Andy and Pete were both in real bands that toured you know they were in hardcore bands
that had records out and stuff so so to us it was like well you guys are
this is clearly a side thing nobody's doing Fallout voice seriously right
hi is Tim Burgess and this is the listening party on absolute radio and I'm delighted to be joined
by Patrick p and Andy from Fallout Boy welcome hey thanks thanks do you go into a new album with
like trepidation or do you think big straight away or do you start very small and going into
writing it I think you're just trying to figure out how it's going to work because I don't even
know that we started out really planning to make a record we went in and did these demos with uh
Neil avaron who ended up producing it really just to see if we you know if we had something we went
in with them for a week and by the end of it we had like half a record you know this one I feel
there's something about it we were kind of really deliberate on it and really careful you know in
making the music really did feel like making dinner for your family or something where you're
like right my grandma used to cook um she would really you know she wanted it to be good because
everybody isn't there all the time you know so it was like a special thing right so she really put
it into it and that's kind of what this record was for me whereas I I was like careful about
and every microphone placement and everything and like how it starts though I feel like is like
you're looking it's like a climber looking at a rock wall you're trying to find the route yeah and
like once you get to the top eventually you're like oh the the route was super obvious but it
wasn't you know what I mean because you start and then you like well that didn't work you know and
then you find like the song that's like the bass the Anchor Point or the couple songs or you're
like you know like when Patrick plays a certain demos you're like well this is the one where
you can kind of anchor the record around this you know and then and then you can bring it then you
can bring in like oh we can bring in the weird song you can bring in the you know what I mean
and like but it's like looking up and trying to see like is there a path to the top of this thing
for people that don't know I write the majority of the music and then Pete writes the majority
of the lyrics yeah and then Pete always second guesses himself sometimes I have to talk him down
from it but he'll be like I want to change this lyric I don't like this I'm gonna change this I
want to change this I'm continually in uh in search of my own Chinese Democracy yes yes
but we've even done it at the mastering Studio before at the you know where where I've had to
I've had to punch in lyrics because he wants to change him so we're at the end of the record um
and he sends me a bunch of lyrics that are kind of catch-all but you know ideas that could work for
some of the sections that he wanted to replace in other songs and I get in the car on the way to the
studio and I I kind of I notice that there's that there's lyrics that came in I open it up and read
it before I leave and the couple a couple of the phrases start getting my head and I'm driving just
the song happens in my head the whole time and so by the time I got to the studio I had a song I you
know fully completed in my head and we didn't have any lyrics that we were going to use for these
others now I used all those lyrics I was just I was just so excited by it and um so it was very
spontaneous it was very songs have you written in the car too a lot of songs of ours I've written
it's the idea of moving right I think the thing for me is that it's that thing of you know of
having your best ideas in the shower or something there's something that when I'm when you're not
consciously about your laptop like trying to find they have good ideas there too obviously you know
I think that I think we all that all happens to us where you have plenty of good ideas when you're
trying but you have a lot of ideas that just like it's like you would hear about Nikola Tesla
would have these like just visions of completed uh inventions and then he had to back you know he had
to uh it's the worst when you have those ideas and you're like I'm gonna remember it and you
don't and then you know I mean like what's that Mitch Hedberg joke where he's like he's like I'm
a comedian which means in the middle of the night when I think of something funny I have to I have
to get up and write it down or convince myself it wasn't that fun that's brilliant not true now I
like tell my I like tell my 14 year old who will be driving and I'll be like I'll have like three
words to make me remember the whole phrase or something and so it'll be but they won't make
any sense together and he's like I'm like write this down he's like okay like that shut up stupid
should we get into track four fake account so Joe isn't here um our guitar player isn't here right
now but he gets called the lead guitar player and I get called the rhythm guitar player and
it's funny because in reality that's not no those aren't those aren't separate instruments you know
this is a song that's really defined by that and we gotten pretty far into the song the way that I
had it and most of the so-called lead guitars were mean but I didn't really have a a proper
rhythm guitar and uh Joe came in and gave it one listen and he just and he picked up this acoustic
and he just went into the booth and and uh we pressed record and he did it in you know one take
