Cincinnati’s Star

By Larry Nager

Maybe the most surprising thing about Nick Lachey in 2008 is that he’s still alive and vertical.

How many of us could have survived the celebrity crapstorm this former Cincinnati boy has endured? At 34, he’s spent a third of his life in the national spotlight, starting with the 1997 release of the self-titled debut CD by 98 Degrees, the group he helped start in LA with three other Ohioans.

A few million CDs later, the quartet dissolved and Lachey dodged the fate of every ex-boy-bander not named Justin Timberlake by making a devil’s deal. He and his freshly-minted pop-tart bride, Jessica Simpson, signed with MTV for a new reality series, Nick & Jessica: Newlyweds. She became America’s favorite dumb blonde; Nick became the country’s best-known bemused husband, shaking his head at such Jessica-isms as her bewilderment at that can of Chicken of the Sea.

Not surprisingly, the marriage didn’t last. Amid rumors of multiple infidelities (hers, not his), he became the country’s best-known wronged ex-husband.
This would be embarrassing anytime, but in the modern age, no public humiliation is  complete without constant surveillance by battalions of paparazzi, with the resultant barrage of cover stories and features in dozens of gossip rags, internet sites and TV celeb talk-fests. Nick was treated to a relentless privacy invasion that continues to this day.
At this point in our celebrity saga, an “accidental” overdose, a rubber-room reservation next to Britney or, at the very least, a rehab vacation, would be in order.

Instead, Nick remains remarkably centered, even (dare I say it?) normal.
“There seems to be an insatiable appetite for that stuff,” Nick explains. “And I’ve learned through experience that you can’t affect it, you can’t change it, it’s wasted energy to try and worry about it. So live your life and do it as best you can and kind of leave it at that.”
But Los Angeles, where the former College Hill resident has made his home since dropping out of Miami University in 1995, is Paparazzi Ground Zero.
“It’s pretty much a constant,” he says of the phalanxes of cameras following his every move. “It’s worse in LA, I’d say, than anywhere else in the country. Again, you can’t stop ‘em; you can’t change it; so all I know how to do is live your life and don’t worry about it and try and ignore it. It’s certainly not normal.”

His City of Dreams
Of course, the kind of celebrityhood that draws that kind of attention has been Nick’s dream since his days at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts. And while, he could do without all the flashing cameras, he’s not complaining about the many perks.
“Its funny you can’t really premeditate those things you can only look back in hindsight and appreciate them,” he says by phone from New York, where he’s making the TV talkshow rounds. “Certainly my career has taken quite a few twists and turns and various forks in the road. It could have gone one way or another, I’m just very grateful and blessed that I’m able to do what I love to do and make a good living at it. I think it’s at the point now where at least I try to use it for good things and to give back. Cincinnati is always gonna be home for me and I’d love to do what I can to raise this city up and try to do what I can.”

That’s what he did on his biggest recent project, TV’s Clash of the Choirs, when he led a choir of Cincinnatians to victory over such heavyweights as Patti LaBelle, winning $250,000 for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. No one expected him to beat the soul great. “Including me,” he admits with a laugh. “I certainly never conducted a choir, per se, before, but you know, I had plenty of experience with harmonizing. I tried to give my input and in terms of arranging the material as well, you know, coming up with different arrangements and trying to make it interesting.

“And that’s really what I wanted to do. From day one, I told everybody, ‘If we’re going to win this thing, it’s going to be because of our diversity and because we can do a lot of different things well. No one’s going to out-gospel Patti Labelle. But we’re gonna show a little side of that. But we’re also going to show something like ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee.’

“I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t too sure going into that project if I was going to enjoy my time doing that or not. But man, I had the best time. I was so happy for those people. It really meant so much for me to see them win and to come back home and enjoy that feeling of being hometown heroes and stuff. It was great and the city of Cincinnati got behind us so much.”

Following the Song
After all the celebrity smoke clears, that’s what Nick Lachey really wants to do – sing.
He got his start in local clubs with his high school pal Justin Jeffres in the horn section of local oldies band the Avenues. After graduating SCPA he studied theater for a year at UCLA, but came home and started his sophomore year at Miami University. In 1995, he got the call to come out to LA and start a vocal group with Jeff Timmons and another SCPA grad Jonathan Lippmann. He brought Jeffres and the result was JustUs. When Lippman quit to pursue acting, Nick called younger brother Drew. There was already a JustUs, so 98 Degrees was born. Things happened quickly, from getting a manager to signing with Motown.

