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CHAPTER 3

‘IF YOU COME BACK’

Eyewitnesses to Tragedy

September 2001

ANTONY

Recounting our memories of 9/11 always seems strange, sometimes uncomfortable, even now. So many people suffered on that day that we will never get to hear about, and yet the four of us continue to be asked for our experiences of it. So this chapter in our lives is shared in the full awareness that our fear, pain and trauma are forever dwarfed by those whose stories we’ve heard, and some whose stories we may never hear. The only comfort in relaying it completely here for the first and only time is hoping it will answer fully all those questions people still naturally want to ask. So, here we go …

As soon as ‘Too Close’ went to number one, we set about preparing to release our third single, ‘If You Come Back’. We were pulled into a meeting in our record company office on the Harrow Road to be told, ‘For this video, boys, we think you should film it in New York.’ As an afterthought, the bosses asked, ‘How do you feel about that?’

I was 20 years old and I’d made lots of hops to Europe by then, but I’d never been to America, and neither had the other lads. We were beyond excited.

DUNCAN

I called my mum the day before we were set to leave. We’ve always spoken pretty much every day, and she always knows what’s going on in my world, so she’d got used to hearing about glamorous trips here and there. Nonetheless, at that point she was working as a nurse in a residential care home, and the thought of her son jetting off to film in Manhattan still seemed absurdly exotic, as it did to me. When we spoke that day, she told me a friend of hers had said the best view of the city was from the top of the World Trade Center so I promised to go up there and take a photo for her to show him.

ANTONY

On 10 September, we flew to JFK International Airport from Heathrow, and we were put in business class seats. It was the first time I’d ever watched a film on a plane. Even by the standards we’d got used to over the preceding months, we were being treated like princes, and we spent the journey revelling in our good fortune.

We arrived there in the afternoon and went straight to a chat with the director of the video. Our videos were always about two things – locations and haircuts. This time was to be no different – all the usual stuff, us glowering at the cameras, singing our different bits – but this time with a glamorous Manhattan backdrop. We went off to have some clothes fittings, some food, general chit-chat, all the time pinching ourselves that we were actually in New York.

LEE

I’m a massive film buff, and the city was everything I’d hoped it would be, absolutely beautiful. But my head was in a strange place. I was convinced there was a weird atmosphere in the air, and I kept telling the boys, ‘Something’s not right.’ It sounds ridiculous, but I kept seeing the number 1939 in my mind’s eye, which got me thinking about World War II, and I even said out loud that I feared something similar could happen again.

SIMON

I’d love to say he’s making this stuff up, so many people talked like this later on, but Lee really was distracted by the number 39 that week and sure enough, we kept seeing it everywhere. It became a running joke after we went to a diner on that first afternoon, Lee picked up a yogurt pot, started eating from it, turned it round, and it had ‘39 cents’ written on it. He gave us all this big look, but we just laughed and told him to shut up.

Two other things of significance happened to me that day. I have a brother called Straon who I wasn’t brought up with – separate families – and our paths hadn’t crossed our entire lives because he lived in New York. When I’d been told we were headed there for a trip, I’d contacted him and made arrangements to meet up with him in the city. We managed it that afternoon. It wasn’t a long encounter, but it was important and it went really well. The other thing I did that day was to get a tattoo. I’d been humming and hawing over whether to have one for ages, waiting for a sign. That afternoon, still buzzing from meeting my brother, I went and had it done.

DUNCAN

We had to go to bed really early because of the following day’s schedule, which suited us because of our jet lag. We were up at five the next morning, the 11th, and had to head straight out. We were staying in Soho, downtown Manhattan, and it took us a good hour to get across the bridge to Brooklyn, where the shoot was due to take place. The whole time, we were looking back at the stunning view of New York, marvelling like a million other gaping tourists at those two towers dominating the skyline across the water. It was still quite dusky and grey when we were travelling. That amazing blue sky that everyone remembers came later.