on both sides there was something about that made the whole song it was like it didn't exist until
that became the whole feel of the song I love that spontaneity you know it's some I did a solo record
a bunch of years ago and one of the things that really surprised me was the lack of surprise when
it's all in your head yeah you know exactly what it's going to sound like but when you're working
with with your friends and and everybody's coming up with their own ideas you know I never would
have heard the song that way Joe has all these Vibes you know he he can go from really intense
to really really mild and really mellow and this was very mellow Joe he just he just kind of um
I've got an idea and he goes in there and he just and he just does it there's also like two distinct
sides to fall off with me like there's like a the Phoenix kind of Fallout Boy and then there's like
this kind of Fallout Boy yeah yeah there's some people I think who like both and there's some are
the other camps and I am a friend who's like just like Phoenix wants Patrick like screaming wants it
like he was like I don't know about the song and I was like perfect this one's definitely making it
there's one occasion we had a son called wants to another and I just remember being so scared
about it um because it didn't sound like it was it did it did but it didn't and and I just think
that that feeling uh you kind of know you're on to a winner really and uh do you know do you when
when you're making records do you ever feel like you're like this is this works this is gonna win
I do but sometimes nobody else agrees with me I yeah because because maybe it's too comfortable or
something like that and I think you have to kind of feel like you're you know you're not you're
not doing the same thing I love the idea of moving forward yeah um lots of people do want you to be
what you used to be but you you know in order to be a progressive artist or what you know whatever
that term of phrase is you have to keep going forward right yeah and I think that the thing that
you were talking about about like the one where you're you're not sure and you're like does this
even sound like I definitely had that when we did the song uh where is your boy and now I know that
feeling is like probably a good feeling the first couple times I had the feeling I was like it's I
think this is not a good feeling because it feels like this is gonna be so different than the other
stuff yeah but then you don't really realize how much of like the band's DNA and your DNA is on the
thing that like when people listen to it it's not like extremely one of our managers is kind of our
Yoda in a lot of ways like he just has these these very you know subtle uh descriptions of
things that you you you unpack for years and one time he kind of offhand was saying something about
how Queen you know in retrospect we go yeah that's Queen at the time every time they would put out a
new song it was like what are they doing yeah why this is like an r b song this is a 50s you
know rockabilly song what are they doing but then in retrospect you don't see the you don't it just
feels Queen you definitely clock the differences but you know it's like Bowie or whatever when you
look at Bowie those records are wildly different and at the time must have been Riot inducing like
why would he do this you know I think a band can not just be a city it can be a continent
and you know writing these different things is building the map to what the bigger picture is I
love that yeah Crazy Little Thing Called Love oh yeah Bohemian Rhapsody you know yeah well that's
and that's what I'm saying is that you know now with the benefit of hindsight you're like yeah of
course Queen but you know at the time it must have been it must have been you know so shocking for
them to put out a Crazy Little Thing Called Love You know like you know the band that did Bohemian
Rhapsody you know the next one is got one of my favorites the featuring Ethan Hawke oh yeah yeah
how did that come about whenever I was watching uh Reality Bites I would always think about this
speech uh that Ethan Hawke's delivers in it it just feels like really profound and really I am
sadly obsessed with the idea that like we just all won't exist one day um and I think in this
speech he really like gets to the core of that but in a very Ethan Hawke still somewhat like Ben
Stiller playful kind of way so we reached out to him about uh using that we didn't actually
run it to him well yeah we just reached out to be friends not friends but like he was super friendly
and super cool and you get the idea of somebody from characters they play or whatever yeah it
was like he'd probably be cool but yeah yeah but maybe not yeah yeah yeah yeah it was cool that he
was cool and I had to reach out to Robert De Niro um on our first album and uh it was just letter
writing it wasn't before emails existed I wrote a really kind well uh you know a message about
the band and and could be used his monologue from Angel heart and and he wrote back and said
yeah cool that's awesome at one point this was the first single before we had the other singles they
were like they're like this is the one that we want the world to hear and so it's weird
now because I know it's weird now because well because now we're so many songs deep that um you
know I don't know this would be the first song you know we always talk about like if we were gonna
um fly in a helicopter that I would have to knock you out like B.A barakas yes if this was going
to be the first single you guys were gonna have to be a Barack hey I wasn't it wasn't my choice
