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Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III was a fixture in the Chicago hardcore scene of the late '90s. Before he had even turned 20, Wentz had performed in First Born, Extinction, Birthright (from Indianapolis) and confrontational political activists Racetraitor, a band that managed to land the covers of Maximum Rock 'N' Roll and Heartattack fanzines before releasing a single note of music. He took on the frontman role in Arma Angelus, unleashing a metalcore bellow over dark songs. Despite the accolades from this community, he was growing increasingly disenchanted. So he abruptly changed his musical course at age 21

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was super-political. It was about finding out about the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, about 10 or 12 years ago it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a closed-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRATH: The first time I met Pete was when he was in First Born. Pete was in a lot of the bands that were doing the '90s, PC, vegan, activist kind of hardcore. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer of Racetraitor. It was a pretty small scene in Chicago. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete called me Baxter. I was just "Baxter" to those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows, the same way we all started doing bands: You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands, too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was definitely the youngest dude at most shows. I would go see Extinction, Racetraitor and Burn It Down-all of the bands of that era.

MCILRATH: Pete and I were in Arma Angelus together. I was their fifth or sixth bass player. I actually did some singing on the record we made.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock rock.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough-guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. He had gotten really into Lifetime, Saves The Day, the Get Up Kids and bands like that. He was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and he didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was telling me at an Arma Angelus practice that he was starting a pop- punk band and they would be gigantic and take over the world. He said that almost verbatim. He was dead-set on that.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something that was easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good: If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

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It most reductively boils down to Wentz writing the lyrics and Stump writing the melodies. But there was a time when Stump was almost the drummer for the band. If Stump hadn't barged into a conversation at a Borders bookstore, and Trohman hadn't dragged Wentz to meet him, there'd be no Take This To Your Grave.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always kind of outweighed my ability or my actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in a lot of bands, and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by two guys. One of them was De'Mar [Hamilton], who now plays in Plain White T's. We'd go out for the same bands and [he] would just mop the floor with me.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Edens Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. I was there with my friend Arthur. That's where I met Patrick. Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. I had never met Patrick in my life, but he just walked up and started talking to us.

STUMP: I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling really down. At that time, I think I was into Rhino [Records] box sets or something. I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking loudly about Neurosis and I came in to be kind of snotty. He and his friend were trying to classify Neurosis and I came in to correct them, like an asshole.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: Joe mentioned that he was putting together a band with Pete, who I had heard of because he was in real bands, which was really interesting to me. Joe said they needed a drummer, a guitar player and a singer. I said I could probably do one of those things. I figured we'd get together once and that would be the end of it. I had been through that, a lot of "false start" bands. I thought it would be fun to do one with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his mp3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

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WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer, but could also sing. He sent me a link of Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. He answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era-dorky and cool.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I didn't think it could even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next 15 years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven: An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it "softcore," but that's exactly what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGB.

MCILRATH: A lot of pop-punk bands were dumbing it down, both musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up in hardcore.

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop-punk, not by debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like the Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They were extracting the few good elements from those bands and putting them together with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be Auto-Tuned-he can sing. Pete never had to contrive this personal depth-he always had it.

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FAKE IT LIKE YOU MATTER Pentz and Stump were the "artsy" W guys of the bunch. By Stump's own account, they took themselves very seriously, but had very different ideas of what was "cool." Wentz was into Chuck Palahniuk, Charles Bukowski and the New Romantic thing. His ideas for band names were long, verbose and somewhat tongue- in-cheek. Stump was really into Tom Waits and wanted to reference Waits somehow. The pair argued over band names. Someone in the camp suggested Fall Out Boy. The Simpsons-inspired name made the short list, and their friends voted on it.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our first show. We were basically booked as "Pete's new band." He was the most known of any of us. The show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. We played with a band called Stillwell. One of the other bands, I want to say, played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. I don't remember what name we were thinking about, but I asked the singer of Stillwell what he thought of it and he said, "It sucks." There was an element of the way he said it that implied, "You guys probably suck, too, so whatever." We played first. We had three songs and a guitar player named John Flamandan. That was his only show with us, and I have not seen him since. We had our original drummer, Ben Rose. I was just singing. I had never just sung before; that was horrifying.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. It was strange watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff playing pop- punk. Pete was hopping around with X's on his hands.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that and it was amazing. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you is that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I assumed that would be the end of that, but Joe was very determined. He was picking everyone up for practice. He was making sure this band was going to happen whether we wanted it to or not. That's how we made it past show No. 1. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something. 68 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM

