When Pop Ruled My Life: The Fans' Story

This programme contains some strong language.

SCREAMING

SCREAMING

SCREAMING

When I was a teenager, I lost seven years of my life to Queen.

My bedroom became a shrine to the defunct band.

The fact that Freddie Mercury was no longer with us

somehow made my love even more intense.

I forced my family to go on holiday near the drummer

Roger Taylor's house so I could stalk him.

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

At some point, every single one of us

has fallen in love with a pop star.

But why do we do it?

What rituals does it involve us in?

And why do some of us never get over it?

Fans have always been a footnote in the great

rock and roll narrative, portrayed as a motley crew of obsessives

who seem to come from another, less stable, planet than the rest of us.

But I think it's time to take a closer look,

because we've all been fans.

I want to explore how the relationship between artist

and fan has evolved over the past 50 years,

while uncovering some of the psychological constants of fandom.

Because the true story of fans is the secret history of popular music.

Falling in love with your first band, that moment of gut recognition

and excitement, is something we have all experienced

and the magical thing is, you don't know when it's going to hit.

For me it happened here, in the isolation of the North Norfolk

countryside, where I grew up.

It was a Thursday night in late November, 1991.

I had just turned 11.

I was sitting in front of the TV, trying to do my homework,

pretending not to be watching Top Of The Pops.

Suddenly, I became aware of a sound

that ran through me like electricity.

I looked up.

# Those were the days of our lives... #

A painfully thin man in white cake make-up

was singing the saddest song.

# The bad things in life were so few... #

He kept throwing these amazing, flashy grins at the camera,

like he was making fun of it all.

# Are all gone now but one thing's still true... #

I felt my skin prickle and that was it.

Out of nowhere, I had become a fan.

# I still love you... #

Looking back now, it's hard to make sense of it all.

So, why do we become fans? What is a fan?

The fan is somebody who has this intense personal attachment

to a person.

They feel they know him,

and they feel, as well, that in some weird sense,

he should know them.

My definition of fan, I suppose, is somebody who is

completely uncritical in their devotion.

They are blinded by affection.

Fandom is forged in the white heat of adolescence.

It's almost as if you've been plugged into the mains.

It completely catalyses you and you see the world

in an entirely different way.

It changes the way you walk, the way you cut your hair,

the way you think and talk - everything.

From, say, 14 to 19 is when your mind is the most open

in your life, because once they are in there,

they resonate for ever, even if,

at times, they disappear. You always come back to them.

It just sticks in your head for ever.

Never mind Sinatra and Elvis,

the first truly global pop fan phenomenon erupted

out of 1960s Liverpool and it turned nice young women from this...

into this.

SCREAMING

# Well, shake it up, baby, now

# Shake it up, baby

# Twist and shout

# Twist and shout

# Come on, come on, come on Come on, baby, now... #

The year was 1963 and the times, they were a-changing.

Welcome to Beatlemania.

# Aah

# Aah

# Aah, aah

# Whoa, whoa, whoa

# Shake it up, baby, now... #

It was absolutely glorious.

Because there were so many of you

and nobody had ever done this before,

and clearly, nobody had ever felt like this before and, you know,

we were the clever ones, because we liked the Beatles.

A first-hand witness to this communal hysteria

was Beatlemaniac, Lillian Adams.

There were the four different options, you know.

There was the small and cuddly Ringo,

the intellectual John Lennon,

the terribly sweet and nice Paul,

and George, who was quite young and seemingly innocent.

-Which one caught your attention?

-Paul, definitely.

You know, I was in love with Paul McCartney for ever.

-# Let me know that you're mine

-Know you're mine... #

Why did you have to scream at Beatles gig?

I've got absolutely no idea. You just did.

Everybody did, and that was it.

I don't think I ever heard a word that was sung

or spoken at a live gig, because you just didn't.

Say goodbye to modesty...

..say hello to an impending sexual revolution.

It was the first time that any of us

had experienced that kind of emotion.

Came out of all the concerts totally overcome and fainting,

having to be lifted out and taken off to the St John Ambulance people.

People were quite worried, you know,

the flower of British womanhood going to the dogs!

# I wanna hold your hand

# I wanna hold your hand

# And when I touch you I feel happy inside... #

There's a, kind of, combination of things that go with

Beatlemania, which is screaming and involuntary urination.

I was always puzzled with this -

did people really pee themselves in Beatles concerts? And they did.

I've interviewed Red Cross people and people who cleaned up

after them and they say, yes, that's what happened.

There was just something in the culture that needed

that at the time and nobody understood it.

There was a little girl.

She was standing, shaking,

she could hardly stand up and there were tears streaming down her face.

We asked her why she was crying

and she didn't know.

Paul, Ringo, George and John were providing a generation

of teenage girls with a target for their burgeoning sexuality.

# I wanna hold your hand... #

Unlike going to a dance or a club or what have you,

where there were real teenage boys

who might have had real expectations,

it was perfectly safe. You could pour out

all of your love and affection to this wonderful idol.

This person that you are in love with is utterly perfect, so, it is

a good start, because later,

you meet real blokes, who are not like that!

