0:00

Hello, welcome to armchair expert.

I am your host Dax Shepard.

Today.

I’m going to speak with Pete Wentz who is the bass player for Fall Out Boy, very popular band, a loved band.

I know P socially through our mutual friend, Ryan Hansen of, probably hung out with him at their house.

0:19

A couple dozen times and he’s been to our house.

He’s a very, very nice guy.

He’s got a couple kids and that makes him ideal double date scenario for us.

And I didn’t know much about him and I read a lot about him before the night.

0:34

I interviewed him.

And I was excited to find out that he like myself has had some emotional trials up and down and I had a lovely time talking to him and I hope you’ll have a lovely time listening to us.

He’s not your kind of like just, you know, where the Beatles really popular in Germany.

1:05

Yeah, and that’s where they say.

They are playing at a strip club there, right?

Yeah, and they started to Hamburg and got like someone got kicked out.

I think we’re weed and uh-huh.

Yeah, you can do like a Beatles tour in Hamburg.

I want us to talk about all this special learning Rob Robert.

On Pete Wentz, welcome to the armchair expert podcast.

1:25

Hello.

You really crammed me in because you’re leaving tomorrow morning for Berlin.

Yes.

I thank you for that, of course.

And you know, what’s really fun about this is?

I know you socially.

Yes, which is a great way to just, we’re friends with Ryan Hansen and Amy Hansen.

1:41

Probably the most fun couple in Los Angeles.

Definitely, and you just were at their house one time and I was like, oh, that guy’s a rock star and but You are so humble.

You’re like the most your shockingly, humble rock star that it’s easy to forget that you are one, which is, I think a compliment to you.

2:00

Yeah.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, I think that because it’s like a thing where like, I don’t know how you think about it, but I like think of myself as like the fourteen-year-old in the punk rock bands.

Like, I don’t, ya think of myself, you know, like, yes, it’s hard to own.

Like, I always, I’m always jealous when I used to watch American Idol, did you ever watch any Seasons totally.

2:20

So there’s a moment in every season of American Idol where it gets down to the final four, whatever.

And then they go home to their small town, and they take a like, a ride in a convertible.

There’s a parade totally, and they’re waving and they’re crying and they’re like, experiencing the adulation and I’ve always watched that was such great Envy thinking, like I’ve never had that moment where I was like I made it totally.

2:45

Yes.

It’s happened.

Totally, you know what I’m saying, but they They really seem to be able to experience that it can you stomach that like can you, can you connect your own identity to that level of success?

One of the things being in a band that people sometimes do is like you’ll go.

3:06

To Hotel pool or whatever and they play your song makes me want to throw up.

Like I can’t think of anything, you know, like more.

It’s like, yeah.

Because then I’m like, the people think I put it, I don’t know.

It is it is a very confusing experience is the only thing I can compare to that is that it’s a few different times.

3:27

I’ve been flying like internationally and I’ll be walking back and forth to the bathroom.

And you know, what have I did a USO tour where we flew to Qatar, or Kuwait, whatever it was and on the plane.

They had a couple movies.

Just by chance that I was in and on the walk back and forth to the bathroom.

3:43

I noticed, like six different people are watching movies.

I was in and it was just all very Confusing.

I kept going like, oh, this must be exciting for them.

I tried to think about.

Oh, that would be cool.

I would like it if I was watching a movie and I looked up in the total guy who just jumped off a roof or whatever was now going to the shitter, totally, but it is, it’s all very confusing to and then I’m like, oh, I’m an egomaniac.

4:02

No one cares that you’re on this point, you know, I always think of it in the terms of like, what’s the experience?

Somebody would want from like, how do they view you?

What would the experience be that?

They would want?

Yes, you know, I mean, that’s a very generous way to look at it.

Well, like, I remember I was in In I was at the dentist office just riding down the elevator and I don’t know him at all.

4:22

But like, Jack Black was behind me.

I’m getting out of the elevator.

He just does this weird like, look where it was.

Like I’m doing this look to you but like No One’s Gonna, like, you’ll tell him, tell anyone this story to won’t like it was like that was the perfect.

That’s like all I needed from it, you know?

Like it is getting that sometimes, awesome.

Stern talks about that a lot where if you’re whatever mildly famous and then you run into someone else.

4:43

Who’s famous there.

Is this Awkward Moment where you’re like, why?

I Know Who You Are.

Our and then you’re kind of looking to see if they do.

You do they know you?

I would be thrilled.

Yeah for Jack Black to give me a little rhythm.

Yeah, and it was like the perfect like I’m doing like a real weird face to you.

4:59

Whatever.

Yeah, like we didn’t talk at all this great.

Yeah, so he gave you basically the experience you want.

Yeah from him.

Yeah, that was.

So it was nice of him.

You don’t you think people just want and experience?

They don’t really care what it is.

They just want to walk away with saying, oh they did some person did this or they did that or if they want a story, there’s some People, I think you want a particular X to me.

5:20

You want a particular experience from like the rock.

You want the, like, you know, like there’s certain people in there certain people who are like, man.

I don’t wanna catch him on the day that he’s depressed.

Yeah.

Or like off duty or something like that.

It’s like the off-duty.

You don’t want, you know, yeah.

Yeah, I think some people would be like, I’m at the Rock and he was nothing like he comes up.

5:39

Like people want that to which is bad.

I trap I totally agree with Monica.

I think I think ultimately you some part of your brain.

No, so I’m going to be repeating the story.

Like the first famous person I ever saw was Jay Leno.

He was at the corner of a Sunset and Tower and I was on vacation with like my buddies from Detroit and we pulled up to the light and we look to the left.

6:00

Well, first, we were like, oh, there’s a cyclone with Corvette Wheels, who would have that?

Because we’re your heads, and then it’s Jay, Leno.

So now we’re telling him, like, roll.

Down the window, rolled down the window.

We’re signaling him and God bless him.

He rolled down the window and he just, he got high, you know, he looked at us and and we’re like, oh my God.

6:16

We love your Cyclone with the vet wheels and then it kind of.

He was like, he’s stoked.

Yeah, because it was like car talk and not right.

Yeah, and and then he’s like, and then he floored it and took off really fast, and it was very, very exciting.

But it didn’t even, I do think when someone meets someone like that, they immediately go like, well, I’m going to be repeating this to somebody.

6:36

Right?

So I have to have a conclusion.

I can’t just go like, oh, I saw Pete in an elevator, and then people are like, Anna was Eli’s.

He’s shorter than you thought you’d be taller.

Total.

Is he a dick dick dick?

Yes.

Was it dick?

Or was he not a dick?

Yeah, and there’s a lot of pressure on that person to come to a pretty severe conclusion about you.

6:54

And I mean, very short in it.

So my first experience with a famous person I think was we’d come out here.

We were living at the oakwoods.

Oh my gosh, like corporate housing.

Super know.

The oakwoods are, there’s a great documentary on Netflix about it.

And it’s where every child actor comes.

7:12

During pilot season.

It’s super depressing.

Like yeah, a lot of stage.

Alms and like all not good.

Yeah, so we were, we were out here we go to me and Patrick who sings of all, but we went to a show a ska show at the time and we’re at the show and we don’t know.

7:31

We also didn’t know, like, the etiquette of because there’s like an etiquette.

You see these Regional.

Yeah.

And so we see Goldberg from the Mighty Ducks, who is the bigger guy?

You know, the bigger guy on Mighty Ducks from the movie, the movie, The Mighty Ducks, okay.

7:47

And we’re going the gods.

Culper of me.

That’s like, you know, and he can hear us but we don’t know that that’s like not really cool to do.

So, we’re saying we’re pointing at him like way too close.

He knows it all and I’m like, no, it’s not him.

He’s not responding like, you know, he clearly is hearing Goldberg over him some Clues.

8:05

Like you hear him.

Go ahead and not.

Yeah and he’s not doing any of it and then on the way out he walked by us and he’s like quack quack.

Fuck you.

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah, and I was like, this is the greatest or and it gives you a conclusion.

And it’s the greatest, you know, yes, so my personal experience with this where it occurred to me that that is what’s happening is I was in Las Vegas and I was gambling one night.

8:29

I hope I can remember every little step of this but I was gambling one night and then I was my cousin was going to meet me.

So it’s a huge Casino.

So I tell him like, oh, there’s a nightclub.

There.

Light, won’t you meet me by the line?

Because that’ll be easy to find.

So I’m there and I’m also incidentally, wearing flip-flops whatever.

8:46

It’s like summer in.

And so I meet up with my cousin and then, that’s that, the next night.

I’m sitting at a like, a blackjack table in this girl.

Next to me goes like, Oh my God.

I heard what happened to you last night and I go.

What happened.

She goes, they threw you out of light because you were wearing flip-flops, and I hope no, no, I didn’t go into light last night and she goes, no, not my friends, saw you.

9:11

You like you were kicked out of white for wearing flip-flops, and then I started like really trying to like armchair.

Just like what, what why is that the story and then I think here’s what happened.

I think the cousin said, oh my God.

I saw Dax Shepard in line at light and then she went.

9:29

Uh-huh.

And because I’m not Tom Cruise.

It’s not enough to just say you spotted me, like you there better be more to this story than just you saw Derek Shepherd and life.

And then I think she started improving, right?

He was wearing flip-flops, which was true and I was like, he was kicked out cuz of them, you know, right.

9:45

And I imagine there’s a lot of stories like that floating around about a Of people.

Yeah and lots of stuff.

Like if you were walking by a place maybe you were kicked out of it or you like that, you know, like putting it all together, putting it all together and from your perspective and like what do I want this?

10:00

Like, what is the story?

I want to walk away with from this.

I have a crazy one was not super crazy.

It’s a little it’s a little bit, but we had this bar that we so in like 2005 or 2006.

I would go to like bars in New York with my friends who were not in a band or whatever and they wouldn’t let they Like three of them in but they wouldn’t let like all of a sudden.

10:20

Yeah, so it was like, well, let’s just open our own bar because then we can all get in and disrupt whatever.

So we opened this.

It was just this like dive bar.

So we open this in Alphabet City.

You like couldn’t get a drink.

I got kicked out of the bar, my own bar.

But on the opening night and we were like, kind of like we were nothing.

10:38

Like we didn’t have like, it wasn’t like there was like a red carpet and like celebrities came out.

Do you know, it was just whatever, but on the opening night of it, James Gandolfini went off.

Oh my place next door to or like something and was caught like, you know, like the way pictures know like he had gone there and so we like didn’t we didn’t explain that.

10:59

That wasn’t what hey you didn’t I?

Yeah, we like, you know, he might have got kicked out of light for the flip-flops.

We don’t know.

Yeah.

Line through Mission.

Yes.

I’ve got a couple different occasions had drivers that had driven Gandolfini to work in right in and I think he partied pretty good.

11:15

Okay.

Yeah.

Who’s next door party, maybe?

You he probably doesn’t know that he didn’t go to Europe at that time.

He didn’t.

So, um, but you grew up, you’re younger than me, which is a bummer for me.

Not much though.

Yeah.

Yeah, four and a half years.

So you were, you were born in 1979.

11:33

You are a summer baby and you are brought home to Chicago suburb.

Yes, that’s accurate.

Yes, because here’s the fun thing about being friends with you and just again, knowing you as a human being and not knowing you as a rock star, is that I Read a lot about you last night.

11:49

And now I know a bunch about you and it’s just a weird dynamic because we’re just friends and you would probably slowly told me a lot of these other things, but I kind of got them all.

Last.

Totally.

Yeah, but your parents, if any of this is correct, your mother was an admissions counselor, huh?

And your father was a lawyer.

12:06

Yep, and they met campaigning for Biden.

Yes, for a senatorial bid.

Yes.

So, just right there on paper, that to me.

Would you agree, Monica sounds like the dream parents?

Like they’re liberal.

They’re educated.

Their professional.

12:24

Was it the cocked of politically?

Yeah.

I was it like, growing up with dr.

Huxtable was it her, is it?

Perfect, you know, I’ve been quite as perfect business and we’ll pretend, you know, know again, I’m talking about Huxtable.

I’m the man who portrayed Huxtable.

12:39

I think that it’s funny cuz I like talk to some of my friends about it.

It’s like so we were like this Soul, kind of like, Liberal family in a not super liberal wasp because it was a wealthy kind of stuff.

Yeah, it was waspy and whatever and we weren’t and so it was weird because like my parent like I didn’t get I wasn’t allowed to watch TV.

13:03

I didn’t eat sweet cereal like my parents would like we would have to go to like the Ethiopian restaurant or whatever which now in retrospect.

It’s like getting piano lessons.

Like 30 years later.

You’re like, it’s dope.

I can like play piano for my friends.

But when you’re like a little kid, you like this sucks.

I just want to eat McDonald’s and be So we were like, weird, you know, I mean, well, you know, Robin Kaitlyn, right?