MCILRATH: That show was with my other band, the Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before the Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some name. Pete said, "Hey, we're whatever," probably something very long. And someone yells out, "Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!" Then when the Killing Tree were playing, Tim was like, "I want to thank Fall Out Boy." We all looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. BUT IF ONLY YOU KNEWIWAS TERRIFIED Fentz's relationships in the hardcore W scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket Split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out With Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by the Southern California label Uprising Records, best known for early releases by Racetraitor, Burn It Down, 7 Angels 7 Plagues and Vegan Reich. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with 7 Angels drummer Jared Logan working as engineer.

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STUMP: In between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo. STUMP: Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer so he just ended up doing it. I showed up to record that demo feeling pulled into it. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did all of the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! In fact, it was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, "Maybe I am supposed to be in this band." I enjoyed hearing it back.

GUTIERREZ: Wentz gave me the demo tape and I loved it. I was into early-to-mid- '90s pop-punk on Epitaph, Lookout! and Fat Wreck Chords. It wasn't cool to like that shit in hardcore. I loved Fall Out Boy from the get- go. I remember telling Pete at Arma Angelus practice that Fall Out Boy could get really big. He just laughed it off. I was telling everyone about the band. Wentz would give me a stack of 50 demo CDs and I'd go hand them out. WENTZ: Chris was a super-tight friend and at all the shows. He wasn't close-minded to a lot of what we were doing. He didn't care. He sold merch for us at a time when we didn't have a lot of friends who were down to do that for us. There was zero money in it all and zero notoriety.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight at the time. He sent me some demos and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz definitely looked at the band as the thing that would make him famous. He had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was just on his game with promotion and the early days of social media. He was ahead of the game. It was all a vehicle to advance.

STUMP: At some point, the demo got to Sean and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that. HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock. I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a band called Subsist. [Guitarist] T.J. "Racine" [Kunasch] joined after. STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album, but we only had those three songs. We were still figuring ourselves out. We met TJ. He was like, "Hey, do you need another guitarist?" We went back to Jared's and tried to put together an album in, like, two days.

MUTTAQI: Wentz was very eager to get something out. I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. Jared from 7 Angels had played on the other stuff, but now they had a new drummer who looked the part but really couldn't play. It was the urgency in the beginning that led to the recording being subpar by everyone's standards. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all so rushed.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked

TROHMAN: That recording could have been a lot better, but it was kind of the perfect first bad record. You need your first. You should have bad tattoos before you get good ones People like self-made millionaires who came from nothing, and it's the same with bands You can relate to a band like that more "That band is amazing, but you should hear their old stuff. Boy, were they bad! Good to know because our band is bad right now. Hopeful we'll become amazing."

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MUTTAQI: By the time Hurley was in the band, the record was already mixed. All of a sudden, the band sounded much better and was getting more momentum. Our record was something being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out.

STUMP: A friend of ours asked us to do a split 7-inch with 504 Plan, who were a big band to us. The [single] never happened, and the three songs we recorded for it became the first three songs on Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: We tried to [stop Uprising from releasing the album]. He released it around the same time we put out Take This To Your Grave, even though it was recorded much earlier. It created a very confusing thing. The relationship with Sean wasn't the best at the time, so we felt like, "Fine, if you're going to release this, we just won't talk about it."

STUMP: I don't mind the record's existence. But I love the revisionist history [with some fans]. There's always a kid who's like, "I've been a fan since Evening Out."

TROHMAN: Those fans have got to be saying that just for the idea of it because musically, it's a giant piece of garbage! Mike isn't a bad drummer, but he needed a click. I'd like to think I'm a better guitar player now than I was 13 years ago. But playing guitar to a drummer. constantly changing tempo? You'd think the producer would go, "Hmm, we should maybe fix all of this." But we weren't at that level.

MUTTAQI: There was nothing purposeful about the release date. We were in the middle of changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The record ended up coming out shortly before their new one. Wentz may have perceived that as some sort of plan on our end, but we were beholden to finances. Lumberjack owed us a lot of money. Our next distributor put together the release plan for Evening. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control at the time.

