BOSTON -- The New Kids on the Block lip-synched extensively in concert and their singing on albums was technically enhanced, a music professor who worked with the popular group is charging.
Greg McPherson, a music professor at the University of Massachusetts- Boston, has filed a lawsuit seeking $21 million in damages from Maurice Starr, the co-producer and manager of the group.
McPherson said he was paid a weekly salary for New Kids record productions but said Starr had promised him additional fees and royalties that have not been paid.
McPherson said he can prove the New Kids lip-synched because he played keyboards on their tour and produced the music for their 'Hangin' Tough Live' video. He said the New Kids sang only about 20 percent of their own vocals.
The bulk of the lead vocals were sung by Starr and Starr's brother, Michael Jonzun, McPherson said.
Starr admitted he and Jonzun had done vocals for the group but said they were strictly background and that the New Kids did their own lead singing.
He said the New Kids did lip-synch on their first tour but 'everything they've since done in concert has been live -- 100 percent.'
The teen-oriented New Kids singers are Donny Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight, Jordan Knight, Danny Wood and Joe McIntyre. In 1991 they New Kids made $100 million.
McPherson said the New Kids largely lip-synched during concerts and that in the studio, their singing benefited from what he called 'masking,' a production technique where a a good singer's voice is used on the vocal track for a bad singer.
McPherson said the good singer's vocals 'are mixed with the bad singer and the bad singer's performance is always so low that it's very inaudible.'
He said he was on stage with the New Kids during their 1989 tour, playing keyboards.
'I had a keyboard which is a digital sampler where I had just prerecorded all the vocal tracks from the tapes of their album. So that all I had to do when their vocals rolled around was to just hit a certain key and the keyboard would literally play whatever their vocals were,' McPherson told The Boston Globe.
He said he did basically the same thing in the 'Hangin' Tough' video.
'That video was supposed to be a completely live performance,' McPherson said, adding that the New Kids 'lip-synched more than 95 percent of whatever was going on and the parts they were trying to sing were horrendous.'
Starr denied the accusations.
'Greg's a good brother but he's not telling the truth,' said Starr.
Starr Wednesday night told entertainment reporters that all the New Kids vocals 'in the beginning were on tape and they sang along with them. But that was at the beginning. For years now, they've done 100 percent of the singing.'
Starr said he was not surprised by McPherson's suit. 'Something like this only shows me that the devil is working 24 hours -- and overtime.'
A public relations spokesman for the group, Bob Gibson, said McPherson's charges are 'inappropriate given the fact we've just had a successful live European tour and we are working to massive audiences live in Australia.'
The allegations come more than a year after Milli Vanilli lost their Grammy when it was revealed they lip-synched their 'live' peformances and did not sing on their own records.