13:21

Yes.

So, Rob mcelhenney and Kaitlin Olson.

I’ve known Caitlin forever and her mother was was super granola and she had never had real peanut butter that our mother hadn’t fucking ground up, you know, in the kitchen sink and it does it can create like a fetish.

13:37

You can fantasize all this trash.

Yes, if you don’t come up with that total and kind of backfired, too.

I mean, when I left my parents house, I watched TV for maybe like mine.

A job.

I’m here because I just didn’t have it.

So like I was like and it kind of and it like the thing you said it kind of backfired because it was like, I had these ideas.

13:56

I was like, it’s like this land that I haven’t really gonna powered via sugar and totally formulaic TV.

I similarly did something, which is because we were poor and we live too far away from Detroit to be getting a good signal and we couldn’t afford cable.

So I watched very little, I had to go to a friend’s house to watch Dukes of Hazzard and and same thing.

14:14

I moved to Santa Barbara and I stole cable for my And that’s virtually what I did for one year is just total Tsum, 12 hours of TV.

Okay.

Yeah.

So also your, I don’t really understand this explanation, but I want to say that it’s in, your mother is the I’m repeating.

14:32

Yeah, go afro, Jamaican.

Yeah.

That’s what, that’s how you say that.

Yeah.

Sure.

So my my on my mother’s side, your grandfather was.

Yeah.

Jim.

He’s not but his parents were Jamaican Colin.

Powell is my second cousin.

That’s crazy.

Yeah.

14:48

Yeah, Aunt.

Well, and even your grandfather is very historic to, because he had some political thing.

He was an ambassador Sierra Leone.

Yeah, that’s pretty wild.

Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.

How did your mother go to Sierra Leone while he was an ambassador?

15:03

So my mom would like, was I kind of an army brat, so she kind of grew up everywhere, except he was an officer.

So, like whatever, but she grew up in Italy, and I don’t know if that she went to Sierra Leone, but there’s like this picture.

I was just at my grandpa’s.

House or apartment and there’s a picture of him on a plane with Muhammad Ali.

15:24

Oh wow, and and I was like, what is this?

And there’s a couple other guys and he’s like, oh, this is when like, I think it was Jimmy Carter.

I don’t know who was but like was sending them around to all the African countries and being like you.

I think it was like you shouldn’t participate in the Olympic like the it was like to do with Communism.

15:39

It was like some like it was like and they were on some like or yeah, they were on some like I was like, that’s a crazy picture.

So Antonio Muhammad Ali story was that um, When he would pay for anything.

And this is like, you got to think about this, in the context of we didn’t have ATMs, like, like electronic stuff, wasn’t what it was, but that he would go when he went to the grocery store.

15:57

If you like spent $2 at the grocery store, he would write a check because nobody can’t nobody cashed in his checks.

Oh, because they wanted the signature.

Oh, it was really super smart, right?

Yeah, I would, I would 100% do that.

Right?

Super-smart anything under, like $100.

16:13

I probably.

Could you think so can adapt?

I could sell them.

Nothing.

Yeah.

Well, you think I should start, right?

You can do that.

Can’t do.

I don’t think it anymore, though, because I think checks don’t like can’t, like it doesn’t work the same way because of electronic banking or something, right?

Or no.

I think I’m for many reasons.

16:30

Probably one of our, hey, I’m not Muhammad Ali.

Be, I think people have phones now and they did far, rather have a photograph with you.

Then.

They would like a cancelled check or a voided check.

Do you think totally we just wild to me because like, if I could hang out with Axl Rose, I would pick a conversation over him.

16:48

I’m over a photo any day the week.

Yes, I’ve kind of lamented about that as well publicly.

Which makes me sound like a brat but it is it is true.

You get the sense while it’s happening.

Like oh, this really doesn’t have anything to do with me.

They may or may not even like me.

If my self-esteem is low.

I’m definitely thinking that at the time and I go oh, they just want something for their Facebook page.

17:06

Right?

And I’m offering to chat with them, you know, and they’re not so interested in that but you know, whatever the poor us.

Yeah.

Yeah thats everywhere.

Now people just want pictures, they want to capture.

Every moment, regardless of rightly.

So they want their own cultural capital.

17:22

They want to kind of, you know, they want some that’s going to get everyone’s brand and everyone is a brave.

Yes, and how can I be critical that?

I want a ton of attention, so to whatever.

But I do tend to hate in others.

What I hate about myself.

So I am critical but you.

Okay.

So you grew up in a pretty affluent.

17:39

What kind of lawyers your dad?

He is a he was a corporate lawyer.

So he’s not going in like, you know, standing up.

Alec Baldwin sound like unbuttoning her button and whatever he did.

No worries, like so he when I was little in the 80s.

He was a corporate lawyer at Helene Curtis, which is like doing mergers or doing intellectual property.

17:59

I think it was a lot of, like, we can’t say that this was not tested on animals.

It was a lot of like, like how it was all worded, and like that kind of stuff.

But he basically, it’s interesting because it’s like kind of his influence how I parent a little bit or something, but like, Was just not around and like literally wasn’t around like he was just working all the time and it took me until I was like, 32 be like, oh, he’s like working.

18:25

So I could like, you know, but I didn’t know it’s hard to like conceptualize that as a kid, you know?

No.

Because you, yes, you in.

By the way, it’s not as valuable as your time with your dad, whatever those things were you guys had total.

It probably isn’t ultimately.

But yeah, I have a good friend who went to Harvard Law and she came out here and she was practicing and then she had two kids and she said, like, I either need to quit or I need to To go to part-time and her firm.

18:50

Luckily, for her said, will make you part time and for her part times 45 hours a week.

That’s not that’s literally what part-time in the lawyer in the world is.

It’s probably from every friend I’ve ever had.

Who’s been a lawyer.

It might be the worst job on the planet.

Yeah, pretty crazy.

You like everywhere.

Just insane and you’re like the most hated person.

19:07

Yeah, but so my dad went from that to and then he worked with a group that abolished the death penalty in Illinois.

Oh, really.

After that, in the 90s.

And then after that, He was dealing lot Northwestern law on OK.

And now he teaches law some and then like now my dad has one of those like because I have a couple friends who have that like he has a job that I don’t like really.

19:29

Like I try to explain to people and I don’t really understand it myself.

Sure.

Like I’m like.he like advises.

Like you don’t have people like, I don’t know.

I’m like, yeah, so he’s kind of like a consultant.

Yeah, and any anyone who has a job as a consultant?

That it’s yeah.

It’s very ethereal to.

Yeah.

It’s like real hard to like, like.

And how do you how do you want?

19:48

If I at how do you monetize it?

Like if I give you a little bit of advice?

Yeah, what’s that word?

Yeah, totally.

How much do I write this?

You have to fame?

Like, it.

Took him hours to think of this advice.

I mean, I have no idea, but he was telling me, but so he advises.

And now he’ll help with murders.

So he did.

He work with one of many lawyers that did the United Continental merger, but when it was happening, he didn’t like, he was like, I’m going to do stuff, you know, because he can’t say anything.

20:11

Yes, at all.

And I’m like, you could just slip me something and he was like, you, we would get, it would be.

Yes.

So, you could potentially Do some really great Insider trades.

Yeah, and he was like, they like this, there’s an immediate circle.

Where like, if you do any like any of these people do anything.

I’m not in that Circle.

I know big big slip it on Three Degrees of Separation, but from, but then he’ll like tell but then he’ll tell me like he was working with a snack company that had had a factory line worker who was peeing in the snack.

20:40

Oh, that they didn’t find out about until two years later, like, the snacks were out there, you know?

And same, as I do.

I was like, I don’t know how you guys holding that.

I am critical of Corporations as most lib cards are.

But I will say this, I often am feeling terrible for corporations that they ultimately are responsible for the actions of some Nutjob employee.

21:03

They have, like, you kind of regularly reading about, you know, even the airline’s, right.

So, however, the on the ground flight attendants, handling this debacle.

That’s now online.

It’s not the company.

It’s like this / yet.

It’s their responsibility.

So I’m a little sympathetic to you have all these people working for you.

21:20

You can’t really control all these people, but I wonder, can you or not?

Because I wonder about like like like Disneyland, you don’t like hear about it.

Well to have a good point.

How I see the lawyer and in your blood.

It’s all yours.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

I’m but growing up in this neighborhood.

21:38

I would say on the surface.

It’s like you’re I’m sure you guys are financially right in the thick of it.

You’re not feeling poor, your mother’s half-black.

Is it accurate?

Is that a source of any kind of in that neighborhood?

Is that that no big deal in 1980?

21:54

Or is it a big deal?

I think that it’s I think that it’s this.

I think that it’s no big deal in the way that like, there’s not issues with crosses on the laundry.

Like at least that kind of thing.

But I and I dis is like interesting because I don’t really know is that I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere.

22:16

Like, I didn’t fit in the neighborhood, you know, I mean, yeah, like people didn’t actively make me feel like I didn’t fit in.

I just was like, I don’t look like any of you.

I just don’t feel like I fit in, you know, I’m right right.

Which by the way, I’m Blond and blue-eyed.

And I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere else.

22:31

So it’s like, of course, you’re insane.

Like, I have to always remind myself of that when these topics of white privilege or anything else comes out early.

It’s I get it because I felt like an outcast.

It’s I think it’s like a very Human Condition to feel like an outcast.

22:46

Even when you were a bull’s-eye of what should be fitting in, totally it.

Maybe I was fitting in way more than other kids were.

Certainly, I was in certainly you were, I’m sure but it’s like also like where you are on your own head.

Like it’s just like it does.

Isn’t yeah, like that?

You’re the prisoner of that, no matter what, you know, because it wasn’t like to me.

23:03

It was not so much even like white pearl.

It’s like I never felt like any of that stuff.

It’s just like being like a like a mud kind of is weird because you’re just like well, I just don’t really like I fit in with my friends, you know, like and I think that’s probably how I find punk rock.

Is it was like a bunch of people who like we just don’t really fit in anywhere.

23:19

So we all just like a none of us look like each other or whatever.

And like so like it was like this, like Island of Misfit Toys, kind of thing.

Yeah.

That’s what a true.

I do is very submerged in the hardcore scene in Detroit in the early 90s.

And yeah, there was this weird.

23:38

I I get it all.

I was like, okay, I don’t feel like I look like that or I’m that’s working.

So I’m going to send a very clear fuck you to the whole system and I’m going to have white dreadlocks, by the way, notice you.

And I unfortunately, gold Rolex.

It’s absolutely love.

Probably my favorite hairdo ever because you didn’t have to do a thing.

23:55

You just well, got me right here we style, right?

Yeah, it was Great, but yeah, that I found like it was a way for me to get some power back of going like, well, fuck you.

I’m wearing size 48, pants and overalls and I have dreadlocks on clearly telling you.

I don’t even want to play your game.

24:10

Tell them not a part of it.

But of course, I did.

I would’ve loved to have been homecoming king or something.

Yeah, but it wasn’t my defense and then yeah, that group seemed to be or that scene seemed to be populated with people who felt similarly.

Yeah, but I will say in evolution seem to have happened around that time period.

Probably started by like Ian, mackaye.

24:28

And Discord and all that where Punk got kind of smart.

Yes, right.

Yes.

So a lot of the kids were in the scene in the Detroit area where like going to U of M.

They were mathematicians.

Yes.

Band members were you know, our nation of Ulysses these guys were laughs dedicated to you know, Brilliance.

24:43

Yes.

And so that was also a very cool moment to also like being kind of, you know, anti misogyny was big.

It was thoughtful.

Yeah obviously.

Being vegan were so big.

They can move like Krishna got big and Chicago rent.

Um, yeah, I like was all.

24:59

It was all it was all thoughtful shattered.

Think no.

No like 108.

And it was the big, Chris shelter shelter.

Yeah.

Sure.

I just went on this crazy.

Kick.

There’s a great Krishna core book just for anyone.

Let’s go.

Really, yeah, that guy from went away wrote.

That’s just crazy.

In the Parenthood title sequence, you know, we had to supply them with photos of ourselves in their youth and I don’t have a bunch of them.

25:20

But in the title sequence, were Parenthood, I’m wearing a shelter t-shirt, and I feel like once a year.

I’ll get a tweet from somebody going.

Like, are you worried?

Through sure, to shelter shelter, merch is really wild, because it stunningly looks really relevant today to like Street wearing all that stuff.

25:36

Yes, it weirdly almost is like, pre that terrible line Affliction.

Yeah, it’s kind of crazy, but it’s awesome because it’s also very colorful and tone fact.

My very favorite long sleeve t-shirt of all time was a shelters white.

Well, yeah.

Oh, yeah, totally man.

Yeah.

I was actually lowered so that literally fell off my body is looking at those either day.

