The Boyzone story started with a farcical debut on The Late Late Show in 1993 – Gay Byrne was for once lost for words – and would swerve into tragedy with the sudden death of Stephen Gately, in 2009, at the age of 33.
But it is also a tale that ended not with a bang but a whimper, with the post-Gately version of the band bowing out in 2019 with an underwhelming farewell tour that was overshadowed by an estrangement between Mikey Graham and Keith Duffy.
Aptly for a group who once performed with the Bee Gees, it’s a pop tragedy – and Boyzone’s surviving members do not hold back in a bruisingly bingeable new three-part documentary that makes life on the frontline of pop seem like a one-way ticket to the seventh circle of hell.
In the run-up to Boyzone: No Matter What (Sky Documentaries, Sunday, 9pm), Ronan Keating expressed the fear that he “doesn’t come across particularly well at some points”. He refers to the ambition that saw him ditch his bandmates and have a go at a solo career in the early 2000s.
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But if there is a villain it is surely Louis Walsh, who sought to capitalise on the popularity of Take That by assembling an Irish version, hiring and firing members until he achieved the optimum line-up. For Walsh, Boyzone required attention – constant tabloid exposure – to thrive, and he continues to cling to the belief that all publicity is positive.
This is painfully demonstrated in the second episode, which focuses on a British tabloid’s public outing of Gately. Keating and his bandmates blink back tears as they recall the singer’s fear that being forced from the closet would end his career. But Walsh, presented with the Sun splash in which Gately “confessed” that he was gay, can see only the upside. “World exclusive! Wow, I love,” he says, leafing through the newspaper. “He got the front page!”
No Matter What is the latest documentary to explore the dark side of the boy-band era. Netflix’s Dirty Pop told the story of Lou Pearlman, the manager of Backstreet Boys and Nsync – a scam artist accused of swindling his acts out of millions. An equally bleak picture was painted by the BBC’s Boy Bands Forever, last November, in which members of Take That and East 17 shared horror stories.
The other context is, of course, the death, in October, of One Direction’s Liam Payne – one more young person chewed up and spat out by the music business. Just how cruel that industry can be is made horribly clear in No Matter What’s interviews with Keating, Duffy, Shane Lynch and Graham – who is not on speaking terms with his bandmates and declined to meet them for an on-camera drink.
The rot set in early for Graham, a talented musician who felt marginalised when Walsh decided that Keating and Gately would front Boyzone. “That was the beginning of a hard struggle. My confidence about music fell through the floor. It was heartbreaking, to be honest.”
Walsh cuts an unapologetic figure. He admits to feeding the tabloids fake stories about Boyzone – including a near-death plane crash in Australia that never happened. He shrugs. That was his job. “I never felt guilty about it. No way. I was promoting them. I’d do it all again. I’d do it even more now,” he says.
The Svengali was a dangerous enemy. When Keating decided to take charge of his solo career and let Walsh know that the manager was surplus to requirements, Walsh got his own back by planting negative stories about Keating in the press. “He knew how to hurt me,” Keating says. “Vicious, bitchy, horrible things.”
If Walsh is the pantomime bad guy, then the monsters in this story are the UK tabloid journalists who seized on Gately’s death from a heart defect to spread innuendos about the artist and imply that his “homosexual lifestyle” – whatever that is – might have contributed.
“He was the last man to have a hedonistic lifestyle,” his sister, Michelle, says. “My mother found two men at the end of her bed taking pictures. They basically broke into our house. ”
Boyzone have been through a lot, though you wonder if their early success hasn’t spoiled them a little and if they might be better focusing on the positives rather than wallowing in the negatives. Unlike many young artists, they don’t appear to have been ripped off and seem soundly placed financially. One of Duffy’s complaints is that because Walsh was managing both Boyzone and Westlife, the latter did not pay a “buy-on” fee when supporting Boyzone in 1999 – a blow, no doubt, but hardly an injustice for the ages.
Much of what they complain about – the clashing egos, the struggles of maintaining a long-term career – is hard-wired into the music business. And is Keating going too far in beating himself up about wanting that solo career – the same dream that drove a wedge between Justin Timberlake, Robbie Williams and Harry Styles and their bandmates?
That question is left to the viewer to answer – but this flensing three-hour documentary makes it horribly obvious that Boyzone believe they have been through the wars and have little compunction about baring their emotional scars. It’s gripping, gruelling stuff – a pop pile-up that you can’t look away from.
