Interview 60 Seconds With: Patrick Stump

Patrick Stump is perhaps most famed as the Fall Out Boy frontman who took a backseat. With his band on an indefinite hiatus, Patrick is finally ready to step into the limelight, and this time, he’s doing it his way.

The ‘Truant Wave’ EP was your first solo material to be made public, that must’ve been quite nerve-wracking for you?
It was to put it out! Writing and recording, the artistic side of things is always easy and fun, kind of effortless. I’m not really thinking, I’m just enjoying and focussing on it. I just wanted to know that somebody got it; that anybody heard it. You always believe in your records.

How have reactions been to it so far?
Great! I feel like you are, to a certain extent, cocooned with people that support you so I play these shows and it’s all people who want to see it; that’s kind of misleading sometimes. There’s been some negative, of course, but any departure is going to be just that. I’m happy with it, and I think there are enough people that are happy with it that it’s all I really was hoping for.

Your album is due out this autumn, is that going to be similar stylistically?
Energy-wise it’s a bit less all over the place. The album’s a little bit more nuanced, but it’ll be hard to describe until you hear it.

Did you do all of the instrumentation?
On the EP, I played everything but the strings and there are a couple of guests so it is a little bit more collaborative. On the album though, I did every note, everything. I recorded the EP after the album partially because I’d played everything and it was like, “Man, it’d be really nice to have someone else in the studio right now.” It gets a little lonely after a while.

With Fall Out Boy your music had to fit around Pete’s words. How did the writing process work with your solo material?
Oddly, exactly the same. I talked to other song writers who’d never had the experience of writing music to someone else’s lyrics and it’s a very different experience. When you’re writing your own stuff, you’ll typically come up with the melody and worry about the words last. Pete and I have completely different lyrical styles but the way I’m applying my lyrics to the music ends up being very similar to the way I do it with his. Except I’m a lot more willing to change things after I’ve put it in. If I’m not 100% sure on a word here or there, I can tweak it forever. It’s a totally parallel experience to Fall Out Boy. I can’t imagine that they would ever sound like each other because I can’t write the way Pete writes, it’s just not possible.

You’ve been through album campaigns before, but what’s been the strangest part of this release to do solo?
I guess the strangest thing is how not strange a lot of it has been. I was really scared of a lot of it. I was scared of talking on stage. And videos. Of photoshoots, of being the centre of the photoshoot. I was scared of playing all these instruments in front of people. Everyone knows me as a guitar player and I’ve never played a lot of these other things in front of people. All that stuff. My lyrics, I was terrified of people seeing my lyrics! And there are a lot of people that like my lyrics, which was great. I guess to a certain extent it feels like split personalities, but everyone’s multi-faceted, I guess. No one is one thing. Comedians get sad and The Cure have happy songs.

Patrick Stump’s new album ‘Soul Punk’ will be released on 13th September via Mercury.

Taken from the Summer 2011 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.