25:54

That’s oh I should kind of look into that.

Maybe I could pick up some old.

Yeah.

Yeah, man, shelter gear.

Yeah, that scene was really kind of fun it to be a part of it at that time because yes, I started going to shows with my brother who is five years older than me.

And originally, I think my first show is 12 and we went to see exploited that was fucking terrifying.

26:13

Like I was going just to prove to my brother.

I was a man.

We were seeing Dead Kennedys and the scene was still half Neo-Nazi and people wore combat boots with screws in the bottom so they can step on your foot blah blah blah.

And then it became really beautiful and peaceful.

Yes.

Yeah, so Came in Chicago.

26:29

I came like right or like me and my friends because we had to like kind of sneak downtown and go to fire, cyborg.

Whatever was and we came like right when because it was in Chicago, as well.

It was like, Neo Nazis were literally beaten out of out of the scene.

26:47

Yeah.

People are like, oh, yeah.

They were like, you put up fliers.

I’m like, no.

No, they were like beaten with fists.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, like, that’s where we Sharps right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s right.

Yeah, and it was like and they were You know, but I came right after it was like, it was more thoughtful.

And it was, did you ever see sick of it all when you’re totally?

27:04

Yeah, so I don’t know how, what Their audience was like in Chicago but in Detroit sick of it all was right down the middle.

It was either it was like half the that new generation and then just half neo-nazis.

That was the worst show ever saw where there’s tons of fighting.

Totally.

Like I said, like I think I came right at the end of it and I wasn’t going to like, like I would go to sick of it all and stuff like that.

27:23

But like yeah, they were like pretty much gone I think.

I don’t know.

Now.

I would have known.

You remember being scared when you go to those shows when you were little, yes.

I remember the mosh pit and like what can I get into?

Like, what like, you know, and and like what was going on Dante’s Inferno?

27:40

Yeah, like which level of moshpit can I go into?

And then like there’s like the Wall of Death would have liked all the stuff, you know, and and I’m gonna dive off this.

Yeah, and the Fireside Bowl was great because it it is this little bowling alley in Chicago and it had these pay phones that were like about About, you know, 10 feet back from the stage and the deal was you would climb up on the pay phone and then and then like head walk on the crowd to the.

28:07

You know, it’s so stupid but in such a weird like Fight Club Eli, yeah, no like we need this to like and you could Crucible of Youth kind of thing, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you could write it was very a Lord of the Rings.

I’m sorry.

Lord of the Flies easy, but you could ride on an experience like that for like 10 days like you would do a show on a Friday night.

28:28

And you did crowd walk or whatever the fuck it’s called all week.

The next week in school.

Like, I didn’t care what jock was doing, what I was like, total.

I’m crushing out.

They don’t even know what’s happening.

Yeah, totally totally.

Yeah, and my thing was crazy because I had like, all these like pen pals and I like, but records based on thanks list and all this.

28:45

Like, I was like, super deep on all.

You collected records.

Yeah.

All of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I never that never appealed to me the collecting, The Knowing every member of every band, all that kind of stuff.

And now we start talking to someone, then I get insecurity.

I was a poser because I didn’t really know who the first.

29:01

Yeah, I don’t think I ever was matters.

Yeah, but like I was just I was fully into it was like my coming of age or whatever.

Yeah, it was whatever.

When did you start playing music?

I started playing when I was 15.

I played bass because it had less strings.

29:19

I tried taking piano growing up.

Could you read music?

I could read music on a piano, but it’s just different on a guitar, or a bass.

Um, I mean, I guess.

Yeah.

Just like transcribing is a little different.

Um, and then was there a bass player you were emulating that you loved.

29:37

No, because I feel like I got into it in the way that like I got into it because of punk rock.

And there was like nobody who I was like, I like these like local guys.

And then like I did like guys like Duff McKagan and stuff, you know, like or whatever, like, you know, growing up.

Yeah.

29:53

Did you have an Eclectic spectrum of music?

You were listening to?

Yeah.

Just Punk.

Know, I listen to Punk.

But like my like the way I got into it was like the First music I think I bought was the first CD I bought like those long boxes was a Slayer Live CD which was decade of aggression, I think.

30:12

And then and I listen to like Metallica and stuff and that was when you had to like order, your shirts from like blue-gray, pour something like something.

Like in a magazine where they would like have all these tiny shirts and you’re like looking at him like oh, yeah, whatever.

And it was a bass solo.

Take one.

What is it that on Anna Anna?

30:28

Your point.

Yeah, really cool.

Yeah, he’s a really that’s about the only vinyl I have is I do have all that early.

All the early Metallica.

I have a little up your ass on vinyl.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like I was into him and I was into but it was more.

So like the you like classic rock.

30:44

Not at the time.

You did.

Later on.

I was secretly listening to it.

Oh, you wanna classic rock?

What was your like go to?

I Love Led Zeppelin.

Okay, I love Rolling Stones.

I also love Steely Dan.

Like, I always loved Steely Dan’s, my parents.

Love Steely, Dan Steely.

Dan is like, one of my what’s it called?

31:01

When you just have like a blank.

I have like a.

Like I said, they’re just not.

I never listened.

So it’s like a weird there.

An enigma to yeah.

It’s like if you didn’t seen The Godfather something like yeah.

I know.

I’m supposed to like know everything about it, but I just, no, no - still no stealing an for you.

No.

No, but not in a bad way.

Just like, I just don’t.

31:17

Oh my, he’s not.

I’m almost jealous of you as if you’ve not seen breaking bad and you’re gonna get the stuff that I talked to you about like a throw people haven’t seen Game of Thrones.

Yeah, it’s his experience at all.

Yes, and I feel like if you You ever open the door to Steely Dan.

It will blow your mind.

Okay, just the, they were just incredible.

31:34

Yeah.

Musicians and so weird.

Every song is so different and they were very like tongue and cheek and I don’t know whatever.

Okay, please check out stealing if I can.

Let’s stop this right now.

Usually come back to, you can blues, and then hit me with that.

31:50

What you think.

But you played soccer to as a kid, right?

I did.

So I knew you were good at it.

I was pretty good at it.

That’s like what I feel.

The most competent in my life about at the time.

For sure was playing soccer and I played Club teams and I in so you must have felt included in that sense, right?

32:09

You are on a team.

So I yeah, so like I was so I was like, the kid on the soccer team that had, like, you know, blue hair who hung out with like the punk rock kids.

Like I was kind of I wasn’t like popular or not popular.

I was like friends with everybody.

Uh-huh, but I kind of think like in a weird way ghost because like all my friends were like these punk rock kids that Like other schools and stuff, right?

32:29

But it wasn’t like antagonistic.

You know, I mean like there was nothing.

I feel like you could like read about my life and think it was like this weird like and tagging like it.

I think all the things that happened and all the were beneficial for who I became, you know, like yeah, like playing soccer a lot and it’s like it’s the thing in my life where it’s like, so this is so messed up, kind of, I won’t do it now because I know I can’t do it as well.

32:56

So it’s like, I just don’t Don’t even want to do it a little bit.

Me in a skateboard.

Yeah, I’d like you to know I’d be crying.

Yeah, tried.

Yeah.

And people are like, do you just want to kick a little bit of my I have no interest.

Yeah.

Well, if my kids were into it, I would do it.

I haven’t played since second grade.

So maybe we should start trying together because even soccer is a little bit of a, like, Fringe sport in a weird way, right?

33:22

Yeah, that’s where you would find, dudes, that were super athletic, but they weren’t jocks in the Yeah, it’s like a little more thoughtful.

My school was weird because our football team was not very good.

So a lot of people gravitated towards soccer.

Oh, really?

33:37

Yeah, and it’s like interesting because of the neighborhood that we were in like your club.

Team played the team that Walter Payton son was on and so it was like all this like with Walter Payton be at the game.

I was like, kind of know it’s sweet when you started playing the bass and you thought, okay, I’m gonna do this.

33:56

I’m going to, I’m going to be in a band.

And did you at that time?

Have like fantasies of stardom?

No, because the stages that we were playing on were like, literally like three inches, you know, whatever and lots of times on the floor, you know, like and we had all these it was like so ridiculous.

34:15

We so we had this band so I had fans that I was in and they were all like had these like sea of hate or like I don’t like all the bad hardcore band names and and then we had this band this one called full.

This breakfast in the deal with that band was.

The van was so bad.

34:31

So because we would go and all these shows were in the suburbs were in like garages.

And you know, like Knights of Columbus Hall and whatever and we would go and the deal with full English breakfast was, we would go to the guy who’s throwing the show and be like, hey, we got this band.

Can we just jump on the show or whatever and rubbing it and and you deal was you had to play an instrument that you didn’t know how to play and we played until we got kicked off.

34:53

So you played it instrument.

You didn’t use a challenge to each other.

This is a challenge to the Wow, it was a little bit of a.

What?

Who’s the comedian that any cough?

Yeah.

It’s a little handy comment because it’s like it just keeps going and someone has to pull the plug because the plug will not give cool.

And then after a while, people knew that bullying was breakfast.

35:09

Did that?

And we change the name of the human head and just do the same.

It was like interesting, like who is spearheading that?

Because I think that’s a lot of confidence.

Yeah, that would be I would say that was not me.

That was my buddy, Isaac did that, it was Isaac a fucking party.

He always liked knew that, like, it was always that stuff.

35:27

It was Always, he always liked knew all the like he almost out punk, rock, punk rock.

Yeah.

Punk’d events are?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was super performance art.

But in the way that like, never got physical, never got no, never no.

Never got physical.

And it never like, wasn’t even performance art because like, there was no, there was like 12 kids here, you know, if you like, it was just like, you’re like, this is just brutal.

35:49

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s a clear.

Fuck you though to everyone.

Yeah, I think so.

So you weren’t really, you didn’t have fantasies of Grand jury during that period?

No.

You just do it because you thought it would be fun.

I thought it would be fun.

The internet was not a thing.

36:04

Right?

Really, you know, like there was like email lists maybe or something the the most famous hardcore band was like not not a whole household name, you know.

Yeah.

My cousin was, I lived with my cousin and his band, which was current.

Did you ever hear of current totally try?

36:20

And then they were Ottawa and then they were Gregor.

They were the Rolling Stones in Detroit.

Like, I was certain they were famous worldwide.

Totally.

Yeah, because you’re playing in bands for five years before.

You’re in, Arma.

Angelis.

Yes.

However, I say that yes, Angeles Angeles.

36:36

Yeah, it was actually like And are you getting good at base?

I don’t think so.

I think I’m fine.

I think fine.

Okay, but like not you can keep time.

Yeah, I’m fine, you know, but I’m not taking lessons or and like it wasn’t really about that.

It was the spirit.

I think.

36:51

Yes.

Yeah.

It’s more about getting up there and Performing, probably right.

Totally.

And are you right?

When do you start writing lyrics?

Not until our managed?

Well, I think I was maybe doing them in some of the Bands but like not until arm Angeles, I think, because when I think maybe I went to a place that maybe In the case, which is a lot of the dudes.

37:10

I knew who were really good.

Musicians, in high school.

They sat in a room for hours and they played that guitar tone.

I don’t know that people recognize what a lonely Endeavor, it is and how much it caters to people that probably have some depression.

37:25

Like it’s a great place to go hide and get lost.

Totally right?

I thought it’s a pretty Common Thread through these kids who get graded instrument, totally and all.

And I know a lot of stories about people with guitar that are Like, immobilize from an injury immobilize because they’re taking care of their parent or whatever.

37:42

Like, there’s a reason that they’re like stationary or like ours, and they just had like, yeah, repetitive, but it also takes a certain like, what I would.

I’m just again, I’m guessing, but it’s relief in some way.

So you’re not participating in a whole lot of stuff to put a that much time into it because I would play the drums, I play the drums, right.

38:04

But after, like, 40 minutes, I would think like, oh fuck, I want to go to get some If you with my buddy, Aaron, you know, like I want to get out and tell him shit.

I didn’t, I didn’t, I wasn’t yet dark enough to really be in my room that long.

Right?

I know people who have gotten like, like I think John Mayer may have gotten like, super good at guitar by kind of just hanging out in his room.

38:23

Yeah, and I know people who have and I also know people who are kind of like I did that and like now I do something else, you know, when, yeah, you know who like just love it.

But like they didn’t become a guitarist because of it, right?

But it is interesting because there’s a lot of a lot of times the the attributes that lead to these gifts be it guitar or any kind of virtual, so musically or even actors.

38:47

Right?

It’s really weird because the thing they did to get famous per se has not prepared them at all for being famous because it was really an introverts pursue totally and I think even to some degree a lot of actors.

I think Jim Carrey spent hours in front of that mirror.

39:04

Just like you would with a guitar totally.

And now all of Sudden, the results of that is like this super extroverted Pursuit and you are not equipped.

