NOTES AND DISCLAIMERS: Could not be more made up. For entertainment only. Happy Birthday, Kelly!

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WHAT IFS

PART 1, 1960s. PART 2, 1970s on next page. *NSYNC: Chris Kirkpatrick (b. October 17, 1941), Joshua "JC" Chasez (b. August 8, 1946), Joseph "Joey" Fatone, Jr. (b. January 28, 1947), Lance Bass (b. May 4, 1949) and Justin Timberlake (b. January 31, 1951).

In 1965, Chris Kirkpatrick, attending college thanks to the GI Bill and 4 years served in Germany and Vietnam, discovered three important things in the course of one week: a place to get weed in the States, a burgeoning folk scene near his apartment and a precocious fourteen year old Justin Timberlake. Timberlake's mother and stepfather ran the coffeehouse/bar that was the epicenter of the small scene and 'he just followed me out the door one night,' Kirkpatrick recalled to Rolling Stone in 1971. 'He was asking me about where I went to school, if I knew the guys who'd performed and then he said he could beat me up. I said, 'kid, I was in the Army, don't even think about it.' But he said he could outrun me, and he was probably right.' Kirkpatrick started to sing a Dylan song the band that night had covered and Timberlake chimed in. 'As annoying as the kid was, we sounded great together.'

A month later, Kirkpatrick suggested to Timberlake that they form a band to play at the coffeehouse. Timberlake suggested a friend of his, JC Chasez, with whom he'd been in a children's choir. Chasez brought along a friend, Joey Fatone and the core of *NSYNC had been formed. With Fatone on drums, and the other three alternating on guitar depending on the song, initially the band had a friend of Fatone's from high school, Jason Watkins, playing bass.

The band began gigging around town, not just at the coffeehouse but opening for touring regional acts. Even its earliest form, the band boasted tight vocal harmonies like the Mamas and Papas and an energetic stage show. They primarily covered blues and folk songs. By late 1966, the band had begun to attract interest from labels, but the other four had decided Watkins had to go. 'He didn't like Revolver, man, and that was the end,' Chasez told Rolling Stone.

Timberlake knew Lance Bass through his church choir and recommended the Mississippi transplant. After an audition, Bass joined the band two days before the show where Jan Bolz of the new indie TransCon Records decided to sign the band. Bolz suggested the band change its odd name and was less than enthused with Bass's performance¹. The band decided to keep the name, chosen by a beatnik poet who'd been a fixture at the coffeehouse, and explained that the performance had been Bass's first with the band. Bolz bowed to the band's demands.

The band recorded its first single, I Want You Back, and achieved almost overnight regional success. When their follow-up, Tearing Up My Heart, did even better, TransCon had the band record an entire album and sent them on a punishing tour around the country. 'We knew, man, even in the studio, these guys were a total shoestring thing and Lance kept saying, 'where's the money?' but we were making an album. We were on tour and we just loved it,' Chasez said.

Bass's worries were on the mark. By 1968 the band had two national hit singles under its belt and the album had sold at least a hundred thousand copies, a definite success. No one in *NSYNC had any money, hardly a unique situation but one the band found intolerable. Courted by Warner Bros., the band got off the road, hired a lawyer and spent two months dealing with TransCon to get out of their bad contract. Signed to Warner Bros, they immediately began recording what some critics call their best album, No Strings Attached. From 1969 on, Bass managed the band and controlled their finances.

NSA yielded a number of hits and won critics' plaudits that their first album never got. With NSA the band moved beyond the covers and Tin Pan Alley sound of their early work and only recorded their own compositions. Not surprisingly for 1969, the album was clearly influenced by the psychedelics the band was taking, especially two of Chasez's songs, Space Cowboy and Digital Getdown. Anchored in the kind of harmonies even the Beatles didn't do anymore, the album was immensely popular and *NSYNC was invited to perform at Woodstock.

Strengthened by their legal problems, *NSYNC were, more than ever, a tightly bonded group of friends first. With both Timberlake and Chasez sharing lead singer duties, other bands would have collapsed under competition and the rush to get their own songs on the album, but *NSYNC never experienced those kind of battles.

By 1969, Kirkpatrick had become increasingly active in the anti-war movement, even throwing his Purple Heart on a bonfire at a protest in DC in 1970. None of the other band members were as vocal as Kirkpatrick, though Timberlake could be counted on to ape Kirkpatrick's manifestos in interviews². *NSYNC, as a whole, had become hippies, with the requisite long hair (except Bass) and drug taking. 'Except none of us ever liked cocaine or the harder stuff and we weren't drunks, so it was never a breaking thing,' according to Fatone.

The closest the band came to a breaking thing in the late 60s-early 70s was the relationship between Bass and Chasez. Bass had always known he was homosexual, though he stayed very much in the closet while the band was with TransCon. While recording NSA, Bass and Chasez began a romantic relationship. Chasez's reluctance to come out or even acknowledge his own same-sex interests even while sleeping with Bass soon put the couple on rocky terms³. Later, Chasez would describe the entire time as 'really experimental, it wasn't completely me, it was something I was doing and then I didn't.'

Despite the drugs and the internal strains, the band performed well at Woodstock. After a triumphant tour, they went back to the studio and recorded Celebrity, an even more critically acclaimed album albeit slightly less popular. The band toured for the next year and a half and then decided to take a hiatus for personal reasons.