# I wanna hold your hand... #

Former Beatles fan club secretary Freda Kelly found herself

in the eye of a growing Beatlemania storm.

I didn't realise how big it was going to get.

I don't think anybody would have done.

I mean, I gave my home address out,

because they wanted somewhere to write to, the Beatle fans.

So, I innocently gave that out

and the first few days was just a few letters,

and then, very quickly, it went to a few hundred, then a bundle,

then a sack, and my father was having a heart attack!

There was no escaping it. By 1965, Beatlemania had spread to the USA

and when the band played New York's Shea Stadium,

not a note was heard above the screams.

SCREAMING

I mean, it was just madness.

They were going on stage, people couldn't hear what

they were saying, they could have been singing about anything,

because the girls weren't interested in what they were singing.

Something had to give and you knew it was going to be

the touring that was going to give.

It's gone downhill, performance.

Because we can't develop when no-one can hear us, you know what I mean?

So, for us to perform, it gets difficult each time. More difficult.

You mean they don't listen to you. Therefore you don't want to do that?

Oh, yeah, we want to do it, but if we're not listened to

and we can't even hear ourselves,

then we can't improve in that, we can't get any better.

So, we're trying to get better with things like recording.

# Love, love, love

# Love, love, love... #

When the Beatles stopped touring in 1966

and cocooned themselves in the studio, they stopped

being pop stars and started to think of themselves as artists.

# All you need is love

# All you need is love

# All you need is love, love

# Love is all you need... #

As a result, their audience began to change.

I could tell that from the fan mail.

There were certain questions there was no way I could answer,

you know, like, "How do they get this sound?" or "How do they do that?"

and I had a list of questions that I would ask them

that had got through the fan mail and they were from boys.

# All you need is love... #

Boys were... It was much more technical -

"I like his guitar style," you know, "I like their lyrics,"

I'm sure a lot of blokes were put off by the hysterical

girl business, but once they had got into Sgt Pepper,

it was an art thing and a music thing,

rather than four blokes standing on a stage being howled at.

The boys pretended they were immune to the look, but weren't really.

They'd quite like to be George or John and Paul and, sometimes,

the strange ones wanted to look like Ringo.

That Paul McCartney look, I spent ages trying to get that

when I was 13, 14, trying to get the hair right and all of that.

But if you talk like that,

you, kind of, get beaten up in the school playground.

Meanwhile, in the mid-60s, a new breed of fan was emerging, that was

less about screaming at pop stars and more about image and tribalism.

# I want you to know that I love you, baby

# Want you to know that I care

# I'm so happy when you're around me

# But I'm sad when you're not there Sing the song, now... #

Being a mod was all about a way of life.

Pop music, as such, was considered more of a girlie thing.

It was all about American R&B, tracking the original down,

you know, the American original was always the best.

I don't necessarily listen to the Top 20, because it's the Top 20.

-You know, most of it is a load of rubbish, anyway.

-Yeah.

Well, it is, innit?

# I want you to give me your sweet, sweet kisses... #

The key mod band was actually the Small Faces.

I mean, musically, all they ever wanted to be was

the East End of London's version of Booker T and the MGs.

# Whatcha gonna do about it?

-# Yeah

-Whatcha gonna do about it?

-# Oh, baby

-Whatcha gonna do about it?

-# You do

-Whatcha gonna do about it? #

The Small Faces, for me, were the best of the mod bands,

basically, because they looked so good.

# Yeah, yeah! #

This was working-class kids.

The mods really wanted this not being judged on where

they came from and wanted to look as good as anybody else.

# People try to put us d-down

# Talking 'bout my generation... #

It was clean living in difficult circumstances.

You may be poor, but don't look poor.

So, I was immediately caught by that in a way,

probably like a religious zeal.

I was very young then, 13, 14, and it was like a secret society.

To be part of this secret club,

mods had to follow strict codes and conventions.

To me, the look was always as important as the music.

A mod would not stick cuff links through a single cuff shirt.

It had to be double cuff shirts.

The trouser was always, if you like, an inch above the shoe.

You certainly didn't put Brylcreem in your hair.

You would always have the top button of your jacket done up,

perhaps the second button, but never the third.

You certainly didn't go anywhere near an oily, nasty motorbike.

It had to be a Lambretta or a Vespa.

If you were going to go casual,

you were looking at, sort of, Fred Perry type shirts.

Fred Perry would be, the top button would be done up,

you wouldn't leave it undone.

I can honestly say that there were times

when I would get into an empty railway carriage

and refuse to sit down, so as not to spoil the crease in the trouser.

# Things they do look awful c-c-cold... #

Having clothes like that made you feel, you know, a million dollars,

you felt quite superior.

You could wear the clothes,

but there was a bit more to it than just wearing the clothes.

There was a mentality to it, as well,

that you were as good as anybody else.

Mod tribalism was providing a way for young,

working-class fans to express themselves.

It was more about being a face than hormonal meltdown.

But by the dawn of the 1970s,

the stage had been left empty for something new.