WENTZ: It was so long ago, that it's hard to figure out who was right and who wasn't. But in general, that concept that you need a record contract, you need to put out a record on a label-it's like getting a bad tattoo. People say, "You'll have that when you're 30, but you think you'll never be 30. It's the same thing when you sign a record contract. You'll think to yourself, "We're never putting out this many records, anyway. When you're 21, you have no idea. My dad told me to have a lawyer look at the Uprising contract. I was like, "Fuck a lawyer!" My personal take is that it's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley wasn't on it, and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon: They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about, at all.

MUTTAQI: They weren't happy with the quality of the record they recorded, and we were just The real first demo tape Fall Out Boy Mon com PANE FALLOUT BOY LOUT BOY ou ever ne the nice boys Hear your Semester ends Decemberad something I forged but I get Knee- Jerk fora, Veress And In Crossing my Tingers You Don Cole hemp for Christmas youre the last the I prone to seewier -Reach the cree Merry Christmas-I Could care less Sobeys To Choice you've been so to de Send me a Card or letter I Can throw those away ALTERNATIVE PRESS 69 ALTPRESS.COM

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some hardcore label. I understand that. But on the other side of things, we did invest some money into it and were made certain promises that weren't kept. It created friction. We felt we were owed more than they wanted to give, and they didn't want that record on the shelves. But nobody with a piece of something like that which was getting so big would just give it away for nothing. Nobody. Ten years later, I can happily say we are friendly again. It made the label some money I invested in other companies, which changed my life forever, honestly. It enabled me to be more than some hardcore dude with a label. I have a pretty successful business life I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm nothing but grateful looking back. I definitely get why they didn't want that record out. But on the other hand, if you record a record for someone, you should make sure it's good. We ended up resolving things with a deal that made me happy. Hopefully, they can look back on it all positively now. I know I can.

TROHMAN: T.J. Racine was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude, but he wasn't great to be in a band with. We had all gotten sick of him. One day, Racine drove to Chicago to pick up some gear, unprompted. I don't know how he got into my parents' house but next thing I knew he was in my bedroom, in the attic. I didn't like being woken up and I kicked him out of the band from bed. That saved everybody a lot of trouble.

STUMP: After we recorded Evening Out, we booked a tour with Spitalfield. They had records out, so they were big to us. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster-same thing when we recorded our three songs for the 7-inch. We went to Smart Studios in Madison. We were excited to be there.

HURLEY: I think Sean O'Keefe was like, "Yeah, you've got to do it with Andy because the other drummers were all over the place."

STUMP: We asked Andy to record the three songs with us. He said he'd only do it if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with the Kill Pill in Chicago on the same day.

MOSTOFI: After Racetraitor, Andy and I started the Kill Pill with some friends, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together-Patrick even sang backup on our EP. The hour Andy finished recording with us in Chicago, he raced to Madison.

STUMP: I was actually checking the drums getting ready to record when Andy walked in and fucking nailed the entire thing. Just knocked it out of the park. Sean leaned over to us and said, "You need to get this guy in the band." Sean didn't think Mike was a strong enough drummer. 70 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM

WENTZ: It was still a fill-in thing but when Andy sat in, it just felt different. It was one of those "a-ha" moments.

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped it out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro-Tools- oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially "Dead On Arrival," and hearing Patrick's voice and how well-written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done... I had a feeling this was something that could really do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band, it would stall out. That was always the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He definitely thinks and writes rhythmically, and we couldn't get a drummer that could do what he wanted to do or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. To me, it sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm really keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. And he's come even further than that now. (FOUR) TIRED BOYS AND A BROKEN- DOWN VAN all Out Boy didn't set foot on a tour Fous for some time. Like most bands starting out, they slugged it out in crappy used vans. Even when Fueled By Ramen got onboard, the band were still surviving on Taco Bell and hoping to find someone to stay with overnight. The phrase "Grenade Jumper" was about "whoever would be the person that would have... um, relations Biblically with a girl in order to have the rest of the band stay at the house," recalls Wentz. It wasn't always a grenade, but "it usually was"