Chasez and Bass had broken up completely by 1972. Bass had actually been at the Stonewall uprising in 1969, and in the years since had become quietly involved with the new Gay Liberation movement. Chasez would have nothing to do with any of it. He began dating women again. The two alternated between a close, almost dependent friendship and frosty non-communication. Bass went to New York when the hiatus began and Chasez moved permanently to Los Angeles.

Fatone used the hiatus to begin his career on Broadway, first in Hair and then in a series of musicals for the next thirty years. He has won three Tonys, most recently for his work in The Producers. He also married his girlfriend of nine years⁴ and mother of his first child, daughter Briahna (born 1971), and went on to father six more children with his wife. Kirkpatrick became more deeply involved with the anti-war movement, organizing and speaking all over the country.

Timberlake had been dating soap opera actress Britney Spears since 1971, to the consternation of the soap opera's more conservative sponsors. An immensely popular actress, Spears and Timberlake were married in 1973 and had two children (daughter Jillian in 1976 and son Jamie in 1978) before their divorce in 1979.

Timberlake, Chasez and Kirkpatrick all released solo albums in the 1970s. Kirkpatrick's one solo album, 46 Love Songs About Nothing At All, an all acoustic album that only had 12 tracks, yielded the AM hit "Dani Of A Thousand Flowers" but Kirkpatrick never recorded a follow-up. The song was written for Kirkpatrick's soon to be wife, Danielle Raabe. The couple had one child, a son named Florien who now goes by the name John. They were divorced in 1983 and remarried in 1986.

Chasez's three solo albums, Coming Through Slaughter (1974), Voices Said Goodnight (1976) and Unbuttoning (1978), were modest hits and reflected the 70s exploration of jazz and rock much like the work of Steely Dan. He began producing for other artists in 1975 with his work with Todd Rundgren, and moved on to doing full albums for a number of artists, including hits for the Cars, Richard Marx and George Michael. Chasez never married and seemed to change girlfriends every year. He has only one child, a daughter Johanna⁵, born in 1978, with journalist/groupie Roberta Grund, also known as Bobbie Thomas.

Timberlake's solo career was the most successful. He released six solo albums in the 70s, Justified (1973), Alone (1975), Robot Love (1976), Demagnetized (1977), Voice Lessons (1978) and JRT (1979). While every album yielded hits and sold well, Timberlake's critical acclaim fell with each release. His songs were increasingly pop and trend-driven, particularly JRT with its ill-advised disco flavor.

Bass retreated to a life of quiet activism and managing the band's finances. He ensured all the members remained the millionaires they were at the peak of the band's activities. He described himself as a 'workaholic' in 1979 to the Advocate, and said he hadn't dated anyone since the break-up with Chasez. Bass had quietly come out in the mid 70s in an interview with Rolling Stone.

In 1980⁶, Timberlake brought all the band members back for his next solo release, universally hailed as a return to his former heights. Upshot won Timberlake his first Grammy and since then, Timberlake has quietly produced excellent albums every two years and toured almost constantly.

*NSYNC performed at Live Aid, their first performance together since 1972. 'It was great,' Chasez said, 'but it's not like we don't see each other all the time. We've never ever stopped being friends. We just stopped making music together.' The performance prompted the band to briefly re-form and record the mildly popular and critically acclaimed Lazarus Routine in 1987. While they have not recorded a follow-up as of this writing in 2002, the band toured together in 1992 and 1998. Kirkpatrick said, 'For us, it's not about, ooooh, we need money now or this guy has gone broke, it's about hey, wanna go have the most fun in the world with your four best friends for a few months? You got time for that? It's like that.'

In 1995 the Enquirer published an interview with Jillian Timberlake who asserted that her father and band-mate Lance Bass had been lovers since 1980, practically living together. Justin Timberlake didn't deny his daughter's claim, although he did blast the Enquirer for taking advantage of his daughter's distress after her court-ordered stay in rehab. Jillian Timberlake said in the interview, and in subsequent interviews when she restarted her burgeoning acting career, that she'd always loved Bass and regarded him as almost a second father.

In 1999, Kirkpatrick published his memoir, A Million Strings Attached, an often gripping recounting of his childhood poverty, time served in Vietnam, and stardom. He wrote extensively about his band-mates, including Chasez and Bass's relationship, with their permission. He also wrote movingly about his struggles with PTSD following his experiences in Vietnam. The book was a bestseller and is scheduled to be a mini-series on HBO in late 2002, starring Colin Ferrell (Kirkpatrick), Christian Bale (Chasez), Joshua Jackson (Bass), Colin Hanks (Fatone) and Ryan Phillipe as Justin Timberlake.

*NSYNC have influenced countless bands that have attempted to imitate their harmonies and driving beats. Tori Amos said in 1996 that one of her fondest wishes was to sing with JC Chasez whose voice she described as 'sex like a snake that coils right between your legs.' She covered Chasez's No Strings Attached on her cover album, Strange Little Girls.

END PART 1.

1.Lance said, "Well, I fucked that up, didn't I?"
Justin said, "No. That was really good for your first performance with us. You're the one. I know it." Lance looked at the others and he didn't think they knew it. They looked cautious. But Justin spoke first, and Lance thought that was the only reason he wasn't fired right away.

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