Interview with Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy

August 3, 2005

Warped Tour -- Atlanta, GA

Leah Weinberg: Yesterday you guys had a day off, so what does one do on a day off from Warped Tour?
Pete Wentz: Yesterday we went to the middle of Alabama and hung out at our bus driver’s house and went fishing and stuff because we’re total city boys. So when we go to the country, we get really excited and don’t know what’s going on at all. He’s like, ‘Go ride the four-wheeler,’ and we got chased by cows and all this weird stuff that we don’t understand at all. But usually on days off we do other stuff, like we went and played the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Our label kind of cracks the whip on us sometimes.

Technique [GA Tech's newspaper]: Do you like playing clubs better than playing festivals like this, or are they about the same?
P.W.: I think they’re good for different reasons. Different ones are good for different reasons. I really like playing festivals because you get to play with all these bands that you wouldn’t play with otherwise and hang out with, and you play for way more kids than you ever would. Clubs I like because they’re more intimate and it’s like you really have a sense of belonging and closeness with the people.

L.W.: What was your reaction when you found out that the album went gold?
P.W.: I don’t even know. It was weird. It feels like you’re in on some joke on the world, kind of. It’s like somebody pays us to do what we do. It’s so weird.

L.W.: How much do you think Fallout Boy’s Internet presence has helped the success of the band?
P.W.: Oh, monumentally. I think that we were downloaded in bedrooms and dorm rooms first more than anything. But I think that the problem is a lot of bands think that they can just go and put out a couple songs on the Internet and be wherever tomorrow, with whatever stage in their band. And I think that they don’t really understand that it takes so much more than that and it’s so much bigger than that. Like, going out, you have to play to one kid and you have to go out and you have to earn people one at a time. If you’re not willing to do the legwork, it’s probably not going to happen. Or else you might just catch a lucky break. I guess there’s some bands that do.

L.W.: What made you decide to be so active on the Internet with the journal and Q&A, as opposed to the other guys who seem to avoid it?
P.W.: I’m just obsessed with the Internet, so I’m on it like every four seconds. Patrick doesn’t really know what the Internet is. Andy goes on to talk to people in chatrooms. And I don’t know what Joe does on the Internet. It’s just kind of like, it’s the same thing as writing Fallout Boy’s music. Patrick writes all of Fallout Boy’s music and that’s kind of what he does. You always play to each other’s strengths and whoever is good at something or just happens to have something that they enjoy is usually how we go with it.

L.W.: When TRL first started it was all about the boy bands and pop bands and stuff, and now with you guys and My Chemical Romance being on there....
P.W.: My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy are the new boy bands.
L.W.: That’s true. But when did being on TRL become cool for this particular genre?
P.W.: To us–I can only speak for Fallout Boy though we are good friends with My Chemical Romance–I think that, to us, it’s always been about playing in front of the most people that we ever could, and TRL is just one facet of that. I think our fans appreciate us going on TRL or Jimmy Kimmel, whatever it is, because they know something’s gonna get trashed and we’re probably going to drop an F-bomb on there. It’s like this danger that they know is gonna happen and I think that that’s exciting. And also, us getting on TRL, the first time we got on there was because our fans voted us on. We have these really hardcore, really dedicated people. It’s not like our label was like, ‘Oh yeah, we can buy you on TRL.’ It’s one of those things where you actually have to have people voting and believing in you. I think that’s exciting.

L.W.: So what do your fans mean to you?
P.W.: It would be hard to break that down into a sentence. To me, it’s like they’re a barometer for me. How I behave, I want to behave in accordance with these people that believe in you and look up to you. I have my own moral barometer or whatever, but just in general, there’s a lot of people that I don’t want to disappoint and that are really important.

T: Looking at the song titles, do you try to interject a sense of humor into the music? Blink 182 made it known that they wanted it to be funny and other bands just presented themselves as is. Are you guys a mix of that?
P.W.: The problem is there was a lot of bands that came out and they had a lot of fart joke songs and then all of a sudden they were like, ‘Here’s our serious record,’ and everyone’s like, ‘Alright, you’re the band that just writes about [fart jokes].’ And then there’s a lot of bands that were out there and they were like, ‘We’re being the next Kurt Cobain and we’re super-serious all the time and we look this way on stage.’ And it’s like, I don’t think anybody has a patent on how they behave. Everybody’s got a little bit of both in them. Everybody has a sense of humor and everybody has a serious side, and that’s important to Fallout Boy. We’re not gonna get there and have dick and fart jokes, but at the same time, we appreciate Wes Anderson movies and these kind of strange, like are-you-supposed-to-be-laughing-at situations.

