American Idol

by Richard Rushfield

  But by the end of the 1990s, he had begun to knock up against the ceiling for an A&R man. Whether he sensed it or not, he had reached the summit of a recording industry that itself was standing on a precipice. In the coming years, those who did not embrace new formulas to reach the public, who held on to the traditional models and the traditional record execs’ need for “cool” over commercialism, were about to be pushed off this cliff, a fall from which few would survive.

  Simon Fuller wasn’t the only one watching Popstars and seeing its immense success and the huge possibilities this hinted at. Cowell, with his history of marrying television and music, also sat watching, pondering the possibilities.

  Ironically, turning down the offer to become a judge on Popstars would be the deciding factor that changed everything for him. “I started to regret it about three or four weeks later because I just had a feeling that this show sounded like it had all the makings of a hit. And then, when I came back from holiday, I saw one episode and I remember my stomach dropping when I watched it because I thought, this is great TV and whoever ends up as the group, they are going to sell a ton of records, which is exactly what happened. And that was the motivation to say, ‘I can’t just sit there and allow this to happen.’ ”

  As it turned out, this new world was about to come calling for Simon Cowell.

  “Simon has been a friend of mine forever,” recalls Simon Fuller of the decision to offer the Lythgoe seat to Cowell. “We both love music. We’re both entrepreneurs. So when it came to me finessing this show, there were two things I needed. One was a record company, because I was a management company, to offer the prize and to drive the show. Then also a kind of partner in crime, someone who could work with me, who knew artists, who could be on the panel.” The panel, as Fuller saw it, would reconstruct the forces behind an artist’s career, including a manager and a record exec. As he had when the subject came up earlier, Fuller declined to appear on camera himself, so he selected one Nicki Chapman, an employee from his firm named to fill the manager’s chair. Cowell, he imagined, could fill the record executive’s slot. Furthermore, from the first he saw the on-air executive character as the person who would actually oversee the winners’ careers.

  “So I called Simon up and I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea. I need a partner in crime here. I think you could be amazing,’ because he’s charismatic. He’s funny. He had all the things that I imagined.

  Cowell was receptive. “ ‘Yes. I want to do the exact same kind of show. I’ve got my vision.’ So he was on the same page. We were very much two peas in a pod. It was the perfect combination. Simon could provide the record company. He worked with BMG at the time. He’d be on the panel and my idea would come to fruition and we’d go conquer the world. Nigel, who produced and started Popstars, now worked for me and spearheaded the production. It worked better than a dream. It was like bang and off we went.”

  To that end, Fuller and Cowell agreed that the Pop Idol winners would be managed by 19, while Cowell and BMG would put out their albums. Cowell’s motivation was simple. “My real interest at that point was having the acts on my label,” he said. “It was nothing more than that. It wasn’t thinking, Great I’m going to be on TV now. It was, I will at least have some artists on my record label.”

  On February 13, 2001, the two now partners in crime went back to meet with Pearson, the U.K. production arm of FremantleMedia. Having limited experience in TV production, Fuller felt he needed a team with more experience putting the show together, expertise for which FremantleMedia received a one-third ownership stake in the Goliath-to-be, a deal that Fuller now calls “the biggest Christmas present they’ll ever have, ever, ever, ever.”

  “Gone with the Wind” is how the Fremantle executive headed his notes from that pitch meeting, since printed in the Guardian. The epic scope of an Idol season might have come as a shock to viewers, but to the partners in crime, off and running, this was already to be no normal talent hunt. “Never before have 50,000 people auditioned,” the notes continue. “Prize money. A huge life.” The notes show the basic elements that became Idol all in place from this early meeting: the multidisciplinary judging panel, the connections with an active media covering the competition (going as far as to suggest a Sun editor serve on the panel), and the role of public voting.

