CityLife

Main event: JLS

JLS

Aston Merrygold tells Sarah Walters that Brit Award contenders JLS have been putting everything into their rehearsals.

HOW many chambermaids does it take to bring breakfast for a member of JLS? Four apparently, confesses a confused Aston Merrygold when he hooks up with CityLife at a hotel in Liverpool.

It’s probably the most well escorted breakfast trolley in the city, but this tale of room service par excellence is also a microcosm of the mass hysteria that now follows the group’s somersaulting lead singer and his JLS cohorts – Aston’s muscly flatmate Marvin Humes, Jonathan ‘JB’ Gill and Oritsé (pronounced: Or-eet-chay) Williams – around.

Last Christmas in Manchester, JLS mania reached its peak when traffic gridlocked around the Trafford Centre after the boys were brought in to switch on the shopping precinct’s festive lights (a day Aston now refers to as a ‘good scary moment’).

Then, in Birmingham, 60 people were injured after a crowd surge caused a barrier to collapse during the group’s performance, leading organisers to stop the event, and in London a free show left four fans in hospital and around 30 needing medical attention.

The madness continues. “While we’re on tour, it’s my birthday,” says Aston, who turns 22 next week, “and all I’ve got on Twitter is messages saying, ‘I’ve bought you a present’. And I’m thinking, ‘This is a lot of messages!’.

“Me and Marvin live in a three bedroom place and the third bedroom is full of Teddies and cards and just endless amounts of stuff that they give us. It’s just so amazing. We walk in there and still get goosebumps.”

Since taking the runner-up position on X Factor in 2008 to Ms Waterworks herself, Alexandra Burke, JLS have gone on to become one of the biggest pop acts in the UK.

Their eponymous debut album is currently triple-platinum (outselling Burke’s album by around two to one), their first two singles shot straight to No 1, and they’ve already collected two MOBOs. Next week, they look likely to clean up at the Brit Awards, where they’re nominated for a hat-trick of gongs and are scheduled to perform.

Internet chat-rooms are rammed with girls swooning over them and there’s even an Aston Merrygold Appreciation Society on Facebook (news to Aston: “Oh, really?” he laughs, shyly. “That feels... erm... quite... OK.”).

But there is a serious side to all this frenzy. Aston admits that such crazy scenes have had an effect on his normally gregarious nature, and that the gifts aren’t always cuddly.

Ambitious

“My friends have asked me, ‘Have you lost some confidence?’ I said, ‘Well yeah, cos I’m scared now of getting rugby tackled or something’.

“When you’re on stage and singing and dancing and stuff the confidence is flowing, you’re in your element, but outside of that I’ve just got a bit quieter than I used to be. 

“I mean, people send you boxes and stuff with your face on,” he grimaces. “As soon as we came out of the show, my mum’s friend made JLS baubles and I got home and they were hanging on my mum’s tree.

“I was like, ‘Oh my… wow!… cough…’. My mum’s still got those. I got some of my family for mine, which was nice.”

Fame isn’t all weird gifts and stampedes, though. Instead, JLS is the realised dream of an ambitious (rather than precocious) kid who always felt that his love of football, singing and dancing would earn him fame.

On a small scale it did – Aston appeared on Stars In Their Eyes Kids as Michael Jackson and on CiTV’s Fun Song Factory. They were high profile slots, but they were hard earned.

“There’s a number of times where I sat in a room with my mum and was like, ‘I don’t wanna do this any more’,” he remembers. “Definitely you go through those times when you can only take so many ‘no’s. 

“Michael Jackson gave me a lot of confidence, not so much because of his music or the way he performed, but I liked the way he could stand there for five minutes and take his glasses off and everyone would scream.

“That kind of stuff makes you go, ‘Wow! That’s a different kind of entertainment. No one else can do that’. It was a mixture of him and those nu-skool guys – Justin Timberlake, Usher – that made me wanna go for it.”

Aston remembers watching the scenes that now greet JLS when he went to see JT aged 13, and fancying a slice of that pie.