Oh, totally.

And I notice, it’s a lot.

I’ve met a lot of actors that have become really successful, and you have you immediately through success occupied, this kind of alpha roll like a, like, you’re the popular guy in high school.

39:29

But so often these people weren’t the popular guy in high school, right?

So they’re now I recognize why so many artists end up feeling fraudulent, or that they’ve occupied this space.

Case that they just weren’t trained to do.

They weren’t the guy getting tons ass in high school and now they’re getting all these girlfriends but then they’re in securing these relationships because that’s not what they did.

39:47

And it’s just all kind of confusing totally and there’s like not a nobody like hands you a handbook label.

Yeah, like this is the way to nor is anyone even being honest about the fact that like, oh, wow this time.

I occupy this space that I’m not super comfortable until because it kind of breaks the illusion.

40:03

Totally don’t want to do that.

I mean, I think that one of the benefits for us, At least or like our, as a band has been like it’s never really been an easy because we’re like pop and rock and like it doesn’t really work in any of them and every song that like has ever been successful for our for us, like, along the way, someone’s like, this is not gonna work, you know, like so it’s been.

40:26

So there’s never been a like this.

Like there’s never been a like, sure thing that’s been helpful because you constantly still feel like you’re on the outside, you know, I’m yeah.

And and, and so the good that makes me think of a question I had.

Which is, Is, were you trying to make music that you thought would work?

40:42

Or were you trying to just make the music you want to hear?

Or was it some?

Some of it was in pursuit of success, in some was just like, oh, this song, I want to totally good question.

So, like, when we, when I first started going, we were just, we got dis really disillusioned with like, like the this Cena music we were in.

41:02

So we were just, like, let’s just play something that’s like, like, do stuff.

That’s like, Reverend fun.

Yeah.

More Reverend than yeah.

It got a little you got a little hoity-toity.

Yeah, whatever.

And so it wasn’t.

Yeah.

It’s a little preach.

Yeah during that whole period, I remember 85% in the conversations among the people in the scene was like, who was it?

41:18

Sell out like that was such a big thing and there was an you know, like as if it had an actual definition and it’s like so goofy.

I haven’t really so beautiful.

Yeah, but it was all fun and then we put out this this record where we being Arma or Fall Out, Boy follow up on.

41:37

Okay.

So like we We put out this album that we like literally had ten songs.

And that was like, the whole album or movie was 11 songs.

And we, and that was it, because I was the only one who knew how to play.

And we recorded it at this studio.

41:53

In Madison, Wisconsin, smart Studio, where they look according to ravana and garbage all the stuff.

Wow, but we had no money, you know, like in our parents weren’t really supporting like they’ve supported us, but they were like not like shoveling money at us playing in a punk, rock band, you know, all the time.

Right, right.

And so we wisely.

42:09

Yeah, but I’m right.

I remember they would get every week at the studio.

They’d get a case of Coke in a case of Sprite for us.

And one day we were like instead of Gideon like the case of spray.

Can we just get peanut butter and jelly?

Ha ha ha.

And they were like shit because we just didn’t have any money and I’m sleeping on the floor or whatever and so it becomes like, you know, like it took one of those things where you’re like, well I want to make music that I want to make but at the same time I know that I’m making.

42:38

Making art in a pop art venue.

So, there’s certain kind of rules or whatnot rules.

But there’s like, if you’re gonna do that, like, in a lot of people, there’s a messenger to.

Yes, you need to like, kind of.

Yeah, just think about that.

When you’re even, if you’re writing movies minimally, they have to have a beginning middle and end.

42:55

Yeah, a lot of people trick themselves into thinking, they don’t need that, but they fucking need that totally.

And you’re like, there’s the difference between like being like I’m writing like they’re all making like a big movie and our or I’m making like a an art house film, you know, like Yeah, which is cool.

You just gotta like know what you’re making and why you’re making it.

43:12

You know, what?

People are going to respond to?

It’s weird.

It’s a little weird for a band, I think.

And I think about this because I kind of get jealous of actors, but I don’t know.

This is a real thing or whatever is like we were talking about this on New Year’s Eve.

Okay.

Well you and I which one which thing, which is we all want to be each other like each other.

43:27

Yeah.

We’re talking to Alice.

Yeah, I’m jealous of.

Yeah.

She totally.

Yeah, because everyone wants to be with the one thing I think of all the time is like, I can’t re release Without a Paddle, every weekend.

I will.

Never profit from that again.

Yeah, you know I’m saying?

But if I had written brown sugar, I can play that till I fucking die.

43:45

Totally.

Yeah, but I think we’ll envious of that.

But so what is interesting is I think my jealousy might be even like it’s not exact opposite but it’s like I can’t go and make like an art House movie and then make like, thank you don’t whole movie.

44:00

Be like every movie like if quarter quarter for calling like the things that I do movies.

Everyone has to be like a big one.

Or people are like Yeah, you’ve screwed up, you know, like boy, you have to be so blatantly Avant.

Yeah.

Vanguard like until you’re done together.

Yeah.

44:15

Neil.

Peart totally and we’ve done that stuff before, you know, like where you’re like, this is literally and you’re trying to send some pretty clear signals.

Yeah, Don’t Judge Me by the old bar, but that.

Yeah, that’s the thing that I get jealous and I also like your less so with music, but with like acting like you’re playing a character and then you can like kind of like leave that character and go play a different character, whatever.

44:34

Whereas with music.

It’s like wow.

It’s like a character named me.

Like looks like me and change your hair but it better.

Stay totally kind of ballpark.

You know.

Mean.

Yeah, so it’s short, it better be really short.

Yeah, that was like the Metallica thing.

Yeah, totally.

44:49

Yeah.

Did you guys party?

We weren’t a big party in band we came.

So I think that it was like two pronged was that we came from, we came from like the hardcore scene where like that wasn’t like really the thing.

45:07

Like the of the bands that we We used to see like they weren’t big party.

Yeah, it was a kind of like straightedge.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, and then we also had grown up on like, we were, like, I think the first generation bands that grew up in like the Behind the Music and you saw a like they were all it, like there’s none.

45:23

None of them end.

Well when you know, I mean, they’re all, they’re all like.

So if I say they don’t make one unless you fuck.

Yeah, get the best.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, and so we didn’t, you know, like guys would actually talk about that.

Like, hey, we gotta we gotta kind of keep our shit together.

No, One was really a partier in the band.

45:40

Like I think that I and we could, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

We don’t need jump ahead.

But like I ended up like self medicating myself because of anxiety and stuff.

But that was different.

It wasn’t in a like party hat.

It was antenna, like let’s rage.

We just weren’t that like we just wasn’t the band we were and we didn’t even have to talk about it.

45:59

We’re like these nerdy dorky guys.

Yeah, but okay, so I was watching the behind the music of Ted Nugent.

I remember like 15 years ago.

He wasn’t And I think he never is Frank Wright.

And I’m like, that’s so confusing.

But then he says in so many words.

46:15

I was addicted to pussy.

He’s like that was his how he partied right, heat?

That was morning till night, right?

You fucking adopted his second wife or some from Hawaii, unbelievable, right?

There’s got to be like some Outlet to it.

Also, are you at least?

46:30

And you guys are in a girl’s?

Not even.

I mean, I think a little bit but like, not in a crazy.

It didn’t like me.

We’re addicted to it during the band.

You know, like, maybe we were, like just doing it all the time and flying, you know, like, by the way, that’s an awesome.

Yeah.

46:45

Saying that’s great, never saying, you don’t know the shows and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, but it wasn’t like, yeah, we just didn’t because it did become like, when I did start, like prescribed myself stuff for like anxiety.

Then it did get like weird and whatever.

But like at the time.

47:01

No, it was just like we were just he’s like dudes in a van that would like quote movies to show.

It was just like not That rule.

Yeah.

I mean you weren’t there for the lifestyle you were there.

No music more, right?

Well, I mean that, in the lifestyle just like wasn’t a thing really.

47:17

We’re just wasn’t like I don’t know it would be cultivated.

I assume yeah, I can imagine being you and then all of a sudden being on tour and like being successful and wait, where’s the party like?

Oh is this supposed to be some gigantic party?

It just like it.

Like never.

47:33

It never really was.

Maybe that’s like that’s like pretty great though.

Yeah.

I feel like you guys are probably but, you know what?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that.

So when we moved so when I’m so we did an album, we’re living the oakwoods and I would literally is so sad.

47:52

I would put a blanket over my head in my apartment at the oakwoods, and I’d be like, this is what its gonna be like, when you’re dead only, you can’t even think of this, you know, I mean, like, you have the blanket and it’s just pure dark, but like, you can’t even, there’s no, it’s even worse because you’re not even gonna be able to think this is what it’s like, when your Dad.

48:08

Yes.

And it was like that’s how dark the Oakwood and like that was.

And so I got a house here and when I got the house, what year is this?

I would say this is either 05 06.

Okay, and when I got the house here, there was like parties because like, we didn’t go to college, you know, like we weren’t like so this was, like, making up for that.

48:26

And it was always, like, themed parties and my, like, neighbors hated me and like, just all like, you know, but even at that point, like the friends that I know you have at least that I’m aware of are like Seth Green.

You’re friends with him.

Yeah, so you’re the crew of people.

Your kind of surrounding yourself with aren’t the degenerate ones.

48:43

Now.

Either pretty dorky.

You know, it’s all pretty much very fun.

Cool.

Yeah, fun.

And yeah goofy.

So in 2001 you form Fall Out, Boy you guys you and Andy and Joe and Patrick, right?

And how quickly do you become super successful?

49:00

Is it is it abrupt?

Or is it gradual know?

It’s super gradual like we played So many shows where there was like five kids.

The other bands were there.

We didn’t get paid.

We got paid in Pizza.

Like, yeah, you know, like it was, there’s a place in Bakersfield think, Jerry’s, Pizza.

49:18

I can’t remember, but we got plate, painted pizza.

And like, we just played shows and like we would the internet wasn’t what it is now.

So we would sometimes show up it shows and they were like, the Show is canceled and were like awesome.

Like, you know, find that out.

Um, and then when it so then what happened?

49:36

Was we we we start to get bigger with kids like with kids.

So like in like, you know, dorm rooms or whatever like file sharing, honestly like MP3, this website that doesn’t exist anymore mp3.com Napster.

Um, and so we were like this band that was like every one of our shows started to be like shut down by like the fire marshal and stuff, you know, whatever like where they were like, where you Ryan colleges and stuff.

50:04

We were playing like Knights of Columbus has like Trevor, like, wherever we could play, but like, it was, and I think it would be like, a can’t, like, give somebody it’s akin to, like, what’s going on with Lil Uzi, or like he’s, some of these hip-hop guys right now where it’s just, every show was like, well, we didn’t finish our set most of the time because it was like, fire marshal or we could shut down, or like a near-riot.

50:24

Like, we were.

Wow.

It was, um, he’s this store Hollister used to.

So, it was big, big, big.

It was big to do in stores, like, at the time.

And so this store Hollister, which was like, kind of like this.

Version of Abercrombie still exist.

Yeah, I really loved it.

50:41

But they would do in school.

They would let us play in stores.

And a lot of those in stores.

There was a zillion rules.

Like, you can’t go here.

You can go here.

You can’t whatever.

Yeah, but the Hollister, they were like go away and so we would have people get on literal surfboards on top of the crowd.

I had a friend who I got on board put on board shorts and kind of look like it was just like in a mall and it was, and it was, it was literal Mayhem.

51:02

Yeah, and it was interesting because At the same time, like your average, Joe radio guy.

Label, Mom and Dad have no idea who we are.

Yeah, I mean, so it’s like this, like weird thing where you’re like in between and that’s kind of what was the Tipping Point that like turned it into the mainstream because like we weren’t, we wouldn’t get played on the radio otherwise, because the songs were not radio songs.

51:28

Yeah, or whatever.

Um, so then when it did happen, it happens fast like it went 0 to 60, then, you know, I’m It was a long build-up but then like, when it happened, I similarly, was auditioning for nine years, got nothing then got Punk’d and then it was overnight, but they kept saying over night, but I was like, well, but it’s not overnight because I’ve been doing this and you didn’t tell people this all the time, but in fact it was over.

51:51

Yeah, when it did happen, it was totally the overnight but it feels weird.

When people say like overnight you’re like, well I had like a zillion years of like really sad like yeah, Danny’s mom, you know, like it’s just not we’ll just see you appear and they’re like, oh where they come from their brand-new.

They But so just yeah, overnight mainstream success, I guess.

52:09

Yeah, and then I think there’s also just for all lot of us on some level in our brain, we go.

Well, this isn’t because as much as I fought the overnight thing, it is true that within a year of Punk’d I had bought my first house which we still currently live in, in my then girlfriend.

52:27

I were like laying on the on the floor in front of the fireplace like the first night we ever slept there and I was looking around.

