Features Fall Out Boy: ‘This Is The Four Musketeers’

The first time the curtain dropped on Fall Out Boy at London’s Wembley Arena, they were approaching the end of a long promo stint in support of album, ‘Folie à Deux’. The band’s arena shows in late 2008 and early 2009 marked both the height of their popularity in the UK - at least, so it seemed from the outside - and the beginning of the end. During some of their biggest live appearances on our side of the Atlantic, the four piece may have been putting on a massive show every night, but they couldn’t have been further from the top of the world.

“I mean, honestly,” begins Pete Wentz, bassist and, arguably, the face of the band, “so much of it was a blur. Some of the rooms, I totally remember - like Wembley - but there are some where… Honestly, it had gotten to the point where we were burned.”

Looking back with the gift of hindsight, the shows they played over those six months fell upon tumultuous times for the band. In the throes of their fourth album and its missteps, the band – also made up by vocalist Patrick Stump, guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley - were being forced onto bigger stages to showcase bigger cracks in their defences. The audiences were there and, for all it was worth, they really cared, but the band seemed to have gotten their heads a little lost in the haze.

“You don’t appreciate the idea that there are thousands of people that are coming,” Pete continues, thinking back. “I mean, you appreciate it but I think there’s a difference in taking it in. Our heads - my head, in particular - were not in that game enough. We had just done too much at that point. I think there’s a thing where, if something special happens to you every single day, it has to be on the level of being Number One or playing the President’s Inaugural Ball, it has to be like that to find the special moment. After that, it stops being special.”

By the time the band’s following US tour – the ever so slightly ironically titled Believers Never Die Part Deux tour – the group had ground to a halt. Halfway through 2009, the foursome were ready to pack it in and concentrate on other aspects of their lives for once. Fall Out Boy was to be put on the back burner, until four years had passed. “That’s one of the great things about getting a second chance to do this again; having that appreciation,” offers Pete, on life after ‘the break’.

“Every day, we’ve made a big deal about getting out and seeing wherever we are, and I think that’s important: not taking any of this stuff for granted. Not just with our band, but in our lives in general. We have a real appreciation for how we’re doing it this time. We’ve really thought it through. I think last time, we were the first band of our management company that got to this size over here, so we didn’t even really know how to do arenas here. We probably didn’t make the smartest decisions, but we just didn’t know. No one gives you a handbook on these kind of things, it just happens. This time, we’re better grounded to do it.

“I feel like having that time off and putting out a piece of music that we were really not sure how people were gonna react to was important to the process and important to us as people in general. Not only do you need to not let special things become kind of mundane, but you also have to make things special. A day can be special just because of who you’re spending your time with, or how you’re spending your time.” He laughs. “It doesn’t need to be a moment that they can put into your Wikipedia page.”

‘The pay off has been awesome’ - Pete Wentz It may be easy to assume that Pete and his bandmates are being insincere when they claim to have had few expectations when it came to the reaction on the reformation, but it seems to be a genuine sentiment. When they announced their return back in February 2013, the shows were little more than 500 capacity rooms to test the water. Even after their first show back in the UK at Camden’s Underworld, the band kept things fairly small, with shows at Glasgow’s O2 Academy, and Islington’s O2 Academy being their only headline ventures last year. In fact, it was only at Reading & Leeds Festival that they really showcased their new material to a larger crowd, which was where their newest full-length really came into its own.

“I think that was one of the ideas of the whole album. The whole idea of ‘Save Rock And Roll’ and being a rock band, and projecting the idea of rock music. These are kids who are maybe growing up with different types of music, and have different ideas of what rock music can be, so to be able to get out there and play music that’s loud and see mosh pits is awesome. When you picture an idea that’s so big and dangerous as ‘Save Rock And Roll’, you wanna put it in the biggest form that you can. Picturing it at festivals and the way it would sound and the way it would translate was super important to us. Just in the way that rock and roll is thought of on those levels; that it doesn’t have to be a relic of the past.”

