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An estimated 15,000 pop star wannabes — many braving a howling, all-night rainstorm — showed up in LA to be the first to audition for “X Factor” yesterday.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” executive producer Andrew Llinares tells The Post. “We are a new show. We could have been in a situation where nobody showed up.”
LA was the first in a five-city audition tour — including a stop in New Jersey April 14 at Newark’s Prudential Center — that marks the official start of Simon Cowell’s much talked-about singing competition and rival to “American Idol.”
The tryouts will whittle the contestants down to several hundred performers. Unlike “Idol,” where the best and worst tryout in front of just the judges, “X Factor” auditions are staged in front of a live audience in a packed theatre.
Inside the LA sports arena, the soggy hopefuls had to wait for up to five hours to audition for a producer talent scout at one of 30 booths and get the thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdict.
“The length of [singing] time seems to vary based upon the sensitivity of the judges,” an auditioner told The Post on his cell phone. “I am witnessing elderly people and people in wheelchairs getting standing ovations.”
Reporters were not allowed inside the arena to watch.
Those who make the cut are given yellow tickets and invited back the next day to perform again. Everyone else is sent home with a free wristband, T-shirt and 3D photo, the performers said.
Norwood Young, a former backup singer for Jennifer Lopez, arrived at 9:30 p.m. Saturday night to be the first person in line yesterday.
Young — from Ewing Township, NJ, a high-school classmate of Star Jones — is not strictly an amateur, which is frowned on for “Idol” but not on “X Factor.”
He has competed on “Star Search” and was featured in the E! channel reality series “High Maintenance 90210.”
“I sang for a while, then got caught up in the Hollywood stuff — the drugs, rock and roll and whatever,” he told The Post. “So this presents me — especially in my age demographic — the opportunity to get out there and go after it again.”
Also unlike “Idol,” “X Factor” — which debuts in September — is open to both individuals and groups as young as 13. There is no upper age limit.
“Susan Boyle really changed the game,” Young says, who is in his early 40s.
“She went against the grain of what music, unfortunately, has been in the last 10 or 15 years. A certain kind of body, a certain look, a certain age.”
The reason the hopefuls did not get to sing in front of the judges is because not all the judges for “X Factor” have been named yet.
So far, only Cowell and music mogul LA Reid are known to be on the panel. A third judge is still not decided on, Cowell says.
“We are taking our time with the judging panel,” Llinares said yesterday.
“On this show, the judges don’t just judge, but they are going to mentor the acts. The people who come on board have to be people who can do both ends of the job, really.”
ON HIS iPOD
What’s on Simon Cowell’s iPod?
“Bruno Mars,” Cowell told Teen Vogue over the weekend.
“I love Janet Jackson’s ‘That’s the Way Love Goes.’ ”
Seems the king of mean also has a soft spot for old Motown and slightly aged girl groups.
“I still listen to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and a lot of bands from the ’90s, like Brownstone and Jade,” he said.
— Post staff writer