The room I've been ushered into - down a warren of back passages and through more security checks than the Gaza Strip - can be found directly behind the main dressing rooms, about 50 yards behind the stage. Behind me I hear the shrill sonic boom of a whole generation of women coming of age.Īn hour earlier and I'm waiting for the band to arrive at the venue. The long escalator takes me down and out and into the sharp night air. He takes a long drag on his electronic cigarette and nods empathetically. Spurlock's advice echoes and bounces off the endless rows of merchandise stalls and nacho stands: "Best thing about a One Direction concert for us guys? No rest-room queues." Out in the foyer is a man, mid-forties, a lone father I suspect, nursing a numbing pint just behind one of the venue's giant structural pillars. Thousands of female fans caught on the cusp of their own sexual awakening, a band beckoning them on with lyrics such as, "I want to stay up all night/And do it all with you", and GQ caught slap-bang in the middle like a substitute teacher at the annual school disco.įorty minutes in, I make a break for the exit. For GQ, the extra illumination only serves to spotlight the astonishing scenes: an ocean of 20,000 wide-open mouths, hundreds of pleading white eyes, 40,000 palms raised skywards, a dark-pink oil slick that howls and moans and undulates with every impish crotch-thrust from their idols' plinths. Tonight, the multi-tiered circular arena - the entirety of which is being filmed in 3-D as part of Spurlock's ambitious project - is brighter than usual, so the six colossal F65 cameras are able to capture every tear, every flushed crimson cheek, every homemade (and often fantastically rude) poster. Their ambition, or at least their management's ambition, is seemingly infinite. And they continue apace: 19 million singles sold, ten million copies of their two albums - Up All Night (2011) Take Me Home (2012) - with a feature film out this month and a third album being recorded, the business empire fronted by these cherubic faces now stretches well into the hundreds of millions of pounds, with licensing deals that include everything from lunchboxes to their own fragrances.
Not the Beatles nor the Stones, not Coldplay nor Mumford & Sons. In March 2012, 1D's debut album topped the Billboard charts. They were the first band to break globally through social media - now with more than 13 million followers on Twitter, and that's not even tallying the members' own individual handles. Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Facebook, One Direction.
Ever since this boy band were forged in the black dystopian kilns of The X Factor by music mogul Simon Cowell in 2010, the five boys, now five men, have gone on to become bigger than even their creator could have dared dream.
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