CLASSICAL-STYLE PIANO MUSIC

We were just coming out of the screaming era, you know,

with the Beatles and other pop bands,

where basically, girls went along to scream.

Bit embarrassing for a guy to scream,

unless he's been hit by a car or something like that.

And so, what it needed was something, really, for them,

that they could go,

"Ah! Now we can relate to that and we don't have to scream."

PROG ROCK PLAYS

Progressive rock bypassed the pop singles charts altogether.

And its sophisticated instrumentation

and complex time signatures seemed to attract

a very particular audience.

Yes's first audiences, when I first joined the band in '71, '72,

would have been 90-95% male.

We did not attract women - at all.

And the women that did tend to come, at that particular time,

were those dragged along by boyfriends or husbands.

Post Sgt Pepper, the rise of progressive rock

helped establish the LP as pop's primary medium.

Elaborate artwork and intricate sleeve notes

released the inner collector in every greatcoated young disciple.

It was the big age of the album, you know, the LP.

Men would go round each other's houses and discuss it.

It's collecting a little bit of that person

and that music to take home with you, to enjoy even more.

It seemed that, by the early '70s,

collecting had become the new screaming.

So how do these historical differences in male

and female fan behaviour relate to my own Queen fixation?

Rather than cataloguing and collecting,

I seemed to create a private fantasyland.

My first creative Queen project, aged 12 - collage.

Custom-made silhouette of the band in the middle.

Cut up a load of magazines, took me an entire weekend.

We have the circa-1992 papier-mache head of Freddie Mercury.

I've got no idea why I made this, but I know it took a long time.

It's quite accurate. Special attention to the widow's peak here.

My teenage fanhood became a deeply-emotional experience.

And my passion soon focused in on Roger Taylor.

He was still good-looking, he had a social conscience,

he was suddenly everything I wanted in a man.

This is one of my Roger Taylor diaries. I wrote this when I was 15.

"If this is not love, will you please tell me what it is?

"I've avoided the word for years,

"since it cannot be wittered away upon a figure that is remote."

"23rd of January, 1996.

"The news from hell -

"he's shaved off his beard!

"Oh, no, why has he'd done that?

"Anyway, I'm still looking forward to him appearing at the Brits

-and looking really cool."

-SHE LAUGHS

'So how do male Queen fans express their fanhood?

'I've come to meet fellow Queen fanatic Rhys Thomas to find out.'

If I look back

to my 14-year-old self and how the Queen obsession

manifested itself, I was actually writing diaries about Roger Taylor.

I was writing letters to him. What were you doing at that point?

How was your obsession manifesting itself?

I think what boys tend to do, because we don't love them,

we don't fancy them, but we still find them attractive.

We, kind of, want to be them, slightly.

I wanted to be Roger Taylor, slightly. Or you want to do...

You want to play the drums or be that person slightly.

But, because we don't have that, we don't fancy them,

we just want to collect things or know everything about them.

And so I, kind of, would read all the books and collect everything.

I wanted to have everything they ever recorded, know all the lyrics.

I was obsessed with buying up the albums. I'd go to record fairs and buy all the solo albums and,

you know, even the John Deacon solo album, solo tracks from Biggles.

-Yeah!

-It was an obsession, cos you wanted to get everything

you could get your hands on. Did you used to write lists,

make up what your greatest hits albums would be if you could...?

No, no. You see, I think a boy would do that.

As a boy, you'd do all that stuff.

So you'd do idealised track listings,

-as though you were the A&R man?

-Yeah, that's right. Yes, I would.

By 1974, the Beatlemaniacs were all grown-up.

but a new generation of pop acts was emerging, targeted at teenyboppers.

GIRLS SCREAM

SCREAMING

Pop mania has come back to Britain, and most

of the screaming has been for a British group, the Bay City Rollers.

There hasn't been a mania like this since the days of the Beatles.

Like the Beatles, the Rollers attract a screaming audience

and an audience which seems to get younger every year.

The average age of the kids who turned out for the Rollers,

was only 11.

# We were rippin' up We were rockin' up

# Roll it over and lay it down

# We were shakin' up

# We were breakin' it... #

I was totally possessed with the Bay City Rollers.

I've been, literally, all round the world.

I've been to Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Belgium,

Holland, Australia, USA, Japan -

all to see Les McKeown and the Bay City Rollers.

Those were the days. They were brilliant days.

I used to come out of my house.

My mum... "You going to school?" "Yes."

There's my school books, roll the gear underneath,

go in the park toilets, change over, on a bus and wherever they were,

I used to go down and catch them.

# And we ran with the gang

# Doin' doo-wop, be dooby do-ay... #

The Rollermaniacs were a child army,

that would risk life and limb to get a piece of their favourite

Bay City Roller.

Roller mania was, literally, pandemonium everywhere.

We didn't fear nothing. We just went for it, because we loved them.

It could get scary. Hammersmith Odeon, we were frightened

we were going to get crushed.

Some of the chairs got broke. People were jumping over the chairs

to get to the front of the stage, to get Les, and they was grabbing him

and all that and we thought, "We're going to be dead."

