There’s a heartbreaking moment in the new film charting the rise of boy band One Direction.
The mother of group member Liam Payne, a 19-year-old Wolverhampton lad who is unashamed of admitting that his favourite movie is still Toy Story, is seen breaking down in the merchandise tent at Madison Square Garden in New York where the band is playing.
Karen Payne sobs inconsolably as she is filmed buying a £34.99 cardboard cut-out of her son. She says: ‘We miss him. He left home my little boy and became the boy in a magazine. If I have this I can still see him every day. When I see him on stage I absolutely burst with pride, but we do miss him so much.’
Mummy's boy: Liam Payne pictured with father Geoff and mother Karen, who bought a cardboard cut-out of her own son because she sees so little of him
It’s a poignant and troubling vignette that casts an unexpected light on the parents that Britain’s hottest pop properties have been forced to leave behind on their rise to fame.
There those mums and dads were, in Leicester Square on Tuesday evening, bright-eyed with tears, on the red carpet with their beloved boys at the new film’s premiere. Zayn Malik’s mother, Tricia, for one, looked almost overwhelmed by emotion.
But behind the smiles there is heartache. The parents of the five teenage boys who were made into superstars have been left to reflect on how much they have lost.
Since taking part in the 2010 X Factor, each boy has been worked to a phenomenal degree.
The band’s first world tour — the Up All Night Tour, showcasing their debut album of the same name — was followed a bare seven months later by the start of another world tour.
Her little man: Anne Cox's son Harry Styles' world-wide star status means that the roles are reversed and she have to get used to her boy showing her the world instead of the other way around
One family: Zayne Malik took his mother Tricia to the This Is Us premiere, where he is seen close to tears as he speaks to her over the phone after buying her a house, and Niall Horan holds tight to his family's values
Fame effect: Louis Tomlinson has acknowledged that his road to fame has been 'tough' on his parents, particularly his mother
In the gap in between the globe-trotting, the band had to make their second album, Take Me Home, and promote it with interviews and personal appearances.
And when they have finished the current tour, another will start.
This breakneck adventure in popular culture has, unsurprisingly, had an impact on their lives. While they may have been earning millions for themselves and others — with total revenues hitting up to £640 million in a year, making up to £28 million for each of them — there is a litany of missed birthdays, snatched family celebrations and sheer, frustrating loneliness for the loved ones they left behind.
A pop star’s life may look enviable — the wealth, the adulation — but One Direction work to a punishingly draining schedule that leaves precious little time for what most of us would consider normality.
The boys are aged between 19 and 21 now, and most families would have spent these past three years guiding their offspring’s transition from sweet teenagers into independent young men, rather than following their unstoppable rise to fame at one remove via newspapers and the internet.
Zayn Malik complained this week: ‘It’s frustrating, I don’t even get time to call my mum and dad.’ In fact, they barely see each other.
Louis Tomlinson’s mother, Jay, says that he has made it back home to South Yorkshire for only five visits in the three years since The X Factor.
Indeed, the One Direction film, This Is Us, directed by Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, is unexpectedly moving when it comes to telling the stories of the families watching the boys’ success from afar.
Liam is the adored youngest sibling of a close-knit family. His father, Geoff, works in a Wolverhampton pub, and he has two older sisters.
There was a visit over Christmas of 2012, when the family went for a celebratory meal at their favourite local curry house, the Penn Tandoori, but they haven’t seen Liam as much as they would like. They travelled to New York this year just so they could spent a few hours with him.
The film shows Geoff close to tears as he speaks about how much he misses his son. He says that he has missed out on ‘rites of passage’ such as seeing Liam finish school, and buying him his first pint of beer.
This is them: The five boys have gone from obscurity to dominating the charts in three years, which has meant that their families have to travel across the globe to see them
Geoff says: ‘It’s not just the mums, it’s the dads that struggle, too. I mean, I can’t offer him much, I could take him out for a drink or play some pool.
‘But he’s the only lad in the family and I’ll never get this time back, he’s gone. And I can’t give him advice because he has seen more of the world than me.’
It’s not easy viewing, and Liam himself found it upsetting to watch. He told an interviewer: ‘He’s always so happy when I see him and happy to have me home; to actually see what he’s like when I’m not there was a bit mad.’
Bandmate Louis Tomlinson, 21, agrees it is ‘tough’ for their parents.
He said: ‘You know a lot of families anticipate that once you get to 18 you’ll go to university and mothers know that that’s the day [you’ll leave] whereas for us, it kind of just happened out of the blue and our mums just had to wave goodbye to us on The X Factor, so I think it was a lot for them to take in at first.’
Zayn Malik, 20, sometimes allows himself to have wistful daydreams about what his life would be like had he not become an internationally famous pop star.
He thinks he would be studying for a degree in English literature — in fact, he still would like to do a degree once the band have finished.
Although he has bought himself a Bentley Continental, a Rolex, two places to live in North London and a new house for his mother, Tricia, he says that the fame barely feels real.
‘These past few years have been a digestion process for me and only now can I enjoy it a lot more,’ he said this week. ‘Before, I didn’t accept it was real. It happened so quickly and we didn’t get any time to absorb it.’