STUMP: We were booking the tour with Spitalfield and we needed a new guitar player. T.J. was long gone. He had been temporarily replaced by a guy named Brandon Hamm who was never officially in the band, always kind of filling in. He quit when we were practicing "Saturday." He goes, "I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore." Pete had a conversation with Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. He was like, "Yeah, I'll do your band." They were on [Madonna's label] Maverick Records. They seemed like superstars to us. He came to two practices and then quit, like, two days before the tour. boks Live at Tower Records & Ma Mike couldn't get time off, so we called up Andy again. He came with us. I just borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. So we get on this tour, and it pretty much sucks. Spitalfield are awesome and we became really tight with them. Drew Brown, who is now in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. We had a blast. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We would literally play any show. We'd end up in a town and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. [We had the attitude of] "Let's just get on whatever show we can. You can pay us in pizza." I remember playing at Chain Reaction in Orange County, California, with a bunch of metalcore bands-I want to say Underoath was one of them. We played Jim Grimes' birthday party. We played with a lot of hardcore bands. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms. We'd play for free.

STUMP: That's one of those things that get lost in the annals of history: Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were really cool, but they were just like, "This is okay, but we'd really rather be moshing right now." Which was better than a lot of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids, actually.

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H MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like close friends. I saw them in Austin before Take This to Your Grave. There were maybe 10 kids there, but it was very clear they all felt like they were Pete's best friend. And in a way, it wasn't bullshit.

MCILRATH: Pete tapped into something that the rest of us were just waking up to: the internet. Not that the internet was invented in the year 2001, but the internet was getting faster. People were starting to get into social networking. It was new to us, and Fall Out Boy were way ahead. They were networking with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete told [fans] a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was part of the building of a new type of scene. Pete extended the Fall Out Boy community as far as fiber optics would let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour, we played a show in Colorado. The day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to handout to college kids. Pete put "members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel" on the flyer. He was just like, "This will get people in."

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections and to some extent that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come see us play live, when we play these pop radio shows, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else who's playing. Some of that carries back to what you had to do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you, not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

HURLEY: After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band. I had a lot of fun. Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever, and I always loved being in bands with him. MY INSIDES ARE COPPER AND I'D LIKE TO MAKE THEM GOLD The split EP never came together, so Fall Out Boy were free to shop those three songs as a demo. Several labels passed. (Wentz would eventually frame each rejection letter.) Others would become interested, only to discover the demo had been sitting on their desk for weeks. The band could have easily gone with another hardcore label like Uprising, but they had their sights set on more pop- punk-oriented brands.

HURLEY: We tried really hard to get on Drive- Thru. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we had already started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my ALTERNATIVE PRESS 71 ALTPRESS.COM

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sister. We decided everything together. She liked them, but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We made arrangements with Pete to see them practice.

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stefanie Reines. We wanted to be on Drive-Thru so bad. They were just kind of like, "Yeah, we have this side-label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that."

REINES: We were with Geffen and we were having issues with them. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy weren't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, "If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive-Thru."

HURLEY: I think I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and they wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing. STUMP: After Drive-Thru, we were talking to the Militia Group. We were pretty tight with them. The conversations had gotten pretty far along. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records' print shop. We went to pick up shirts one day, and someone comes downstairs and says, "Um, guys? Tony [Brummel, Victory Records founder] wants to see you." We were like, "Did we forget to pay an invoice?" He basically threw an offer at us on the spot. HURLEY: They told me Tony said something to them like, "You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry." GUTIERREZ: I started noticing people who weren't associated with hardcore showing up to their shows. There was a group of two dozen girls from Chicagoland area that would show up over and over again. I'd be like, "Do those 14-year-old girls know you're a total fucking nut-job, Wentz? That you're a criminal? That we were playing Hellfest two years ago?" It's not something that happens often when dudes who legitimately love Neurosis, Cannibal Corpse and Death have 14-year- old girls showing up to see their new band. I remember mocking Wentz when I saw him signing autographs. But he was like, "What am I supposed to do? Bum these kids out?"

STUMP: The label guys and the managers aren't all out to get you. There are some that are sweet, genuine people. Some are dick bags, some are awesome. I really liked the Militia Group. They recommended Bob. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They said Crush was their favorite management company to work with and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. The guy who started the company, Jonathan Daniel, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, This band sucks!" But Jonathan liked us and 72 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: I hadn't actually seen them, but I wanted to work with them after hearing them. I heard the Fall Out Boy demo and I was like, "This guy can really sing, and these songs are great." I went at it hard. Pete and I really clicked. I talked to him the most then. TROHMAN: We met Bob and we felt like this dude wasn't going to fuck us over. He told us not to sign with the label that had recommended him to us. He thought he could get us on a label with more resources, which would work harder for us. We thought there was something very honest about that. The guy that didn't like us at Crush wasn't around much longer.