# Hey, hey! Rockin' to the music... #

They'd get hysterical. They got no heed of traffic,

they would just run straight out into the road, willy-nilly.

These kids just do not know what they're doing.

The hysteria was similar to The Beatles.

The manager would set out

to trap us in a situation with the fans.

He would want to make press. He'd actually go out to plan chaos.

There was one pretty horrifying time, where we kind of got trapped.

There was so many people and teenagers on the street,

they caused the whole traffic to stop.

They'd finished their gig and out they came in their car.

The fans were, literally, everywhere.

Hanging on the door handles and on the bonnet.

They were banging, banging, banging and the limousine went like that.

The roof... Then, we started to get scared.

It's in slow motion and you see faces pressed up against glass

and people going, "Eeh!"

I was on the back and I was holding on to the aerial,

so I didn't slide off, but I could feel myself sliding off

and I thought, "I'm going to come off in a minute."

There's Les at the back and he's going like this

and he's waving to me and I'm going...

All of a sudden, the car sped off and, as it did, I come off!

You do feel, kind of, special on one regard.

I know it sounds, well, weird, but you, kind of, get used to it.

We just went for it.

It was scary, but at the same time, we just didn't fear it.

We just did it.

It was because we love Les so much.

We were the fans and we were given them what they wanted.

And the Rollers were giving us what we wanted.

It seemed that normal service had resumed on Planet Pop -

girls were screaming and fainting at boys in bands again.

But what about boys obsessing over female performers?

At the end of the '70s,

as punk was redefining the fan/artist relationship in a hail

of gob, a group of front women arrived who were fearlessly spiky.

Punk had swept away all that had gone before

and it was a time of reinvention,

really, for women.

There's a very, very famous photograph that has myself,

Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Viv Albertine, Siouxsie Sioux

and Poly Styrene, all collected together for the front cover

of an NME and those were the woman who did change the pop landscape.

SHE SINGS

Male punters had always looked down on girl singers,

but not any more. Not unless they wanted a kick in the crotch.

Everybody knew at that time, that within pop music, sex sells.

I decided that that really was not for me.

If you wanted to put out a reasonably serious message, the worst thing,

really, you could be doing would be hanging around in a miniskirt.

This was a way of beginning to say something about the female condition,

that was a little bit more than just, "I'm in love with that boy."

Females within pop always had some, kind of, subservient, you know,

the puppet, a male Svengali.

You know, somebody working the strings in the background.

# This is the happy house... #

That's for boys and that's for girls and, you know,

girls have to be very demure.

# Oh, it's such fun

# Fun

# Fun

# Whoa-oh!

# We've come to play in the happy house... #

I think the first time I would have seen Siouxsie and the Banshees

would have been Top Of The Pops, 1980,

when they were on there doing Happy House,

but it stayed with me and I could tell that, you know,

there was a lot of depth to what Siouxsie was doing.

She, as an icon, was never a sex symbol.

Her entire career was about refusing the male gaze, refusing to be

sexualised in that way, refusing to be submissive to the male leer.

In rock and roll terms, that was a real first.

She's quite a forbidding presence, really.

There was a real toughness to Siouxsie -

this refusal to compromise. And, I think,

fans, whether male or female, respected that.

I got it completely.

It was much more aggressive.

It was almost like, if you keep people a bit frightened,

then, you know, that's a good place to be.

# Following the footsteps of a rag doll dance

# We are entranced

# Spellbound... #

I think it had to be, you know, an onslaught, an attack,

rather than waiting for them to accept this.

# Spellbound, oh-oh-ho

# Spellbound... #

I was really shy, cripplingly shy, at the time.

I loved the idea that I could walk down the street looking quite

alien and quite freakish and people would look at me,

they'd stare, but they'd keep their distance. And I think Siouxsie

inspired that, in a way, because you cannot take your eyes off her.

But you don't want to get too close, because she is, frankly, terrifying.

# Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Whoa, whoa, whoa, who-oh-ho... #

With the ladies of punk, two-tone and new wave

redefining gender stereotypes in the early '80s,

traditional male rock fan identity could have been thrown into crisis.

But heavy metal bands, like Iron Maiden, were picking up

where '70s rock had left off.

I started getting into rock bands. I was at boarding school

and you've got loads and loads of adolescent boys -

no women, girls of any description, whatsoever -

so you're just locked in with a load of bloody hormones

and music that makes you want to go...

# Yeah!

It was the Purples, it was the Sabbaths,

but there was a prog thing going on in the background.

Four times 50 living men,

and I heard nor sigh nor groan,

with heavy thump, a lifeless lump,

they dropped down one by one.

And that is what Maiden fans recognised

and it came at a time when people wanted something new.

They wanted a big, big, big, grand internal vision and Maiden,

as we've gone through the years, we've got 35 years of stories

and monsters and things to be discovered.

Like male '70s prog rock fans before them,

some Iron Maiden fans have dedicated a lifetime to collecting

and cataloguing everything their favourite band has ever done.

'This is my man shed.

'Everything I've got is pretty much here, really.

'I spent three quarters of my life out here. It's escapism, isn't it?