I was like this doesn’t feel right.

This is not how it works.

Like where I’m from a Michigan, I would have had to build my way up to this house with four other houses.

This is bizarre.

52:43

Right?

And it did feel incongruent with what I thought was supposed to happen.

Totally, but I think that know and I would think that at times and there was like times when the thing that to me that’s weird because I like really do think of myself as the as like the you know, like the 14, 15 year old kid or whatever.

52:59

But like the times like when like the perspectives are like forced together for some reason like where you’re out and you you know, like there’s Things that like force all recognize.

Yeah, and it’s weird, right?

Because you’re like, all of a sudden standing there and you’re like, well this person you like I have kids that come up to me and they’re like, you know, Andy Hurley is the reason I play drums.

53:17

I’m like, Andy really like that.

Like a shitty kid.

I met know what.

Yeah, you know, but then I’m like, oh my God, like, this kid.

Like yeah, sits in his room and like pretends to be any hurt, you know, like, and it’s just a weird thing that forces your perspective.

It is very weird.

And then I don’t know if you’ve done this but there was a moment where like Academy Awards ago.

53:38

I had been in a comedy troupe for years and we could not get 50 people to come to the shows.

Right?

And in this comedy crew.

It was myself Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone Nat Faxon, Octavia, Spencer Tate Taylor, and there was an actual Academy Awards where the help was nominated.

53:55

That Tate had directed.

Melissa was nominated for bridesmaids.

Octavia Spencer was nominated for the help and that faxing was nominated for writing The Descendants.

And it was this two layered thing where one I was like, this is mind-blowing.

54:11

We were on this comedy crew and no one comes to us and then the excitement immediately gave way to 0.

So all these people, I’ve been revering and worshipping are just human beings and their normal guys, and maybe it took the whole thing down a notch for me.

Yeah.

54:27

So when you hear a kid say to you, that they started playing drums because of your as you say your dipshit buddy from high school, doesn’t it kind of put everything in perspective?

I have a little bit like, wow, so I guess John Bonham was also a dipshit.

Yeah, cool.

You’re insane.

54:42

Yeah, that really you.

Well, yeah, because I mean, and it’s like, I think about it and it like, does it somewhat but then I’ll watch like, so I watch that Spielberg movie.

And I’m like, wow, this guy did like if I think of like I did like 1% of like the stuff he like he’s done that.

55:01

Like, Over and out like to keep yanking like to keep touching and making gold, or to keep like the superheat.

Yeah, I agree with you.

That there is definitely a strategy Geniuses and I’m not saying I’m like, I’m less impressed now with Francis Ford Coppola for doing Godfather, but there’s a huge spectrum of people that you are falling in the middle of.

55:22

And for some kid.

You are fucking Metallica good-looking base, you know, get there in my head.

Yeah, but it’s true.

But do you think ever?

Because like there’s the, like, The the Coppola Lucas, what was their class, like?

55:38

Yeah.

I mean, like, I’m like, wow, it’s like, is there like other versions of that?

You know, like, are there other versions of it?

And it just hasn’t like gone on long enough, or like Blockbusters had become like, you know, like, well, we’re sitting in the neighborhood, right?

That was built by one director.

Cecil B Demille where he owned this whole and apart right to or yeah, I mean he’d you just can’t imagine being bigger.

55:59

I think even in or even take someone like Burt Reynolds Burt Reynolds was the biggest box-office star eight out of ten years in a row that will never ever happen again.

So, there were things that yappy, just get bigger, totally unrelated.

But but my favorite biography is tightness about John D Rockefeller.

56:19

Okay, and one way to think of him as the first man, to ever make a billion dollars and if you equate a billion dollars from 1915 to now, it really means he was worth like 20 billion dollars, but that’s not an accurate way to think of his wealth.

Really have to think about what the entire amount of wealth in America was at that time and he basically had about 20% of all known wealth.

56:41

So now if you would compare that that someone has trillions of dollars, you know what I’m saying saying?

Yeah, it’s not it’s not like a direct proportion up to by the way Monica you’re gonna have your hands full with that stigma Monica listens to what I say, and then she corrects me after the podcast.

56:57

So I’m sure this is founded a ton of shit that’s inaccurate.

But but yeah, I do.

I think sometimes people there are people that will never be healed, never have again.

You won’t have Spielberg and I don’t think but I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I just think there’s time but just we will never know until we have enough to.

57:14

It will never be a TV show, like Roseanne or Cosby because there was three networks and they were literally 38 million, right?

All week were W, right?

And it just won’t happen is totally.

It’s probably healthy but Phineas level, I mean, not in the actual way, we consume right?

57:29

Those types of things.

But yeah, because like get out or whatever like there.

Things.

But like but but are we allowing like people to like incubate enough?

Because you can like broadcast all the time.

I don’t know.

Like, it’s just yeah, I mean like if we played our first like, a not to put whatever, but if we had played our first show in front of the internet or in front of whatever.

57:48

Yeah, it’d be bad.

You know, I mean because like we didn’t figure it out, you know, I mean, so like well, that’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about because we both even though we’re in such different occupations.

There are parallels, right?

So, There will be times where I’ll be lamenting about how much the film business has changed.

58:06

How much televisions change and how I missed the golden rare, right?

And then on another day I go.

Well, no, but I did get to experience a lot better version of it.

So really, I should just be grateful that I did.

You know, when I was in Without a Paddle that year, I think Paramount had released 12 Movies.

58:22

Well, last year, they released for, and at the same time every Studios was releasing 15 movies.

So they were making, you know, a couple hundred movies through all these Studios.

Well, now there’s less Studios They make a third of what they used to make.

So in a way, I’m lucky as a motherfucker.

So you I would imagine at times have to lament had you been the same exact Band Fall Out, Boy in the 80s.

58:43

You probably would have sold 40 million albums.

Totally, ya know.

If you guys sold, you know, all all day, like, always 20 million.

That’s fucking amazing.

I would not, I don’t know.

It.

Was that hot even though I recognize but yeah, but I don’t hugely successful, but I don’t know.

So, yes, you would have sold 100 million.

59:00

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

And You at times go, I got this.

Yeah, sometimes.

Yeah, sometimes I do but I think of it in the way that like I’m like well music as all our.

It’s like so like there was a point when music was basically a guy going door to door, selling sheet music, you know, door to door.

59:19

Okay, and then like, you know, when records came out that guy was like music is over like we’re never gonna, you know, whatever and like or you know, I think about a boot with rock music all the time because you know, I was reading remember whose book it is, but You know, there was a time when like, sousaphone music, sousaphone music, like marching bands, like they were, like, this is the biggest music and now we know like one guy.

59:41

Well, yeah, there’s a really also deep tradition, right?

All along the Mississippi, where Jazz was traveling from Chicago down to New Orleans because those bands were so popular and totally on the river boats and totally.

Yeah.

And now it’s but and now it’s like relegated to, you know, and it’s like I think it just keeps moving forward for us or for me.

1:00:00

It’s a little weird because we like straddle kind of like to eat.

Ira’s.

Like there was an ERA where we You know, I got all the plaques and yeah, you got but one thing Platinum yeah people were on the Jets and you know, like I saw the tail end of that.

Yeah, but then like the internet like our band wouldn’t be what we were with without the internet and and so like it’s both and it’s really interesting because now, like on our new record, I there was this like group of guys in Lagos in Nigeria and and who I really liked their music.

1:00:34

There’s got a mystery.

Ian’s got Burna, Boy, and it’s like a whole scene and I like, talk to this guy.

Verna boy on WhatsApp, and it’s great because like, I talked to him and he’s like, he’s like, man, you better not be fucking with me.

I brought Fall Out Boys.

And I but I followed by the Nigerian 2011, like, all this like dope.

1:00:51

I was like, whoa, this is amazing.

Yeah, but like we couldn’t have done that, you know many and then he would like we work together, you know, like you couldn’t yeah.

Yeah, you wouldn’t.

You would?

There’s nowhere that you heard.

I think it’s cotton property.

Cool, really better.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I worry about like with an eye.

1:01:07

You can maybe answer this guy.

Think about this all the time.

Is that like does a movie like, how do you get a movie like like e.t.

Made now?

No, you can’t.

You can’t right.

No.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the only hope currently is that Netflix has said they’re going to make 80 movies and spend three billion dollars that if in fact, that happens, that will be amazing because they are committed to making the movies that used to get made.

1:01:28

Because there’s this whole section of movies.

Now that don’t get made these, you know, forty million dollar dramas, even I got really sad this.

I was watching Home Alone with my daughter, and it’s such a great movie, totally.

And everyone saw it in a movie theater.

You couldn’t have seen it at home and you have that shared experience and I got like, heartbroken that a, they don’t really even make those movies.

1:01:49

There’s not stars like that, that can drive those movies.

And then no one even goes to the movie theater.

And I was like, God, that is heartbreaking to me.

But again, the, it’ll be replaced by something that my kids will have the same level of fondness for, and I have to constantly remind myself of that, because I’ll get it.

1:02:04

Depressed about all that.

Yeah, like my kid.

My older kid doesn’t.

He’s always like, well, what was the Wi-Fi?

Like when you were little, like, I was stuck like an interesting because there’s no, I mean, like, yeah, and it’s so interesting because, you know, I’ll talk to other friends that are like, more my age.

1:02:20

And they’re like, I wish there was like, more tangible stuff and, like, record stores.

I’m like, they just don’t, they never had that.

So, they don’t care.

Yeah.

Well, even the thing I tripped out on his that on a cell phones.

Currently still, when you hit the send button.

It is a picture of an old phone, right?

I was thinking that to them.

1:02:36

That graphic doesn’t even make sense.

No, it isn’t.

That doesn’t even there’s for them.

There’s no reason it shaped my kid.

Picks up a house phone.

I’m picking up my cell phone and he looks into it, like, he’s faced.

I mean, like it doesn’t hurt.

You think.

I can’t hear what they’re saying.

It’s just a different thing.

1:02:53

So, the as I understand because I don’t know, a ton about the music industry, but as I understand it, what replaced record sales is touring?

That’s where now bands.

Generate most of their money.

Is that accurate?

Yes.

I think that If you had to give a percentage of how much revenues is generated by the 20 versus your sales.

1:03:09

What is that percentage?

I think I’m not like not a good numbers guy, but I think it would be tours and Merchandising would be like 60 or 70, uh-huh.

Maybe it’s 60 because like, there’s also like, Brands obviously want to be involved in music when you’re 11 and your licensing.

1:03:30

Yeah.

Music.

Obviously, it sinks and stuff like that.

Um, we’re a band that still we gets streamed and we sell albums.

So yeah, um, it’s like a mix of a lot of old fucking fan.

Yeah.

It’s a mix.

It’s really weird, you know, so it’s like a mix and you have to appeal to like a casual fan.

1:03:47

Yeah.

And Can a kid who’s just?

Like, I really only want to hear own playlist.

Well in again, you would know this way better than I but there.

Yeah, there’s a couple genres of music where that genre base didn’t evolve the way.

So country.

I think country sells albums albums.

1:04:04

They sell CDs.

It’s all physical albums.

Yeah, it’s all CDs.

Yeah.

Yeah, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, it’s crazy.

Yeah, I mean, so, let me ask you this, eventually, you guys do become quite large and you enter the Zeitgeist and We’re of you even though I’m not even listening to that type of music anymore.

1:04:21

And how do you how do four guys in their 20s share that experience?

I I just imagined myself in that moment having to share my acting success with three other people.

1:04:36

And in my twenties, I could not have done it.

It’s wild men.

It’s wild on every level.

I’m surprised.

No one really asked that question.

It’s wild, because it’s wild for a couple reasons.

So, it’s wild because Like, in the negative way, where that immediately, anytime you get any kind of success in entertainment all the time.

1:04:54

There’s all these people around her like what like make this thing with me, you know, like whatever.

But they’re saying it to like four different people.

So they’re like saying it.

Like like you don’t need him to do it like you do, you know, whatever.

And that was happening that was happening for sure also through no effort of y’alls.

Some people are just popping.

Yes.

1:05:10

It’s just the nature of like an assembled TV show.

Yes, some people are just whatever.

Yes, a pop and you’re one of the people, right?

You, you kind of were in Italy, popular for being the bass player.

The yes, absolutely.

And is it?

Because you’re so cute.

I’ve no idea.

But yeah, and it’s a little weird, but at the same time, like Patrick and me like make one good rock star together because he like doesn’t want to do any of the stuff, you know?

1:05:39

No.

He like the Leaning like all the promotion.

Yeah.

He didn’t want to do any of it.

No.

Yeah, and he doesn’t like just so so self-assured and confident.

He doesn’t need that.

Approval and attention.

I think it’s like an introverted.

Okay.

Morse is not comfortable.

