~Warning: This Program Contains Explicit Language and Situations~

In the year 2000, one band looked most likely to break every record in music history. That band was...Population Five. But drugs, alcohol, cheap wine and women, and the band's own failures and insecurities made it a rocky road to stardom for the five young artists. A road that in the future may lead to pop music history...or back to the streets.

Population Five began as the brainchild of five struggling young musicians: Buddy on drums, Mike as lead guitar, Rama on lead vocals, Rob as the bassist, and Victoria as backup singer/tambourine girl. Their talent quickly blew audiences away, and took them to the top of the charts in the summer of 2000, with their catchy hit single, "Don't Fuck With Me, You Hateful Bitches." After following that up with "I Wanna Make Sweet Love to You," and a critically-acclaimed cover of Elton John's ""Rocket Man," it seemed there was no further heights the band needed to climb to hit the highest reaches of ultimate superstardom. Ironically, it would be on the night of the 2001 Grammy Awards, where the band was nominated for 14 Grammies, that the trouble first surfaced.

It was on that night that the volatile temper of drummer Buddy finally snapped. After drinking two bottles of vodka, and a record 18 boilermakers, Buddy trashed his hotel room, causing the hotel managers to call the police. While the rest of the embarrassed band accepted their seventh Grammy Award, Buddy was outside of Radio City Music Hall, putting an unfortunate fan in a headlock. After wrestling the young man to the ground, Buddy shouted, "Never ask for my fucking autograph again, asshole! You don't mess with a drunken Irishman!" and then passed out onto the street. After he was rushed to the emergency room to have his stomach pumped, Buddy expressed regret for his actions, but for the rest of the band, it was too late.

Rama: It was clear the fame went straight to his head. Unlimited alcohol, critical acclaim, and the women! My God, man, the women!

Rob: I was ready to kick him out of the band. It wasn't so much the lawsuits and the embarrassment, but that asshole would not stop with the old jokes. Look, I'm not that much older than the rest of you hateful bitches.

Mike: So we had a...what do you call it? An intervention.

Victoria: A court-ordered intervention.

Mike: We told him he had to keep his cool. I mean, we can't have that kind of bad publicity haunting us.

Rama: Yeah, so now we cut him off at 15 boilermakers.

The next one to crack under the pressure was Mike, the lead guitarist. After receiving critical comparisons to guitar gods Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen, Mike fell victim to the worst critic of all: himself. At the start of the band's 2002 summer tour, Mike locked himself in his hotel room and refused to take the stage.

Mike: I couldn't stand the pressure. I'm not really that great of a guitar player, you know.

VH1: But what about all the critical acclaim you've received?

Mike: That doesn't mean anything. I know I'm no good.

The band had an intensive therapy session that lasted for six weeks and cost almost 2.8 million dollars to try and snap him out of it.

Buddy: That therapy crap was a waste of damn time. Do you know how much money we lost by pushing back the tour?

Rama: But do you remember the therapist? She was fucking hot, man. I really think I was in love with her.

VH1: You mean at the end of the session?

Rama: No, by then she was a complete bitch. But in that first half an hour...man, she was perfect.

Fame had hit lead singer Rama hard too, but in a different place: his heart. Or maybe somewhere a little lower.

Mike: Wilt Chamberlain, Zeppelin in their heyday...nobody got more groupies than Rama. I think he shattered all the records.

Buddy: I'll always remember the night he took on 289 groupies in six hours. That fucker counted!

Victoria: I just couldn't stand the tour bus. He never wore pants on tour. He wandered around the bus at all hours, with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Chivas in the other. He could have at least worn underwear.

Rob: The last straw for me was the night of the release party for our third album, "Gay People Love Techno." Right before we were about to leave, we get a phone call from the lawyers. We were being sued by three sixteen-year-old triplets who said that Rama got all three of them pregnant...ON THE SAME NIGHT! That was it for me.

Although Pop5 managed to settle the lawsuit out of court, his bandmates' bad behavior caused bassist Rob quit the band in 2004.

Victoria: Rob was always the moral center of the band. I can remember him like it was yesterday, saying, "And the fucking media says it's us gay people who are degenerates! You fucking straight people are worse than us. Remember Rama's 27-minute marriage to that teenager in Wyoming? How exactly was that upholding the sanctity of matrimony?"

Mike: I thought his head was going to explode.

Rama: Yeah, Rob left the band for...what was it? Four days? Yeah, then he came back again.

Buddy: He probably just needed to check into a rest home or something. You know how it gets when you get older.

Rob: I can fucking hear you, you asshole.

It wasn't until 2005 that Victoria began feeling the pressure of fame.

Buddy: We noticed she was getting a little chunkier. And not in that good way, either.

Mike: I kept seeing her backstage, eating Twinkies, when she thought we weren't looking.

Rama: So we sat her down and said, "Look, darling. You're the token girl in this band, and our fans don't want to come and see a fat chick on the stage. You've got to pull yourself together."

Buddy: She cried a lot, but it was for her own good, in the end.

Coming up next: Population Five - The Diet Pill Addiction and Plastic Surgery Years