'Iron Maiden and my refuge. Rock music is my refuge.'

Last time I counted,

I had something like 8,000 vinyl albums,

half as many CDs. I've still got some stuff on cassette.

In the '70s, I was a massive fan of rock music but I was a little bit

too young to have Zeppelin and Deep Purple at their peak,

but Iron Maiden played the Marquee Club in 1979.

Went along to see them there.

The night really just changed my life.

I became a fan overnight.

I'd never throw anything away. I keep everything.

As you can see, I'm a terrible hoarder.

Once you start going down this route,

it's really, really tough to stop.

I collect things like backstage passes. I've got tickets.

I collect T-shirts, all with the famous mascot, Eddie, on the front.

This is myself and my son, who, funnily enough, is called Eddie,

in front of Eddie the Head.

I am an absolute vinyl junkie.

To me, you cannot beat the smell of vinyl, the look of vinyl.

A real statement of intent. An absolute classic.

Number Of The Beast, the one that made them worldwide stars.

My favourite Iron Maiden album.

Just an absolute classic. Every single song on this.

If you haven't got this, you haven't got a record collection.

This rack of cassettes here, is just something I have accumulated

down the years.

These ones are from 1978, on the first tour, right through to,

basically, when cassettes started going out of vogue, really.

There's nothing like having something

like that, if you're as excessive as I am.

It really has taken over my life, supporting Iron Maiden. You know,

my kids don't really understand.

My ex-wife certainly doesn't understand!

Once it gets its hooks in you, you know, there's no escape.

For all its joys, being a fan can feel like a frustrating,

one-way relationship -

an unrequited love. As a result, some fans attempt to cross the line

between fantasy and reality.

By the time I was 16,

I was agonising over how

it would be if I actually met Roger Taylor.

I produced a flow chart, to explore the possibilities.

If I don't meet him, there's no meaning to my life and fate.

If I do meet him and he's a bastard, my life will be crushed.

If I meet him and he's courteous, I'll feel an unfulfilled aching.

If I meet him and he's really nice, I'll be doomed to lunacy.

Then, one day, I crossed the line between fantasy and reality

and actually stalked Roger Taylor.

I had forced my family to go on holiday near Roger Taylor's house

in Cornwall. We were driving along one day, when suddenly,

I spotted him walking into the local cinema.

I ran in, scanned the room and there he was.

I sat in that cinema, staring at the back of Roger Taylor's head,

for two hours.

The film finished.

I rushed outside and I pounced on him.

When he realised he wasn't being mugged,

he signed my cinema ticket. And that was it -

Roger Taylor knew I existed.

And it's this desire to turn fantasy into reality,

that can lead some fans into even more extreme behaviour.

I got sent somebody's pubic hair in the post, one time,

which was fairly awful!

They were grey!

A lovely man, I won't mention his name,

had his leg amputated to my music

and had had an album cover printed on one of his false legs.

People followed me around. I mean, Toyah Wilcox told me

she followed me around

in a store in Birmingham.

I once had a fan send me

a map of America, with lots of pictures and things

and pictures of bombs and stuff like that, with...

annotated with, "President will be here and I will kill him."

This gun, this bridge, etc, with lots of conspiracy theories.

I was just like, "What the fuck is this?!"

In the 1980s, the media, through which fans engaged

with their favourite artists, was changing rapidly.

I've come to see former colleague and Smash Hits editor,

Mark Ellen, who witnessed this change.

How was being a fan in the '80s

different from being a fan in the '70s, do you think?

Well, the first major difference, I think, was video, actually,

because in the '70s, broadly, people tended to find tracks

and then apply them to the soundtrack of their own lives.

In the '80s, people tended to watch miniature movies on television sets.

Image was absolutely crucial.

# There's a lovin' in your eyes all the way... #

In this new age, where music video and image were king,

one man quickly established himself as a quintessential '80s icon.

# I'm a man without conviction

# I'm a man... #

Boy George was the absolute turning point,

in terms of '80s pop music and the way people looked.

The look was so precise, it was so extravagant.

You could imitate it. You could go out and buy the hats,

you could wear a dress, wear make-up.

As a bloke, it was guaranteed to annoy your parents.

Teenagers really, really fell in love with it and were devoted to him

and thought he was representing some deity!

A number of fans turned up for the Boy George lookalike contest,

including this young fan.

How long does it take you?

-She does all the plaits herself.

-Yeah, half an hour to do my plaits.

Boy George inspired an army of lookalikes,

but one fan would take his desire to look like his idol a step further.

# Give me time

# To realise my crime

# Let me love and steal... #

I've always been a huge fan of Boy George.

He was, sort of, out there and he has such a strong image.

And such an amazing image.

I was in a cabaret group

and we would impersonate these people on stage.

And then, sort of, Boy George came along

and I, sort of, dressed up one day and then everyone said,

"Oh, God, you really look like him. You really look like him."

So I just, sort of, took that on.

# Do you really want to hurt me... #

'I was 15 years old and I went to France with the group.'

I took my Boy George stuff with me -

my Boy George hat and my Boy George wig and everything like that.

We went to St Tropez and then they said, "Oh, we want you to...

