THE ACCIDENTAL SEX SYMBOL

HE MAY "TURN INTO A TOTAL IDIOT" AROUND WOMEN, BUT SHY INCUBUS HEARTTHROB BRANDON BOYD HAS BEEN CHASED BY CRAZED GIRLS SINCE THIRD GRADE. NOW HIS BAND IS BLOWING UP BY REJECTING THE MACHO NOISE-MONGERING OF HARD ROCK-SO WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT BEING SUCH "DARN NICE GUYS"?

BY KATE SULLIVAN

Brandon Boyd's ears are smoking. The 25-year-old Incubus singer is lying down in a trailer parked in the Old West sector of Universal Studios Hollywood, where his band is shooting scenes for the "Wish You Were Here" video in a huge tank of water filled with plants, turntables, and a couple of mermaids. (Across the street is the legendary Red Sea from The Ten Commandments, which parts every five minutes.) A sexy medic leans over cutie-pie Boyd, takes a long drag off a menthol cigarette, wraps her mouth around his ear, and slowly exhales. As the smoke wafts out, she rubs his skull meaningfully with her eyes closed, as if she were reading his mind and it was full of Kama Sutra diagrams. Boyd's older brother, Darren, later swears he saw tongue.

Still, Brandon feels lousy. In the video, the SoCal-based modern rockers-guitarist Mike Einziger, bassist Dirk Lance, drummer Jose Pasillas, and DJ Chris Kilmore-escape from rioting teenage girls by running down a bridge and jumping into the ocean, where they are rescued by pretty mermaids. Unfortunately, no one tells Brandon that hopping in and out of deep water all morning can lead to inner-ear rebellion if you've got the sniffles, and his eardrum is close to bursting, as a doctor will inform him. Smoke is an old folk remedy, but it doesn't work on Brandon. ("It did raise my, um, spirits," he says.)

So he lies on a couch with a hand clutching his ear, worried Incubus may have to postpone an upcoming tour of Japan and New Zealand. The video, however, marches on without him. (Future Pop-Up Video trivia: The "Brandon" who is saved in the ocean is a look-alike production assistant with even more freakishly sculpted abs.)

In the end, Brandon's go-get-'em mom, Dolly Wiseman, saves the day. A cuddly force of nature with bright red lipstick and psychic instincts, she drives onto the set in her SUV, lays what she calls her "healing hands" on her son, and decides he needs to go to the hospital. He does, and after ingesting a mess of funky steroids, he's feeling slightly better the next day.

This isn't the first time Wiseman's intuition has helped her son: When he was a baby, he knocked over a cup of hot coffee and burned the area around his armpit. An ER doctor said it was nothing; unconvinced, Wiseman flew Brandon to a burn center, where she learned it was a severe injury that would require a skin graft from his thigh. "All through that ordeal, he never cried," she remembers, still slightly awed.

"Brandon's a mama's boy," says Darren. "We all are." (Brandon is the middle of three sons.) It's true: Brandon mentions his mom constantly, even more than his ex-girlfriend Jo English, whom he dated for three years and who appears in Incubus' "Stellar" video. "My mom is the most creative person

I know," Brandon says, his highest possible compliment. (Wiseman is a singer, artist, and writer.) "She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence."

Wiseman has shaped Brandon's approach to music, love, spirituality, and shirts. She did his colors once, "and it totally stuck into my subconscious," he says. "I can't help it now-like, I wear brown and shit." Her metaphysical questing has also rubbed off on her son, who practices yoga and loves books like The Mists of Avalon. "Most of my interest in things of that ilk comes from my mom's bookshelves."

Considering their close relationship, it's no surprise Brandon gets along so well with women. "Growing up, most of my friends were girls," he says.