Over recent months he has met singer Robbie Williams, film director Martin Scorsese, Hollywood star Will Smith and U.S. President Barack Obama. But he has missed out on seeing his mother and he wasn’t even there when she moved into her new home in Bradford. In the film, he is shown telephoning her after contracts have been exchanged. He tells her, ‘I promised you I would get you one,’ but then rings off saying: ‘I’m going to go before you make me cry.’
The band’s Irish singer Niall Horan, 19, has missed his home comforts so much that for a time he rented his mum, Maura, a home around the corner from his new base in London, just so they could spend some precious time together while he was working on the band’s yet-to-be released third album.
His father, Bobby, works at the meat counter in Tesco in Mullingar, in County Westmeath, Ireland. He has also been missing his son.
‘The good thing is that he’s still the same young fella that left our house in Mullingar that day in 2010,’ says Mr Horan.
Long way from home: Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Liam Tomlinson and Liam Payne attend The BRIT Awards in February last year as their world domination takes hold
‘He hasn’t lived at home since the day he left for that audition, but he still has his own bedroom, although it is at the bottom of the garden.
‘I converted the garage for him because his guitar playing was making such a noise and we’re so close to the house next door.
‘When he comes home he just wants to be Niall and leave “Niall from One Direction” behind. He’s through the door and straight to his room, and when we do talk he does it while he’s strumming his guitar, and you have to talk to him over the chords. It’s funny, but that’s the way he is. He’s not a big drinker, but we often go for a pint when he’s home.’
Like all the parents, Bobby Horan can see how lucky his son has been. While many of his friends are students, or on the dole, Niall is a multi-millionaire.
But he has also been in a state of arrested development — he has only just got his driving licence because he struggled to find the time to take lessons.
Des Styles, the father of charmer Harry, 19, echoes Bobby’s sentiments. Like him, he saw his beloved son leave the house to go to The X Factor auditions, never to return.
Sitting in a cab on the way to the boys’ show at Madison Square Gardens in New York, Des’s ex-wife Anne says: ‘There’s this feeling that we should be showing him the world, and instead he’s showing us. We would never have been able to take him to a place like this. It takes a long time to get used to.
‘There’s also always this thought in the background that you have to be ready to pick up the pieces if it falls apart . . . and we’ve been waiting for it, but it never comes. The fame just gets bigger and bigger.’
And so do the earnings. There is no more stark measure of just how wide the gulf now is between the lives the boys lead and the modest existences of their parents.
One can only assume that, as One Direction earn ever more money, that gulf will become a yawning chasm.
Estimates vary, but the band members each now have fortunes of between £5.5 million and £28 million and they are set to earn a whole lot more this year.
The band is the biggest in the world at present, and even music industry insiders are staggered at the amount of money they are making.
Andy Greene, associate editor at Rolling Stone magazine, says: ‘It’s insane. They are working them like dogs and printing money just now.’
Indeed, Business Insider magazine believes that they will have earned $1 billion (£640 million) by the end of this year.
Never changing: Niall's parents Maura and Chris, right, say they are proud that their son is 'still the same young fella that left our house in Mullingar that day in 2010'
Jesse Lawrence, the CEO of New York ticketing specialists TiQIQ, says: ‘The earnings are certainly unprecedented. I think that the big driver here is the window of opportunity.
‘The end is certainly out there, but no one knows when it is coming because teenage girls have pretty fickle tastes. The band are getting everything that they can, but the bottom could fall out of it tomorrow.
‘I think that Justin Bieber is a great example. He has now been eclipsed by One Direction.
‘In terms of their earnings, the tickets are over half of the revenue. There was a time when you earned more from albums, but the economics of album sales have changed quite a bit.
‘Now, releasing an album is sort of a point of entry, and if you are successful then you can tour, and then you can make money.’
The Take Me Home tour started in London in February 2013 and will conclude in October in Melbourne, Australia. Now in its North American leg, it has also covered Europe.
There are around 120 shows, at venues averaging a 12,500 capacity. With a typical ticket price of £64, and allowing for a substantial number of tickets at a higher price, Business Insider magazine estimates that the tour will generate £119.5 million in gross revenue.
NEXT May, the band will start their next tour in Santiago, Chile. So far only 12 dates have been announced but there will be more — and this is a stadium tour, with average gates of 60,000 plus. Even if the tour is only half the size of the current one, that would be 60 dates. At a £48 average sale price, the 2014 tour should gross almost £173 million.
The band has made £191.4 million by selling 30 million records to date. The new film, meanwhile, is projected to earn £95 million.
Such astronomical sums are beyond comprehension for most of us, presumably the boys’ families included.
One Direction’s Up All Night: The Live Tour DVD has earned them £9.6 million, and they’ve made £43 million from the sale of One Direction books, watches, pillows, backpacks, pencils and so on. A perfume, Our Moment, is imminent and may add a further £12 million — or more — to the coffers.
They have made considerably more money for their paymasters at Sony, and for Simon Cowell himself, of course.
In April last year, Cowell signed off a £2 million performance bonus for each band member, so pleased was he with their global chart domination.
But while global chart domination pays very well indeed, it also has a heavy cost — as One Direction’s parents and the boys themselves are learning.
Source: Daily Mail
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