2. The one who escaped
But wait, Lance wasn’t the first fifth member of ‘N Sync!
This role was originally played by Jason Galassowho knew Fatone from the choir in high school and tried his hand at group singing when he got a Page (1990s, FTW) from his old friend out of nowhere. He happened to know Chasez because, as Galasso explained in the 2019 podcast of The Digital Get Down, “used to hang out with The Mickey Mouse Club,” stars like Chase Hampton and Keri Russell.
After being locked up in a playback of “Perfectly” Boyz II gentlemen‘s “End of the Road”, that’s it, he was in the as yet nameless group. “I remember thinking, ‘Damn, Justin’s young!'” He recalled. “But then I heard him sing, I thought, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how old he is, he can sing his butt.”
At the same time, the bass singer was also in a group of three called Unreal, “so I’m still trying to decide, you know what I want to do, in which direction I want to go,” which group I want to go to, “recalls Galasso, who in the mortgage business these days. “Because I remember when Lou Pearlman first brought music, he was thinking about the kind of music we’d make and I come from an R&B hip-hop background. That is my love, my heart, my soul. “
When Pearlman came over with “that European-style techno” I just thought, ‘Hmm, okay.’ “So he went on and traveled to Atlanta with the other guys in Unreal to cut a demo he thought he was going to be she turned out great.
In the meantime, ‘N Sync was starting to come up with a look and they talked about putting together a showcase for Disney’s Pleasure Island. They even made an excursion Shaquille O’Neal‘s house to check out his home studio in Orlando, but they hadn’t recorded any music yet. And what was more consistent for Galasso, they had not yet signed any contracts.
Both groups soon tried to get him to sign. Galasso said he took the duel contracts to an attorney, and while the deal with the trio was pretty standard, Pearlman was the sixth member of the ‘N Sync contract, and that contract was “phone book thick.” He felt the other members of ‘N Sync were more excited about the deal than he was – which was true because everyone signed it whether they really understood what it was or not.
So Galasso ended up going with the group that wasn’t ‘N Sync.