That’s another reason that their recent return to our shores this time feels so triumphant. Gone is the lethargy of their last stint in these venues; the band are urgent and aggressive. Emerging onstage clad in balaclavas, the songs of ‘Save Rock And Roll’ have their sheen scuffed up. While the tracks are just as anthemic as on record, they’ve grown to become more diamond-in-the-rough affairs, shining bright but cutting deep.

“It’s been insane,” concurs Pete. “I dunno… I feel like it’s been a while since we were in Wales, but that show was kinda pretty mental. We didn’t really know what to expect after playing only festivals and smaller shows here. It’s been cool because one of the things that we really wanted to do with this was be able to take the tour that we did in the US and take it around the world, as much as possible, in as big a kind of capacity. It just seems like, whenever you watch stuff on the internet, you’re like, ‘Oh man, I wish I could see the band doing it that way’. We’re trying to bring as much of that stuff, and recreate it. We even shipped the set out here. For us, it’s been a big undertaking, but the pay off has been awesome. It’s great to see all the kids having a great time.”

Their audiences aren’t the only ones having fun. One of the most integral parts of their return is the band’s own solidarity. They know all too well the strain of being on the road, so this time around there’s a level of respect and support for one another, and a certain camaraderie that’s been feeding into both the band’s performance, and their live backstage. “I think it’s important to know when enough is enough, Pete begins. “It’s a strange balancing act because our band needs to perform, in order to progress what we’re doing, but at the same time, we all have different home lives now and stuff that we need to get to.

“For me, it’s been made easier by stuff like FaceTime and things like that. Also, [it’s about] understanding that everybody has that something back home. When we go home in April, we have the whole month off. For me, when I go home, I’m just gonna be a dad. I’ll go to pre-school and stuff. But, making sure we have that balance is really important and everybody’s been pretty aware of it with each other. I understand that this is the four musketeers,” he adds, trailing off. “Or the three musketeers and d’Artagnan!” He laughs. “That it’s the four of us and we’re in this together, and [we’re] making sure that everyone’s doing alright. Everyone’s been more aware of that.”

It’s not just that: when the band regrouped, Patrick was adamant that they needed to stay creatively stimulated, even if it only meant practicing. Is that something they’re sticking to? “We’ve been playing new songs every day in soundcheck,” confirms Pete. “Not ‘new’ ones,” he laughs, stopping the rumour mill in its tracks, “but ones we don’t usually play; we’ve been practicing those. Then, beyond that, creatively I think we’ve got new stuff that will surprise people who were surprised by ‘Pax Am Days’. I don’t know that it’s necessarily all in music form, but sometimes it’s like Fall Out Bird. Just keeping your mind stimulated!”

The question on everyone’s lips, especially as summer approaches and 2014 threatens to disappear altogether, is what could come next for the band beyond their upcoming tour with Paramore. With their return so successful, they’ve been catapulted back into the public eye, but now their lives are different. The last thing they’d want to do is let all of this slip away, but push too hard, and who knows how long their second wind might last.

“To me, and this is just maybe because I’m a ‘whatever’ guy, but I feel like we’re halfway there. I feel like we’re halfway through the process. It feels really good and a lot stronger than I would’ve expected. I feel like we’ve still gotta see [music video series] Young Blood Chronicles all the way through, and there’s things we still need to finish, whether they be called loose ends or not. We have a documentary that we’ve been editing for a really long time. We have just a lot of stuff that we need to do something with, in order to finish out the process that is the ‘Save Rock And Roll’ album cycle. So, at this point, at least we’re halfway there and we’re very humbled by the way that it has gone.

“I feel like we have a plan through the end of Monumentour. I don’t know beyond that if we have one. I know we all have our own ideas, but we haven’t really talked as a band about what we’re doing and when we’re doing it next. The plan is just to keep moving, like sharks! I would be surprised if we didn’t do something within the next year…”

Fall Out Boy’s new album ‘Save Rock and Roll’ is out now via Island Records. Monumentour will kick off this June.

Taken from the new, free DIY Weekly, available to read online, download on Android via Google Play, or download on iPad now.