I was no that was JD was like this is the song I believe in this song and I was like okay you know
I I don't I'd never believe in anything of mine so yeah but uh I think that's sweet you know to
not always be convinced by your own ideas yeah look man I didn't even intend to be a singer I
don't know what I'm just a drummer and we didn't have anybody that could sing and I just really
wanted to write songs you know so I'm still you know we've been doing now 22 years and I still
feel this like distance from it so you know when I when I write these songs I'm still like is this
is this okay or is this you know is this does this pass is this an okay song you know yeah I
I think this one had an energy that um yeah made the record really I mean we wouldn't be making a
record without it how did he go from straight edge hardcore to pop punk and where does pop
punk and emo cross over to me like pop punk like was you know like screeching weasel and Green Day
obviously and then they and then like Green Day obviously got so big that it kind of became the
umbrella that yeah all that you're a pop punk kind of lived under and then there was you know
blink and then I think when our generation came they were like well we're not gonna like we're
gonna do like a cut off on pop punk and like you guys will be like the first emo bands you know
but there was also like emo that predated that you know I'm thinking like straight edge kind
of Hardcore is like fugazi and stuff like that and would you agree with that yeah I mean I think that
originally we were like more probably in the 90s straight edge hardcore so it was like chugging and
um Earth Crisis and bands like that oh yeah doing that every night all the time is like heavy and
it's a lot on your brain a lot on your throat and it felt like it would be fun to do something that
was like melodic and yeah kind of like for the hell of it you know I mean like there's something
that didn't feel like it had all this like and it's funny of course that's the one that you
know like you end up doing 20 years later the one that you're kind of doing on a lark or whatever
because it kind of frees you off yeah yeah yeah I love that question because it's something that we
don't get to talk about a lot Randy and Pete were both in real bands that toured you know
they were in hardcore bands that had records out and stuff so so to us it was like well you guys
are this is clearly a side thing nobody's doing Fall Out Boy seriously right right and early on
I think we all kind of had that kind of looseness with it because you know it was really just fun
it was just kind of a a side experiment both of these guys had been in or were in simultaneously
like five or six other hardcore bands that were all Heavy it was kind of like one little break
from it would be this thing we would play these hardcore fests all of our friends were hardcore
bands and they uh and you know everyone was like yeah this is fine but we really just want to mash
we really want to pit dance right now we'd really like to see that band but then we would play these
shows and for some reason people uh kept coming and people wanted to hear us again and it was
really random and I knew it was a thing when um when uh Pete's been he started doing us over what
I thought of as his real band you know we just didn't know what the rules to this band were so
like yeah it was freeing like you said I wondered what you'll kind of take on Fame was these days
you know whether you got a healthy relationship with it or we had like you know maybe a year or
two years where it was like super famous like when it was on TRL and there weren't boy bands and like
people were always outside of your hotel and you kind of only saw like kitchens and like you would
enter hotels through the kitchen you know and that kind of thing and it was not a great life
like that's why I like I look at you know um some of the K-pop and and uh One Direction and like you
know that all the stuff that they kind of do and I'm like like God bless them is not that long for
us like the attention's cool and like the that you know but like it's just I don't know you can't go
anywhere or do anything so I kind of feel for them you know or whatever to me there was a time where
it's kind of like like Luke in um I think it's an Empire where he goes into the cave you know or
whatever and like you're just like you don't need the lightsaber because you only bring what you you
know and he's like no I'm bringing the lightsaber remember just whatever you bring into Fame like
it come like that's all there is you know I mean there's not you don't get extra stuff no one goes
like oh now you'll be full or whatever you know and so I wanted to be like less famous so like
I'm I like like rearranged my life to like have it be like this is the amount like I love like
playing the band I love it yeah yeah yeah yeah for the world my friends but I don't really want
the rest of the thing I really enjoy my family we live in this like really inauthentic time where
everybody's taking pictures of their food and like there's so much fomo and so much you know you're
like I only wish I was there because I'm not there but if I was there I would just want to go home
it's just a strange time and I don't know if we're like as uh a species really meant to feel and see
all these things so often like when you wake up in the morning you're like looking at your phone
and like it just can't be there's no way it's just too much stuff and too many feelings yeah