"..play here. We'll give you £1,000."

We did this one-off show.

And it was like, you know, madness. You know, it was, like, packed out.

All these people were clapping and having a laugh and thinking,

"Oh, he's amazing." Blah blah blah.

And in one paper, it said "Yes, Boy George was amazing."

But it wasn't him, it was me.

# I'm a man... #

And it was, like, "This is too risky.

"Is this fraud?"

# I'm a man who doesn't know... #

And I came back to England and it just, literally... It went mad.

It hit the headlines, you know.

It was on the cover of every single national newspaper.

And it was just...

I was just going off and I was just doing children's television

and local television and TV:AM.

But Darren's complete metamorphosis, from fan to pop icon,

began to take its toll.

HE MIMES ALONG: # There's a loving in your eyes all the way... #

'I suppose, in a way, you know, I wanted to be that sort of person.'

It was amazing, but people didn't love me or respect me for Darren.

But, you know, they just thought I was George.

# Who doesn't know... #

I was being two people. I was George and Darren.

So, I was, you know... It was like Jekyll & Hyde.

# You come and go... #

It's, sort of, very difficult, sometimes.

We are very different, as people. but it's just that image.

He has such a strong image and such an amazing image.

With music videos now beaming iconic images of pop gods

into every home,

pop stars began to feel more untouchable

and mythical than ever before.

If you were a pop fan in the mid-'80s,

fandom becomes a, kind of, religion, doesn't it?

Prince and Michael Jackson - best examples, actually -

they built these great fortresses. You know, Neverland

and Paisley Park, and you just had

a mental image of these Disney-like chateaus,

with a portcullis and moat round them that you're never going to get into.

And that really just intensified your interest in them

and intensified this idea of mystery.

SONG STARTS: The Way You Make Me Feel by Michael Jackson

# Hey, pretty baby with the high heels on

# You give me fever like I've never, ever known

# You're just a product of loveliness

# I like the groove of your walk Your talk, your dress

# I feel your fever for miles around... #

'I don't think I could imagine my life without Michael Jackson.

'Not a day goes past where I am not humming, singing or listening'

'to his music.'

# But you're the one for me...

-# The way you're making me feel

-The way you make me feel

# You really turn me on... #

'The first time I remember seeing Michael Jackson,

'I just remember being absolutely mesmerised.'

The music that he was producing was completely something else.

And then when he started dancing...

I just can't... I can't even describe it.

My mouth was on the floor!

When you are watching a man who is singing, dancing,

dressing the way he does...

..but then lives in a palace,

and having a zoo and a fairground

and doing and having everything you at that age would love to have.

And I think that was the magic that he brought.

Michael Jackson seemed such an unobtainable figure.

-# So just leave me alone

-# Leave me alone, leave me alone

# Leave me alo-o-one... #

People in need of an imposition of order on their lives,

a way of avoiding chaos, tend to believe in some higher being

that's going to take care of them.

And I think a lot of people channelled a lot of that energy

into Michael Jackson.

And somehow, he presented something fabulous and extreme and exotic.

Michael Jackson was mass-worshipped like no other '80s pop star.

And even in death, he still holds a powerful grip

on his fans' imagination.

# I'm going to make a change for once in my life... #

Songs that had so much meaning at the time, now,

because of his passing, just pull a little bit tighter.

And I remember listening to songs with my friends

and we were all in tears.

It's getting to me now.

It really choked me up.

# I'm starting with the man in the mirror

# I'm asking him to change his ways... #

And he was always the boy that didn't want to grow up

and you didn't want him to grow up.

You feel sorry for him. You really do.

Despite their idols being ultimately unknowable,

some fans still feel a deep emotional connection with them,

but others take this profound desire to connect with their idols

to the next level.

It was like being drawn into the circus.

It was like, "I want to join the circus."

I want to go where he's going and go backstage and, you know, party.

I came from Iran at the age of ten, from a war zone,

and straight to Manchester's Moss Side.

It seemed like, in this world of rock and roll,

you would be accepted for whatever, whoever you are.

It was like a utopian playground,

where anyone could be anything and no-one would care.

Rock and roll is the soundtrack to my sexual awakening and, specifically,

probably, Guns N' Roses.

I was listening to that music and the fantasies that it evoked in me

was, kind of, being out on the road with these guys

and everyone just being themselves

and the guys being quite wild, like bad boys.

So, it was like a fantasy, definitely.

I would just turn up backstage and just say to the security,

"I'm here to see the band"

and they'd be like, "Who the fuck are you?!"

"I'm the band's entertainment."

Something possessed me.

I was like, I want the whole band here now and I want to

"see you and you and I want to have a threesome with you two."

There were times when I would be with a band and then they would say,

"Oh, I'm tired." And I'd be like,

"Can you go and knock on people's hotel room doors

"and find me someone hot, with tattoos and long hair and eyeliner,

"and bring them for me, now?!" And they'd be like, "All right."

I guess I am a fan of not one specific band,

but a fan of the whole mentality -

the rebellion and the anarchy - of rock and roll.