ANTONY

When we got to Brooklyn, we found the set in an industrial car park right next to the river, so that the director could capture that perfect scenery behind our usual bobbing heads. We were called into Make-up, in the trailer nearby. My biggest problem that morning, or so I thought, was having the hairdresser give me the wrong blade for a shave. It sounds properly ridiculous now, of course, but that was the carry-on, all the usual nonsense. So I was struggling with this huge challenge, when our coordinator, Carol, burst in, saying, ‘There’s been a plane crash at the Twin Towers.’

I could make no sense of that. For some reason, as she spoke, I visualised something small, a glider or something, low down near the street, so my instant reaction was to say, ‘Oh no, that’s sad. Is everyone all right?’ And just then we heard a massive shout from outside. We ran out, and everyone in our crew was gazing across the river at the stunning view of downtown Manhattan and the World Trade Center. We could see smoke billowing out into the sky from what we learned was the North Tower, where the first plane had already gone in. Then someone shouted, ‘It’s a plane,’ and pointed to the second tower. Our video team, by pure instinct, trained their cameras on the scene as we all watched the second aircraft crash into the side of the South Tower.

SIMON

These were our riggers, our lighting crew, our gaffers … All professional men and women, all booked to do a hard but straightforward day’s work. And they ended up playing witness to one of the most defining events in their country’s history, purely because they’d agreed to film a pop video for a boy band from the UK, one they’d never even heard of. Our view of the Towers, and the tragedy that befell them, was stark – all too perfect. The footage that our team shot that morning ended up going around the world, and bringing audiences glimpses of what we’d seen for ourselves. The random nature of this universe is something I still struggle to get my head around.

ANTONY

At this point, somebody suggested saying a prayer, so we stood in a circle holding hands. We didn’t know any of these people, or the words to say, but we wanted to respect everyone’s needs. It was peaceful, but there was a bubbling sentiment of rage too. One man started swearing, ‘You’re not going to fucking defeat, us, man, we’re America.’ Another bloke yelled, ‘That’s it, we’re going to war.’ It was like they all knew something, and we didn’t.

We’ve never been the most clued-up group of people when it comes to world events, and we were singularly ill-equipped to put into context what we’d seen, what we heard. Add to this the fact that none of us had ever visited New York before, and the day before we’d been walking around thinking we were on some glamorous film set. Now, with dust, smoke, screaming, sirens, planes crashing, it seemed as though we’d entered our own, all-too-real disaster movie. It made no sense on any level. It didn’t feel real, or rational. It wasn’t something we could process or explain to each other. All we could do was feel the shock, anger and fear around us, and it seemed to be escalating.

LEE

People around us continued to yell, until one voice rose above the rest. A man pointed at the Towers, and shouted, ‘My wife’s in there,’ and everyone suddenly went silent. Just terrible …

DUNCAN

Looking back now, I think we were all absolutely traumatised by what we saw. At the time, we were just standing still and watching. Nobody spoke.

ANTONY

I had to turn away. At that moment, one of the American guys offered me a cigarette, but I told him I didn’t smoke. He said, ‘Take it, it will calm you down.’ It was the first time I’d ever smoked, but it worked that day, for the rest of the week, and I got hooked forever.

SIMON

I could see the others looking either numb or becoming emotional, but my reaction was different somehow. If I’m really honest, it made me feel strangely fatalistic. I’d met my brother that day, and I knew that everyone in my life knew how I felt about them. It was as though we’d had a sudden inkling that the world really could end at any moment, and it was a time to ask yourself, is everything in your life facing the right way? And I can truthfully say, on that day in 2001, it was. I was resigned, but I wasn’t scared. I felt at peace. Perhaps that was just shock having its effect on me, and it does behave differently in every person, but that day was the awakening of a spirituality in me that has never deserted me since.

