By Amy Turner
“They say quitters never win”
And Fall Out Boy are no quitters. But how much more do you really know about the band?
“They say quitters never win”
And Fall Out Boy are no quitters. But how much more do you really know about the band?
Fall Out Boy was formed 2001 in Chicago by friends Pete Wentz, a bassist and Joe Trohman, a guitarist. They met drummer Andy Hurley and vocalist Patrick Stump before starting from the bottom. Their experience was summed up by Wentz who said the band would do whatever to get a gig. "Let's just get on whatever show we can. You can pay us in pizza.”
At this point the bands main aim was to find themselves a name. They had a few names in the mix, but no decision could be reached. For their second performance, Pete Wentz introduced the band using a ‘very long’ name. According to Stump, an audience member yelled out, “F*** that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!” And the name stuck. But what many people don’t know is that Fall Out Boy is in fact a fictional character from The Simpsons and Bongo Comics.
The band continued with varying success over the next year, and it was only Pete Wentz and his “singular focus on taking things to the next level” that kept the band together. He saw the band as "the thing that would make him famous.” This clear vision is what helped Fall Out Boy make a name for themselves. By 2005 Fall Out Boy had been deemed “the next big thing” by multiple media outlets.
But the stress proved too much for Pete Wentz. "It is particularly overwhelming when you are on the cusp of doing something very big and thinking that it will be a big flop… sometimes we take action, sometimes we take pills.” Despite this the band reached multiplatinum success in 2007 making it to number 1 on the US billboard 200 with their album ‘Infinity on High’.
Fall Out Boy continued with their successful release of albums until 2010 when they went on hiatus. Each pursued their own individual musical interests, which were met with "varying degrees of failure.” The band decided to get back together in 2012, and have since released two albums, the most recent of which, American Beauty/American Psycho, we look at in more detail in the review section.
The Fall Out Boy song you have heard most recently would possibly be ‘Immortals’, their single released in the soundtrack in the Disney film ‘Big Hero 6’. An animated film seems a strange place to for a pop rock band, but Pete Wentz said “it was insane how much [the film] lined up with the way our band saw the world…Your victories aren't exclusively yours.”
So… have you learned something new? Has Fall Out Boy’s experience inspired you? Let us know below, and feel free to add your own success stories.
At this point the bands main aim was to find themselves a name. They had a few names in the mix, but no decision could be reached. For their second performance, Pete Wentz introduced the band using a ‘very long’ name. According to Stump, an audience member yelled out, “F*** that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!” And the name stuck. But what many people don’t know is that Fall Out Boy is in fact a fictional character from The Simpsons and Bongo Comics.
The band continued with varying success over the next year, and it was only Pete Wentz and his “singular focus on taking things to the next level” that kept the band together. He saw the band as "the thing that would make him famous.” This clear vision is what helped Fall Out Boy make a name for themselves. By 2005 Fall Out Boy had been deemed “the next big thing” by multiple media outlets.
But the stress proved too much for Pete Wentz. "It is particularly overwhelming when you are on the cusp of doing something very big and thinking that it will be a big flop… sometimes we take action, sometimes we take pills.” Despite this the band reached multiplatinum success in 2007 making it to number 1 on the US billboard 200 with their album ‘Infinity on High’.
Fall Out Boy continued with their successful release of albums until 2010 when they went on hiatus. Each pursued their own individual musical interests, which were met with "varying degrees of failure.” The band decided to get back together in 2012, and have since released two albums, the most recent of which, American Beauty/American Psycho, we look at in more detail in the review section.
The Fall Out Boy song you have heard most recently would possibly be ‘Immortals’, their single released in the soundtrack in the Disney film ‘Big Hero 6’. An animated film seems a strange place to for a pop rock band, but Pete Wentz said “it was insane how much [the film] lined up with the way our band saw the world…Your victories aren't exclusively yours.”
So… have you learned something new? Has Fall Out Boy’s experience inspired you? Let us know below, and feel free to add your own success stories.