"I really need female friends." Considering his androgynous beauty and sweet demeanor, plus Incubus' kid-tested/mother-approved guitar rock, it's no surprise he's MTV's newest weapon of mass heartbreak. Girls scream for him to take his shirt off at Incubus shows (he usually obliges), and Teen People recently voted him one of "The Hottest Guys in Music." His sensitive-guy appeal sets him apart from today's testosterone-drunk rock. While chunky-boy Fred was crowing about nookie and groping groupies, Brandon wrote the flowery 2000 hit "Stellar" in homage to his girlfriend's celestial body: "Meet me in outer space / I need you to see this place / It might be the only way that I can show you how it feels to be inside you"). He's the kind of guy who can call a vagina a yoni (the term used in the Kama Sutra), and somehow it doesn't sound creepy.

"Most of my favorite artists are women-Björk, PJ Harvey, Ani DiFranco," he says. "Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing-we're domesticated apes with a microphone."

Long associated with the nü metal scene, Incubus earned their first buzz on the Ozzfest and Family Values tours. But compared to most of the music on current rock radio playlists, Incubus' sound is pretty darn yonic. Morning View, the oceanic follow-up to their breakthrough third album, 1999's double-platinum Make Yourself, is a melodic song cycle inspired by heartbreak. Incubus experiment with loose structure and unusual arrangements (including strings and Asian instruments) while delivering the kind of hooky choruses and guitar riffs radio loves. Brandon's voice swaggers on several harder-edged songs, though his sharpest lyrics belong to a ballad, "Just a Phase": "You are a fingernail running down the chalkboard / I thought I left in third grade / Now my only consolation is that this could not / Last forever even though you're singing and thinking / How well you've got it made." So is that a rant about an ex or an attack on a certain rock trend?

"There's pressure to be a heavy band in this whole scene, and we just really turned our backs on it completely," says Einziger, 25. Though they have a DJ, Kilmore's work is all about texture, not hip-hop flava, and Brandon never busts a rhyme. "I think the world of rap-metal is just pathetically ridiculous," Einziger adds. "In my opinion, it's a very horrible place to be. We don't want to be part of anyone's little bullshit scene."

The day after the video shoot, Brandon and Darren run a few errands in Malibu. As Brandon stands at a sidewalk ATM, a thirtyish new-age lady spots him and exclaims, "I know him! I mean-he's famous!" Brandon gets his cash, and she makes her move: "I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your soul." He thanks her mildly. She admires the red Sanskrit tattoo on his arm and asks if he practices meditation nearby "in the colony." She speaks to him in knowing tones about chakras and symbols-as if their shared spiritual interests made them part of the same club. Brandon answers her questions directly, yet cordially, never giving away too much.

Not long after, a middle-aged mother approaches Brandon, her wide-eyed teenage son in tow. "We just love your record," she says. "It's incredible. We were already listening to it a long time ago." She asks if he'll pose for a photo with her, and Brandon obliges. Three giggling teenage girls also want a picture, and he offers them a smile but few words. Flash. They thank him, and as he wanders away, they ask Darren, "So what band is he in again?" Even prepubescents can't seem to help themselves. A ten-year-old lass walks up and asks, "Are you Brandon from Incubus?" When he says yes, she squeals and runs away.

Brandon has a knack for leaving strangers satisfied without really opening up to them. "If he doesn't feel safe, Brandon can pull down a shield to protect himself," says Wiseman. "Most people can't see it." Once he feels comfortable, though, he's a good listener and a good talker. He looks directly into your eyes as he speaks; when you say something that pleases him, he'll mutter "right on" or give you a high-five. He rarely puts his foot in his mouth, though he is prone to putting his foot behind his head, yoga-style, when he's sitting around. ("I can do both, but I have to be lying down.") And he claims to be painfully shy around the opposite sex. "I get scared around really gorgeous women. I turn into a total idiot. I try to be funny, and I end up sounding ridiculous and walking away."

Sure, babe. "Really," he protests. "Recently I saw this beautiful girl on the beach in Barcelona, and it took me 45 minutes to get up the nerve to talk to her."