MCLYNN: I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things and go to radio.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: They wanted to hear more. "Dead On Arrival' is a really good song, but we're not convinced you can write more good songs." I took that as a challenge. We went back in with Sean maybe three or four months after we did the demo. "Where Is Your Boy" was my "Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your fucking hit song, jerks!" It worked! Which was crazy. But when we were recording that and "Grenade Jumper," I must have been pushing really hard for an idea or something. Pete, Joe and I were driving. Pete was in the backseat and he says, "Guys, I don't think I want to do this band." We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, "No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band and then leave it! That's bullshit!" Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parents' house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, "Don't break up your band over it." I said, "It's not my band. It's a band you, Joe and I started." He was like, "Okay, I'll stick around." And he came back with a vengeance.

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flier with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few fliers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. I knew I wanted them right away. I randomly cold-called them at the apartment [where most of them lived] and I spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to speak to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone and ended up working out a deal.

STUMP: We ultimately decided Fueled By Ramen was the best place for us. They were the smallest of all the labels involved, the label with the least gloss to them at the time. I was like, "I don't know about this, Pete." Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish there. So we rolled the dice.

JANICK: Pete and I became so close. So much so, that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disc, Gym Class, Cobra Starship. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. STUMP: We had those three songs, and John said he'd buy them and make them part of the album and got us money to record some more.

REINES: They were never on Fueled By Ramen. Are you going to lie like everyone else always does? They never had a contract with Fueled By Ramen. They had a contract with Island. Obviously, it's not going to be in the article. I know what AP writes. When [FOB] won their MTV Woodie Award, they didn't thank Fueled By Ramen.

McLYNN: Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen who we did a one-off with, knowing we could get upstreamed and have a bunch of radio stuff behind us on the next record. I didn't want to go to radio too soon. I wanted to build a base. But I knew radio was something this band would need in the future. It wasn't a classic major-label upstream thing. I didn't want to start the band off on a major because they wouldn't understand it, and I didn't want to stay on an indie forever because these indies didn't really have radio staffs. Having a one-off with Fueled By Ramen, followed by a chance to move to Island, was sort of a perfect scenario. It was a true indie deal with Fueled By Ramen. I think they made the record for maybe $18,000. [The band] slept on floors while they were recording. They paid their dues. There was no tour support. They got in the van. TURN THIS UP AND I'LL TUNE YOU OUT ith Fueled By Ramen (and Island) now backing the band, Fall Out Boy were able to visit a couple of real-deal studios to put together their first proper full-length. It was during this process the unique partnership between Wentz and Stump really started to take shape.

STUMP: We went back to Smart Studios. We had an amazing studio and Sean O'Keefe again. It was a very pro recording session. All the accouterments were there. Meanwhile, we were four broke idiots.

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STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: They wanted to hear more. "Dead On Arrival' is a really good song, but we're not convinced you can write more good songs." I took that as a challenge. We went back in with Sean maybe three or four months after we did the demo. "Where Is Your Boy" was my "Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your fucking hit song, jerks!" It worked! Which was crazy. But when we were recording that and "Grenade Jumper," I must have been pushing really hard for an idea or something. Pete, Joe and I were driving. Pete was in the backseat and he says, "Guys, I don't think I want to do this band." We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, "No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band and then leave it! That's bullshit!" Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parents' house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, "Don't break up your band over it." I said, "It's not my band. It's a band you, Joe and I started." He was like, "Okay, I'll stick around." And he came back with a vengeance.