Yeah, he didn’t want to do it and now it’s like evened out a little bit more, but at the time it was like, he was like, you can be like my avatar for that, you know?

1:06:01

Okay, great.

So initially he was supportive of that.

I think go ahead if you’re willing to do it fucking please.

Yeah, I don’t think he ever really you never minded that you there’s probably somewhere there’s some shit.

We’re like, you’re like an interview and you’re like just asking these questions and asked, you know, like Stop asking about this guy’s personal life or something, you know, like, oh, no, you know, I’m sure you’ve had the situation.

1:06:22

I’ve had it a ton when you go on a talk show with a couple other members of the movie.

They’re going to put someone right next to the talk show, host.

Yes, and that’s basically, they’re telling you who’s most popular in that group.

So, your Amigo, I remember, we were promoting Without a Paddle.

I sat on the third, every single time.

1:06:38

It was like, go Seth Green and Lillard and then me and by the end of a four-week promotional tour.

I was so insecure about the fact that I was on the fucking, you know, it sidelines.

Ends, but then it yeah here on Letterman or you’re on these things and you’re still absolutely.

1:06:54

Just never goes away.

And you tell yourself.

I tell I told myself.

If I ever got that level of attention, that would be enough, but it’s never ever ever.

Never.

No, it’s a bigger rating to know that it’s never, it’s a black hole and I wanted to talk to you.

Can’t feel it maybe in a little bit.

1:07:10

But yeah, have you read said Arthur when you were a kid like you have to read it first.

Is that what is that?

Is that it’s the Herman has Yes, probably Buddhist, right?

Yes, and ultimately his realization.

The way he finds all of his answers is is through gluttony.

1:07:29

He like lives as a month for a long time, then he does this and then he goes moves to the city and he becomes wildly famous and six and not famous, but successful and rich, in fact, yeah.

And it’s weirdly through that experience.

That he found his way to his truth.

Right?

And I do think if you have the same Hang-Ups and insecurities that That I have.

1:07:50

It’s so fortunate to have the excess to recognize a while that.

Okay, so that’s not because I think I would have died believing that that level of approval and attention would have made me feel good and you can’t and I would have been jamming it forever.

It’s not really you can’t tell you.

No, I mean, no.

1:08:05

No, I never internalized.

It doesn’t make you feel better about yourself now.

Yeah, I want exact thought about it before.

I’m like, if you have a Grammy, if you have this amount of none of it, it just doesn’t.

Yes, because anytime you get it, you’re like, well, that’s fine.

But let’s not, you know, and it’s like, I don’t know.

Yeah.

1:08:21

Well, I’m gonna I’m gonna go over straight to that then.

So for me, that moment was crystal clear.

I had tried to get sober a bunch of times.

I could, I could manage getting sober while I worked for the most part.

I think, for Without a Paddle, I was sober up until the last two weeks and I was sober free idiocracy.

1:08:36

And then I was, I went on vacation.

This was my last week of drinking 2004.

September 1st is when I quit, but, I went on this vacation because Cuz I was about to start this movie Zathura and I had just finished doing a movie that Mike Judge directed and I was about to do a movie that Jon Favreau was directing and I got so annihilated this whole week in Hawaii, and I smoked crystal meth, and I did Coke and I got in a car accident.

1:09:02

And I was so physically sick, by the time I got on the plane, to go back home, and I had a layover in San Francisco.

And I was sitting in a bar because I could not get on the next flight unless I had like, six more drinks.

I was just physically dying and I’m in the corner of this bar.

1:09:20

And I’m so nervous at someone from a, a is going to see me at the airport drinking, and I’m in the way I’ve got myself in the corner of this bar.

It’s a mirror next to me and I just feel as bad as I’ve ever felt in my life and I go, holy shit.

I’m doing the thing.

1:09:35

I’ve been trying to do for 10 years.

I’m acting in movies.

I have money.

I have more money than I thought.

I was ever going to have right.

These are all the things.

I told myself my whole life.

If I had, I’d feel good and I feel happy, right?

And I felt the worst I’ve ever felt and it was the scariest moment in my life.

1:09:54

And that was finally, the time.

I was like something’s severely broken and I have to confront it and press it because I can’t I really had believed.

If I had Jim Carrey’s career.

I would love myself.

I would feel great about myself.

I would be happy.

1:10:10

And it’s very scary yet.

Very liberating to recognize.

Oh Jesus those things don’t make you feel different totally, you know, and you had a similar experience in you.

Yeah.

Around the same time.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that so my stuff was I had crazy.

1:10:29

I think that when the band was a on the precipice of getting big in the mainstream because we’re big with kids or whatever that created, all this kind of anxiety. 80 in me, you know, I couldn’t fly, can do anything and so I can started just taking like benzos like just kind of like Xanax and was prescribed to me at first and by the way, I tried all this other stuff too.

1:10:52

I did like hypnotherapy and all this other stuff.

They like to look like later under the blanket, all you know, like all this stuff and it just didn’t none of it did anything, you know, and so I kind of like self-medicated and all that stuff and for me, my things like my own personal and I guess everybody’s thing.

1:11:10

NG is completely different whatever.

But like when I had my kid, my older kid full time.

I was like, oh my God, this is like a little human being that like, I’m in charge of and I need and it was like my moment where I was like, you have to, like, get your shit together because like, you can’t like, make, it’s time to exq.

1:11:32

Can’t like be dead.

You can’t, you know, like it’s like you can’t.

That’s not like an option.

Yeah, and so that’s like Me if without that I wouldn’t have liked been able to, although a lot of people because I’ve watched a million people try to get sober.

A lot of people do tell themselves that when they have that kid, that’s going to be the thing that’s going to shift them away from that, right?

1:11:52

And I’ve seen more times than not, that actually adds to the issue, because now, there’s even more stress, more fear, more pressure, and I think we need more an escape from these fears.

Yeah.

So, the band had taken time off.

We were taken like a Hiatus and this weird.

1:12:10

Because it’s like kind of like, you know, every day you get up and you’re like, um, like this is who I am.

So it’s like the band and like it.

Yeah, that’s your identity.

Is my identity and like that’s removed from you.

Yeah, that’s terrifying.

Right?

And I’m living in New York, I end up getting, I end up, we end up breaking up my first wife and and so like I was at the lowest it could have been but I had this like two year old guy.

1:12:40

It was like with me and I didn’t have like an Auntie, my parents don’t live out here.

Like it was just like we just hung out.

It was like a buddy thing.

Would go to like a Sandler movie.

Yeah, we would get the exactly who would go to like travel town and we would go to you know, like huh.

And it was really and it was like one of those things were also.

1:12:55

Like and I think I might I was probably projecting this but I’d be having like a little Yoda moments with him where I’m like, you’re teaching me so much about myself.

Yeah.

I probably wouldn’t even like he probably likes just a kid who just says stuff, you know, whatever.

But like for me it was all, you know, and I think that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean for me that’s what it was for me.

1:13:11

It was like a it couldn’t have gotten like my life couldn’t have gotten any lower like it was like, I was never, do you recall?

How many, what we’re taking Xanax or Ativan Xanax?

And do you?

How many were you taking a day?

A lot of people don’t know this about benzos.

1:13:26

They’re like, in this is weirdly the big kind of secret that’s going on.

In this opiate epidemic.

It’s sure the opiates are an issue but most times people are mixing and opiate in a band that’s going to be so many people are addicted to benzos and it’s really not.

But now it’s gonna be a really big problem for this generation is and it’s one of the hardest ones to detox from.

1:13:46

Yeah.

I’ve seen friends in a coma with their heart rate at 180 because they’re detoxing and they’re in a coma so, so that’s a gnarly one to be on Allah.

Yes.

I was taking it mostly, go to sleep.

I think, and I would take it.

Like so they come as footballs or they come as the bar and I would take, I could take like a half a bar or 3/4 of a bar.

1:14:09

Uh-huh.

What do you think at that time?

Was the source of all this anxiety?

You think just biochemically?

You’re predisposed to anxiety.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, but I think the family condition.

I don’t think so because I don’t if it is it’s not.

1:14:26

They just somehow or whatever.

Yeah or something.

Yeah, but I also think that like, you know, whatever you want to call it like entertainment start.

I’m like all that stuff like that doesn’t help it that like enhances it, right?

I think that like being in a successful.

And in a weird way is you know, because I see it with like, you know Bieber, whoever it is like where you’re like, people just didn’t want you to get better.

1:14:47

They want your like, head above water, you know?

Yeah.

That you don’t need to be like his cured is in a lot of times a problem, you know, absolutely.

No.

Because then and you can tell yourself, I certainly did.

I was nervous that if I wasn’t fucked up and wasn’t working double time to make up for the fact that I was fucked up that I actually wouldn’t be funny or wouldn’t be creative or whatever.

1:15:07

I did come to think of it as like, oh, this is part of the Whole process.

Totally.

And my thing was very, yeah, like, like writing lyrics, whatever.

Like, if you’re not, like, a bummed out guy, like wonderful people like you, or whatever, and then, like, it’s something like, for me.

It was really this kid because I was just like, you just gotta like, but did you get help aside from that really?

1:15:26

Well, I mean, I talked to therapists.

Okay.

I did talk to a therapist but a lot of times I would think I would either omit or I thought it was like well shit.

And there were some that were really helpful and I had friends that were really helpful, but no I didn’t like it was Really?

You’re just trying to figure it out on your own.

1:15:43

Yeah, and it was like from a mental place.

It’s probably not the most objective, totally.

But I think also, like I was like, well, you don’t have a band, you basically hang out by yourself with a kid.

Like this is the time where you can like this figure it out, you know, I mean, because like and I also think that like the one of the things that actually helped a lot was I had atrophied, but the thing that people don’t really talk about is like you, atrophy basic.

1:16:10

Adult things when you’re like in like in your band or whatever.

Like I didn’t know how to get through an airport.

I was like, I follow a backpack to the airpo right after you eat these things and light infantilized.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, totally.

And you’re like, I don’t go to the store.

I’m not gonna live to other people.

1:16:26

Totally.

Yeah, you know, and in some ways it was like helpful when you have too much stuff because you’re like, don’t want to micromanage all this stupid stuff.

But you know, like I was at the point where I was like you should just do all this stuff.

Like you don’t need, you don’t need to help doing it.

And I think that, Like in taking that back it like probably.

1:16:46

Helped.

I also think that like when you’re like, it can’t get any worse sometimes like that’s for me.

It was helpful because I was like, no, like there’s nowhere else to go really, you know, I mean, yeah, there’s no like, yeah, you know, like there’s no yeah when I’ve quit and even if I’m quitting like cigarettes, which I had done a million times, there is some comfort and going today’s miserable.

1:17:05

But this is the most miserable.

So tomorrow will be like marginally less miserable and then so on and so on.

Hopefully I also never had like Shaking.

Like I never had the like if I don’t do this, I’m gonna you didn’t have to get well as these no Ed function with, yeah.

1:17:23

And mine was like, did you replace this with anything else?

Are you on anything?

That’s good.

Now that helps you like I work out and I get like, I’m the kind of person that gets really into something.

I think we went out but I get really into something for like three months, like, where I’m like, I gotta know everything about this thing.

1:17:38

And then like people ask me about a year later.

I’m like, what are you talking about?

I don’t even like yeah, but um, and so I I think I did some some of that.

But yeah, I mean like more so I think because I do like talk to people about it.

1:17:53

I know it’s like different kind of because I think it’s just different for everybody.

How you figure yourself out and how you navigate.

Yeah, kind of like will also, again, based on to what you’re, that’s why I’m saying.

So like Kristen who’s very, very open which I applaud about being having depression and she’s on SSRI inhibitor, right?

1:18:12

And That’s a biochemical thing, right?

It’s not that she had trauma so much in her child.

Mine’s kind of, I believe who knows a lot of trauma induced.

I was molested.

If you were molested, you have an 80% chance of being an attic so that seems like that ship sailed probably early.

1:18:30

And so your own personal struggles.

Do you think are that are that are biochemical or may be derived from trauma or no?

I think biochemical.

And is there a shame in that?

1:18:46

For Kristin, there’s there was shame and then she kind of owned it and now there’s like a lot of strength in it.

I think that there was like maybe, you know ten years ago.

It was like you don’t really like talk about this kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Publicly, you know, but everybody a lot of people kind of deal with all of it.

1:19:03

So like that’s what’s weird about it is you don’t talk about it.

Yeah, so there’s like a stigma to it and like a maybe I don’t know if it’s from like being in a band or in a guy or whatever like there’s like a weakness thing to it.

Probably.

Whenever we remember.

Even The Sopranos like Tony Soprano.

Had to keep it very trying to.

1:19:19

Yeah.

Tell you went to therapy.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, but me I find it far more inspirational.

Like, I find it far, more inspirational.

That Jim Carrey.

