If you’ve been reading our magazine since the new millennium began, you know that Fall Out Boy has been a main-stay in our pages (virtual or otherwise). With every record release, every tour, every promotional roll-out, the foursome of Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley have been covered. Like the never ending magic of this modern rock band, our adoration for this band will never waver.
Many people like to ponder on what would it have been like to be alive during Queen’s breakthrough in the seventies or imagine what it would have been like to see Nirvana live in the nineties during their rise to popularity. We firmly believe that music lovers of the future will say that about Fall Out Boy – they defined an era, and even though they have continued to thrive well into modern day, they are a band that is synonymous with the early 2000s. Fall Out Boy define fearlessness in everything they do – then and now. Whether it be the Young Blood Chronicles short film that caught your attention or the sounds of dubstep that were weaved into the rock on later albums, the band has continuously pushed the rock genre forward for the fans just as much for themselves.
Fall Out Boy have introduced generations of kids to punk rock since their start over 20 years ago. They are one of the few guitar-driven bands to have multiple songs take over mainstream pop radio having been just as popular on Z100 and Tumblr in 2015 as they were on MTV and MySpace in 2005. The four-piece have taken on everything from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” alongside John Mayer to more recently reimagining Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with a fresh, current twist. They are friends with much of the industry, collaborated with Taylor Swift, and are also possibly the only band to style a fedora in a way that was not only cool, but weirdly badass.
Last year they dropped So Much (For) Stardust, which may just be their best album yet. As astounding as it sounds for a band eight albums deep into their career to still find new ways to surprise their audience, they did just that. Fall Out Boy impressed, surprised, and captivated us. A song like “Love From The Other Side” encapsulates all two decades of style from the band, while a track like “The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)” is filled with longing as it sets up a completely new atmosphere for everyone to explore musically – not only through the album, but on stage, as well.
We caught the first leg of Fall Out Boy’s So Much (For) Tourdust last summer and it was a career-spanning, Stardust-celebrating spectacle. (Without a doubt one of the best shows we saw in 2023.) They are back town this week to shake things up, light up the stage for fans of all ages once again, this time at Madison Square Garden as part of leg two of the tour – appropriately called So Much For 2ourdust. It’s sure to be a legendary evening at the World’s Most Famous Arena. We know it. You know. Even their multi-faceted vocalist Patrick Stump knows it. How? Because we had a conversation with him earlier this month to discuss MSG, NYC, the album, the tour, and everything that makes Fall Out Boy the band we know and love.
With So Much (For) Stardust, you have four albums pre-hiatus and four albums post-hiatus. How is that mentally for the band?
The thing that’s funny about the hiatus is that it wasn’t a planned thing, really. It was literally just… we haven’t booked a tour, and that – not booking a tour – extended into three years. Then, of course, I gave a terrible interview in SPIN magazine where I basically implied the band wasn’t around. I didn’t mean that, but it sounded like the band wasn’t together. We were talking so infrequently at that time that Pete really thought I had just quit the band. The band did kind of then accidentally go on a real hiatus.
Anyway, the point of that is when I look back on that time, it’s like this weird moment where the band still existed, but there’s no record of it; that’s one of the reasons why it always feels like a difference, a big jump between records. Folie [à Deux] feels really different than Save Rock and Roll –or it did. However, now with the benefit of time, it’s like those differences eroded away, now it feels a lot more together. I notice a pretty big difference between Take This to Your Grave stuff and American Beauty/American Psycho era stuff. Those parts of the setlist do feel different to me, but it still feels enough like the same band that when we play the whole set those eras all blend together. The thing that’s weirdest to me is how Stardust just sits right in there. Stardust, when you play it live, itdoesn’t really feel too out there or weird. It doesn’t feel anachronistic, you know what I mean?
Yes! As someone who has seen you live before, I agree with you 100%. Tracks like “Love From The Other Side” and “Hold Me Like A Grudge” fit in seamlessly.
Yeah, and I feel that when I play them. Singing those songs, it feels natural with any of the rest of the set.
Obviously with So Much (For) Stardust, you’ve added more orchestral elements. I saw the movie Sick Girl – you did an amazing job doing the music for that film. Tell me about writing for films and how that has transformed the music you make.
Oh, thank you! Scoring is something I always wanted to do. It’s something I had always tried to do. It wasn’t really until about nine years ago that I started getting the opportunity to. It’s something I’ve been doing in my downtime. It’s funny – I spend so much time doing that. It’s most of what I do these days: scoring. Fall Out Boy is a much bigger deal, so when I go out on tour, I’ll see my dad and he’ll be like, “How do you have time? You must be so busy with the touring!” No, I’m busy with the scoring! The touring is almost like a break [Laughs]. I’ll be working on film scoring and TV scoring all day and then it’s soundcheck time or time to go on stage. Then I go out and do the show. I actually said this on stage the other day: “This is my break from work, I guess!” because I’ve been in the studio all day.