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WENTZ: We were fibbing to our parents about what we were doing, cutting corners. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: We recorded seven songs in nine days. I don't think we slept anywhere that we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

WENTZ: We were so green; we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day, there was soda for the band. We were like, "Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly and bread?" which they did. When I listen to that album, I can hear that stuff in some ways.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, "This is what a real professional band does." WENTZ: It was mind-blowing to see the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album. HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley [Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight- edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. Pete would say things like, "You got too much munch before you punch, O'Keefe," meaning punching on the tape machine when we were tracking guitars. They'd call me "Scooby Snacks O'Keefe" and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like 10 different stoner nicknames-"Dimebag O'Keefe" and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take, like, seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous. Center spread from AP 193, August 2004

WENTZ: There were no cameras around. There was no documenting. There was nothing to indicate this would be some "legendary" session. There are 12 songs on the album, because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an "important" record. Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone other than Patrick. Fall Out B ALTERNATIVE PRESS 73 ALTPRESS COM

STUMP: When Pete [committed himself to the band] it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point: "Saturday," "Dead On Arrival," "Where Is Your Boy?," "Grenade Jumper" and "Homesick At Space Camp." I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some all right stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he did not take that kindly. When we got back in the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, "You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics and I'll write around them," kind of angrily. So he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy. The sound was always more important to me-the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation was all very exciting to me. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight all while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments are the result of that. 74 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM HI-FIDELITY

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from completely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision and Patrick would say, "I can't sing those the way I need to sing this." They would go through 10 revisions for one song. I thought I was going to lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy: There's a lot of push and pull and each of them trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

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FALL OUT BO TAKE THIS TO YOUR GRAVE Peter Wentz Andrew Hurley Patrick Stump Joseph Trohman MOSTOFI: As the band got bigger, their roles became more defined. Pete was the emcee and Patrick was the musical conductor.

STUMP: We had a huge fight over "Chicago Is So Two Years Ago." I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me was thinking the band wouldn't work out and I'd go to college and do some music on my own. I had a skeletal version of "Chicago." I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we had a big fight over that. We argued over each word, one at a time. "Tell That Mick..."" was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all of my words on that one-every single one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. It was tough, but it was also interesting. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss.

Lanzamiento y desempeño comercial

McLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking at the time, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, it was their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, "You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy." Patrick laughed. Then I 76 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. They fit together so perfectly. Pete listens to electronic music and pop. He DJs. Patrick likes old soul and classic R&B. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision; Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. And the fact Pete found a guy who can sing like that and take his lyrics and work with them-which is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two that really creates the sound and the songs. They're just really lucky they found each other.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting really insane when we would do in-stores. We'd play anywhere. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts and took this surfboard off the wall and started crowdsurfing [on] it during the last song.

McLYNN: We got a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beef because some of the more established bands weren't too happy about these up-and-comers. They were on this tiny little shitty stage. In Detroit, there were so many kids, the stage actually collapsed. The PA fell after they had only done, like, three songs. So they finished with an a capella "Where Is Your Boy," and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on a tour as the opening band and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird." It was just bizarre. When my parents saw that it was this wild thing, they were like, "Okay, yeah, maybe take a year off from college." That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: The Warped Tour week was around the same time as our first AP cover. I give Mike Shea [owner/founder] and Norman [Wonderly, then-publisher] a lot of credit. They've always been really early. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy. They were like, "We know it's early with you guys, but we think you're going to be big and we want to give you the cover early." It was the biggest thing that had happened to any of us. It really kicked things to another level and helped stoke the fires that were burning.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. They were excited. That wasn't a small zine: It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. I was shocked. It was a really shocking time. It's still like that.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and I had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I was always hoping to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away-I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat and I could always hide. You couldn't see my eyes or very much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to take it off. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house and every time I walk in and see it, I see the fear on my face- just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. "Why is there a camera on me?"

JANICK: We were pounding the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 albums, then 200,000 albums, there were points when everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of AP, that was huge for us. When they did Warped for five days and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2,000 to 3,000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before. TAKE THIS TO YOUR GRAVE AND I'LL TAKE IT TO MINE There's no overstating the impact Take This To Your Grave had on not only the scene (and eventually mainstream culture), but on the band members themselves and everyone involved with their team. The album represents a time before paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before the trappings of genuine fame and fortune, both good and bad. But most importantly, it represents a zeitgeist that launched untold numbers of bands to pick up some musical gear, make noise in their garages and actively participate in this culture. The fact the album continues to resonate with generations in the years following is a testament to its longevity. HURLEY: It encapsulated the time well enough that it worked for people. Fall Out Boy started as a band for fun because we were burnt out on doing hardcore bands and what hardcore I was turning into. There's just something special about when the four of us came together. We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool, a front-to- back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We