I did live out a lot of my fantasies!

But there comes a time in most of our lives

when the fantasy of fandom inevitably begins to fade.

After I met Roger Taylor, something changed.

A certain urgency about my fanhood had been taken away.

He felt more normal.

Going to university and aware of my dwindling affections,

I wrote an entry in my diary addressed directly to Roger Taylor.

"I'm scared of losing you when I go away.

"I'm worried that my lack of privacy and time will change this somehow

"and that things will never be the same again."

And that was it, the last-ever entry in the Roger Taylor Diary.

Coming out of the teenage bubble,

I felt sad to know I was leaving something behind.

That intense devotion you only get from being a teenager

living at home,

projecting fantasies on to someone you will never truly know.

I think that, for a while, it's quite easy to drift out of being a fan,

when you have got kids, mortgages,

all sorts of other stuff to worry about.

Time just runs out

and you can't dedicate yourself to the cause as much as you could.

You're doing different things as you grow up

and real life just impinges.

I think there's almost a window of opportunity in your life,

between about the ages of about 12 and 19,

that you can ever really fall in love with an artist.

And after that, you can appreciate music,

you can find stuff that you really enjoy

but you will never again feel that frisson

of something that almost brings you to life.

What happens is that you relate to them intensely

when you are a teenager, on a personal level.

It's about who they are and how they dress

and the life they lead and how I can be like them.

I think those relationships just change.

Back in the late '80s, change was in the air once more for fans,

as the rise of underground club culture

rejected the worship of individual pop icons,

in favour of a more inclusive musical experience.

# The hands of time... #

In the heart of London,

a young DJ wanted to harness the power of this new youth movement.

What Soul II Soul were doing was integrating everybody,

bringing everybody together. Empowering ourselves.

It's about a happy face, a thumping bass for a loving race.

We're all feeling this vibe.

It was the first time

that there had been a voice which represented

the whole of our generation.

The energy was like you were on the cusp of something.

Like something's about to break out.

# Back to life

# Back to reality

# Back to the here and now, yeah... #

The majority of music that we were hearing

was either heavily influenced by American music

or was American music.

So, when Soul II Soul came onto the scene,

it was like, "Boo, boo, what was that?!"

It was like completely different.

It was about our black, British identity.

When that translated around the rest of the world

and that reverberated, it was just pretty incredible.

Soul II Soul's global hit, Back To Life,

was the moment black British youth and fan culture found its voice

and broke through into the pop mainstream for the very first time.

Well, it was important for us to show our identity,

because for many years, black Britain was a...

..sloppy second to what was happening in black America.

So, we were fighting for our identity.

"Oh, there's black English? What is that all about?

"Where did you guys come from?"

It gave us an interest in, "Where are my roots?

"What's my family's journey been?"

And it gave us permission to then present it

and show it off and be like, "This is who we are."

At the dawn of the '90s,

as club culture was creating new expressions of fanhood,

what was happening back on Planet Rock?

MUSIC: Lithium by Nirvana

While grunge music announced itself

as the sound of disaffected American youth...

..a band of misfits from Blackwood in Wales

were becoming a beacon for lost British adolescence.

I think the Manics spoke to and spoke for

maybe slightly damaged, troubled outsiders,

but bookish, intellectual ones, as well.

And the sort of people who maybe

would rather drink a bottle of vodka

and read a Penguin paperback on the war memorial,

rather than go to a party.

It was me, yeah, I was that person.

To anyone who came from a similar place to us,

and that could be anywhere, it could be Manchester,

it could be Glasgow, it could be Dundee, wherever,

they definitely felt that there was a kind of otherness to us

that just wasn't being fulfilled by anyone else.

There's something about solitude

which is not something to be afraid of.

Slash 'N' Burn by Manic Street Preachers

# You need your stars Even killers have prestige

# Access to a living you will not see

# 24-hour boredom I'm convicted instantly

# Gorgeous poverty of created needs

# Slash and burn

# Kill to live

# Kill for kicks... #

If you met a fellow Manics fan anywhere in Britain,

you instantly had a connection.

You could spot them a mile off.

You'd see them on trains in their leopard-print coats

and their eyeliner and their glitter on the way to a gig.

And you'd think straight away, "Well, I know where you're going."

There was a feeling of community. It was a community of outsiders.

And I think the best, kind of, youth culture tribes

do have that about them,

that it is a community of people who don't fit into any other bracket.

You could tell straight away, you know,

when people start turning up, kind of, looking like you,

I think that's the sign that you've tapped into something.

Androgyny definitely appealed to a lot of kids -

wearing the make-up, spray-painting our shirts,

they could really look different and be different.

You looked out into the crowd and it was a sea

of just people with the same kind of intensity as yourself.

It just felt like we were an army.

The figurehead for this army of outsiders

was band guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards.

When a rock journalist

questioned the authenticity of the Manics' music in 1991,

Richey carved the answer, "4 real", into his arm.

The Manics were sick of being laughed at.

Laughed at for being Welsh,

laughed at for being "fake punk revivalists" and all of that.