In terms of the way it affects the writing, we got together with Neil Avron for Stardust and we hadn’t worked with him since Folie à Deux. That was 2007/2008. Neil is maticlous and brilliant and really capable of bringing things out of you. I was excited about the idea that we had been doing all these different crazy things – all four of us. While I’m doing this [film scoring], Andy’s still touring in hardcore bands. He’s in six or six bands at the same time! Joe has been writing, constantly writing TV scripts and comic books. He has a comic book out with Rick Remender called Holy Roller. We’ve been doing all these things and I was thinking about what it would be like to bring all that together. Neil is very capable of reflecting that, being a lesne for that. He was really able to help actualize and blend the orchestral stuff. Not for nothing, some of the synthesizers… I don’t think people would notice it as much on this record, but there’s still synthesizer stuff in there. It’s just Neil. When he mixes a song, when he goes in and looks at a song, he really picks an element and goes, “This is the thing I’m going to emphasize because this is the thing that’s jumping out.” When it’s a guitar part, it’s the guitar. When it’s vocals, it’s the vocals. A lot of those things have always been there, but there’s a way that Neil clears out the focus. I think it’s really helped to spell it out in those songs.
Gotcha! It’s a mixture of working all the time and Neil pulling it out of you, as well.
Yeah, exactly! He pulls it out of you and finds a focus. You throw a bunch of things at the wall and he clears some space and goes, “This thing is magic. This thing I want to focus on.”
Another thing I’ve noticed in regard to Fall Out Boy being on the road is how it feels like every tour tells a story. The Hella Mega Tour had the story screens and videos, even The Boys of Zummer tour had a storyline throughout. Was that always intentional or does that happen after you plan a setlist?
No, that’s always intentional. It really comes from Pete. He’s the driver to that kind of story and he can’t not do it. There’s this thing where he has to tell these stories and he has to tell it in this specific way. Frankly, sometimes I don’t even understand it, and sometimes it happens and I don’t get it, but I can always recognize it. Whenever it happens, we need to do that. Whenever the idea comes forward and it’s that, you need to do that because there’s something that’s so inherently us about it now. This one has a story, as well. My kids were asking me about it. They’re like, “What does that mean?” and I’m like, “What does it mean to you?” I think that’s part of the fun. We are these guys that write things and compose things, but there’s something specific about the way Pete thinks; I don’t know if I could write one of his stories. I don’t understand what’s happening – it’s so surreal and abstract in this weird way. There’s something really unique about that and I cherish it. I look back at some of those tours and I’m like, “That’s really nuts that we were doing…”
I remember this one time we did the American Music Awards a million years ago. Pete had this idea about these crickets – these giant crickets that were going to be on stage chirping. I remember the producer of the show being like, “You want crickets chirping dead air on live TV?” There’s just something to it! It’s the way he thinks. There’s something I always love about seeing our show when the show comes together and I can turn around, look at the stage, and being looking at that story. It’s just so unique.
While we’re talking about tours, I do have to ask about this one; the Magic 8 Ball has been hugely successful. There’s a whole Twitter [X] page dedicated to “Oh, the Magic 8 Ball tonight is this.” Do you guys plan out the entire Magic 8 Ball sets before the tour starts, or does it happen on a night by night basis?
I’m not allowed to talk about the magic of the Magic 8 Ball, probably, but I will say that we tried to practice a lot of songs ahead of time. A part of this was the staging, because of the story and such, the specificity of that and how for a long time we had been a band that played a variation of the same set every night. On a tour we would play basically the same set. This tour – this is the same tour, Tourdust and Tourdust 2 is the same tour, really. This tour we really wanted to try something different with that and just really play as many different songs as we could. We have to play some of them. If we don’t play “Centuries” and we don’t play “Sugar [We’re Going Down]” then I think people would be disappointed, so we’ve got to play those ones. Then, the rest of the set really is about trying to surprise people and trying to be different every night. The 8 Ball is the maximum version of that.
It’s kind of a challenge to make sure you find something obscure. I’m always digging through, because we recorded so many things, we demo-ed so many things. I’m always pitching, “Hey, there’s a demo of ours that leaked 10 years ago that was unfinished, what if we played that or we put that in the rotation?” I’m really trying to be surprising, because it’s a fun challenge. There’s been something really exciting with it now. We’re 20 years in – 22 years in – and there’s a different kind of excitement when the audience is with you for that. For a long time into our touring, people didn’t know who we were. They’d show up and know a couple of the hits or something, or maybe they were into the T-shirt or whatever it was, but now a lot of the audience that’s there knows a lot of our catalog, knows a lot of the deep cuts. We can do that! The Magic 8 Ball is way more fun. It’s an idea that we feel we can do this far in.
A prime example of that is Folie à Deux, an album that, when it dropped, had rough critical reception, but now in 2023 when you played “Pavolve,” that’s not even on the album but rather from that era, we saw fans lose their mind. That must be such a special feeling.