Maybe is wrestling with a ton of shit and it’s not easy for him.

It’s humanizing.

It is and it makes me feel like, okay, great.

1:19:36

We’re all kind of, you know, this is this is challenging for all of us just being a human on planet Earth, so I don’t feel so like well fuck.

Jim Carrey just wakes up and he’s super prolific and funny.

All these things.

And why aren’t I?

That way, I just find a way more comforting to know that Pete, Wentz struggles like everyone else.

1:19:54

And I also think it’s how it’s helpful to know that.

Like, you’re not going to get a promotion that’s going to fix everything.

Now.

You’re not gonna hit it, hit a goal of making x amount of money and that’s going to fix anything.

No in.

If you can share that and I can share that.

1:20:10

I think you can go like, oh, well, maybe I need to be focusing on maybe a like for you and I have very similar experience.

You have Bronx.

Yeah, and you recognize there’s not enough time in this day for me to be thinking about all my problems, all day long and get him ready in eating and change and all that stuff.

1:20:31

Right?

This is just you can’t do it.

So you’re either gonna totally neglect this kid, or you’re going to get out of your own head.

Totally.

And I’m like, I don’t want you like in therapy for whatever me not being here, struggling, you know, like whatever.

Like the thing.

I like to think because of course I I’m doing a great job.

1:20:46

As a parent.

I certainly am giving it a lot more time and say, my dad was able to do, right?

And then I like to play the game of like, well, they will be in therapy.

Anyway, yes, like what are the specific things?

Yeah, but I’m the one I loved talking about his, uh, somehow Kristen had done some work for, like, Bill Clinton’s Foundation or whatever it was.

1:21:05

The point is when Lincoln was born, we get this letter in the mail.

It is a letter from Bill Clinton welcoming link into planet Earth and I’m like, this is so bizarre and it’s framed in our house, as you would do Oakland, right?

Your daughter, a letter and I was thinking she will be in therapy at some time going.

1:21:21

Like, I mean, Bill Clinton wrote a fucking letter.

Totally, welcome me.

I mean, what was I supposed to do?

The expect it?

I’m just trying to think of all the things that like, yeah, totally.

Yeah, I think about, yeah, I think about all those.

It’s like, and it’s all pretty scary because now like at at nine, it’s so much more.

1:21:39

It’s so much less like black and white, like, this is wrong.

This is right.

Is so much more like emotional parenting and like, It’s fail and like I just watched, I don’t know.

I’m not going to give spoilers because I just watched this Black Mirror Arkansas.

Well, I wasn’t last night.

Yeah, it’s like oh, yeah, watching it.

1:21:55

You’re like, well, this is all a mess.

You know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In a nutshell.

The episode is about.

Someone can get an implant their child so that they can track them and also see what they’re seeing.

And then, of course, the parent becomes obsessed with everything.

They’re seeing and blah, blah blah.

Yeah, insane.

Yeah.

It was a very loose metaphor for helicopter parent.

1:22:13

Yes, probably right, totally.

So you guys, you you followed by took a big break was that?

Well before I even ask that.

Do you guys all share ownership of everything?

Yes, you do.

Yes.

So we do well, seems generous from some of the members I have to assume.

Yeah, I mean I but I think it you write the lyrics.

1:22:30

Yes.

All them.

Or some of them, all, all of them and then Patrick rights, all almost all the music.

Okay.

So and the angele are just on the Freeride there on the gravy train.

No Joe started, Joe definitely started writing music.

Okay, and then And Andy is just like the easiest guy to ever be in a band with I was just like, give me the plane ticket.

1:22:51

Give me the check.

And I like hanging out with you guys kind of that crumber way though.

Ya know.

It’s great.

It’s like pretty you know, although except police.

I hear every time that police try to get back together Stewart Copeland and and sting fight non-stop like from the side.

1:23:06

Yeah, it’s alright.

Yeah, but we’d heard that, you know, like that you to split it evenly and it just seemed like it was like one of those ones because we were Dude, when we started we were just like these guys in a van.

You don’t actually think in that moment that I’m gonna be giving up Cherry the end of the day a ton of money.

1:23:23

Right?

Right, and it ended up being certainly easier for the ban when it’s that.

Yeah, it ended up being super helpful for the band super healthy for the band.

And the thing that I didn’t say really get to say was that when you’re the other thing about doing it with like three other guys is that you’re like shielded when you’re doing anything.

1:23:45

Because you’re like there’s these other three guys you’re going through with me and we can all like I don’t want to answer this.

This guy answers.

This.

This guy does the solo this guy, you know, like and it’s like in a weird way so like that aspect of it is pretty awesome because you’re like there’s three other people that basically have the same life experience of me, almost to a tee.

1:24:02

Yeah.

With the exception of like 7% for the last, you know, 12 years like it’s like being on like a submarine with your siblings that like never stops, you know, I mean, yeah, so like you like what?

I like I know each other, but we have to cherish.

If you’re like me at all.

1:24:20

You have to cherish the fact that this is the group of guys, that knew you before, you were Pete, Wentz.

There’s like such a value to that is also.

Yes, and hopefully.

And I think is the case, is that we all treat each other like, when we met each other, right, you know, I mean which with the exception of I think that, you know, when we did take some time off, three years off.

1:24:38

We like did a reboot, which was like, really awesome?

Because there wasn’t, was there a big fight or was it just, you know, a lot of fights, a lot of Or flight, okay?

And a lot of like talking through managers and all right, right.

I know people are burnt and like I think Joe wanted to write a bunch more which he went off and did and like because he like when we started he was younger than us and then he and then he became like a writer and a prolific, you know any thoughtful, you know, or whatever.

1:25:03

And like there wasn’t the space to do that.

And so like he wanted the space to do that.

And yeah Patrick wanted to do his own thing.

And yeah when he did his solo stuff and you heard it, we are like oh shit.

We’ve been sleeping a little bit.

On Joe.

Um, I thought like I was like, oh I did.

1:25:19

Yeah.

I was like, I didn’t know that this guy could play guitar like that.

Oh that’s you know, which was cool.

Yeah.

It was cool to also see because like when you go off and do your own things, it’s like they’re completely different because like it’s just there’s it’s not be filtered.

Yeah, you guys have a share you have a collective personality as Fall Out Boy, right total, but then you obviously all have such dramatically.

1:25:37

Different totally although it does sound like you’re all introverts from what I’ve gathered store.

We’re all like dorky making all like kind of agree on certain things.

But yes, so like when we took the time off and then we came back, it was like, because when you start we started doing a man, we were like, we’re kids were like, basically kids and then, like, you stay.

1:25:56

Like, like, it’s like, it’s like, you’re Frozen in time.

And, I mean, and my best friend from when I was 12 and weekly, who still my best friend, the second were together.

I am 12 years.

Yeah, you’re to your Frozen in time, you know, it’s all put, all these things have liked, but for us, it’s weird.

Because it’s like, you’re it’s the person you work with every day and you’re like, you’re like a but I’m a grown-up.

1:26:15

Up and then, and they’re like, they’re like, you’re like, you’re the guy that.

And so, like, when we got to do the hard, like kind of reboot, like it was like, oh, everybody’s got kids.

Everybody like you saw each other more and wasn’t, it wasn’t motivated out of finances.

1:26:30

Originally or was it motivated out of?

Like Wildlife was more fun doing that as much as I thought it was a drag.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that When Sir Patrick wrote this kind of like open letter blog about kind of how bummed he was, you know, whatever.

1:26:47

I read it.

And I was like, oh this is you know, like I don’t want this kind of feel like this, you know, or whatever we started talking and like it had to be to me, it needed to be and to all of us.

I think it needed to be motivated for New Me by new music, like to go back and be like, a legacy Act is whatever.

And you know what?

1:27:03

I think we would have waited if it was like, just to be alone.

Right?

Right.

I mean, if it was just purely Financial, I think, We would have waited because it was time, still.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so like it was about like new music and stuff that would be kind of like exciting, you come together and you go.

I think we do still have some more creative thinking upset.

1:27:22

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And how long was that was a four-year break?

Yeah, three or four years.

And as you said, your identity is at that point had been 10 years of being this thing.

How fucked up where you in?

Those four years.

Were you did you feel rudderless or were you scared?

1:27:38

Super fucked up when I started like I was like, I don’t know what to do.

I have I have no idea.

Yeah, at all.

You know, I mean, yeah, and it would also Imagine leading up to the break up.

You’re like, I don’t need anything guys in.

Yeah.

All right.

1:27:53

Yeah, that’s right.

You’re like, oh shit.

I really kind of need it.

No, totally.

Yeah, and I think that At the time also there was like all these other shifts that are happening.

So like EDM became this like all music was Hot music were like, so like I was all these ships that were happening.

1:28:08

The internet was like a super big thing, then yes, um, and yeah and then and then, you know, like towards the end of the break of the time off.

I was like, I like kind of like just being a dad.

Like, I don’t really want to go back to like getting you don’t have Lobby called, but did you have Financial fears at that point?

1:28:27

Because I wonder if it’s because your dad made a good living And I grew up broke.

I’d like to think I’m so upset.

I’m, so fearful.

Even when we have plenty of money.

I’m so fearful.

I’m obsessed with the to.

Oh, you are.

Yeah, that mean what I think it is.

Yeah, but know what I was gonna say this earlier, because when we’re talking about the humanizing thing, yes, that I’ll throw this in there.

1:28:44

Is that?

I remember watching, I think it was like someone who’s talking about it, like, Will Smith on Oprah.

And he’s talking about how he’s like, worried about money.

It’s, yeah, it’s just like, oh, wow, that guy’s weird.

When money is in, like I probably will always be worried about.

That’s right.

Yeah, there isn’t a A number.

1:29:00

That’s gonna yeah this to fix that but when you like doing the math, a lie, like okay this much I’m 30.

Glad a wild where you 31 33 32.

Yeah, so conservatively, you have 50 more years left.

Yeah, but I think I was like, I’ll just get a clothing line and stuff.

1:29:17

Yeah, but other but I was kind of like, well, I can like live at this spot in the valley, or I can like, you know, like I kept like thinking like I could probably.

Yeah, rather than do like, I was like, I don’t really care.

Like figure myself out and I got unhappy.

1:29:32

Yeah, which is like happiness is like I don’t really know how to explain this to myself 10 years ago.

Happiness, is better than all of it.

So like I was I was happy.

I would like tenth man.

Is so I would go to like travel town and like I was like, this is like really fun.

I really like like myself travel time.

1:29:48

By the way in l.a.

Is a train museum and they have a miniature train that you can write or yeah your kid a total on and I was like, I like myself and you are you were getting self-esteem.

Yeah.

I’m confident about like I was like, I feel really good being a dad and I really like I like this.

1:30:05

Yeah, and I don’t, if I go back to doing the band, will I be gone all the time?

Will I be feeling the anxiety?

But look.

I was like, I don’t really want to do that again, you know, I mean, like what?

If like figured it out?

Yeah self.

Yeah, so that was worth more than all of the other stuff to me.

1:30:21

Right?

Um, but then like Patrick was bombed and you know, like we’ve got together and it was magically the first time we like Played together.

It was like for some reason for whatever it is like that band like who we are as for people with bigger than the four people.

1:30:37

Yeah, I mean and I don’t know why it is.

You guys have rhythm and I don’t mean yeah, totally.

Yeah, you can’t put like, I don’t know why really, but it just greater than the sum of your.

Yeah.

Yeah, and so like that that part of it was was great, but there was like definitely like a little bit of a like when we were putting new music out.

1:30:52

I was like are we like about to torpedo the Legacy, right?

I mean, like, you like are we about like is this not only are we like, you know, like you brought it up earlier and I will say that this has been a very helpful thing for me to manage my ego, which is you said I’m under the blanket.

1:31:10

And then I think about death and I go.

Wow.

And you can’t even think about.

I constantly tell myself.

I’m never even got will personally, I believe I’m gonna die and that’s it.

Lights out, right?

I’m not going to be able to evaluate my legacy or what people think of me or any of that shit.

I will not be here to witness this know and it really Let me go like none of it fucking matters, but can you imagine torpedo in it?

1:31:31

And then having like 30 more years, like where you can, you know, like because like my thing is kind of like, oh, that’s just safety through, not trying.

Yeah, I know.

So that’s an account.

Just like doing.

Nothing is not as big of an accomplishment, is even destroying the band.

Would be weird.

1:31:46

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

And so when I get it, I imagine the fear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And and but it just worked, it worked.

But like we were like, it could be like a cone.

Are you guys?

Bigger than ever.

You like.

You play stadiums.

Yeah, so it’s bigger than, yeah.

1:32:02

It’s bigger and it’s more Broad and it’s also just different.

Because 10 years also, like four years time off is really like 10 years with the way the internet is now.

Absolutely.

