WRIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME ??

WRIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME???

WRIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME ??

Wright Entertainment Group, Wright International Records and Entertainment President Johnny Wright Says We're Wrong

August 8, 2001

"I am not a Svengali," says Johnny Wright. "I'm more like a traffic cop." As the Orlando-based manager of today's Kings of Pop, NSYNC, as well as co-manager of its reigning Queen, Britney Spears, Wright is comfortable directing at rush hour. His current responsibilities are not all that different from what he's been doing for the last 15 years.

Wright got his start in the business barely out of his teens, as a DJ at WCOD in Hyannis, MA. It was there he got to know Maurice Starr, another local music lover, who discovered the group New Edition. Maurice put together a new boy band, then asked Wright to accompany them on a short tour as road
manager. "Those three weeks turned into four-and-a-half years," says Wright. The group was New Kids on the Block.

Today, Wright guides the careers of almost a dozen artists from his Orlando office on the Universal Studios back lot, where he oversees this summer's biggest traveling spectacle, NSYNC's "PopOdyssey" tour. The massive undertaking employs a crew of 300 per show and requires three set-up days to
build the stage. With a revolving stable of openers, many of them pop stars in their own right, and a few of Wright's own (Dante Thomas and Christina Milian), NSYNC has become the show to see this summer” even if you're not a girl under 17.

HITS own way-over-17 teenager, Shirley "You Can't Be Serious" Halperin, went down to O-Town to audition as a Britney Spears dancer and ”oh, yeah” interview Wright at his 16-acre "compound," which includes a bowling alley, dance hall, three fully equipped recording studios and a jet ski dock.

What were some of the things that you learned as a tour manager which helped you parlay that position into a full-time day-to-day manager?

Always be at the beck and call of your artist; never tell your artist [that they] can't do something and always give your artist options. A lot of managers get caught because they feel they should be dictating. At the end of the day, the artist's entire livelihood and what happens to them is up to them. You can't tell them what choices to make. You can only stand behind them and hope that the right choices get made.

Orlando seems to have become a mecca for music managers in recent years.

Disney and Universal recruit a great deal of teen performers to work the parks. So if you're looking for talent, they've already done the work for you” look at Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, JC Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell” all from "The Mickey Mouse Club." The other thing about Orlando is that people are always recruiting musicians, so it became easy pickings for us when we wanted to assemble a group.

Who are some of the new acts on your roster?

We have a young girl group called Triple Image, two 10-year-old twin sisters and another sister who is 11. They are cute as a button and they sing their tails off. I have a group from New York called Gotti 13, which is the first rock group I've done. I've got Marcus, on J Records. He's a rapper with a comical twist, a cleaner version of Eminem. And there's Christina Milian [signed to Island Def Jam], who also came out of Disney [as a reporter on "Movie Surfers" and one of the voices in "A Bug's Life"]. She sang that incredible hook in Ja Rule's "Between You and Me."

How are your relationships with the labels your acts are on?

Iâ€™ve had great relationships. When we first signed the Backstreet Boys to Jive, the first release took 13 months and we were antsy because we had already been on the project for three years. But that ended up being a good learning experience in terms of dealing with the label on a day-to-day basis. Iâ€™ve come to the realization that you don't put a record out until it's "right." It took some bad vibes between Jive and I to learn that, but once I got that, it made it easier for me to deal with them on Britney and Aaron Carter. And I take that to my dealings with other labels. For the most part, weâ€™re supposed to be on the same team. So the only time I get mad at a label is when I think they should be spending more money. And in that case, you have to find alternative ways to get the money, make it happen, then go back to the label and say, "OK, pay up!"

What do you think about the alleged teenpop bust?

With radio stations so dependent on ad sales, sometimes a teen audience is too limited. Since they want to expand their demographics (and extend their revenue streams), radio is now programming away from the teen market. There are so many teen groups out there because when something is popular, everybody does it. And naturally not every one of them will be able to do 10 million records. Some see that as a waning of popularity; I think it's just that people have more options now. When a radio programmer my age sees nine out of 10 acts being teen acts, there is a reaction to that. Although, it won't be like when New Kids, Hammer and Paula Abdul faded, because there are too many ways for kids to get music now. If it's not coming from MTV or the radio, it's coming from the Internet. Aaron Carter is a perfect example. Here's a 14-year-old kid who has sold 2 million records and has probably had less than 10 spins on major radio and most likely never had his video played on MTV, but he's still able to sell out a headlining tour. So there are new avenues to promote and sell. At the end of the day, a hit record is a hit record” radio will have to play it and MTV will have to air it.

The NSYNC "PopOdyssey" tour is undoubtedly the biggest traveling production of the summer.

The guys had a lot of ideas that wouldn't fit in an arena, so we decided to do an all-stadium tour. The problem was that it could only be done in the summer and the record wasn't going to be released until July 24. So we figured a good way to promote the album would be to add seven songs from "Celebrity" to the set. And to make the fans understand that these were the new songs, we created an event for each song. "Up Against the Wall" has the guys on the Velcro wall. "Celebrity" has the cameras, velvet ropes and red carpet with the fans being brought on-stage. We wanted to create something that would stick in the fans' minds for when they bought the album. And so far, the reaction has been good. It was a risk for us because we didn't have new product, but we have always had good luck and supportive fans. And we did it in such a way that, even if we only sold 50% of the seats, we would be able to do the show the way we wanted to do it. And so far, we've been lucky enough to sell to about 90-100% capacity, so it's been better than we anticipated.

NSYNC seem jubilant about having had more control on the new album.

Oh yeah. Nobody knows their audience better than they do, so nobody can bring their fans what they want better than the band. About seven of the new songs come from the guys themselves, and not just in a co-writer position, but as solo writers and producers. And that the first single, "Pop," is one of their songs says a lot about how far they've come in their writing and production abilities.

Do you have aspirations to be a label head?

Yeah, that's the next level. But again, at the end of the day, I want to be sure that we are ready to do that. We're almost there” we have the talent and our own facilities to record, so we can keep the cost down. All we need is the right distribution deal.

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