And it just all got too much

and Richey wanted to show Steve Lamacq from NME

that they did mean it,

in the most graphic, bloody and dramatic way that he could.

Did you do that for publicity?

No, just talking to a journalist afterwards,

I was talking to him for about an hour,

and at the end of that, you know,

he just basically didn't believe what we were saying

and I just cut my arm just to show him that, you know, we mean it.

Well, he definitely appealed to someone to...

to the slightly more damaged sections of society.

How did the fans react to it?

A kind of mixture of sympathy and...

..despair.

In February 1995, Richey Edwards went missing

and has never been found.

Richey Edwards is fixed now in pop culture,

in the same way that Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain are there for ever,

to be discovered by successive generations of troubled young people.

Today, music fans fuel a £33 billion a year global industry.

But almost 50 years since The Beatles disappeared

beneath the screams of Shea Stadium,

how much has fanhood really changed?

Today, the biggest pop band in the world are One Direction.

They sell out every stadium on the planet.

But seeing them live is only the tip of the iceberg.

1D's audience can share their passion

more than any other fans in history.

How important is the internet for One Direction fans?

I think the internet is very important for One Direction fans,

and for the band, as well.

Just to be able to connect with their fans all around the world.

I talk to people every day that are in Israel and London

and Argentina and all over the world.

It's a community thing.

There's just always something going on, always people to talk to.

It's like a large group of friends.

Anna and Molly are both fan-fiction writers,

an internet phenomenon

where fans create stories about their favourite pop stars,

based on their wildest imagination.

Reality has left the building.

Everything I've written and most of the stuff that I read,

it's AU, like alternate universe.

So it's not really inspired by the band.

Like, none of my characters have the same personalities

as actual members of One Direction.

You can have fan-fiction, where a fan almost writes themselves

as being part of the band.

But they can also be writing

the kind of fiction that's getting the most publicity,

which is slash fiction,

whereby you pair together two or more people of your choice

in a relationship.

And, of course, with One Direction,

the most famous example of that is the fandom around Larry Stylinson,

which is the name of the pairing

for Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles in the band.

And fans write fiction where these two are in a romantic

or sexual relationship.

There's a sense of wanting that romantic storyline,

and wanting to play out the romance with your boy band member,

seeing them in a situation where they're vulnerable

or in a situation where they're taking charge,

or in a situation where they're being tender.

It's just a way to connect with other fans

and be creative and have an outlet.

And have fun with it.

How many people read your stories?

Well, I have over a billion clicks, a billion chapter reads,

-which is a lot.

-Wow!

I have like 88.8 million at the moment, I think.

Wow!

From One Direction...

CHEERING AND SCREAMING

..right back to Beatlemania,

pop fandom has always been forged in the furnace of youth.

But for many,

being a fan is something that they never truly let go of.

And so, half a lifetime later, they gather at reunion gigs,

where band and fan commune

and relive the magic of that first rush of blood to the head.

You want to go back to a place and time.

You want them to be the 25-year-old that you saw on stage.

And you want to be the 12-year-old who was in the audience.

It's easy to think you might have been happier then,

and that life was less complicated.

I've been doing this for 50 odd years, right,

and you find yourself with people just feeling young again.

There's nothing nicer than coming to a gig

and then afterwards you come out and you can go,

"Hello, Lol!" "Oh, crikey, how are you?"

You know, and you know the people

and you realise that you've got a bit of responsibility,

because they really do care about the music

and they care about everything that you do.

# Bye bye, baby

-# Baby, goodbye

-# Bye, baby... #

We're really grateful that the fans have stayed the course.

They all have this cherished memory of when I was their idol

and all the things that happened in their life,

during those important years.

And so, we can all have fun together and go back,

Doctor Who-style, and do that.

I'm happy doing it. That's the good thing about it.

I mean, not doing it because,

"Oh, my God, I've got to go and sing Bye Baby again."

I'm really pleased to go out there and be singing Bye Bye Baby.

I've been a part of something that's meant so much

to quite a lot of people. So, it's worth

fighting for, it's worth sticking at it, Les, you know?

You can do good in this world.

The irony of pop music is that it's often dismissed

as being the most ephemeral, trivial and temporary of art forms.

It turns out that it's not. It's the most enduring.

It turns out that cheap music

is actually the thing that stays with you for life.

Because being a fan involves

some of the most intense human emotions and rituals,

it's a love that can never truly die.

This is a special place for Queen fans -

the house Freddie Mercury spent his last days.

Like thousands of fans before and since,

I myself made a pilgrimage here as a young girl.

From Jim Morrison's tombstone mourners,

to the ever-growing cult of Elvis, fans' devotion has a power to far

outlast the bands they love. The ability to become truly obsessed

with a musician has never truly left me, either.

And in a way, I always feel like it's a return

to the best part of yourself -

the pure, intense, unadulterated devotion of being a fan.

# Somebody to lo-o-ove...

# Find me

# Somebody to love

# Find me

-# Some...

-# Somebody to love

-# Some...

-# Find me

# Somebody to love

# Can you love me?

# Can you love me?

# O-o-o-o-o-oh # CHEERING AND APPLAUSE