We’ve all wished for do-overs in our lives, a chance to say “wait, that isn’t me. Let me prove it.” now it’s time to decide: does justin bieber get his wish?
We’ve all wished for do-overs in our lives, a chance to say “wait, that isn’t me. Let me prove it.” now it’s time to decide: does justin bieber get his wish?
On an early Saturday afternoon in Beverly Hills, the hot streets are thick with slick rides and the sizzle of fame. The sky is an opulent blue and feels higher somehow, so the sounds echo and drift as they do elsewhere only in the summer at twilight. A middle-aged man crosses Rodeo Drive totting a black-and-gold Bulgari shopping bag no larger than an apple. Tourists gabble at the windows of high-end boutiques where the clerks maintain a desultory distance from the single shopper browsing $600 jeans.
Outside a Saint Laurent store, there’s a commotion. In any other neighbourhood, it might signal an escalating argument or brewing brawl. But here there’s no mistaking the thrill that ripples the crowd. Who is it? Who? Who? And as the paparazzi muscle in for angles and the well-known name is passed around, you find yourself feeling faintly repelled.
It’s not that you don’t like Justin Bieber. You actually find him offensive. Why? Because his success primarily depends on skilful producers and shrieking tweens? Because he managed to steal the attention of half the planet’s girls by basically becoming one of them? Or maybe it’s just that he has never had to deal with all the crap the rest of us have. Like public transport. Job interviews. Getting fired, or dumped, or ignored at the bar. This is a kid who had his bodyguards carry him up the Great Wall of China. Everything was handed to him. And now he’s a big boy and thinks manhood is going to be handed to him, too. And you’re like, no, dude. No.
In Rodeo Drive, the crowd adds ranks. The 15th douchebag of the day revs the engine of his rented Bugatti. Around the corner, wannabes crowd the tables of Villa Blanca, the restaurant owned by that woman from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The phoniness is everywhere. And maybe this is why the Biebs is disliked so much. With him, it’s as if all that phoniness is gathered in one place.
You could keep walking. But suddenly you’ve got this fierce need to know if there’s anything real behind that celebrity facade. And what if there was? Would that change anything?
INSIDE SAINT LAURENT, ONE-THOUSAND ankle boots sparsely line the white shelves. The latest Parisian fashion hangs from racks suspended from the ceiling. At the end of the shop, a black-and-white shot of Val Kilmer’s son covers an entire wall. It’s quiet. There’s no sign of the Biebs.
Suddenly, your phone starts blowing up, like somehow it knows he’s near. Then one of his crew appears and leads you to the changing room in the back.
The pop sensation stands before a seven-paned hemisphere of mirrors with his arms crossed, trying himself on. He’s rocking the skater look he picked up a few years ago, with calf-length black shorts, a nightie-length black tee, and a Brooklyn Nets cap turned backwards. A diamond cross hangs from his neck. Prince Johnny by St Vincent wafts from invisible speakers.
You recognise the caterpillar eyebrows, the pouty lower lip. But the rest of him is rougher than you’d expect. Scrappy. Like a tuber before it meets the sous chef. His skin is patchy in places, a bitch to shave. For some reason, you think of a video game you once played, when you met the boss at the final level.
He nods at a black leather jacket with gold piping hanging on a nearby rack.
“How cool is that jacket?” he says. “That’s on the men’s runway right now?”
A young clerk in skinny jeans pulls it for him. “Uh-huh,” she says. “It was spring-summer ’15.”
“Awesome.”
The clerk leaves to fetch a larger size.
Prince Johnny you’re kind, but do be careful... “So Saint Laurent is very cowboy-inspired,” Justin begins. “And really manly. It’s one of my favourite brands.”
More merchandise appears as you settle in to observe. A new jacket and a pair of high tops with suede fringe at the heel. The clerk kneels to place them before his Biebitude, deftly reaching around with one hand to keep her jacket from riding up and revealing her butt crack.
When all your friends and acolytes...
“Yeah, you know, I’m just getting bigger, man,” Justin says, explaining his need for new duds. “It’s like, my shoulders don’t fit in some things.”
He twists into the new jacket. “I had a stylist,” he goes on. “I don’t have a stylist anymore… I’ve been styling myself for the past few years, just because I know what I want now… I’m grown up, so I want to take the initiative.”
There’s your problem right there, you’re tempted to say. But don’t. Because, really, you don’t want to be a jerk about it. And what would be the point? Justin tries on a few more items.
“So I’m probably gonna head out with the blue jeans, the brown shoes, the red shoes… and that’s it.”
A brace of bodyguards materialises – a neat trick, given their size. Together, they resemble nothing so much as a pair of bridge pylons. “Give me two seconds,” one of them says. “Because the paps are all right at the window.”