  FremantleMedia wasted little time buying into the concept. They quickly got on board, fleshed it out, and pitched the show to both the BBC and ITV (the United Kingdom’s two major networks), ultimately finding a home on the latter. “I’ve never pitched a TV show in my life. But I thought God, this is easy. Literally two minutes in [Claudia Rosencrantz] bought it.” Within seven months of that meeting, Pop Idol would make its debut on the British airwaves.

  “Popstars was a big hit,” Fuller remembers. “It was a big hit show. So everyone in the music space was like, ‘Shit. These shows work.’ I was so fast on the mark because I’d already had it worked out and so the whole industry was thinking. . . . It’s not so rare that I was ahead of the curve, but I was ready to go.”

  Chapter 4

  POP GOES THE IDOL

  In the fall of 2001, as the United Kingdom mourned the attacks on New York and Washington, and braced itself for the fallout to come, the television viewers of Great Britain began to embrace a new form of diversion. Angry, belligerent, fearless—the star of the newly debuted Pop Idol was being heralded as the nation’s much needed truth-teller. He is “brutally frank in the show, which could eclipse the success of Popstars,” wrote the Daily Record.

  Pete Waterman—the sixty-something songwriter/recorder producer dubbed “Slaughterman” by the media—instantly became the breakout star of Pop Idol. Singled out as the worthy successor of Nasty Nigel, Waterman gave brutally honest rebukes to the untalented which were winning him legions of fans. “I’m not being rude,” he told one, “but you have the worst voice I’ve ever heard in my life.” “So what part of ‘You ain’t got no talent’ would you like explaining any more of that?” he asked another dumbfounded contestant in his garbled syntax.

  “Pete was always there to be the bad guy,” recalls Cowell. “Pete was my mentor. . . . And he’s got a big mouth. And I thought, this is great. He can soak up everything and I’ll just sit beside him.”

  Despite the interest sparked by Waterman’s barbs, the show was far from a hit. While the truth-telling bit caught the public eye, Pop Idol’s mix of frothy production, over-the-top singing contest, and reality TV seemed out of step with the somber spirit of the moment. More than one reviewer predicted its early disappearance, writing it off as just another one of entertainment’s many victims of bad timing. “Pop Idol has failed to capture the nation’s imagination,” wrote a critic in the Guardian. “ITV executives will probably blame September 11 for what has—or rather, has not—happened, and claim that water cooler conversation is distracted by more serious affairs. It’s a pity such a handy excuse is available, as it may obscure an interesting discovery. Contrary to all TV’s calculations, it appears that there is, after all, a limit to how much nastiness we can take.”

  A decade later it’s a limit we’re still seeking.

  Launching Pop Idol was a gigantic task. For one, there was a need to demonstrate that the show was different from its predecessor of just six months, that—in the word that seemed to come up frequently at the time—it was epic. At Pop Idol’s very core was the idea that to find a true superstar would require a search on a massive scale.

  Set designer Andy Walmsley recalls crafting a stage that went beyond the normal cheesy setting for a television contest. “I wanted the set to resemble the rock-and-roll touring sets typically seen at Rolling Stones or U2 concerts. That style was very commonplace in an arena setting but not on network TV, so I used a lot of aluminum scaffolding with a dozen or so towers connected together via gantries that were more reminiscent of an oil rig than a glitzy talent competition.”

  Walmsley’s Pop Idol design was also the first to “extensively use video wal
ls which were haphazardly scattered all over the set. Now, of course, the use of video screens on sets is in fact overdone, but at the time the sheer volume of screens I used was completely new and it made the set stand out as something different. It worked for the show because we were trying to be a very young contemporary pop show, not a Star Search–type, safe, middle-of-the-road show.”

  For Cowell, the preparations for Pop Idol were also an introduction to a whole new world of television production. “When we first started, we spent I think ten, eleven weeks sitting in five-hour development meetings going through this show. Really working on this format. I loved it. That was my favorite part. The whole time, the ideas. It was a really exciting time.”