It was a special feeling! That record was really hard for me. It was such a hard experience because I cared so much about it. I put so much into it and people reacted so negatively. Now we play songs from it and it’s beloved. That makes me feel so good, so grateful. It makes it a different thing than just nostalgia. That’s one of the things – there’s really nothing especially exciting about nostalgia. Personally, I don’t want to just live in whatever era. There is something exciting to me about repurposing some of it for somewhere new.
A great example of that is on this tour. One night with the 8 Ball we played the song, “Bang The Doldrum.” That’s from Infinity On High. We didn’t think anything of it – “This would be a fun song to play in an 8 Ball!” The reaction was… so big, so different than we expected that it ended up in the regular rotation. It ended up being part of the set! It’s not part of the set every night, but it became part of the set because we were surprised by the way people responded. That song wasn’t a song people had been requesting a lot. It wasn’t a song that was really high on our Spotify or whatever. When we played it live, it felt like it had come home or something. That was new. That was a new experience.
I feel like with Folie, it has that capacity. Like you said with “Pavlove”, some of those demos, those really obscure things, we don’t even have the tracks for that. We couldn’t release those songs if we wanted to. Those were demos. Those weren’t even finished songs. I don’t think the band even played on most of those. There’s all these demos that I played and recorded with Neil for Folie and a handful were leaked out over the years somehow. I have no idea how people got them. People have asked me about them, and there’s one, “Legendary” or something like that which has some numbers at the end of it. A fan found me and was like, “Hey, that song, what do those numbers mean?” What? I look at it. That song was never even released. “What are you even talking about? Oh – that was the date!” Neil had written it into the end of the WAV file. It’s so obscure, but fans are still passionate,, and it goes so deep that they know these things.
That’s part of the thing, too; fans know and revere this stuff so much it forces me to give it more attention. I do have a tendency to downplay a lot of the things I do. I don’t mean to, but I don’t take myself that seriously, I guess. It kind of forces me to, because it’s fine to be humble or whatever, but it’s not fine to poo-poo your stuff if somebody else has a tattoo of it. You’ve got to have a lot of respect for that. It forces me to put more effort into it. I never listened to Fall Out Boy [Laughs] as much as I’ve listened to Fall Out Boy on these tours, because I’m putting so much more effort into now since the audience has shown me how much respect I need to give my own music.
That’s phenomenal. I read Joe Troman’s book [None of this Rocks] and he said Folie à Duex was like Queen’s Night At The Opera for you guys. I really see that comparison. Now, Patrick, your sold out show at Madison Square Garden is right around the corner. How are you feeling about it? I need to get into your headspace for that.
Those are great, but I’m a little scared! MSG is always intimidating. We’ve done it a bunch of times so there’s a little bit of comfort there. I’ve at least done it, but it’s still a bit scary. Not scary – intimidating! It’s the only one. It’s Madison Square Garden. I’ll be in China and people will ask me about Madison Square Garden. Everybody knows Madison Square Garden. It’s a big deal. It’s always going to be a big deal. That means a lot. It’s definitely a night that I’m thinking ahead for, like making sure I sleep enough, because everything matters for that show. I mean everything matters for every show, but it’s heightened for that show.
I just have so many memories there. The first time we ever played there was a radio festival. It was a really big radio festival and it was also this weird era where there was such a confluence of people that were there. I want to say Beyoncé was there, Shakira was there, and the Backstreet Boys were there. Kanye was there. It was all these big artists playing and then there was us. We were a very little band. We were allowed to play three songs, so we played 3 songs. It was the first time we ever – in our career – had pyrotechnics, fire, explosions, and stuff that has now become very central to our set. That first time at MSG was the first time we ever did it. I remember hearing that Paul McCartney was in the audience! It was just overwhelming. It was terrifying. It couldn’t have been more terrifying.
I remember that I went back to the dressing room after all the smoke cleared and was like, “Man, that was just too much, too crazy.” There was nobody in the dressing room. The dressing room was kind of empty except I saw a couple of figures standing in the corner. This guy kind of comes out of the shadows and he goes, “Hey, can you take a picture of my kid?” It’s Bruce Springsteen. I was like, “Sure! Yes, sir!” It was actually a really important experience for me because he was so down to Earth, cool, and normal. He was just dad. It really left a stamp on me. This guy is probably one of the most famous people standing in Madison Square Garden and he didn’t have any security or anything. He was just himself. I remember that and I think about that a lot: how much this guy manages to be himself whenever he goes. Madison Square Garden can be this massive, important, iconic place that you can be this superstar in, but you can still manage to be a normal guy. That’s what I think about when I go into Madison Square Garden. If Springsteen can be cool, what’s your excuse?
Whenever I go into Madison Square Garden I’m humbled and amazed to be part of a continuum. Also, know your place. There are so many artists that came before you and there will be so many artists that come after you, so respect that legacy of being on that stage. – take it seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.
FALL OUT BOY WILL HIT THE STAGE AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ON FRIDAY! FOR ALL THINGS FALL OUT BOY, INCLUDING 2OURDUST TICKETS, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE!