The clerk hands Justin a US$1,000 hat to cover his face – the kind of thing Richie Sambora used to wear in the early Bon Jovi days. His team assumes a Swat formation and piles out the rear door.
Justin crouches after the bodyguards as the shouting starts. Behind him comes Ryan, a pal from way back. They wind around an open car door and plunge inside. Paparazzi and groupies mash against the windows.
Justin raises his knuckles to the tinted glass as the car – a Rolls-Royce Phantom – slides out of the alley and into South Santa Monica.
“SO I HAD A NECK INJURY ABOUT A YEAR AGO,” Justin begins, leaning back in the richly upholstered seat, his voice a low croak. “I landed on a trampoline on my neck, doing a backflip, and my neck has been messed up ever since.
“And this chiropractor who I found, he’s amazing. He does all the Los Angeles Clippers. I got the connect from Denzel Washington.”
You listen. Because there is something interesting about the kid. What’s interesting is that he’s a 20-year-old pop star surrounded by lackeys and somehow trying to tackle the very private question of how to become a man.
Watching it is painful, like watching a skunk attempt to work loose from a bear trap. But there’s something fascinating about it as well. It turns into a kind of dark sport. And if you watch long enough, you can’t help but think: “Gee, if I only had five minutes with the kid.” But what exactly would you say? And could he even hear you if he hasn’t learned to listen yet?
Biebs massages his neck. Someone recalls a scene from his second movie, which shows him doing flips on a hotel bed. He’s quiet for a long moment. “
It’s funny,” he murmurs. “I still feel… like a kid. I just still feel young. I don’t feel like I’m almost 21. At all. It feels like yesterday I was doing those backflips on the bed.”
The silence stretches out. But then his mood seems to lighten. “Chugging Red Bulls,” he says, elbowing Ryan. “Me and this guy. Like, chugging eight Red Bulls for fun.”
“Yeah, those were the fun times,” Ryan says wryly. “Now, it’s reality. Now, we’re adults.”
It’s quiet again as the great car banks into South Beverly. Biebs bought Ryan a Mustang for his birthday several years back. Now, he’s helping Ryan become a Hollywood director.
“There’s a part of me that don’t ever want to grow up,” he says, in his soft voice again. “I want to always remain… to have that sense of purity inside of me where I don’t… I don’t want to lose that sense of purity.”
The car comes to a stop across the sidewalk outside a modern multi-storey building. The steel garage door is shut. Some paparazzi have already arrived. The Biebs is still in his ruminative zone.
“You ever notice how, like, smells and stuff bring you back to old times?” he says.
The garage door opens, and the Rolls eases in. An elevator leads to the second floor, where a woman is emerging from the chiropractor’s office.
“Bye,” she says over her shoulder as she brushes past us. “Thank you.”
In the empty waiting room, the Biebs shares how he beat up two of his bullies in the sixth grade.
“I was a pit bull,” he says. “I was small, but I could hold my own.”
It seems to match his current image as a scrapper. But this doesn’t sit right with him.
“Maybe that’s like a cover-up for me not being tough,” he says, in his soft, sleepover voice. “Like the tattoos and stuff? Maybe that’s like a cover for me being a softy.”
And you listen. Wondering what to think. How to judge. As if manhood were yours to bestow.
Meanwhile, a door opens and the chiropractor, Dennis, emerges. “All right, my man,” he says. Dennis is an affable guy in his 60s, the kind of dude you can easily picture padding barefoot around a mansion in the Hills. Like maybe one of those 10,000-square-footers with its own orange grove.
We move into Dennis’ office, and Justin climbs onto the padded table. Dennis begins working his ankle, which the Biebs sprained playing football.
“Did you recognise Demi?” Dennis asks. “You didn’t recognise her, did you? That was Demi Moore who left when you came in. She’s just… man, she’s really gone through a lot.”
A pause ensues.
“Great girl,” Dennis concludes.
You wonder at the phrase. Didn’t Justin say the same thing about Anne Frank, in that unfortunate comment he left in the guest book at the Anne Frank museum?
Poor Demi. Nursing a vague sense of loss at not having recognised her, you observe that maybe the Biebs has something to learn from Demi about how to get around unnoticed.
“Pssh,” he says wearily.
“There’s nothing I can do.” Eventually, the talk turns to that other pop star, Michael Jackson, whose perfectionism Justin admires as much as his music.
“I’m a perfectionist, too,” he says. “It has to do maybe with, before, probably being accepted. You know, maybe people would like me if I was good at things. But then I’m also really just competitive and I like to win. I wasn’t fit for school. They make it so everyone’s the same and I was so different and so creative. And sometimes I wanted to stand when I worked. And they would tell me: ‘Sit down.’ And it’s like, why?”
