The Osmond brothers are not suffering from Bieber fever.
In recent interviews the famous showbiz family discussed their struggles with maintaining their image into adulthood and disapproved of Justin Bieber’s recent behavior.
In an interview with Times Union, Donny Osmond lambasted Bieber’s rebellious antics.
“Come on, buddy!” he said as soon as teen stars today were mentioned. “Stay out of whorehouses!”
Osmond said he understood frustration with an outgrown image, having experienced it himself, but said he had decided against the open rebellion Bieber embraced. Patience, Osmond said, is the key to a graceful transition.
This attitude has helped through other rough patches in the family. WDEF 12 News quoted Osmond’s fellow entertainer brother Jimmy Osmond as saying that mismanagement with fame-gotten money — primarily in the form of trusting the wrong people — had lost the singing siblings $80 million.
Jimmy Osmond now takes the same attitude toward the episode as Donny does toward his post-teenage rebellion. He said it was a good learning experience.
“We lost about $80 million, maybe $100 million in today’s money,” he told WDEF 12 News. “But it’s actually the best thing that ever happened to my brothers and me because it made us really appreciate how to manage money, and it forced us to refocus.”
The Osmonds insist that the music and performance is for the fans, both on and off the stage.
“It’s important to take time to say hi and sign whatever people want you to sign,” Jimmy Osmond told The Laughlin Entertainer. “When performers dismiss fans after they bought the ticket, I’m blown away.”
Jay Osmond, in the same interview, said meeting long-term fans was a rewarding part of stage life.
He said, “It’s rewarding when we talk with people after the show and they tell us, ‘Your songs helped me through some rough times.'”
One long-term fan who could say this was Rhonda Lapp, who has terminal cancer. As she is a long-time fan of the Osmonds’ music, her husband launched a social media campaign in hopes that his wife could meet them before she died.
The Moorpark Acorn reported that after a Facebook request for contact with Donny Osmond was shared 2,000 times, the head of Donny Osmond’s charity contacted Mark Lapp, Rhonda’s husband, to invite the couple to front-row seats of “The Donny and Marie Show” and a back-stage meeting with the stars.
“Donny sat down right next to her,” Lapp told the Moorpark Acorn. “It felt more like meeting a friend than it did meeting a big star.”
Donny Osmond especially feels he has license to critique stars who fail to make the transition. In an interview with Piers Morgan, Osmond described his early success, struggles and now-enduring fame. Piers Morgan asked him whether he would do “fame” again, if he had the choice; he said neither he nor his siblings would want it.
