It’s a cold Wednesday in January, and New Kids on the Block are at Fenway Park. The goal? To talk about Fenway, where they’ll have their only show of the year on Sept. 19, and to discuss their decades-long and successful career.
“We became this hugely marketed thing of wholesome boys, but we were really street kids from Dorchester. Then we became known as a band that wouldn’t last — a pop teen phenomenon— and here we are, thirty-something years later, still going,” said Donnie Wahlberg, 50.
We spoke by phone to Wahlberg and the rest of the NKOTB crew: Jonathan Knight, Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Danny Wood. Friends since childhood — some since kindergarten at Roxbury’s Trotter Elementary School — their chemistry was palpable as the performers looked back and forward.