“You’re a nonconformist,” Dennis observes.
“Yeah. I’ve always been different, and I haven’t been afraid to be different.”
The silence resumes. You wonder how many true fans have gathered outside the building. When you next tune in, Dennis is talking.
“You were very young when you were tossed into the lion’s den, bro,” Dennis says, his large hands cupping the underside of Justin’s skull. “Like when you kick a bird out of the nest you hope it can fly? That’s kind of like where you were at. You were young. I mean 13 is young. If you think about it, right?”
“Yup.”
“What relationship skills do you have at 13? Not much.”
This lingers a moment before Justin picks it up.
“I had to grow up so quick,” he says. “And it was almost like I grew up for the public but I didn’t necessarily grow up. There were things I had to do, as far as the way I had to make relationships, and conversation. But as far as actually growing up, there were a lot of things I missed out on.”
The remark gives you pause. A bid for sympathy?
Maybe it would be better (you venture to suggest) if the Biebs just disappeared for a few years. Like Batman. Go abroad and find yourself. Come back when you’ve figured it out.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice a near whisper now. “I wish I had the Batman thing where people didn’t know I was Bruce Wayne. Like I had a costume or something.”
The chiropractic table is a place for reflection. Bones are loosened, tendons unknotted. Thoughts tumble out. Large hands find your kinks and unkink them. And just think how kinked the Biebs must be, loathed by millions, adored by millions more.
The door opens. Ryan comes in with Justin’s coffee. Three creamers, three sugar. The table sighs downwards and he alights.
“HE’S TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW BIG HE CAN BE. BIGGER THAN OBAMA? BIGGER THAN MICHAEL?”
THE ROLLS SAILS NORTH IN BEVERLY, windows cancelling the city’s fine Mediterranean light. It does more than exclude fans and paparazzi. With its lush interior and 3570mm wheelbase, it provides a kind of rolling pressure chamber where the manling can equalise the imbalance between inner and outer, between the worship of strangers and self-doubt.
Perhaps it was this imbalance that got the best of him in 2014. It began with accusations that he assaulted a limo driver. Then that he lobbed some two dozen eggs at a neighbour’s house.
Soon after that, his house was raided by cops. Then to Miami, where he was arrested at 4am for allegedly drag racing a Lamborghini while under the influence.
It goes on like that. And you could easily sit back and wish more of the same upon him. Until in the end, he achieves the well-trod exit from celebrity that some part of him surely desires.
Some survive the trial. Wahlberg did. DiCaprio. Heaven knows how. The fact is it’s hard to be a man these days, even if you’re not a celebrity. With gender roles constantly shifting, who even knows what a proper man is supposed to look like?
The Biebs’ father wasn’t exactly a steady presence when he was growing up. In a way, Justin eclipsed him at age 14. You can see him in the Biebs’ first movie, a former mixed martial arts fighter looking out of his depth as his son dominates an arena full of screaming girls.
A quick left, and the Rolls dips into the cool safety of a parking garage, where a security guy in a maroon jacket waits, holding open an unmarked door. As we step into an elevator, Justin uses the moment to call attention to his diamond cross.
The Biebs turned heavenward for answers in 2014, spending time with two different but equally hip young pastors – Judah Smith from Seattle, and Carl Lentz from New York City. The latter, it is said, baptised the Biebs in a bathtub. The former accompanied on his family vacation in Palm Springs, talking and golfing his way to spiritual equilibrium. (“These were the rules: I did whatever they did,” Justin says. “It was very humbling, because these past few years, everything has been on my time.”)
The elevator doors slide open, and you follow him through the back entrance of Equinox. Here, you meet his trainer, Patrick, a merry Swedish gentleman with no hair at all on his head and a lot on his chin. The kind of guy who puts his thumbs in his belt and tips back a bit when he laughs.
“So are we gonna do chest and arms?” Justin says. “Is this Saturday fun day?”
Justin seems to find his vibe again now. On the incline bench, he starts pressing twin 40s. From there, it’s 12 reps with a 40kg curling bar, and leg lifts for the abs. He rotates through the sets a few times, pausing to study himself in the mirror. He’s 20 years old. He’s trying to figure out how big he is, how big he can be. Bigger than Obama? Bigger than Michael? It’s a tough thing to judge when you can see your own body sprawled across a Calvin Klein ad on a 15m billboard.
The rest of the world still thinks of him as small, and seems to want to keep him that way. Because even when he puts on muscle, by the time pictures hit the Internet, someone has erased it all in Photoshop. It’s like he hasn’t earned it yet.
Having accustomed yourself to the hysteria that tends to surround him, you’re surprised he’s able to work out without getting hassled. But it’s an elite gym, first of all. And most people don’t work out with their phones.
“There are always pretty girls here,” he says.