ANTONY

Inevitably, after a while it became about practicalities and our production team swung into action. There was no question of going back to our hotel, instead a plan was devised to send us to a hotel further along the Hudson River, in upstate New York. The only vehicle we could get hold of was an old mobile caravan, but it didn’t matter, we were just happy to be on the move, and we all clambered in. As we got further away from the city, we began to feel safer – until a tyre blew out as we were racing along the freeway, which meant we skidded across the tarmac and nearly crashed off the side of the road. If our driver hadn’t been some kind of military driving expert, an ex-marine or something we’d heard, that could easily have been the end of us. The Winnebago had two wheels in the air. Everyone was screaming.

DUNCAN

That was when we got properly scared, as it seemed the fates were stacking up against us, and our chances of getting home quickly were getting slimmer and slimmer. I felt so sad, then, remembering that my mum had told me to visit the Towers, that the news would have got to the UK, and there was no way of letting her know I was okay because all the phone networks were down. I couldn’t even get a one-word text to her.

ANTONY

We got to the hotel in a sweet place called Tarrytown, which looked like something out of an old-school American film, all green and clean, and a million miles from what we’d just experienced. We booked into a lovely hotel, for what was meant to be two days, and everyone started to feel better. Unfortunately, we soon learned that nobody was going anywhere, so this turned into a week, and our nerves started to fray once again. Fortunately for me, I had my new 20-a-day habit to keep me busy.

DUNCAN

During that time in the hotel, we drank an awful lot of alcohol to dampen the shock and numb our emotions. There was just nothing else to do, nowhere to go, everyone having the same conversations over and over again about what it all meant, and so much stress. Everyone was on red alert. Everywhere we looked, TV sets were on, either the ABC or CNN, with breaking news, more breaking news, and we couldn’t even phone anyone.

It took me three or four days to get a call through to my mum. When I finally managed it, I said, ‘Hi Mum, it’s me’ and there was just silence at the other end. It turned out she was so overcome with relief she couldn’t actually speak. She’d been at work in the nursing home when the news had come on the TV. Everyone there knew I was in New York, so they all just stopped and looked at her, and she’d had three days of fearing the worst. So when I got through, she couldn’t speak, and neither could I; we both sat, holding our phones in silence.

LEE

The girls from Atomic Kitten – Natasha Hamilton, Liz McClarnon and Jenny Frost, who had only a few weeks before replaced Kerry Katona – were in the same hotel. They were signed to our label and had also been evacuated from New York. We inevitably spent a lot of time with them; they were all lovely and it was a comfort having them there. That was when Liz and I first got to know each other, and we ended up getting together later. But I had times during that week when I was so scared I would physically crouch down under a table. All four lads slept in the same room the whole time we were there. It felt as though the world had suddenly become completely unpredictable and, by extreme bad luck, we’d chanced upon the wrong place at the wrong time, when anything might still happen.

ANTONY

Finally, a week later, we were able to fly home and, because of our schedule we had to go straight from the airport to a gig in Southampton, an open-air event. The crowd knew we’d be there because we’d announced it on our website, and our families were all travelling down to the coast as well. I’m not by nature a crier, but it was pretty emotional seeing my parents’ faces. And being back on stage. Just going through our normal routines felt freshly amazing. I think we all felt very fortunate.

LEE

When we all settled down again in the UK, Liz and I went out for a while after that, and even got engaged. But looking back now, there was no real prospect of us ever getting married, or that relationship working out, nor should it have. It was a strong connection, and we’re friends to this day, but it wasn’t built on anything like normal circumstances. Instead it was a bond founded on shared fear at an extraordinary time.

SIMON

It’s a strange chapter in all our lives, such a massive thing to be part of, when all we wanted to do was sing and dance, and I’m not sure we’re any more equipped now to analyse it or put it in any kind of context. But the anniversary of those terrible events will always be important around the world, and we’re part of a small group who witnessed them with our own eyes. It will always be a memory of fear, enormous sadness and heaviness. There’s no getting away from it. We just carry it with us and, compared with so many others on that day, always feel very fortunate.