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From StarTwo

Review by DAPHNE LEE

POP BABYLON
By Imogen Edwards-Jones
Publisher: Bantam Press, 310 pages
(ISBN:978-0593060308)

I DON'T know about you, but I really like watching the E! Entertainment channel  and sniggering over programmes like MTV Cribs, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane and Meet the Kardashians. It's just so much mindless fun watching how the rich, famous and shameless live their lives.That's why Pop Babylon is such a delicious read.

It's the latest in Imogen Edwards-Jones' series of Babylon books - novels that claim to give us a sneak peak at what truly goes on behind the scenes of various industries. So far she has covered fashion, travel, hospitality and, with Pop Babylon, music.

The books all have an anonymous co-author, supposedly some insider of whichever industry is being exposed. In the Prologue to Pop Babylon, Edwards-Jones declares that the contents of the books are based on true events, related to her by a colective "Anonymous" - "a collection of some of the finest and most successful managers, song-writers, pop stars and other souls in the music business. It's up to you to decide whether or not to believe what's revealed, but it's much better if you do. There's little point in a book like this if it's fiction.

It would be just as entertaining, for some, to read lists of shocking facts about pop stars, but here you get the dirt embedded in a story about the rise and rise of a five-member boy band, called, quite literally, Band of Five. Also, to avoid law suits, I suppose some of the "facts" have to be attributed to fictional characters. The story is told from the point of view of their manager, co-owner of The One Management, a company that's not making as much money as it used to in the 90s.

Mr M (who remains nameless throughout the book) and his partner, Paul, usually manage rock acts and singer-songwriters, but when one of its more successful clients jumps ship, the pair decide to try their luck creating and managing a boy band. Such a task is completely new to them - which means that the description of the process, step by step and in minute detail, is quite naturally incorporated into the story. Still, it doesn't sound entirely natural when Mr M breaks off every now and then to tell the reader, at length, what's happening and relate an anecdote or five to illustrate his point.

Nevertheless, the anecdotes are usually juicy and always amusing. It's oddly gratifying yet distressing to find out just how exploited the average pop act is by its managers and record company. The glitz and glamour are not real, just part of the image being created and projected; just the spin that gets the act noticed and the product (the music) sold. You think of all the manufactured bands you've known and start to feel kind of sorry for them. At the same time you might also despise their desperation for fame and fortune.

The desire to succeed is so strong that there doesn't seem to be a limit to the depths that people will sink to to secure a place at the top - or even just on one of the rungs of the ladder to success. Lies are told, people are manipulated, tantrums are thrown, sex and drugs are offered as payment, bribes and lures. By the end of the book, I wondered what sort of dirty laundry even a relatively straightlaced musician like Norah Jones has to hide.

It's certainly mind-boggling to read about the sort of bad behaviour that goes on. For example, a member of Blue once ordered a drink while peeing against a bar! Then there's the crazy demands that celebrities make. The story that stands out is how Axl Rose has someone blow dry his testicles between songs at concerts - to prevent chaffing. It's so preposterous that it must be true.

One can't help thinking of bands like Take That, Boyzone and N'Sync when following Band of Five through their first year, from the audition through the promotional "whoring" exercises, including touring schools, setting up a My Scene page and flirting with the punters at a gay club, to chart success, personality clashes within the band, fights with management and, finally, the split because of "artistic differences".

Perhaps Edwards-Jones could write a book in which the band members, after pursuing solo careers that crash and burn, reunite in their 40s. One of them could injure his back trying to execute a tricky dance step. That might be one way of dishing the dirt on the NHS - Hospital Babylon anyone?