Hanson have admitted regrets about turning down the chance to appear on Sesame Street out of frustration at being labelled a ‘kid band’
Oldest brother Isaac admitting he would go back in time and tell himself to go on the show if he could.
“I would go back to myself and say: ‘Do Sesame Street, you bozo,'” he says.
The band, who burst on to the scene as teenagers 25 years ago this week with the song ‘Mmmbop’, spoke to Kate Thornton on White Wine Question Time as they prepare to embark on their longest consecutive tour yet.
The brothers Isaac, Taylor and Zac, spoke to Thornton about what it was like having such huge sudden success so young, with Taylor calling the TV show which stars the like of Big Bird, Kermit the Frog and Elmo ‘legendary’.
Isaac explained: “We were so frustrated with being pigeonholed as being this ‘kid band’, that we looked at each other and went: ‘I’d love to do that, I wish we could do that. But I don’t feel comfortable doing it.”
WATCH: Hanson on turning down Sesame Street
The singer and guitarist, 41, said it was an example “of both the trauma and maybe [being] a little too self preoccupied, and a little bit too in the moment or something.”
He said anyone who knew him knows he is still ‘obsessed’ with Kermit the Frog and he had an Elmo puppet that his wife had made for him.
The brothers are originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma where they said they grew up listening to Motown records and didn’t feel like they really matched with anything going on there.
At the ages of 11, 14 and 16 they found themselves with number one records in 27 countries simultaneously, and a level of fame Taylor said it was ‘impossible to articulate’.
He remembered flying to Australia for the first time for what was supposed to be an in store acoustic performance, and ‘looking out at 30,000 people stacked in a parking lot’.
Remembering also having to fly into some places by helicopter because they couldn’t physically get to the spaces otherwise, he said he didn’t want to hold on to those ‘extreme experiences’ for too long ‘because your body overloads’ with the adrenaline and the ‘sheer power’ of it all.
He added: “I was trying to make sense of it myself. And I realised it’s true, is you can be destroyed by the trauma of that kind of success.
“But you can also use it as a tool to understand what’s possible. I think I’m kind of a dangerous person to be around because we’ve seen the impossible happen.”
They will tour their new album Red, Blue, Green over more than 90 shows in 20 different countries.