T: With regard to getting on MTV, do you ever get accused of selling out?
P.W.: I don’t feel like we’ve gotten a really big backlash because we’ve been really honest about our intentions and very see-through the whole time. At the same time, there are always going to be people, like there’s growing pains. Like anytime something changes or gets bigger or gets different than it was, I think people react, both in the band and outside the band. I definitely had a lot of bands that I believed in that were like these special little things to me, and when it’s grown, it was scary. You were losing this thing. You used to always tell all your friends, ‘You gotta check this out’ and then as soon as your friends were into it, you were like, ‘Man, this fucking sucks.’ Everybody wants to have this secret. Eventually you come to terms. You can love something and it could colossal and it could be tiny. There’s certain bands like Saves the Day or Morrissey, like Morrissey’s kinda popular right now in the emo scene but I love Morrissey no matter what. When nobody likes him but me and a bunch of crazy fat moms, that’ll still be cool too. It’s just one of those things that you come to terms with eventually, that you can love something and no matter how it changes, you’re just going to stick by it.

T: It just seems that a band will explode because that’s what’s popular right now and its original fans get mad.
P.W.: We’ve always tried to do things that keep it special for our fans, like playing secret shows and keeping our fans pretty updated. I think the other difference is that we’re not really a band that came out of nowhere. Over 200,000 people bought our last record and it’s like when we put out this record, those were the people who--when we got on MTV and were played on the radio, we’re only played and all of that because our fans waited so heavily when they bought the record and had such an awesome reaction to it. I think they know how much we value them and they’ve always been ambassadors for Fallout Boy.

T: Are you ever afraid that your fans are going to grow up one day and not like you any more?
P.W.: I’m afraid for anybody who has to grow up because I have a Peter Pan complex. But this is the thing, when we wrote our new record, people were like, ‘Why doesn’t the new record sound like Take This To Your Grave and why is it so different?’ We don’t want to just keep getting the next batch of 14-year-olds. We want them too, but we want to hold onto all of our fans. The thing about how our fans have grown from age 14 to 18, like when we first came out, I think that the changes you go through are so dramatic, it’s like, it’s important to me and I have the respect for our fans to know that we’ll grow with them and they’ll grow with us. That’s why we’re not going to keep putting out the same record over and over.

L.W.: Do you think that a lot of people were either disappointed or surprised that the new album wasn’t ‘Take This to Your Grave, Part 2'?
P.W.: I’m sure there were some people that were disappointed. I think there’s a lot of people who would be a lot more disappointed if we put out “Take This To Your Grave, Part 2" though because for whatever reason, it’s one of those records that kind of caught on and captured a moment for a lot of people, and you can’t ever have that again. There’s a lot of records that I’ve been into like “Through Being Cool” by Saves the Day, and it’s like, if they put that record out again, it’s like I wouldn’t have been the same age and having the same feelings and it hit me at just the right time. I’d rather them go on and keep making different things and trying to explore. At the same time, we’re not gonna write a record just to alienate our fan base. We’re gonna put out the records that suit Fallout Boy the best at the time. But yeah, there probably were. And there’s probably some people that were surprised.

L.W.: What do you think of the whole Hey Chris phenomenon?
P.W.: [Laughs.] Sometimes you create this monster and it becomes this other thing. I like Chris a lot. He’s a good dude. He was out for the last couple of days. I didn’t realize he’s a phenomenon, but I believe it.
L.W.: He’s become somewhat of a celebrity.
P.W.: Yeah I believe it, definitely.

L.W.: So with your label and Clandestine and a new book and Fallout Boy, how do you have the time to do it all?
P.W.: Sometimes on Warped Tour, you don’t have a lot of time. Usually, the biggest thing with rock bands or bands in general, it’s like the whole hurry up and wait game. You get here and then you sit around and do nothing. Rather than sit around and smoke pot or whatever or cry about your girlfriend into the phone, I just try to do other things to keep my mind off things. It’s enjoyable for me. I’ve always been the kind of person, my mind never stops working, like I never go to sleep ever so that stuff kind of fills that void.

L.W.: What’s the new book about?
P.W.: Well, we’ve got two. One’s called ‘Rainy Day Kids’ and it’s done. We’re sending it to press soon. It’s a different voice, kind of. It’s just the past three years, everything that I didn’t tell anybody and everything that just didn’t make it into Fallout Boy lyrics. It’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit more personal than Fallout Boy lyrics probably and a little less ‘Fuck you, girl.’ And then the other one is one I’m doing with William from The Academy Is. And it’s way weird. We write chapters back and forth. It’s pretty cool.

Related Links:
Fall Out Boy Photos
Fall Out Boy Show Review
Fall Out Boy Interview #1
Fall Out Boy Interview #2
Fall Out Boy Interview #4
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