It's kind of baffling, this shyness: Growing up in Calabasas, California, an affluent town near Malibu, Brandon was always getting chased by girls. "Even when he was a small child, he had this charisma," Wiseman says. "Girls loved him. He had pale blond hair and big brown eyes, and even his teachers wanted to touch his hair." At first he didn't know how to deal with the attention. "In the third grade," says Darren, "my mom would pick us up from school, and this one older girl would jump in the van and smooch him all over the face, just maul the hell out of him with that cherry-flavored lip gloss. He'd cry and push her off."

Soon, Brandon began to see the light. "One day in fourth grade, a girl from sixth grade followed him home from school," Wiseman remembers. "He invited her in to see his toys and play. After a while, he came into the kitchen and announced that she had been kissing him and that he liked it."

Brandon inherited much of his mojo from his father, who was a model and actor in the '70s and '80s. "He was the Salem man," Darren says. "The guy on the billboard. He had bright green eyes and a green shirt on-'How come I smoke Salems and you don't?'"

"And he was on Days of Our Lives a couple times," Brandon adds proudly. "He was also in a Julio Iglesias video, that duet with Diana Ross. I thought that was the coolest shit ever." He laughs. "I still think it's the coolest shit ever!"

Nobody expected Brandon to become a performer. "I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist," he says. "I still think that sometimes." (He attended art school for a couple of years.) The video for Incubus' Top 40 hit "Drive" features animation by Brandon and drummer Pasillas, who were childhood friends. Both attended Calabasas High School, along with Einziger and Lance (their former turntablist, DJ Lyfe, joined after graduation). When they were 15, Brandon and Pasillas, a West Coast-punk fan, started dabbling in music. "It felt like it was coming from the exact same source as the drawing," Brandon says. His parents split up around the same time ("definitely the darkest period in my family's history"), and screaming through Metallica covers was an ideal release.

Einziger also needed some musical therapy: At 14, he was seriously injured in a car crash in which one of his best friends died. "I withdrew a little bit from my friends and started spending time in my room playing guitar," he says. "For months, my parents tried to convince me to go to a therapist-they thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't freaking out. But in actuality I was dealing with it in my own way."

Naming themselves after a mythological demon that has sex with sleeping women, Incubus started recording demos in a Santa Monica studio in the early '90s. They were so nervous before their first show, at a Los Angeles-area club, that Brandon's mom prescribed group meditation. "I had them lie down on the floor in the living room and took them through a visualization," she says. "I told them they were swimming underwater and that they could breathe and were playing with dolphins. They were so relaxed afterwards."

A frustrated Incubus had no luck with major labels, so they released the goofy, Primus-obsessed Fungus Amongus themselves in 1995. But gradually word spread. Interscope came calling, and renowned producer Scott Litt (R.E.M., Nirvana) wanted to sign them to his burgeoning Outpost imprint. Incubus ultimately went with Immortal/Epic, Korn's label. "I was offering them burritos and guacamole," Litt says good-naturedly, "but they went with someone who gave them Rolexes." No hard feelings-he went on to produce Make Yourself and Morning View.

The band released 1997's Enjoy Incubus EP and hit Europe with Korn. The schizo funk/jazz/metal S.C.I.E.N.C.E. dropped to decent sales soon after, and the band toured nonstop for two years, opening for bands like Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit. Around the same time, Lyfe was replaced by Kilmore, a DJ from Pennsylvania who was struggling in L.A. He didn't even have electricity for a while. ("It was cool," he says. "I just used candles at night.") One evening, the phone rang. "It was this guy asking if I wanted to audition for a band called Incubus." He was so excited he learned 16 tracks in two days.

Incubus won a slot on the second stage of Ozzfest in the summer of '98, thanks in part to Ozzy Osbourne's son, Jack, a big fan. "The rumor was that Jack's favorite bands got to play the second stage," says Jock Elliott, Incubus' product manager. Korn invited the band to Family Values that fall. But with 1999's Make Yourself, Incubus were making a clear attempt to bust out of the hard-rock world, with more tuneful, chorus-driven songs, and a bigger accent on vocals. "There's this formula of yelling and screaming over guitar riffs-that's not what we do well," Einziger says. "We have a singer with an intelligent voice who writes great lyrics, and we wanted the music to be much more of a platform for him."