  A comedy duo called Ant and Dec (short for Anthony “Ant” McPartlin and Declan “Dec” Donnelly) was hired as the show’s hosts, a glib pair who had been performing as a stand-up comedy duo since they were fourteen. Filling out the panel with Cowell and Waterman were Nicki Chapman and Neil “Dr.” Fox, a radio DJ.

  Pop Idol premiered on October 13, 2001, with an audition episode featuring the now familiar mix of diamonds in the rough and the painfully misguided. Apart from the titters set off by Waterman’s first cruel dismissals, the buzz around Idol’s early weeks focused on a character made famous on another show. When he had appeared months earlier on Pop Stars, Scottish singer Darius Danesh had become the nation’s favorite contestant you love to hate. With a smarmy goatee, ponytail, and a stratospheric level of self-confidence, Darius had become the United Kingdom’s leading subject of water cooler conversation when he performed a jaw-dropping version of Britney Spears’s “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.” His reputation only continued to grow when he publicly expressed outrage and contempt for his dismissal that followed. The return of Darius to the airwaves to audition for Pop Idol gave his new home an initial burst of publicity. “He’s back—and he is still as cringeworthy,” proclaimed the Scottish Daily Record.

  While the early audiences were merely average by British standards, the groundswell was quietly beginning. Beyond the Darius spectacle, another singer caught the public’s eye in that first audition episode, one Gareth Gates. The fantastically cute seventeen-year-old suffered from a lifelong stammer, rendering him barely able to squeak out his name. When he sang, however, breaking into Westlife’s “Flying Without Wings,” the stammer magically vanished. “You sing brilliantly,” Waterman gushed. Sensing the power of a storyline in this medium, even Cowell congratulated him: “What you’ve done today is unbelievably brave.” The draw of Gates’s teenage good looks, his obstacle-beating backstory, and the discovery of a raw, unknown preternatural talent took hold almost immediately. Gareth fan clubs sprang up around the nation and stutterers support groups announced their backing of the young singer.

  What would become Idol’s showcase moment, when the hopefuls submit themselves to the judgment of the professionals, took a bit of working out. Cowell recalls of the first audition shoot, “We hadn’t really thought about how the audition process was going to work and we sat down and I asked Nigel, ‘How do you want to do it?’ Initially he wanted the contestants to sing, leave the room, and we’d deliberate and then they’d be invited back into the room. I think I remember saying to Pete Waterman, ‘This isn’t a real audition. You’ve got to tell them, as you would in any audition.’ I’ve auditioned kids all my life and this felt wrong and we changed it to what it famously became, which is you sing in the room and you get a comment.”

  Despite these blips of interest, the ratings remained mediocre. It was not until the format turned to the semifinals that the first stirrings of the sleeping giant were seen. A staggering 1.3 million people cast votes on who would make it through to the next stage, 62 percent of them voting for Gareth Gates.

  But Gates wasn’t the only star. On November 11, just one month after the series debut, the first article about Simon Cowell appeared. “Women Fans Fall for Mr. Nasty” declared Sunday People. “The record boss is being chased by besotted women wanting to get to know him better—despite his sarcastic comments and cutting remarks to young wannabes on the hit ITV talent show. Single Simon admitted last night: ‘It’s certainly come as a surprise. I thought that by being outspoken it would create a lot of animosity but it has had the opposite effect.’ ”

  While it was Waterman’s zingers that attracted the greatest notice, the public was noticing that beside him on the panel was a man whose put-downs were delivered with conviction like nothing ever before seen in the public space, a man without an ounce of self-doubt whose very being radiated certitude. Nasty Nigel’s zingers had felt more playful than deadly, coming as they did from an older, more established figure whose attitude to talent was not, in fact, terribly nasty. (“It was a performance,” he says today. “Nasty Nigel was a character more than me as a person.”) Waterman’s taunts had wafted with traces of wobbliness, touches of that most beloved of British stereotypes, the aging eccentric. But Cowell’s barbs were precision guided missiles, delivered without mercy and packing the explosive force of a thousand nuclear blasts.

