Tom Lynch

It's not every day that one of the biggest bands in the country surfaces from a suburb as tranquil as Wilmette.

Fall Out Boy, the pop-punk foursome that broke out with its 2003 release "Take This to Your Grave" on Fueled by Ramen, saw its debut shoot directly into the veins of kids in search of something new, less-defined and more intricate than basic three-chord slam-dunks dripping from typical touring punk-rock acts. Aided by a promotion deal with Island Records, Fueled by Ramen sold more than 200,000 copies of "Take This to Your Grave." Near-constant touring by the band made the difference--more than 500 shows over the last two years--plus high-profile opening gigs with mega-draws Blink 182 and Taking Back Sunday. During this time the band consistently held the number-one spot on the Alternative Press Reader's Chart--a publication that named Fall Out Boy the second most underrated band of 2003--and made Rolling Stone's recent list of the top ten artists to watch in 2005.

Fall Out Boy looks ready to geyser, especially with a main-stage presence on this summer's Warped Tour. Now with a major-label deal on Island Records proper, last month's release, "From Under the Cork Tree," the sophomore outing from a group of musicians still hovering around the 25-years-old landmark, rocketed out of the record-sales gates. The release shattered the Tower online pre-sale record, besting the likes of Depeche Mode, Modest Mouse, Train and many more super-sellers, and when it debuted on the Billboard chart at #9, Fall Out Boy had created the coveted "top ten" record. (At press time the album rests at #49.) The band's dedicated fan base, energized by Fall Out Boy's inexhaustible live show, helped completely sell out an April-May headlining tour with Gym Class Heroes and The Academy Is..., prompting The Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis to write in a column last month that this "couldn't happen to a more deserving band."

With everyone seemingly leaping onto wagon Fall Out Boy, you might expect the boys to try and leave behind their roots. "We grew up pretty much in the most boring suburbs on the planet," jokes bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz, sitting in a back booth of Lakeview's Pick Me Up café. He talks casually and comfortably, just like a kid from Wilmette would, tattooed arms covered by sleeves and hair impeccably groomed with product. He rests his two cell phones on the table. He grew up not far from the setting of John Hughes' eighties teen romps like "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club." "I guess that's a pretty good depiction of what it's like," says Wentz, who counts "Breakfast" as his favorite. "It's just a hyper-conservative adult population and a bunch of kids who don't know what to do with themselves, who get into fireworks and skateboarding and eventually play in bands, I guess. Everyone I knew wanted to be Lloyd Dobler [John Cusack's boombox-wielding geek-hero of "Say Anything"], but no one was, even though they thought they were." Was Wentz one of those kids into fireworks and skateboarding? "Oh very much," he laughs. "I'm still very much an advocate of both."

Growing up, Wentz listened to Michael Jackson ("pre-children," he's quick to mention), and then it was Def Leopard and Guns `n' Roses. Once high school kicked in, it became the Misfits and Minor Threat. "More than anything I wanted to be a rock star," he says, "like Axl Rose in the `Welcome to the Jungle' video."

Whether it was the dream of being bombarded by groupies Axl-style or a ploy to make himself noticed by female classmates, Wentz picked up guitar when he was in junior high, eventually moving to bass after a friend asked him to join a band. "I was like, `Yeah, I'll do that, it's got less strings, it's got to be easier,'" he says. "That's my principle for playing bass always--it's got less strings, it's got to be easier."

Wentz and drummer Andy Hurley--of Milwaukee, the only member not originally from Chicago's suburbs--played in a band together early on, as did Wentz and guitarist Joe Trohman, until Trohman met vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump at a local bookstore and went back to Stump's house to practice. After one session, Stump became singer of the then-untitled new band.

The foursome's first show was in a conference room at DePaul--where Wentz was a political science major--for a modest crowd. "It was a really weird room," Wentz says. "Someone called us like an hour before the show and was like, `Hey, you want to play?' We played three songs. We were really bad. There were a bunch of people there who thought we were gonna be alright, but we weren't." The band grabbed its name--an obscure "Simpsons" reference--from a suggestion from an audience member at an early show.

The four had relocated to the city and were living in the Roscoe Village area when the band began to take off. Wentz hadn't graduated--"I'm like a year of classes away. At some point I should probably finish so when I have kids I can be like, `you have to go to college.'" It soon became obvious that the band members had no reason to keep residences in the city--they were constantly on tour.

Wentz moved back in with his parents. "Whenever you leave [your apartment], you sort of leave it trashed, and when you come back it's way more trashed. But when you leave your parents house and you come back, it's like, your mom's got cookies, and you're like, `Wow, I'm 14 all over again.'"

And then Island came calling. "When we sent our demo to everybody, nobody really cared at all, and then Chris [Knapp] from Ataris called one day and was like, `I love this thing.' He gave it to a couple of labels and it started this feeding frenzy. Some majors became interested, but Island was the only one that was like, `we'll just sit back and let you guys do whatever you want to do, and if you need help, we'll help.'" A few months and a phone call from Jay-Z later, and Fall Out Boy was on the Island roster as of October of last year. "It's weird," Wentz says. "If anyone really knew us--like, to our friends, it's just really strange."

One of Wentz's cell phones rings--he allows it to sit. Turns out, he avoids phone calls. "I have two cell phones just so that many people can not get a hold of me," he quips. "I don't answer...ever."