But being in a group was never on the checklist. When it finally happened and the boys found themselves together, discovering how their voices fitted by singing old Boys To Men songs, Aston says he knew it would be his ticket.

'Hit every angle'

The real breakthrough moment, of course, came in the shape of an X Factor entry form, but it was a remarkable stroke of luck that got them on the show.

Having missed the deadline for applications, the group asked around their industry contacts for a way in – eventually it came, in the shape of a friend with a form he could no longer use because of other commitments.

The story of their assent from auditionees to near winners is well told, but Aston says he hopes it’s an association that sticks with them throughout their career.

“People ask a lot, ‘Is it a bad thing that you’re associated with X Factor?’ I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to be associated with the biggest show in the world.

“Simon Cowell is a genius. He’s trying to find talent for everyone and giving the public the choice to pick that talent and get records released by the people they wanna hear.

“The public put us where we are, so hopefully X Factor will stick around for years to come. It’s just creating great talent: Leona, Alexandra Burke, Shane Ward, everyone that’s come out of the show are still doing fantastic. It’s a great way to start your career.”

One thing X Factor seems to have instilled in them is a serious work ethic. Tomorrow, the group hit the Apollo for the first of two theatre shows in the city (the next is on February 22).

But it prefaces a massive arena tour at the end of the year, stopping at the M.E.N Arena on December 16 and 20.

Aston promises quite a show. “There’s something for everyone. If you appreciate dance, there’s a lot of dance, if you appreciate music, there’s a lot of music, and we’ve got the DJ.

“We’re just trying to hit every angle. As hard as it is and as tired as we are when we come off stage, we’re still smiling and thinking, ‘You know what, we did a good job’. And if something didn’t go right, we come in early and we fix it.

“We’re always getting told to put the brakes on. We’ll say, ‘Why don’t we do this and jump over this and flip across this?’, and they’re like, ‘No guys, you can’t move and sing at the same time. You don’t wanna hurt yourselves’.

“For this show, there was a couple of things added at the last minute – set wise and dance routine wise – and it’s fine, we just think, ‘Let’s do it’. People have paid for a show. I know you might say is it too much, but then again, if I’m watching it I want to see as much as possible.

“There are two layers to the stage and we’re told by the stage manager and choreographer they’d advise us not to flip off one stage level onto the other, and it’s just like, ‘Oh it’s fine – it’s fine, I’ll do it’. I’ve got that mentality that, if I was watching it, I’d want someone to do it.

Tribute

“We’re here now, there’s no point in doing it half-hearted. If you do hurt yourself, you hurt yourself. And I have. Yesterday, in the dress rehearsal, I fell doing a flip and I landed awkwardly but it is just because the adrenalin is still going you keep going.”

‘You old pro,’ pokes CityLife. Aston laughs. “I woke up this morning and there’s a bruise or whatever. But you just do it.”

With the recent departure of the group’s biggest musical and movement hero, can we expect a Michael Jackson tribute in the set?

Aston lets out a squeaking noise that suggests he’s been rumbled. “Oh, well, there might be one or two,” he admits through nervous laughter. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Before those shows, though, he’s got something to say to the guys: if you’re going, don’t be scared to come down the front – it’s not all screaming teenage girls.

“The dancing brings in the guys. There were a lot of guys in the audience yesterday enjoying it,” enthuses Aston.

“That’s when you feel that this is working. Everyone says, ‘You get a group of lads and the girls are gonna like them anyway’, but we wanna put a show on for anyone.

“It’s literally from the nans to the mums to the cousins – they’re all there.

“As much as we obviously love the female attention (Ed: cue embarrassed blushes and giggles), it’s great to hear that young boys wanna go to dance class.

“My little brother, Kayne, he’s 13 and he won a dance championship.

“He gets enough girls as it is without telling anyone he’s got a brother in JLS – he don’t need no more help.”

JLS play the Apollo on February 6 and February 22 and the MEN Arena on December 16 and 20, 2010. Apollo tickets are SOLD OUT, tickets for the M.E.N Arena are £25.50-£32.