The following italicized article is from www.mirror.co.uk:Amid a frenzy of anticipation, Britney Spears’ sell-out Circus tour rolls into town today.
It won rave reviews across the Atlantic, so hopes are high for the 27-year-old pop star’s UK dates, beginning at London’s O2 Arena.
Yet a mere 18 months ago it seemed as if the curtain had come down on her pop career for good.
With the world watching, Britney fell apart – crumbling under the pressure of a messy divorce, a custody battle over her two young sons, and family feuds.
Now a fascinating book reveals for the first time what went on in Britney’s mind during her meltdown.
Here, in the first of our exclusive serialisation of Britney: Inside the Dream by Steve Dennis, we expose how booze, rows and a famous ex led to her chaotic comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards…
Seven minutes before her live performance, Britney’s dressing room door opened and a collective look of horror fell upon the faces of her management team.
“What the f***?” shouted one.
It was immediately clear that her much-hyped comeback was about to become car crash TV, a global display of a pop star unravelling.
At the MTV Video Music Awards, Britney had pledged to show everyone “the bitch is back”.
In front of millions of fans, and some sceptical industry bosses, she had to prove that despite the messy divorce, custody battle, head shaving and stints in rehab, she still had the talent that had made her a global phenomenon.
Now, for the first time, the backstage events leading up to that disastrous performance can be revealed.
Raged
Efforts were made to ensure it all went smoothly. Britney had rehearsed for five weeks with handpicked dancers.
She had got Dita Von Teese’s stylist Trish Somerville, to create a flattering black one-piece for the make-or-break performance. And she had managed to secure the services of Ken Paves, dubbed Hollywood’s hottest hairdresser.
But Britney herself managed to ruin the most important performance of her life. Hours before the show, her anxieties raged. She decided it was a good idea to start drinking tequila shots to calm her nerves – one after the other.
Her prickliness wasn’t helped when her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake popped by to say good luck.
“He was cool and couldn’t have been friendlier, but that wigged her out more,” says a backstage source. “She was freaking out over the littlest thing.”
Her low self-esteem, until now hidden, was making itself known as anger and a difficult attitude. And the sagas of the previous months were all stirred up by the pressure to deliver.
Britney was terrified, and the good luck gesture from Justin was a final reminder that this was a huge broadcast.
Unworthy in her own mind, she would render herself unworthy in public.
The source says: “Brit is someone wanting to be loved, not used, not treated like a robot, not there for everyone else to make money, and not working all the time. It was inevitable she was going to reach the ‘F*** it! F*** you!’ stage. The great sadness is that she reached it in the run-up to this big moment.”
Ninety minutes before the show, Ken Paves entered the dressing room with an assistant, carrying golden hair extensions in his little box. “I don’t like him! I want his assistant,” announced Britney.
The assistant pledged her loyalty to Ken and Britney instructed her bodyguard to forcibly remove Ken from the room
In the corridor outside, observers saw Ken being shoved out the door, remonstrating: “I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” He was still carrying Britney’s hair extensions, tissue-wrapped.
Then word came through to management: “Britney’s just fired Ken Paves.” As they gained access to her dressing room, she explained she didn’t like his attitude.
“That’s great Britney, but you need him right now. He has your hair extensions,” she was told.
Britney, whose hair was still short following her head-shaving incident, pondered this reality: “OK then, he can come back.” But after retreating to his hotel room, Ken Paves wasn’t answering his phone or his door.
Fishnets
Britney seemed oblivious to the distress she had caused. And it dawned on MTV that their opening act was playing up – and she had no hair.
Nelly Furtado’s stylist came to the rescue, but Britney still needed hair extensions – from the hotel’s salon. The source says: “By now everyone was frying.”
In her dressing room, Britney was knocking back another shot. Once the stylist had saved the day, everyone was asked to leave so that Britney could slip into her striking Trish Somerville one-piece.
Instead she emerged in a black bra, black hotpants and fishnets, showing an unflattering paunch.
Britney’s reps insisted she change.
“It’s too f***ing late! We’ve got to get her on stage!” shouted an MTV assistant.
The source says: “Everyone knew it all hinged on her hitting the first line we’d rehearsed to a T – look down the camera on a close-up and lip-sync, ‘It’s Britney, bitch!’ If she could hold that line, and get through, she’d won.
“But the music started, and she stood and stared at the camera without moving her lips. At that moment, we knew it was over.”
What followed was an infamous performance in which Britney looked more like a wasted clubber in Vegas than a pop princess who was “in the zone”.
In one evening, she had sabotaged her hair, her designed outfit, her choreography and her reputation. Britney got the attention she craves, but this time as a laughing stock and an object of pity.
Within minutes of leaving the stage, she was in tears as the show continued.
A door from a backstage corridor burst open on to the emptied casino floor outside the auditorium. Britney, wearing a hooded sweater over her stage outfit, tore through, shoulders up, head down.
She spotted an open-air, but closed, restaurant called Guardino’s and dived under its roped-off barriers. She walked to the second floor and sat on the floor.
From a distance, Britney was seen using a mobile phone, either furiously texting or repeatedly dialling. An off-duty waiter brought her a glass of water and there she sat for 45 minutes, crying.
Lesser stars could never have recovered. But no one should ever underestimate Britney.
Bald truth of rebel’s hair shave
Britney sat still and looked in the mirror at her newly shorn head, tears welling in her eyes.
Minutes earlier she had ordered her driver to pull over at Esther’s Hair Salon in LA, complained her hair extensions were too tight and announced: “I want my hair shaved off.”
Now, after grabbing the electric buzzer and shearing her mousy locks off, there was nothing anyone could do.
“She said her mom was going to be mad,” remembers hairdresser Esther. “And she got a little teary-eyed. She all of a sudden realised what she did.”
The stylist, who had tried to talk her out of this public sabotage, tried to make her feel better by complimenting her “nice shaped head” while photographers outside rushed to their laptops to wire the photos that would, in minutes, be circulated around the globe.
The pictures convinced the watching world that Britney was losing the plot and on the verge of a cataclysmic breakdown.
But the head-shaving had little to do with self-loathing, more a loathing against the public persona that had defined her until then.
What few people knew was that Britney was rowing with her mum, Lynne, who seemed to be incessantly reminding her of her motherly duties and responsibilities. What made Britney most irate was that her mama kept mentioning how her ex Kevin Federline wasn’t forever on the town. This was all being viewed as controlling behaviour.
The head-shaving moment was the culmination of an escalating rebellion, heightened by heartbreak over her divorce and custody battle, that can be traced back to 2004 when Britney decided she no longer wished to conform, be controlled or take instruction.
Britney had been well-coached in the messages that imagery conveys and this one dramatic image told her mama, and any other interested controllers: “So now what are you going to do with the pop star?”
What better way to rid herself of the performer’s identity than by losing the very hair she was famous for; sabotaging the act to free the person?
Suddenly, the superficiality of the pop star lay on the salon floor.
Source: Mirror
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