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Fall Out Boy's proper debut album was a magical, transcendent and deceptively smart pop-punk masterpiece that ushered in a vibrant scene resurgence with a potent combination of charisma, new media marketing and hardcore-punk urgency. Like most great bands, FOB reverse-engi- neered the best elements of their favorite bands and sweetened it with a personalzed twist and... presto! Fall Out Boy made all of our lists of things to do today. Back then, Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley had yet to ascend to the top of MTV's TRL or collaborate with Jay-Z. Fall Out Boy were still the property of dedicated diehards who would soon share their band with the world. The Midwest quartet weren't yet anchored by the clichés of the scene as they spiraled toward the mainstream. They refused to surrender the spirit of the community that shaped them. Take This To Your Grave was released May 6, 2003, the same year the world lost Johnny Cash and the Dixie Chicks were in hot water for daring to criticize President Bush. A decade has gone by, but the album endures. Sure, FOB have released bigger records since, but Take This To Your Grave reinvented the wheel and ran all of us over. In this exclusive and exhaustive oral history, we take an in-depth look at the era of this subcultural touchstone (and mainstream precursor) as told by the people who lived it, from a fateful meeting at a Borders books all the way through Fall Out Boy's first major cover story (AP 193, August 2004) in this very magazine. Forget the grave: Take these stories to your heart, as they're positively timeless.

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OUR LAWYER MADE US CHANGE THE ALBUM COVER the cover of Take This To Your Grave Tis something like the pop-punk Abbey Road. The image is instantly recognizable, extremely identifiable and absolutely iconic in certain circles (it also bears a slight resemblance to the cover of Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. But we digress...) It's hard to imagine the album without that shot of the four guys sitting on a couch, with their names printed on the front and a tint reminiscent of old jazz records.

WENTZ: That's not the original album cover. STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula...

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled By Ramen, and they were like, "We can't clear any of this stuff" The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the very fateful decision to have my name listed as "Stump."

WENTZ: What we used was originally supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. The reason we're sitting close to each other is because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment of all time. It makes me wonder: How many of these things are just accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

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STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was the Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. YOU NEED HIM. I COULD BE HIM atrick Stump seemed like somewhat never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front onstage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two- headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump in the front seat of the car, while Trohman and Hurley ride in back. However, Stump insists that a Swiss Army knife makes for a better analogy to describe the way their roles fell into place a decade ago.

STUMP: It's almost like having a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle.

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FOB: outside their old apartment L-R: Hurley, Wentz, Stump, Trohman BÁNH MÌ &CO. VIETNAMESE SANDWICH EATERY We Deliver! (773) 360-7266 appearing at RIOT FEST Chicago were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this small, personal thing. That album was probably the last moment a lot of people had of having us as their own band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. "This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about." We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and to us.

TROHMAN: There was a rumor before Save Rock And Roll that we were going to come back with, like, one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tour and that we'd be touring with this band or that band. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just coming back from the hiatus with a Grave tour. I know some people really want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. I'm almost 30, and it would be really hard to do something like that without it being contrived. But of course, we play those songs live! We know that's where we came from, and we know that album is an important part of this band's history.

MCILRATH: Fall Out Boy are an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't 78 ALTERNATIVE PRESS ALTPRESS.COM expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. They created so much. They were smart. As a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on to confront being a part of mainstream music, it's a machine that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight. It's a really fast-moving river. You need to know what direction you're going. If you don't, it'll take you for a ride. The hardcore scene instilled that in us, to know where we stood on things. It made us ready for anything the world threw at us- including the giant music industry.

STUMP: I'm so proud of it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy were that good of a band, honestly. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is really hard. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life. The impact that record had put a different pressure on me. "This moment will never come back again. Playing this same music will never mean this much to everyone again." Including the band. ALT FALLOUTBOY f FALLOUTBOY connect! ANDY HURLEY: HURLEYXVX PATRICK STUMP: PATRICKSTUMP JOE TROHMAN: TROHMAN PETE WENTZ: PETEWENTZ Ea arlier this year, we discovered through Twitter that Stefanie Aulicino and her three roommates were living in the same Chicago apartment that Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman lived in when Fall Out Boy were making Take This To Your Grave. So we figured, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we had the Fall Out men go back to their old stomping grounds and see what the girls did to the place since the band members were there last?" Check out the exclusive video footage on altpress.com all this month!