Keep On Movin’ with Five
Mere minutes before an interview with one of the most successful and iconic boy bands in history, Five, my laptop decided to cark itself, go kaput. Panicked, I tried unplugging and plugging, unplugging and plugging. The time had just turned 7:58am on a particularly chilly Thursday morning and I was severely lacking in spoons. My morning coffee hadn’t woken me up enough for such an unexpected surprise. I have been a Five fan since the young age of (ironically) 5 so I needed, for my younger self, this interview to go perfectly.
After 25 years apart, Five are well and truly back. One of the biggest and most successful boy bands in history, Five will be heading to New Zealand next year in May to play their highly-anticipated Keep On Movin’ tour at The Trust Arena in Auckland.
Formed in 1997 by Heart Management and signed up to Simon Cowell, the lads went on to sell more than 20 million records worldwide, with several of their albums and singles reaching multi-platinum and gold status. ‘If Ya Gettin’ Down’, ‘Everybody Get Up’ and ‘When the Lights Go Out’, amongst many, many others, are certified 90’s bangers. Also, they are the only UK act to hit the Top 10 with all their 11 singles, including three UK number 1 hits and won their first BRIT award in 2000 for ‘Best British Pop Act’.
Alas, when Five’s faces appeared on the Zoom screen, so did mine. There was Jason ‘J’ Brown, Ritchie Neville, Sean Conlon, Scott Robinson and Abz Love—the lads. The band sat squished together, knee-to-knee, in what looked like a public house. Each one was holding some type of beverage. The boys were on it.
We’ve got all of Five here! How’s it going, lads?
JASON BROWN: We’re a little bit drunk, dude! It’s late at night and we’re all on good f**king form.
RITCHIE NEVILLE: You’re in the future, right? Down in New Zealand? You know what the future holds!
I guess so! How excited are you to get down to New Zealand with your tour next year? To come into the future?
JB: I am legitimately surprised that people still want to come and see us. People on the other side of the world will be filling arenas and big theatres and actually pay their hard-earned money. It’s been 25 years since we actually finished performing together. It’s crazy, dude. We were stoked when the tour grew to 12 dates. Then we got to 25 dates. Then Australia and New Zealand jumped onboard and were like: ‘g’day, f**kin’ come over here!’
SEAN CONLON: And it’s gonna be amazing to see people (like yourself) who have been lifelong fans. To have that love from way-back-when is simply brilliant.
RN: We didn’t quite understand back-in-the-day how much we’d affected people’s lives. We’d never wrapped our head around how big we really were! A quarter century later and still being able to fill arenas is unreal.
JB: We’d never initially intended to come over to Australia and New Zealand. It was literally the fans saying: ‘you need to bring the concert over here!’
SC: It’s just like back in the 90’s…The fans are saying what they want and we get it done.
It must feel good, right? To have so much love still…
SCOTT ROBINSON: It’s amazing. To have an idea in your head of how you’ll be perceived, you do start to panic. You’re like: ‘hang on, what if no one cares?’ To get this level of appreciation, whether it’s from the media or the fans for so long is incredible.
JB: Especially in this day and age, where everything is just so expensive, to have people putting their hands in their pockets to see us, we are going to make it as worthwhile as we possibly can.
SC: We’ve been looking into the setlist, and mate it’s looking pretty good.
ABZ LOVE: [Jason] even said that he’d give £50 to everyone who comes along to the show.
JB: Yeah right! And before I agreed to that, Abz promised that he’d breakdance naked onstage!
AL: Expect some fireworks on the night!
All your songs are certified hits, but what songs of yours would you say are your go-to to get the crowd moving? Got any of these banger tunes tucked away that you’re going to whip-out at your show?
RN: Luckily we’ve got a few of those!
JB: I’m going to go with ‘Satisfied’.
SR: I’m going to say ‘Closer to Me’. It’s a brilliant song and was sorta where we left off. It’s got a lot of emotion attached to it.
RN: I reckon these two are having out-of-body experiences. When we’re onstage and we want to drop a banger and see the crowd go loopy, I’ve gotta say: ‘If Ya Getting Down’…
AL: Ah! Richie stole mine!
SC: Today I’m going to say ‘Invincible’…
Have you guys ever played shows in New Zealand?
JB: Yeah, we’ve played NZ. All the way back in the day, we brought our first world tour in 2000.
RN: I think then we played both islands. We played Auckland and Christchurch.
You guys gonna have a holiday whilst you’re over here after your show?
RN: Maybe…Are there any All Blacks games happening when we’re over?
Mate, I gotta be honest with you, I am the worst person to ask! I’m part of the 1 percentile of New Zealanders who can’t stand rugby!
SR: The Australia and New Zealand leg of the Keep On Movin’ tour actually finishes in Auckland…
AL: So that surely means a party at Jamie’s house! Woohoo!
Of course! You can crash on my sofa. Obviously, you’ve got your fans and you’re legends, but what was the moment when you guys actually came together again and decided to get Five back together?
RN: It was a very organic process, really. Life had gone on. Time had happened. We realised that it had been so long since we were all in the same room together. It turned into a personal thing, on a personal level. We did that and it was a genuinely beautiful experience. An offer then came in for the UK and Ireland tour. We thought: why not? Starting off all those years ago so young, it had such an effect on our mental health and personal lives. It was just such a beautiful thing to come full-circle on our terms and reignite the process and we aim to just make people happy.
SC: The band had been knocking around the centre of our collective lives…
JB: I agree. The band had been the overarching thing that had connected us all. Since 1997 we’re had this bond that has been with us through our collective experiences. I hope I can say, on behalf of all of us, Five is one of the most important things in our existence. We would have been bereft for the rest of our lives if this reuniting hadn’t happened.
AL: We were meant to do this. We were always gonna get back together. We just didn’t know it at the time.
Do you think Five will stand the test of time?
RN: When the band ended, we didn’t know quite what we’d done. As time has gone on, we’re still being played on the radio. Growing up, our parents were listening to The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, A-Ha, and they became these monoliths. We’ve been able to realise that our band did that too.
AL: Just as long as the music doesn’t turn too AI and still has human in it.
As creatives, as artists, are you guys worried about the whole AI thing?
SC: Yeah, I reckon people are going to get scared when the budgets run out. They’ll just turn to AI. But I really think that when people yearn to get touched by music, they turn to the artist.
RN: I wouldn’t say I lie awake thinking about it. But it’s going so quickly, this tech world, that I do wonder about producers and film. That’s going to be the next big thing.
AL: You do realise it stands for ‘Abs Intelligence’? See, I’m a robot! I’m from the future.
RN: Is that why you’ve got no penis? Robots don’t have genitalia…
Do you guys reckon this tour will reignite the past Five? Can we expect to see you guys back together a lot more now?
SC: We have absolutely no idea! In the 90’s we were winging it, and we’re pretty much winging it now.
SR: In our minds we don’t need a plan!