was totally hung up on Gillian. But she was with her boyfriend and seemed completely oblivious to how I felt, so I just figured it was not to be: I’d go off to college and meet somebody else.
Brig, my best mate from school, was also going to Limerick IT and at first it was quite exciting moving down there together. We shared a room in a house that we rented with some older students from Cork, and set out to see what Limerick had to offer.
It didn’t have a lot. Or rather, it probably did, but I didn’t want it. I thought my course was boring and I didn’t like the lectures, so I stopped going to them. Instead, I stuck posters of the Backstreet Boys up in our room and dreamed about making the band work.
I made a few friends and Brig and I played a lot of pool in the student union but I never felt at home in Limerick. I didn’t meet any nice girls, I was homesick and, in truth, I was still missing Gillian like mad. It felt like a mistake – I didn’t want to be an accountant – and after six months, I dropped out.
I moved back home and promised my mum that I would get a job and also enroll in Sligo to do a different course. I signed up at a local college to start a business and computing degree the following autumn and a great mate of mine, Paul Keaveney, got me a job in a business supplies store called Buckley’s.
Buckley’s was OK, in fact I quite liked it, and I spent my time moving boxes of nails, sweeping up and inputting orders on the computer. Yet it always felt like a stopgap, and I couldn’t help telling my colleagues all about how I was in a band that, you never knew, might make it one day.
Life fell into a routine, but one bit of excitement came with the news that the Backstreet Boys were touring and were coming to Dublin. When the tickets went on sale, Kian and I queued outside Star Records from five in the morning to buy them.
It was six months away, but it was something to look forward to.
We definitely needed a boost to our spirits because IOYOU had slipped into a hiatus. After the excitement of the gigs, the single and the TV appearance, nothing was happening. Mary had done a lot for us but we weren’t sure where the band was going next.
Mary had given us a formal management contract to sign but we weren’t sure about it. Because we were so young, we had shown it to our parents. Some of them liked it, some of them didn’t. My mum thought we should get legal advice.
What we really wanted, of course, was to be managed by a proper music-industry big-hitter, a major name like that guy in Dublin, Louis Walsh, who had created Boyzone and built them up from nowhere. Obviously, we knew that was too much to hope for; it
wouldn’t happen in a million years.
I was in the pub with the other lads one night, bemoaning the fact the band was going nowhere, when Derek said that Gillian had broken up with her boyfriend.
Derek dropped it into the conversation as casually as if he had made an offhand comment about the weather, but as soon as he said it, I was in shock. I felt jittery, nervous: the butterflies in my stomach were in danger of being burnt by the fireworks that were going off next to them.
My mouth had gone dry and I felt as if I couldn’t speak, but I gave it a go: ‘Really? Is that right?’
‘For sure,’ nodded Derek. ‘They’re properly over.’
Wow! It was the best news that I could have heard, and yet a part of me was thinking, Oh God, here we go again. Over the past six months I had been trying to get over Gillian, accepting that I had no chance. Now, suddenly, I was in turmoil again.
As it happened, I didn’t bump into her around town for the next few weeks. Instead, I knuckled down to my day job at Buckley’s and hanging out with Kian and Mark. Mary’s contract was still sitting around, unsigned.
My sister Mairead was by now in college in Dublin and every few weeks I would go up and stay with her in her apartment. One weekend at the start of 1998, Kian came with me. We were sitting around, mildly hungover, in the morning, when Mairead’s phone rang.
It was my mum – for me.
‘Shane, listen,’ she began. ‘I’ve been on the phone with that Louis Walsh, who manages Boyzone, and…’
What? Why was she taking the piss like this?
I wasn’t in the habit of putting the phone down on my mum, but that was what I did. She rang straight back.
‘Shane, I’m not joking. I’ve been trying to get him for months and last night I finally talked to him about your band. You’re meeting him in Dublin tonight!’