  Lythgoe tells of Cowell’s finding his way into the role: “Peter Waterman was outrageous. He was fun. He was sharp. Simon had to learn certain things. I think that Simon was very nervous to start with and was a little lost with what was going on. We had words about it and I said, ‘You’ve got to take control of this show. Be the judge.’ Simon learned very quickly. He learned how to handle people and how to direct them. In the early stages, he needed inspiring. I’ve heard people say that I fed him lines but he would fight lines. If you gave him a line he would fight it or find a way of putting it into his own words. He was never going to take words.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be mean. It was just a hilarious audition,” Cowell said. “Just like I’d been doing all my life. It was like seeing my day job on TV. I thought it was hysterical.”

  Coming as they did in a time of anxiety and uncertainty, after a feckless decade that had come to a crashing halt with 9/11 and the end of the boom market, it was a voice the public longed to hear.

  By the end of Pop Idol’s second month on the air, the spotlight had shifted. “Simon Cowell is the new pantomime villain of the music industry,” wrote the Daily Telegraph. “As the most outspoken judge in ITV’s Pop Idol program, Sarcastic Simon is the dasher of dreams, reducing young hopefuls to tears with his blunt assessments of their talents. ‘Are you serious? You can’t sing, you can’t dance,’ he witheringly informs teenage wannabes who have just put on the performance of a lifetime.

  “The forty-two-year-old’s credentials for deciding who has got what it takes are based on past successes with such musical talents as the Teletubbies, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Zig & Zag, Robson and Jerome, and boy bands Five and Westlife. While none of his signings are likely to collect the Mercury Prize for their artistic contribution to music, over ten years Cowell has achieved sales above 25 million albums and scored more than seventy Top 30 records, including fifteen number one singles. ‘I’m paid based purely on the profits I make,’ Cowell candidly admits.”

  Mr. Nasty had become a star who, for the first time in his career, had a public image to consider. And consider it he would. Cowell claimed that he had gone on the show just to secure talent for his label; nevertheless, once he stepped onto that center stage, he never looked back.

  If ever a person could be prepared for fame and all that came with it, it was Simon Cowell. Perhaps unique among the world’s mega-stars, he has not shown one moment of regret since becoming an internationally known figure. Having made stars, dated them, lived with them, and grown up around them, he was intimately aware of all that came with celebrity. For twenty years, Simon Cowell had been involved in every aspect of the shadowy business of creating stars, from spotting the talent, to finding the right material, to selecting the moment to hit the marketplace, to overseeing careers. He had seen how the magical alchemy could transform people into stars, and he had seen how it could go wrong.

  In the
modern media age, no single person has stepped from the role of star maker into the role of star on anything close to this scale. No entertainment executive has ever become as renowned a star as Simon Cowell would. Cowell gave all signs of enjoying the role change. Asked by the Guardian whether he was surprised by all the attention he was receiving, Cowell answered, “ ‘Not in the slightest.’ He runs a loving hand through his hair. ‘When you’re hot, you’re hot.’ ”

  As his public profile increased, Cowell took action to make sure that the story the public would hear would be the one he wanted told. In January, Cowell engaged the services of one Max Clifford, a publicist and image consultant known for defending the good names of some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial figures, including Mohamed Fayed, David Copperfield, and internationally reviled Big Brother star Jade Goody. An article in PR Week announcing the hiring noted that “Clifford’s first job after being contacted by Cowell was to quash untrue allegations in the tabloids about Cowell’s links with a certain fallen pop promoter and sex offender,” a clear reference to Cowell’s friend and mentor Jonathan King, at the time serving the first year of his prison sentence. Asked in another interview with the Guardian why he hired Clifford, Cowell responded, “One simple word: ‘protection.’ ”