Fall Out Boy Bio

This famous band from Chicago (Illinois, U.S.) was formed in 2001 by Patrick Stump (vocals, guitar), Pete Wentz (bass, backup vocalist and primary lyricist). Joe Trohman (guitar) and Andrew Hurley (drums). (Although Hurley, onetime drummer of Racetraitor, joined the band after Fall Out Boy's Evening With Your Girlfriend (Upraising Records, 2003) was released.)

Pete Wentz, former vocalist of a metalcore band called Arma Angelus, started to write some pop songs with Joe Trohman first, just for fun. Then, it's been said that Trohman met Patrick Stump at a convention bookstore. Patrick became without any problem the singer of this new band despite his lack of experience and despite he auditioned to be the band's drummer before. Finally, Pete brought in Andy Hurley because he knew him well and played together in other bands in the past. As Wentz said, "We are all best friends and we wanted to play music we had grown up listening to - the stuff that first got us into punk rock", they found the perfect combination.

"We just wanted to do something different with no intention of it ever becoming anything," Wentz says. "We didn't even have a name until after our second show, when we played some college and asked the crowd what we should be called and someone screamed out 'Fall Out Boy.' "

In 2001 they put in the market a selfreleased demo, following it up with in May 2002 with the Split EP on Upraising Records (also featured by Project Rocket). Labels from New York to LA were interested on them. As someone said, "A bidding war of sorts was already in full swing". Fall Out Boy eventually signed a deal with Gainesville, FL's Fueled by Ramen, the label coowned by Less Than Jake drummer Vinnie Balzano, but also received an advance from Island Records to record their proper debut. That same year they released their first full-lenght album Take This To Your Grave on Fueled By Ramen. This one contained singles such as "Where Is Your Boy?" and "Saturday", which were played on MTV and FUSE. The album achieved Gold Status, although only after the success of their next one. They also released a second Solo EP with the Upraising label in February 2003: Fall Out Boy's Evening Out With Your Girlfriend, which was well received and began to bring Fall Out Boy some exposure.

While on tour (Warped Tour), the band released for their acoustic EP "My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue", (Island Records, 2004).

On May 3, 2005, they released their major label debut From Under The Cork Tree, which made his appearance on Billboard charts at #9, selling over 70 000 copies just in the first week. This one soon achieved doble platinum status . The band was nominated for "Best New Artist" at the 2006 Grammy Awards.

During his childhood Pete Wentz enjoyed reading "Curious George", "Babar" and Richard Scarry books, but his favorite children book was "The Story of Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf. The story, about a giant bull who sits under a cork tree and smells flowers instead of getting into the ring and battling a bullfighter, was so inspirational to Wentz that he named his breakthrough album From Under The Cork Tree.

Here you are some comments of Pete Wentz about the album.

"We could have easily regurgitated our last record which is what certain people expected us to do," Wentz says. "But when it's all over, we want to be remembered as a rock band that pushed limits and was sincere and totally honest to itself and its fans. When we are 90 years old and on our death beds, it will matter to us that at least we took chances."

[...] "When we wrote Take This to Your Grave, we were listening to Green Day and the Descendents and a lot of hardcore," explains Wentz of the album's diversity. "But now we listen to a great deal more music and let it influence us without getting away from our roots. I think it's important to know your place, but there's a colossal spectrum that you can explore within that."

"I used to get Circus magazine when I was little, and there'd always be these little ads in the back where you could order posters," recalls Wentz. "And there'd always be this super-amazing, awesome dirty picture of Samantha Fox, who sang 'Touch Me.' My mom would never let me order the poster, so I'd just cut the picture out of the magazine and carry it around with me. And, we grew up near Shermerville, which is right near where all the John Hughes movies are set, so that's where the Sixteen Candles reference came from. It's really funny to me because nobody who hears the record probably knows who Samantha Fox is, but maybe they'll look her up on the Internet and see all these amazing topless pictures and thank us. Either that, or they're send us hate mail."

Unfortunately, their fame was not too good for Wentz, who tried to suicide taking an overdose of Ativan. When asked about the reasons why by "Rolling Stone", he said "It's so hard to think about and understand. I'm not making an argument for being a disturbed genius; I was a confused kid. I felt like I was Pete Wentz for everybody else, and I didn't have Pete Wentz to turn to." We can find some trails of this episode in the song called "7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen)", since Pete Wentz is the primary lyricist of the band.

Infinity On High was released on February 6, 2007. In the album's opening week, it reached number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 260,000 copies.