Excerpt
The Jonas Brothers
Chapter 1
Nick, Kevin, and Joe: They’re super talented, objectively hot, world famous, and married to absolute queens. And now . . . the Jonas Brothers are back!
If you’re Gen X or older Gen Z, you’re thinking: finally! If you’re on the younger side of Gen Z, you wouldn’t remember the first iteration of the world’s favorite band of brothers. But if you’re a new stan, fan, or just Jonas-curious, you are here for the Jonas renaissance! Or, the Jonaissance, as we like to call it here at SCOOP! Either way, that makes for a lot of cross-generational fans buying their music and lining up to see them live. So it’s a no-brainer their comeback game is 100 percent.
Maybe you’ve been in love with Nick forever. Maybe you just discovered Joe. Maybe you think Kevin has morphed into the cutest bro. (Sorry, they’re all taken.) Or maybe you want to be one of them. (Who could blame you?) The JoBros are about as close to pop royalty as you get. And they’re way less controversial than many of their predecessors. (See: Michael Jackson and Madonna)
Whatever your interest in this sibling trio, there’s so much to know about the Jonases, from their earliest days as Jersey kids to their savage resurgence on stage, TV, and film. Their bios are long, their credentials run deep, their love lives are the stuff of rom-coms. But it all began in a little, unassuming brick house in suburban Wyckoff, New Jersey, where music was king. That is, right after religion.
That’s right! The Jonas Brothers began as a family band with religious roots. Dad was a pastor, and after preaching in Arizona and Texas, the family returned to NJ and settled in for a while. The Jonas family—parents Kevin Sr. and Denise, kids Kevin Jr., Joe, and Nick (Frankie Jonas wasn’t in the mix yet)—lived in the parsonage down the street from the Wyckoff Assembly of God church, their second home. Nick says they were basically the first family of the church, which came with perks and pressures. (More on that later!)
Music was a major focus at home, where Kevin Sr. played a number of instruments and both parents liked to sing. Clearly, the Jonas Brothers have music in their DNA. It was also a focus of the church, where the boys were immersed in music and performance, especially Nick. Early on, Kevin Sr. says he knew Nick had a gift. When Nick was just three, he would self-correct if he sang a bad note! Whoa! But it was in a hair salon (Denise was in the chair) when Nick was six that another customer noticed his angelic voice and recommended a talent manager to his mom. At eight, he started acting in Broadway shows, as Little Jake in Annie Get Your Gun, Chip in Beauty and the Beast, Gavroche in Les Misérables, and Kurt in The Sound of Music. It wasn’t just his vocals that led to early success. Nick’s parents say he was blessed with charisma and likability.
Joe, the family comedian, was a little jealous, tbh. But then he nabbed some stage time of his own, allowing him to exercise those comedy chops. Nick was at an audition for Oliver! in Nyack, NY, when the director caught a glimpse of Joe, with his long, shaggy dark hair, and asked him to audition. Joe got the part of the Artful Dodger. (There’s an adorable photo of him out there in top hat and tails.) And then in 2002, he landed a part in Baz Luhrmann’s production of the opera La Bohème on Broadway.
All three boys were signed to a talent agent, and their parents likely logged too many hours chauffeuring them to auditions. Not to be left out of the spotlight, Kevin—who wasn’t interested in singing—scored some TV commercials. Luckily, Wyckoff isn’t far from New York City. And their parents were game.
“My parents have sacrificed so much, more than any parents really should. And they’re amazing, and we appreciate everything they’ve ever done for us and always will,” Kevin told J-14 back in 2007.
While Nick was in Beauty and the Beast, he and his dad wrote a song called “Joy to the World (A Christmas Prayer)” for Broadway’s Greatest Gifts: Carols for a Cure, Vol. 4 album. The track was released to Christian radio stations, and Nick signed with a Christian music label and made a record. Unfortunately, the record didn’t really take off as they had hoped.
But Nick and his brothers decided to write a song together: “Please Be Mine.” It took them all of ten minutes. (They were seventeen, fifteen, and twelve at the time.) When the president of Columbia Records heard it, he loved it and signed the brothers as a group. You read that correctly. The first song they wrote together got them signed as a band!
Okay. You’re thinking, This is all happened so fast . . . that’s redonkulus! In some ways, yes. But the road ahead would not be paved with gold right away.
First bump: What to call them? Some of the ideas thrown around: Sons of Jonas, Jonas3, Jonas Cubed, Run Jonas Run (Seriously???), and Jonas, Jonas, Jonas. They decided to just call themselves the Jonas Brothers. Phew! That could have gone badly . . .
With Kevin on lead guitar and Nick and Joe on vocals, the band started writing more and recording. And they hit the road, warming up for people like Jesse McCartney and the Backstreet Boys. But there wasn’t much cash attached to those gigs, and the family was often financially strapped. Their first tour was in a van and a trailer, and sometimes they did quick round trips to places like Boston to avoid staying in hotels. They played a lot of mall food courts and schools, often for a few hundred people, if they were lucky.
They weren’t allowed to tell anyone what they were doing because the church wouldn’t approve of them making music that wasn’t Christian.
Their first single was “Mandy,” named for a girl Joe had dated in high school. Not a Christian song. “Year 3000” actually became one of their biggest hits. That wasn’t considered Christian, either. “Please Be Mine” was, of course, included on that first album, It’s About Time, which is aptly named, because it took for-ever to come out. When it finally was released, it didn’t pull in the kind of numbers they’d hoped for.
In the meantime, Kevin Sr. was forced to resign as pastor from the church, in part because the family was moving away from Christian music. (According to Joe in a 2013 interview, there was also a scandal around stolen church funds that divided the church.) It was devastating for the family, both socially and financially. Joe says it had an effect on the way he viewed the concept of church. Their lives were wrapped up in the church, and they had to move to another town in New Jersey and a smaller house.
In the new Jonas documentary,
Chasing Happiness, the brothers go back to Wyckoff to check out their old house and the church. You can feel the film’s mood shift as they drive by in the rain. They say it was a real blow to be rejected by the church they loved so much.
“It’s rare that we go to a place that we’re not accepted,” Nick says to his brothers in the film. “It’s like there’s two buildings in the world that I can think of where we’re told, ‘No, you may not enter.’ The house we grew up in and the church we helped build.”
Adding fuel to the fire, Columbia Records dumped the Jonas Brothers after their album failed to take off. Not a happy time in the Jonas house. But out of the ashes came the seeds of success. In the basement of that house in Little Falls, NJ, they wrote a lot of songs.
In the end, Columbia’s dismissal turned out to be a blessing in disguise. (Not for Columbia.) Because another big company was waiting to scoop up the band of brothers.
