Ronan Keating knows all too well that life is a roller-coaster. And the singer is currently riding a high after ending a long-running estrangement from his Boyzone bandmates.
Ronan, who is about to rejoin The Voice Australia as a coach for the first time in nearly a decade, found fame in the early ’90s with the Irish boy band.
But his relationship with Boyzone members Shane Lynch, Mikey Graham, Keith Duffy and the late Stephen Gately became strained when the group went on hiatus in 1999 after Ronan launched his successful solo career.
His track When You Say Nothing at All was featured in the movie Notting Hill and became a global hit.
“When Ronan became a huge star in his own right, his bandmates felt abandoned,” a music industry insider tells New Idea.
Why did Boyzone fall out?
Now, a three part-documentary series Boyzone: Life, Death & Boybands – which begins airing on Channel Seven this week – lays bare what really happened between Ronan, 48, and the men he once called his “brothers”.
“We were a bunch of kids, we weren’t perfect and we weren’t polished,” Ronan reflects in the program, which aired in the UK earlier this year. “I made choices I’m not proud of. After 30 years, I think now is the time to talk about them.”
The band’s heavy workload and the perception that Ronan was favoured by band manager Louis Walsh contributed to the tensions within the ranks. Louis inviting Ronan to co-manage the boy band Westlife – who went on to become massive – also drove a wedge between Boyzone.
“People were asking me to do things and some of the others weren’t getting asked and it definitely fuelled a bit of animosity,” Ronan said.
Fractured friendships
For years, the band members barely spoke – until they reunited for a brief tour in 2007. They also supported one another when Stephen died suddenly, due to an undiagnosed heart condition, in 2009, aged 33.
But when the band regrouped again, now as a quartet, for a tour in 2019, the wheels fell off once and for all. Ronan and Mikey were irritated by Keith and Shane’s constant partying.
“That was the end of the road for Ronan and his surviving bandmates – until he reconnected with Shane and Mikey for the documentary,” our insider explains.
While Mikey declined to meet up with the surviving members of Boyzone in the doco, Ronan has reconciled with Shane and Keith.
“Ronan was really broken by their feud,” our insider adds. “But it’s all water under the bridge now.”
