By Maeve Quigley

Copyright evoke

It was January 10, 2001, a couple of weeks after the Five gigs at the then Point Depot in Dublin. It was a city that band members Jason ‘J’ Brown, Ritchie Neville, Abs Love, Scott Robinson and Sean Conlon were familiar with – they’d recorded some of their hit songs at Windmill Lane and enjoyed many nights performing in front of their adoring fans.

But this time Ritchie Neville was here for another reason. He was standing outside Richmond Court after he and J found themselves in what was described at the time as a drunken brawl in Temple Bar on a rare day off. Now Ritchie was facing the music.

‘Jay and my court dates were different,’ he says. ‘So I just turned up to Dublin on my own… I just thought, oh my god, this is a nightmare. Then the judge calls up the police officer that arrested us and – I laugh about it now because you have to laugh – he’s gone, “What time did you arrive on the scene?” And the police officer said, “I arrived on the scene at 4.15pm” or something. The judge, an old guy, looked at me with one raised eyebrow and said, “You were that drunk? At that time in the afternoon?”’

In the end, he was fined £3,000 for being drunk and disorderly. J couldn’t attend his court case but the charges were struck out after he paid a £5,000 fine

What had happened was essentially a drunken fight in Temple Bar between some young men who probably should have known better. The band had gone into the hotspot for drinks on a rare day off in what was an intense tour – ‘an intense life’, says J – to let off some steam and were being hassled by some other young men, making jibes about the band.

It’s telling that in the court reports, Garda Cushen also said the teenage Ritchie had told him when he was arrested: ‘I can’t go anywhere without getting hassle, just because I’m in a boy band. Why should I let them get away with it? I’m sick of it.’

When the fight and arrests happened, the lads had to ring their boss Simon Cowell and tell him but his reaction was that no publicity was bad publicity. After all, Five were living up to their reputations as the bad boys of pop. But psychologically, the arrests added to the behind-the-scenes turmoil that was causing the band to break down.

Speaking to the media after his arrest, J said he was quitting the music business and stayed true to his word, moving to rural Wales where, he says, he did little other than stare into his own head for 25 years.

It’s almost 25 years later now and Five are sitting in the bar of the Gibson Hotel, announcing a return to the now 3Arena this December.

Five still look like a boyband – man band now if you will – but soon after that Temple Bar moment, the band imploded and today’s reunion had seemed impossible. There have been attempts at a comeback but always with one member missing that then fizzled out – probably as a result of what had gone on in the past.

Neville says the court case at the age of 18 was stressful but every single day of Five’s lives was stressful. ‘Every day, there was so much pressure that it was just another thing to rock up and deal with.’

On the face of things, Five were on top of the world. They’d had strings of hits with tracks like Got The Feelin’ and Everybody Get Up, a number of best-selling albums, and were on top of the pop world, producing a rawer, more rocky sound that was the antithesis to Westlife’s squeaky-clean balladeering.

But there was little downtime, few days off and the pressure was taking its toll on the mental health of the band – Sean and Scott in particular.

Sean was suffering from anxiety in the run-up to the release of their last studio album Kingsize while Scott had a breakdown trying to juggle the demands of the album and the fact that he had just become a father.

On September 27, 2001, the band announced it would be splitting up. After that, there were short lived reunions with some members in 2006 for a year and again in 2012.

It was Abs who went for the solo career with a degree of success, which was followed by a reality show in which he documented his life on a farm in rural Wales. The others sank into obscurity, Ritchie moving to Australia for a time and running a restaurant, Scott singing in pubs and opening his own memorabilia shop, and J studying horticulture.

But it always felt like there was unfinished business and earlier this year they announced that all five members were finally on board for a reunion.

Two decades down the line, all of Five felt they were missing out on something – essentially the friendship they had together. There were reconnections and phone calls made.

‘We decided to meet up as friends and worked out that we got on still really well,’ says Scott of the reunion. ‘We’ve reconnected as people.’

Neville says that essentially the band ran away from fame but now there’s a chance to heal the wounds and get back to doing what they were brilliant at, which is performing.

Sean had always been in favour of a reunion but it had never worked out properly without all five members. This time, they say, they are helping each other heal the wounds of the past.

‘This is a big, massive, healing process for each and every one of us,’ says Ritchie. ‘There’s always been this deep, quiet sadness that I think each of us has carried for two decades. and now that’s being vanquished.’

Without the reunion, their lives would have felt off-kilter forever, says J, who was the one who was most resistant.

‘Our lives wouldn’t have been correct,’ he says. ‘Imagine not walking on to a stage again, the five of us, because not to blow our own trumpet, but something really magical happens when us five are on stage with each other.’

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Ritchie says they are older and wiser now, and can better understand what happened to them when they were younger.

‘After the band I would think, “what was that? I don’t understand it”. But now when I am an old man looking back, especially now we are doing this, it is going to make far more sense. It’s going to feel good. It will be a happy memory.’

Scott admits the night before the reunion tour was announced, those old feelings of terror rose up again. He called his wife Kerry and said, ‘What if we think is this a big thing, this big announcement but what if no one actually gives a s**t?’ ‘And she went, “You’re overthinking – you watch tomorrow”.’

She was totally right too – tickets for their gigs in Ireland are all but sold out, with a handful of remaining tickets for December 2, and the rest of the tour is a similar story.

‘My kids are at school and they coming back to me saying, “My friends are going absolutely mad, I can’t believe you’re back in the band,”‘ says Scott. ‘I’m thinking, yeah me too. It’s crazy.’

FIVE play Belfast’s SSE Arena on November 22 and Dublin’s 3Arena on November 23 and December 2, see ticketmaster.ie for details