By 1997, their first album was out and the first hit, “Invisible Man,” was climbing the charts. The quartet was marketed as adult R&B, the early edition of their CD even including the suggestive “Can I Touch You There?”
They looked to be one-hit-wonders, until Motown re-released the album the following year. “Can I Touch You There” was gone. 98 Degrees had become a PG-rated boy band.
They duetted Stevie Wonder on “True to Your Heart” for Disney’s Mulan and took their place in the Boy Band Derby, a distant third beyond ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys.
Problem was, that’s not what 98 Degrees was about. Singing took a backseat to dancing, flexing and posing, and Nick and the rest looked increasingly uncomfortable. But they knew where the money was.

“We got ourselves together in the image of a Boyz II Men. That was literally what we wanted to be, but we just got caught up in a wave there with the pop boy-band thing.
“We got swept up in a bigger moment, which was fun and it brought us plenty of success. But at the root of it all, we were always more interested in singing and harmonizing than dancing. And certainly better at it than we were at dancing,” Nick recalls with a laugh.
Good thing he was getting used to discomfort. His next career move would constantly put him in that condition.

Nick was ready to settle down when he met the gorgeous – and famously virginal – Texas pop singer Jessica Simpson. Just as 98 Degrees was the third-string boy band, Jessica couldn’t break out of her own distant third behind Britney and Christina.
Together, it was a different story, at least for her. They married in 2002 and Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica debuted in 2003. It jumpstarted her pop career, but Nick was transformed from the bigger star into husband/sidekick, a modern Desi to her Lucy.

The show lasted three seasons, the marriage three years. Today, Nick has no contact with Jessica, who, having bombed in feature films, recently announced plans for a country album.

Life After Jessica
Nick has been dating, but the only ones taking it seriously are the paparazzi documenting every evening out.  If he ever does tie the knot again, don’t expect a Newlyweds II. “Oh, no, no. That’s one thing I can promise you that will never happen again. What is it, ‘Fool me twice, shame on me?’”

But Nick learned more from Desi than how to look exasperated on camera. Just as Desilu Studios turned a conga player into a TV producer, Nick is returning to MTV with a reality series focusing on SCPA students. “I’m producing it and I was kind of the creator behind it, but it’s really about those kids there at the school, it’s about profiling them and giving them a platform,” he explains, adding that he’d like to do more of that. “I feel like I have some good ideas, and it’s always exciting to get a chance to kind of put those ideas in motion, so I’m thankful for the opportunity.”

He’s in Cincinnati pretty regularly. So often that he only missed one home game on his season Bengal tickets. When he’s in town he sees old friends and hits the usual suspects (Graeter’s, Skyline, LaRosa’s, Montgomery Inn), staying with his father in the house he bought him. A huge sports fan (his short-lived Miami major was sports medicine and 98 Degrees often performed wearing Reds and Bengals gear), Nick was part of an investment group that unsuccessfully tried to buy the Reds. Today, he’s one-third owner of the Tacoma Rainers, the Seattle Mariners’ AAA outfit. “It’s just been fun to be involved in a different capacity there, kind of forced to look at sports from a business frame of mind, as well as being a fan.”

He’s considering starting his own TV or music production company, but not for a few years. At the moment he’s finishing his third solo album and hopes to release it before summer. He’s also leaving open the possibility of a 98 Degrees reunion. He stays in touch with the other guys, including brother Drew, who became a star in his own right on Dancing With the Stars. When we spoke, Nick was planning a trip back to see his brother with the Dancing tour at U.S. bank Arena.

For now, there’s only one Cincinnati group he’s performing with. “We are adding the choir to one of the songs. I promised them that if they won, I would feature them on a song on my album. So we’re definitely going to make that happen.”

He’s grateful to his winning team for several reasons. “Doing (Clash of the Choirs) was great on a couple levels. I try to do everything I can to promote the city of Cincinnati and paint it in a good light. So I was really happy that we did the show for that reason, and also to remind people that music is what I love to do and I think I’m pretty good at it  and to get people remembering me for that again.”