'MMMBOP' OR 'MMMBUST'?

POP: A year after the bubble-gum trio's breakthrough hit, the major tour finally begins. But can Hansonmania last?

by BEN WENER The Orange County Register

They're hot, they're cute, they're wholesome, they're mega, they're adored.

Critics seem to love 'em almost as much as teen-age girls. They reportedly receive 25,000 fan letters a week, and the official Web site sees more than 100,000 hits a day.

And they're platinum, baby. Way platinum. We're talking "Jagged Little Pill" platinum. Only the Backstreet Boys and (maybe) the Spice Girls come close to matching their phenomenal rise -- and both are significantly lagging behind.

Bubble-gum pop has become, as one of the group's many fan clubs is dubbed, something of a Hansonopoly. So, naturally the lads of Hanson -- guitarist Isaac (he likes Ike), 17; keyboardist and tambourine-shaker extraordinaire Taylor (the hotties call him Tay), 15; and Zachary (cherub-faced Zac to the preteens), 12 -- are already as media-savvy as a team of publicists staving off Bruce and Demi salvos.

A conversation with the uniformly coiffed trio (all blond, all shoulder-length) is polite and chipper but also as choreographed as a senator's keynote address at a national political convention. Somehow, no matter what is asked, everything returns to the party line the Hansons seem to have memorized the way other children learn the Pythagorean theorem.

Ask Ike if, as his group prepares to play the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night, he feels any kinship (if only on a mania level) with the Beatles, probably the last band to bring such battalions of screaming meemies to the historic venue, and he cleverly avoids the question. "Well, I don't know about that, but what I do know is . . . ."

What Ike and his brothers know is that they need to be careful. They're well aware of the career catastrophes that have come before them. They know the names David Cassidy, Donny Osmond and even Donnie Wahlberg probably better than they know Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. And they know all too well that the musical family they most get compared to -- the once-brilliant-now-dysfunctional Jacksons -- may not be the most logical role model.

(And right away, we'd better settle this matter: girls. Again, walking on eggshells required. No, they don't have girlfriends. "We've dated people from time to time," Ike says from a tour stop in Detroit, not indicating if that includes uber-tyke Zac. "I'm sure it will happen sooner or later.")

So Hanson is cautious. Gracious, yet diplomatic -- which in itself is as remarkable as how infectious "MMMBop" was upon first listen and how it skyrocketed to the top of the singles chart. Most kids their age have trouble carrying on a conversation for more than a few minutes. To be fair, endearing Zac sounds as if he'd rather be with his Sony PlayStation, but he's able to get out a few thoughts before passing the phone to Tay.

"I would say all of this still surprises us," Zac says of the group's now-established fame. "It's amazing. We never expected anything at all, and we got this."

He tries to formulate a thought on the why-is-Hanson-so-popular query -- "If it wasn't us, it would be someone else in this position who is fulfilling hopes and dreams, I guess" -- then cuts to the quick as only a sixth-grader can.

"Hanson is three guys who write, sing and play. And we're all different. We aren't just one thing. We are many things."

BUILDING A PHENOMENON

That's an understatement. Hanson certainly is a group of fairly talented musicians still bucking to be taken seriously, but it's also a marketable mother lode: T-shirts, quickie books, stickers, notebooks, lunch boxes. (Naturally, there are anti-Hanson shirts, typically sporting a red circle-and-line over one of the band's many pictures.)

And though the critics salivated over the band's Mercury debut, "Middle of Nowhere," and even seemed to enjoy both its Christmas album ("Snowed In") and its rush-it-to-the-fans demos collection ("3-Car Garage"), it wasn't necessarily because they had stumbled upon the next Stevie Wonder.

Still, that's often how Steve Greenberg, senior vice president and head of A&R for Mercury, has described his first reaction to the band -- as if he had discovered the great lost group of the '60s pop explosion. By now, anyone who cares knows the story: Three cutie-pies from Tulsa, Okla. are weaned on a series of Time-Life rock 'n' roll compilation tapes their father, Walker, had mail-ordered. They begin to imitate the sounds of Little Richard, the Beach Boys and, of course, the Jackson 5.

Born performers, the three form first as an a cappella act, playing at any local meeting, dance or pizza parlor that will have them. Ike and Tay begin to write songs. They set down some demos, light out for the annual South by Southwest music convention in Austin, Texas -- as a tight-knit family all the way, headed by Walker and his wife, Diana, along with sisters Jessica and Avery and toddler brother Mackie -- and start hounding any music exec who will listen.

Attorney Christopher Sabec falls for their intensely happy pop and takes them to Mercury (after several others passed), which then hooks the act up with some top-flight backing -- namely, Black Grape producer Steve Lironi and techno faves the Dust Brothers.

And "MMMBop" -- along with "Where's the Love," "Man From Milwaukee" and a handful of other favorites -- come to life. Pandemonium ensues.

"I don't think we have any control over that," Tay says of Hansonmania. "Every band in this position is going to get that sort of thing, and there's a whole lot of other groups that have gone through that same sort of reaction. We're one of many in a long history.

"And whatever happens, whether you're too cool or not cool enough or too old or too young, someone's not going to like what you do. That's just how it goes. We've just been very lucky."

TIME ON THEIR SIDE?

All of which prompts the question, how long can their luck last? Moms across America will attest to the rapid and fickle changes taking place with their 13-year-old girls. It's not at all unthinkable that by the turn of the century Hanson might be as washed up as Macaulay Culkin.

It's a thought that Tay and Ike seem to have considered fully.

"What we do will have to evolve," Tay says, noting how a recent visit to Berry Gordy's Hitsville U.S.A., the birthplace of Motown, has inspired him. "You'll see Hanson expand. I would say the ideal situation for us would be to grow as writers and producers. People always say, 'I want to be a producer,' but as far as moving forward, we very much want to be more involved in the production side of things.

"It will always have that Hanson mark, whatever that is. And I think we're grounded enough to keep ourselves focused on the music and not get carried away by other things, like fame."

As for the music itself, Ike is thinking even more grandly. "Sometimes people focus too much on the image when you wish they wouldn't, because images are fleeting. It's the music that matters . . . and I think that a musical evolution is natural. I hate to even make this comparison, but look at the Beatles. Look at what they started out as, this long-haired pop band, and then just a few years later they were doing 'Rubber Soul.' "

"Rubber Soul"? Hanson? Even the most adoring fans -- those who know what "Rubber Soul" is, that is -- might chortle a bit over that one.