You want to ask him about it. The girls. You remember a story about how he brought a flashlight to a club in the Hamptons. Played it over the faces and bodies of the girls. And if he saw something he liked, he’d keep the light there until someone from his entourage could fetch it. This was his pick-up line. Not words. Photons.
“There was a minute where I abused that,” he admits. “Used my power. But you come to the realisation that that doesn’t make you happy.”
You have to take his word for it, of course. And as he talks, you realise the funny way you each want to be like the other. He wants to be like you. Real. Limited. Bounded. You want to be like him. Or do you?
“I’m very much a relationship guy,” he says. “I like to bounce ideas off the person that I love. I like having a real connection…”
He pauses to throw punches in front of a mirror. Jab, left, hook. Mayweather is a friend. Justin meets many celebrities because their kids dig him and the celebs want to know why. Satisfied with what the mirror shows, he turns and touches a fist to your chin. “Right in the kisser,” he says. Then again, trying to get it right: “Pow! Right in the kisser!”
Suddenly, you feel bored. And hungry. You want to be back in the Rolls, riding the wide empty avenues like a pharaoh on the Nile. The plan was to hit Sugarfish, but the Biebs went yesterday and had an allergic reaction, so plans have changed.
“THERE WAS A MINUTE WHEN I ABUSED MY POWER. BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU HAPPY.”
OFF CANON, THE ROLLS sneaks quick right on Clifton Way into the bougainvillea-clad alley behind Spago. This is one of Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants. Last October, the Biebs cooked with him here. A skylight fills the spare dining room with white light. The tables are widely spaced, like the shoes on the white shelves at Saint Laurent. Nor does the bathroom disappoint. The Biebs finds you there.
“I’ve come to watch you pee, bro,” he jokes, standing at the sink. “You wanna know what I do? I wash my hands before I pee.”
You feel an explanation is required. He obliges.
“I feel like my penis is more clean than my fingers,” he says.
Is this the line you’ve been waiting to hear? Probably not. On the way out, he holds the door for you. He’s trying, anyway. He’s making an effort. In return, he asks that you take the seat with the back to the door.
“Never have your back facing the door. That’s an old mobster thing. You heard of that before, right?”
Enough time has passed that you feel it’s okay to start correcting him. Because that whole back-to-the door thing started with cowboys – not mob guys.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he acknowledges. Then: “Draw, you lily-livered, yellow-bellied sonuva one-eyed bear!” A waiter appears. Agnolotti is ordered – chestnut in a sweet butter sauce. A favourite of the Biebs.
“This has really been a big year for me, as far as figuring stuff out,” Justin says. “This is almost like a full 180 from how I was. Yesterday – a year from yesterday – I was in jail.”
He’s talking about the drag racing charge. Which he denies. But of all the negative media, somehow the worst of it was what Bill Hader told Howard Stern about working with the Biebs on Saturday Night Live.
“Justin Bieber showed up with, like, 20 guys,” Bill said. “He had a guy holding a slice of pizza, a guy holding a Diet Coke…”
And the backstage there is small, too. So manoeuvring around all these dudes was kind of a hassle. A totally needless hassle.
“Timberlake,” Bill went on to say, “it was just him. He’s a real class act, that guy.”
And there’s something about the phrase that sticks with you. Class act. Yeah. Like, as hard as it may be to be a man these days, that’s a phrase you could definitely endorse.
“I think at that time I was rolling a little deep,” says the Biebs. “It was also a whole different phase. Timberlake was a grown man when he came on SNL. I wasn’t even 20 years old yet.”
You wait.
“But I do,” he says finally. “I do aspire to be a class act.”
You nod. It’s the line you’ve been waiting to hear. Not even that he is a class act, because he isn’t. Heck, we’re all works in progress. But that at least he aspires to get there one day.
He’s bouncing Barrett, his general manager’s baby, on his knee. Barrett’s hand is slick with drool.
“Babies are so gross!” his manager says, approaching with a wet wipe.
Yes, babies are gross. But Justin likes babies. Because unlike record label execs and paparazzi, at least they don’t try to screw you over. He likes children for the same reason. This is why Michael Jackson hung out with them so much, Justin says.
“It’s not weird. It’s just innocent. But then you want to get away from that,” he says. “And I think I did, too. You feel like you wanna grow up and you gotta prove yourself. Hey, man, you don’t need to prove yourself. I didn’t know that, though.”
You get it now. It’s an innocence story. A story that begins with innocence, descends into tawdry Hollywood drama, and emerges again, or tries to, into some new, stronger version of that innocence. Maybe, in time, even a certain nobility. Or whatever aged innocence becomes.
“Wait, wait,” the Biebs demands. “Do you think I’m being authentic right now?” It’s a fair question. Worth pondering. Do you?
