2. But wait, Lance wasn’t the first fifth member of ‘N Sync!
That role was originally played by Jason Galassowho had known Fatone from choir during his high school days and was dabbling in the vocal group arts when he received a page (1990s, FTW) out of nowhere from his old acquaintance. Coincidentally, he also knew Chasez because, like Galasso explained on The Digital Get Down podcast in 2019, he used to keep up The Mickey Mouse club” stars like Chase Hampton and Keri Russell.
After they “locked in perfectly” on a rendition of Boyz II mens “End of the Road”, that was it, he was in the yet-to-be-named group. “I remember being like, ‘Dang, Justin is young,'” he recalled. “But then I heard him sing, I’m like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how old he is, he can sing his ass off.’
At the same time, though, the bassist was also in a three-piece called Unreal, “so I’m still trying to decide, you know, what I want to do, what direction I want to go in as far as what group I want to join,” Galasso, who is in the mortgage industry these days, remembered. “Because I remember, the first time Lou Pearlman brought some music, he was thinking about what kind of music we should make, and I come from an R&B, hip-hop background. That’s my love, my heart, my soul.”
So when Pearlman came over with “this European-style techno, I was just like, ‘Hmm, okay.’ So he went ahead and traveled with the other guys at Unreal to Atlanta to cut a demo, which he thought turned out. great.
Meanwhile, ‘N Sync started creating a look and they talked about putting together a showcase for Disney’s Pleasure Island. They even took another field trip Shaquille O’Neals house to check out his home studio in Orlando, but they had yet to record any music. And, more consequentially for Galasso, they had yet to sign any contracts.
Pretty soon both groups were trying to get him to sign. Galasso said he took the dueling contracts to a lawyer and while the deal with the trio was a fairly standard issue, Pearlman signed into the ‘N Sync contract as the sixth member, and that contract was “thick as a phone book.” He thought the other members of ‘N Sync were more crazy than he was about the deal—which was true, because they all went on to sign it, whether they really understood what it meant or not.
So Galasso ended up going with the group that wasn’t ‘N Sync.
