BROS – THEY’RE BACK!
’80s super spunk pop twins, Matt and Luke Goss are back and ready to chat about their fine bromance.
THIRTY YEARS AGO, TWINS MATT AND LUKE GOSS, AND BANDMATE CRAIG LOGAN CREATED “BROSMANIA”. (ALTHOUGH IT WAS LESS ABOUT CRAIG AND MORE ABOUT LUKE AND MATT!) NOW BROS ARE BACK AS A “MAN BAND” AND READY TO BE FAMOUS AGAIN. INTERVIEW BY MARC ANDREWS.
In 1987, a trio of British lads were launched on an unsuspecting public and soon became the next big thing in pop. Twins Matt and Luke Goss, together with their mate Craig Logan, were called Bros and one year later, with the success of hits like When Will I Be
Famous, Drop The Boy and I Owe You Nothing, their album Push had sold 10 million copies and they were megastars.
A year after that, Craig left the band, finding “Brosmania” too much to bear. Matt and Luke soldiered on for two more albums with diminishing returns until they split in 1992.
Lead singer Matt went solo with varying degrees of success before becoming one of Las Vegas’ biggest acts. Drummer brother Luke, meanwhile, became a movie star appearing in Interview With A Hit Man, Hellboy 2, Blade 2 and the Frankenstein mini-series. Now a movie director, his film Your Move hits cinemas later this year.
That’s around t he same time he and Matt, as a reformed incarnation of Bros, will tour t he UK. They’ll also perform one special show in Australia, as a t hank you to t he band’s biggest selling territor y outside t heir homeland. It will be t he f irst t ime Bros have toured together in 29 years.
DNA: Why reunite now?
Matt: We feel we’re at the point in our lives where we’ve done so much as individual artists [that] as brothers we want to make our sound again. We don’t need to do it but we wanted to do it again as Bros.
Luke: It’s a great nostalgic thing. We just want to have some fun. It’s a blast when you have an audience there. As a filmmaker, I don’t see the audience, so now I can get on stage with Matt as Bros. The fans have shown us they still want that. Besides the UK, you’re performing one huge concert in Australia. Why come Down Under? Matt: Australia gave us some of the best memories of our lives. The whole Brosmania thing meant we had six thousand people waiting for us at the airport. We just wanted to come back to Oz.
Luke: It was a fun, joyful memory for Matt and me. Australia was about being a pop star in a fun way. We had a great time and some incredible fans. I have butterflies in my stomach about playing there again. Craig Logan left the band in 1989. What’s your relationship with him now? Matt: I had lunch with Craig in LA recently and he’s great, but my brother and me started this band when we were kids and Bros meant brothers.
Luke: This will be the most accurate ambassadorship of what we wanted to do musically in our lives. I don’t think this is something Craig would want to do. It wasn’t in his heart like it was in ours. He’s happy working as an executive. Bros had a big gay following and you were one of the first bands to embrace that. Luke: The segregation of our audience between gay and straight is such a non-issue. I’m deeply proud of our fans in general. The gay fans are extremely diligent in wanting things to look great and I am proud of that community embracing us.
Matt: I had 15 proposals on my stage at Caesar’s Palace and 13 of them were gay proposals. I truly believe love is love and it’s a civil rights issue. The rights extended to straight couples should be given to gay couples. I’m quite passionate about equality. I take it as a great compliment we have a gay audience.
Luke: My brother-in-law is married to an Australian man. They have set the bar for what any loving relationship should be. You had a gay manager, Tom Watkins, who also managed the Pet Shop Boys. Matt: He’s no longer involved in what we do. He was a brilliant manager and knew what he was doing with my brother and me. He was lucky to have two guys with a tremendous work ethic, who just put their heads down for five years.
Luke: For him a band was a commodity and there was lack of human understanding. What Bros song are you most proud of? Luke: The two biggest anthems – I Owe You Nothing and When Will I Be Famous. Matt: The immediacy of those songs… when we play them live the audience sings the melody back to us. Every single person in the audience sings back to you. You’re lucky if you have one but we have a few of them. Any chance of new Bros material? Matt: I have a new single coming out and having my brother’s endorsement of that means a lot to me. Luke: It will be a smash, but it makes sense to collaborate and make that happen.