Fall Out Boy- UPCLOSE
March 11, 08 by Eddy L
It’s another sunny, 74-degree afternoon in Los Angeles and casa Wentz is abuzz with activity.
“I woke up to cameras,” Fall Out Boy’s bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz says, referring to the MTV crew encamped at his Hollywood Hills home, shooting an episode of “MTV Cribs.” In addition to the usual entourage of producers, makeup artists and stylists in tow, our DUB photoshoot has encroached upon the tricked-out orange Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster and black Chevy Tahoe parked in the entry of his secluded bachelor pad overlooking the sprawling City of Angels.
These are hectic times for Fall Out Boy, the band that started playing gigs in the suburbs of northern Chicago, only to explode in popularity thanks to their infectiously catchy single, “Sugar, We’re Going Down.”
Their name came about when they asked an audience what they should call themselves and somebody screamed out “Fallout Boy,” an incidental character from “The Simpsons” (Fox). They gradually crawled their way into the national consciousness, and, by 2007, the band has become the latest, greatest popular music sensation; the darling of the pop punk set, not to mention certain non-disaffected youth that passionately distance themselves from the aforementioned male demographic with a penchant for eyeliner and strikingly sensitive conversation.
Just ask one of their 1,592,505 MySpace “friends,” or any of the kids who spent their parents’ hard-earned money to vault the band’s second major album, From Under the Cork Tree (Island Records, 2005), to double-platinum status. Fall Out Boy’s strange chemistry of musical sensibilities has lent them an air of relevance in the unfocused miasma of today’s overfed Top 40, “American Idol”-driven cultural mosh pit.
“We’re like a pop rock punk band with a lot of R&B and metal, influenced by weird things that are personal to us,” explains vocalist and guitarist Patrick Stump, who describes the band’s early days as “skimming off the influence of other bands and heroes, until we woke up and were who we are.”
In fact, musical disparity seems to be an integral part of the eclectic foundation upon which this foursome has built its self-sustained empire. Stump looks up to Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and David Bowie, while lead guitarist Joe Trohman counts A Tribe Called Quest, The Smiths and Pantera as influences. Pete Wentz admires the wordplay of Morrissey and writers such as Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemmingway (his small, expressive bulldog shares Hemingway’s name), while drummer Andy Hurley finds inspiration from Snoop Dogg, Fischerspooner and Megadeth.
Fall Out Boy’s recent success appears to have come as much from hard work and relentless touring as it has from their perfect integration into the collective consciousness of popular music, thanks to their hip-hop and soul influences, their casual inflection of cheeky irony, and their aura of imminent accessibility.
As for their musical identity, Stump admits that their latest release, Infinity on High (Island Records, 2007), is their “first album without a vestige of our initial influences.”
Incidentally, the album debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 1. Buzz around Fall Out Boy has fueled high-powered collaborations with Jay-Z, Babyface and Timbaland, and booked them as headliners on the Honda Civic Tour, which puts them on the road for two months this summer. Subsequent tour dates incorporate destinations including United Arab Emirates, South Africa and Russia.
If anything, the serial city-hopping feeds the band’s creative machine by inspiring new material. “When I was in Tokyo, I could write like nobody’s business,” explains Wentz, who uses a Mac laptop to document his observations on people, places and experiences, many of which make their way into his lyrics. Los Angeles provides myriad opportunities for sociological surveillance, a practice not lost on Wentz.
“It’s probably the best place for people watching,” he says; “everybody wants to be someone else. I think that’s a cool aspect to it.”Los Angeles has, as a matter of fact, come to represent a peculiar but inspirational place for the members of Fall Out Boy. Trohman and Stump, who still maintain residence in Chicago, plan on eventually moving to L.A., and usually crash with Wentz while here for work-related purposes (Hurley lives in Germantown, Wisconsin.). If the process of creating their latest album is any indication, they should have no problem mining the depths of their musical sensibilities.
“This album wasn’t done in a pressure situation,” Hurley says. “We had already had one-and-a-half/two albums worth of material, so we just picked through what was best.” And yet, working in the studio has kept the band insulated from the merciless glare of the limelight.
“We’ve been working in the studio for the past six months or so, and we haven’t had to deal with the popularity thing in a while,” Stump explains. “There’s just a lot of creativity going around.”
Simultaneously sarcastic, irreverent and endearingly serious about their craft, Fall Out Boy manages to produce addictively enthusiastic music that is both digestible and satisfyingly complex. If their future endeavors are as manically inventive as their punk permeated power-pop tune “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” they might be able stay afloat amid the musical debris that tends to be hot one second and gone faster than you can say “one hit wonders.”
The song’s video features an epic rock-meets-rap theme that channels “Walk This Way” while mocking 1980s music video excess. In the clip, lead singer Stump is possessed with inexplicably bizarre vocal stylings that baffle and eventually win over a hip-hop audience and Trohman dances while playing guitar and wearing a top hat as a homage to Slash from Guns N’ Roses. The cartoonishly ridiculous scenarios are the band’s way of making fun of the way the media (and general public) views the band (destroying hotel rooms, Wentz’s naked photos, driving towards oncoming traffic, etc.).
It’s an unapologetic trait that makes Fall Out Boy a band you hope will stick around, if only to save the music scene from the middling strains of conformity.
via Dub Mag