Nevertheless, the album's first single, "Pardon Me," stalled. Then one day on the tour bus, Elliott heard Einziger casually playing the song on a $50 acoustic guitar. "We got the idea to record an acoustic version and send it out to radio," Elliott says. "It just exploded." The song eventually peaked at number three on Billboard's modern rock radio chart, paving the way for "Stellar" and "Drive." Incubus thus became the odd Ozzfest band to break out of the hard-rock ghetto and cross over to Top 40 radio and VH1. They were also the only rock band on Moby's forward-looking Area: One festival last summer.

Jed the Fish, the first DJ to spin Incubus at L.A. rock station KROQ, says, "Bands hate to categorize their music-they always say, 'What we do is unlike everything else.' And that is fucking bullshit. But it's true with Incubus."

Through more than a decade of ups and downs, Incubus have stayed close friends, thanks to their mellow, surfer-dude personalities. The one time tension got really bad-during the recording of Make Yourself-they went to group therapy. "When we're making music together, it's like five men making love-in a very platonic sense," Brandon says. "It's very erotic, because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."

"None of us are too high-maintenance," adds drummer Pasillas. "But if you have some serious issues and you've got to confide in someone, [bassist] Dirk is really good."

Dirk Lance is the straight man of the group; beneath his impassive facade is a surprising warmth. Just don't wake him up too early. "Those four guys are some of the most positive people you will meet in your entire life," he says in his deep monotone. "They're always in a good mood, and I'm just not that way, so over the last ten and a half years that's provided for some interesting moments."

Such as?

"Brandon and I used to fight almost every day because I was not a morning person. First thing in the morning, don't greet me with a smile and a 'Hi! How are ya!' For, like, two years nonstop he would do that. I was like, 'Oh my God, you've got to be deliberately doing this to drive me crazy!'"

Did he ever kick Brandon's ass?

"We're much more passive-aggressive."

Lance says he hates it when writers portray Incubus as "such darn nice guys." But it's true: They are some of the most well adjusted rock stars in the under-40 bracket, which is reflected in their music. It's more supportive than challenging, and easygoing enough to blend into various radio formats or lighten up hard-rock playlists. ("You can put them next to Puddle of Mudd, or Pearl Jam, or Disturbed," says KROQ's Jed the Fish.) Brandon is simply a naturally happy person, and even his teenage torments didn't lead to the usual angst anthems. In fact, given his parents' remarriages, he's thrilled to have "this huge extended family. Everyone is so unique and interesting and weird and beautiful," he says. "I come home from tour, and I'm like, 'Ah, my crazy family!'"

Tonight Brandon heads over to a Malibu restaurant for a birthday dinner in honor of his stepfather, Brad Wiseman. At a long table covered with seafood, Dolly and Brad, Brandon's brothers, and his two step-siblings chat animatedly. Brandon regales them with a story about getting caught up in a riot at an L.A. rave. "The cops were shooting rubber bullets as we were running toward the parking lot," he says, still bewildered. "But we were trying to leave!" Darren follows with a dramatic description of the sexy medic who worked on Brandon's ear. "She was pretty hot!" Brandon says. As soon as he finishes eating, he cuts out to visit a sick uncle. "Everyone in Incubus is very close to their families," Scott Litt says.

For Incubus, rebellion is not about pissing off your parents; it's about growing up without succumbing to adulthood's grind. "People slowly destroy themselves doing what they think they have to do to make ends meet," Brandon says. "I like what I do. I love being able to express and create. But I also see it as a means to allow me to do [more internal work] without having worldly distractions like a nine-to-five job. I always want to be able to read and have the time to draw.

"Right now is the craziest time that we've ever had," he continues. "I do take it seriously to an extent because I know that if we do it right, not only will we have the gratification of making music, but when I'm older I'll have the freedom to just say, 'What am I going to do today? I'm going to paint a really, really big picture.'"