And now "From Under the Cork Tree." The follow-up to an indie success, especially when promoted by a major record label, can be tricky. Bands struggle to avoid the "sophomore slump" tag--if a band retraces its steps, it's not being ambitious enough, but if the band pushes towards the mainstream, it "sells out." Luckily, Fall Out Boy found a middle ground with its Island debut, and with a title taken from a children's story--"The Story of Ferdinand," a tale of a bull so shy he spends his life underneath a cork tree (Elliott Smith had a Ferdinand tatted on his arm)--the record offers a more adult sound without totally breaking from the band's charming, heart-on-sleeve rhythmic renderings and off-center, sometimes goofy, elongated song titles. (Check the opener: "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of this Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued," or later, "I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Keep Your Mouth Shut.") The band keeps its sense of humor, something Wentz finds incredibly important to remain "believable"--a "Wes Anderson kind of humor" that allows the band to poke fun at itself while staying painfully autobiographical shouting out epics of broken hearts and lost loves.

"We wanted to write a record that would suit every mood and that would change people's moods," he says. "I think about fans that got our first record when they were 14 and are getting this record now, when they're 17 or 18, and the change people go through is colossal. I don't want to be in a band that just gets the next batch of 14-year-olds. I want to have respect for our fans that they'll grow and not want to hear the same record over and over again."

"From Under the Cork Tree" is still very much pop-punk, with a sly slide of emo howling, and with the band's hardcore presence on stage to electrify already-worshipful crowds, it seems destined to succeed, despite the difficulty of marketing it within any certain genre of music.

"Early on it didn't matter because nobody cared who we were," Wentz says. "People would hear our music and think it's kind of...whatever, but then they'd see us on stage, thrashing like a hardcore band. Early on, we were told by different managers that we need to calm down. We were on tour with American Hi-Fi and we were told to learn to be a little more like them, a little more at ease on stage. But we didn't care. We were in the shittiest van on the planet playing kind of bad music, and we were into it so it didn't matter." Not that that dissuaded critics and fans alike from attempting to label the band. "I think it's weird how human beings need to compartmentalize things, like things need to fit into different boxes in your head for you to function. It's something I've noticed more and more from being in a band. You can't just be out there doing your own thing, it's gotta be in a safe little spot that can fit in everybody's head. We've always just considered ourselves as hardcore kids playing pop music. I don't really care what we're called or labeled, but if you're gonna love us or hate us, do it because of the music, not what the label is. But, I think, the other side of the spectrum is that bands are way too nervous about being called `emo.' Bands freak out about how bad of a stigma it is if their music is emotional. Isn't that what it's supposed to be?"

A young band inexperienced in the major-label world may feel added pressure when trying to produce a success. "We felt pressure in a weird way. I remember my dad came into the studio and listened to some demos and was like, `This is interesting, but it doesn't have as many hooks.' And I'm like, `What? I'm you kid!' It's weird now because all of a sudden it's real people with jobs riding on the line, not just the four of us having a really good time doing it. But at the same time, when it stops being fun, we're gonna stop doing it. But, people meet us and realize that we're just kind of normal."

Is it difficult remaining normal when shoved into the rock-star limelight? "It is, it's tough," Wentz says. "It's like, we played the other day and Jay-Z and Beyonce were on the side of the stage watching. But, like, at the same time I come back to my house and my mom makes me clean my room. It's hard to navigate being Pete from Fall Out Boy and being Pete from Wilmette, but at the same time, that's something we've always made a conscious effort to do."

A few weeks ago Wentz took an afternoon off from interviews and photo shoots and touring to catch "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" with some friends during its opening weekend. At the theater, Wentz was flooded with rock-star catcalls--"they do this thing where they just yell out song titles," he laughs--but the fans were polite enough to wait until after Anakin's transformation to approach for autographs. "They were really cool," Wentz says. "It's really weird," he says of star status. "I'll look on the cover of a magazine and be like, `That's Joe's face. I knew that kid when he was 16!' Why would anybody want my autograph? I guess people get used to it, and we're on the cusp of that I guess. It's not scary, but it's weird. It's not over-the-top just yet."

When asked if Wentz misses playing smaller venues to miniscule crowds, he pauses before answering. "I miss small Knights of Columbus shows, for sure," he says. "When we try to do them now it's really chaotic and kind of dangerous, so we don't do it." The band occasionally plays under secret names, or, in one instance, just shows up at shows, instruments in hand, and asks if they can play a short set, as they did recently at an Knights of Columbus show in Arlington Heights. "We played in front of fifty kids," Wentz says. "They were like, `holy shit, is this really happening?' People were calling their friends to get them there. It was great."

(2005-05-31)

Also by Tom Lynch

Tip of the Week
Last year's bestselling "The Devil's Highway," Chicago native Luis Alberto Urrea's work of nonfiction, won the Lannan Literary Award, got the author inducted into the Latino Literary Hall of Fame, and topped my best-of-2004 nonfiction list
(2005-05-24)

Tip of the Week
Stella's third novel, "Unimaginable Zero Summer," makes the high-school reunion the 400-pound gorilla of life. Seven Chicago thirtysomethings spend a summer together before their fifteen-year reunion with booze, food and karaoke, and their unavoidable pasts surface, along with all of their drama
(2005-05-17)

Author Visit
Adrienne Miller, the Midwest-raised literary editor at Esquire magazine, offers her debut novel, "The Coast of Akron," a comedic examination of the Havens--an afflicted, artistic family of dysfunction
(2005-05-17)

Tip of the Week
Local author Joseph Suglia's "Years of Rage," his debut novel commenting on the cultural and social atmosphere that surrounds America's pitfall into school shootings, works as both a controversial piece of fiction and an educational look into the alienated mind
(2005-05-10)

Tip of the Week
(2005-05-10)

Dark Secrets
(2005-05-10)

Influential Illicitness
(2005-05-10)

Tip of the Week
(2005-05-03)

Tip of the Week
(2005-04-26)

Soundcheck
(2005-04-26)

Tip of the Week
(2005-04-19)

War of the Worlds
(2005-04-19)

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