You’re talking about like someone has gone all the way through high school.

So you miss that?

Window of that potato total generation of people.

1:32:17

Really?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

So Crow generation, it’s broader than ever and it’s bigger than yeah.

It’s bigger than ever.

Yeah, but it’s like but I’m like a crazy person like you were just talking about where I’m like every single show.

I’m like, this is the one where they’re not coming to it.

1:32:34

Literally every single one and then when we play it straight, like when were on stage, it’s great, and whatever.

But before it want it to happen, but at the same time, I very much want to see your face.

When you walk out to an arena.

Oh, yes, you guys.

In janitorial staff.

I mean, can we talk other guy holding a tray of mini hot dogs that will go on.

1:32:55

Unsold.

That’s what I picture you have.

Nightmares about that kind of thing.

Mine are all like super stressy like you like I’ve I’ve killed somebody and nobody knows or I have a recurring dream where I have buried a body years ago.

1:33:15

I’ve gotten away with it and there is a construction project now on this island where I built it and my whole dream is about getting that body back.

It’s insane.

I think that’s Secrets.

Yeah.

It’s B.

Yeah, I’ve been I also think that because I also have like lots of one’s about my kids and them getting sick or they get shot in the dream.

1:33:33

Sure.

It’s all stressed dreams.

I have a zillion stress dreams before you go.

I want to ask you one question about relationships because you had a bunch of had a bunch and it made me think of it because of knowing those guys and them knowing you in the value that I personally put on that.

So I was with a girl for nine years.

1:33:49

Bri and one of the things that I was heartbroken by in scared of His everything post Bri someone was going to have potentially been aware of me before they met me and they won’t have seen the one-bedroom apartment for ten years and they didn’t see the like going to Groundlings and running theaters and no one came and I felt like it was I don’t know why I just felt like that was so important that that person had done all that with me and it was so sad to me that whoever I did this with again, wasn’t in a weird way.

1:34:24

Going to know the real Or that was my fear of it.

So when you got divorced, first of all, where you was their Shame about getting divorced, did you feel like oh, this is a failure and everyone knows I think so.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I mean in the way that like, Yeah, I mean in the way that like, no one plant.

1:34:44

You like.

Well, I like my parents weren’t.

You know, I mean, like, I didn’t grow up, like divorce was not right.

Was not a like heavy.

Like I didn’t.

I didn’t know about a lot of divorces.

You know, I mean, I wasn’t like, I didn’t come from a divorced household, right?

So in that way, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and I think I like the the celebrity way.

1:35:00

We’re like, people, like talk about it and like your rise and like everyone, you know, and you’re just like, yeah and you’re just kind of like, well, it’s none of that stuff, you know, but whatever it is what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know you’re caught in a weird position.

Where you Actually want to tell everyone your business yet.

You want to correct that?

It’s not in that business.

1:35:17

You kind of want to go.

Well, that’s not true.

But I’m not gonna tell you what.

Yeah, totally.

But you did you, do you find that?

You’re because you’re kind of a serial monogamous, right?

You had like long term, high school girlfriend and then you’re married.

And then now you and Megan have been together a long time.

Yeah, how long eight years?

1:35:32

Seven years?

Yeah.

That’s a long time.

Yeah, do these relationships have a pattern.

Do you think or do you think you broke a pattern with Megan or?

Um, I think I broke a pattern in the way that like I’m a different person.

You know, like I think that the things that you move quick though.

1:35:51

Can we say that you fucking move quick?

Because if I recall, you’re a Megan story.

You guys meant she moved in, right?

Yeah, you like move?

She did.

Well hi.

Oh she did.

Yeah.

She didn’t have anywhere to go.

So it was like, stay here since it was all gasp.

Oh, yeah, but she never laughs.

1:36:06

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, but but it’s like always move that.

Asked.

Um, no, no, okay.

No, but like it was always like monogamy, you know, you don’t have commitment issues, no seams.

1:36:23

No, and it was not like a like Yeah, I mean, I think that like with this I think that you are at least with me like one of the things with like having it all be so public or like maybe it’s that, you know, like, you know, like figuring it out and trying to be like a good guy for a kid.

1:36:45

You’re like, well, what are the things that I did?

Like, what are the things that are like for sure, my, you know, like my issues.

Yes.

Yes.

Versus were like some shared issues and which are not my issues, you know, and like trying to like my anything after your like I meant dissipates when you get out of a relationship like the first bit of it, you’re like, oh they did this.

1:37:03

This, this totals.

And then over time that has less impact.

You start going.

Like, I guess I kind of, I wasn’t there.

And I didn’t show up.

Yeah.

And you’re like, I can’t like I had and then the rest of your life is just your mistakes.

You make total.

Yeah.

Yeah, and so like I think, in that way, I feel like I’m in a better.

1:37:20

Like, I’m a better partner.

Did you make some proactive decisions?

Like, okay.

I’ve got another shot at this again and I cannot let myself do.

This again.

Yeah, there were certain like I think there’s like certain.

Yeah, obviously, I think those are certain things that I was like, well, you should be like, you got like whether you’re in a band and you’re gone or whatever, like you got to be like, you know, like engaged and be dialed.

1:37:43

Yeah, totally present.

Yeah.

Well, what’s Kristen?

I like first of all, she was kind of opposite of what I always dated my whole life, right?

When we first met she was very Christian and I was scared to raise kids with someone who is going to want to go to church all the time and all these weird thing.

1:38:03

I had all these fears about her but I just kept kind of plodding along because I was like push at the end of the day.

She’s a super good person and she’s really funny and fun to be around.

But I remember having to say, to myself all the time, like don’t try to defeat this person.

In this argument.

Stop trying to make this person, a clone of your thoughts.

1:38:22

You know, I’m saying like I think in the past I felt Like if the girl didn’t agree with me then she must not like me.

So I’ve got a really convinced his personal think the way I think about of or why would she want to be with me?

Like, how can she be opposed everything I think and still love me, which ironically.

1:38:40

Now my wife is opposed to every single thought I have and yet it’s somehow working because he needs some but I haven’t been sizes you.

Yeah, but I had to decide like don’t do this.

There was a voice in my head going.

You gotta break this fucking pattern.

Right?

You’re in.

I mean, I think that one of The issues for me is that like I was probably like, when everybody tells you like, how awesome your band is and you are and stuff like that.

1:39:09

You know, like that was one of the biggest.

Maybe it’s not like, it’s really an addiction, but like that was like feeding.

Every like I’m like, I’m like, I’m like, I’m like I couldn’t possibly be, you know, screwing this all up.

And at the same time you like basically like a man boy, like I haven’t really like Addressed anything about myself at all, you know, I mean and I think that like in having it all explode at the same time it like just puts it all out in the light, you know, I mean because it’s like the divorce and then the the band and all of it happened at the same time.

1:39:41

So it’s kind of just like you just have to deal with it because there’s no other.

There’s no other way to like, you know, I mean like cause it’s like there’s it’s beyond like Rock Bottom, you know, I mean, yes, so and while it’s happening though, don’t you?

Because I haven’t had that kind of like, big public.

But in those moments, I’m assuming you think the rest of your life people are going to be talking about.

1:40:03

Yeah, I mean, I think that anytime but I’m sure you can relate in this way.

The anytime you have anything that goes wrong like when it first like when you Republic thing, like, when it first happens, you’re like, oh my God, like, this is gonna go on forever and then you’re kind of like you realize and you’re like, how much worse can it get?

And then you’re like, oh, it like, doesn’t go on forever and the people forget, they don’t care.

1:40:22

They don’t care, whatever.

Yeah, an hour later.

I mean, my experience, my My most recent experience with that is that so there they did this Ghostbusters reboot or whatever and Patrick loves the Ghostbusters.

We all love to go supposed to be like really love Ghostbusters and be like you guys wanna do the theme song was like well do it.

1:40:39

We would love to do it.

Patrick like loves it.

When I do it.

Missy Elliott and I’ll stuff and we were like this, you know, like we were, you know, like comparatively like to the movie, like we’re just a small part of it, you know, but like the tide and everything that was, you know, so the fuhrer Like so that we felt it, you know, I mean and I was like, yeah, I was like, oh wow.

1:40:59

This is like people, like really don’t like anything about this, you know.

Yeah, but and then and they were like there, they put women in this year all know.

So like all of it, you know, whatever.

And I was like, oh my God, you know, and and and other they put the three best female comedians on the planet.

1:41:15

Yeah, but they were like, we’ve invited you guys to the premiere and and in my head, I’m like, oh man, we’re gonna go and like, get booed.

They’re just throw stuff and like I said, The fear in everyone’s like psyched, you know, it’s all Ghostbusters fans.

They’re like psyched and they’re like, love this.

1:41:32

We love the movie, whatever.

I was like, it’s just so funny how, you know?

Like yeah, just a weird time to be, you’ve done a few songs for movies, right?

Huh?

Yeah, three, four, we’ve done.

So we did that.

We did this song Immortals, which is for Big Hero, 6, huh, and then we’ve written for movies that have not happened before Rice 0, which is interesting process.

1:41:53

What is the pressure like knowing?

That you’re not.

Just going to go write a song.

You want to hear your you’ve, it’s got to fit within this or the existing thing.

Is it stressful as hell?

Did write those songs?

Well, so the first time we wrote, I’ll just give you the Abridged version.

1:42:09

So the fruit yet, is the first time we wrote it was like in 2004-2005 for Shrek.

They had attempt in the tempt in what did they tended?

Like, it was like not Beatles.

It was I don’t remember those.

1:42:25

They tempt in a song and maybe with stones.

And you know, we met, we met with like katzenberg and like, oh, you know, whatever.

I’m like they’re like, you know, this is the song attempt in.

We saw the like rendering and it looked weird and like the song was cool or whatever.

And then we go back to the studio and we’re like, well, they asked us for that, right, but they don’t know that.

1:42:44

That’s what they want.

They we should give them what we think, you can imagine how well that one.

Yeah.

Wrote for Disney’s Big Hero 6, and that was like a really cool process because you were there before the temp.

1:43:02

Yeah, and they we were involved.

And they were like, this is what it like, you know, we’re thinking this would be like, what are you guys, you know, like in that was really cool to be part of the process like that.

But at the same time you’re writing for somebody else’s thing, but I’m here and I don’t know.

Your process is a band, but I can’t.

Imagine you guys ever said.

1:43:18

Let’s write a song that feels inspirational for the first half, then takes a dark turn and then ends triumphantly, that’s how Rights, no more.

Like we’re gonna have a bridge where they can like introduced characters.

Yeah, because it but in this situation, you very much have to deliver what that moment in the movie needs to have this God that I’m scared of that.

1:43:37

But it’s like when you write for a show, it’s the same thing.

You’re there to deliver something specific not to like, bring your own.

Yes.

It’s right.

You got to write an episode of Friends.

Exact.

It’s really hard in my twenties.

I couldn’t figure that out.

I didn’t know how to like, be on board for that or like be like, well, Fucking idea is, you know, like I couldn’t, I couldn’t swallow it.

1:43:59

You know, I well when I got up to imagine there’s tons of critique and notes when you do a song like that.

Yeah.

And like the thing that I and, you know, like I’ll probably be blowing myself up for saying that the thing that I’ve noticed is with like vice-president Executives, like in Hollywood.

1:44:17

They have like, all these fucking notes just to have notes.

And I’m like, yeah, I love a good note, like a great note, you know, even if it’s like something that’s a critique.

I’m like damn.

I’m like, that’s a great note.

But a note for note, sake drives.

Me fucking crazy.

I’m like, I didn’t start a band for like some guy who doesn’t even give a shit who just feels like he has to justify his job.

1:44:36

AB c–, give me a note.

Yes, so that that is absolutely epidemic.

In Hollywood.

Were you have a president?

You have all these VPS and then you have lower Executives and creative Executives, right?

And yes, they have to justify their job by having a thought on something.

1:44:51

So, even if you have written a Beatle song, there will be notes from People because they can’t just not say anything.

Yeah, but you know, like a hack I discovered during chips, which was I said to them.

Hey, how about this?

How about I go?

Ask three really well-known writers that you guys love to read this script and let them give me notes.

1:45:12

And I will take those notes and they go great and I have to say maybe they would have been the same notes, but just knowing that, these writers were just fellow writers that were really, just telling me flaws in my story, our flaws.

As in my emotional development, the third act, they didn’t give a fuck of the movie made money.

1:45:29

They didn’t care if it was 90 minutes or 120 Minutes knowing that their motivation was literally motivated by story.

So like I wonder if there’s a scenario which you, you guys could have received input from other musicians that have already made really successful songs for movies or vice versa and has that ever happened, like, have they ever did they ever bring in the composer and go here to talk to the composer?

1:45:52

Because he’s got his finger on the pulse of what this is.

We Talk to him on Big Hero 6 and was super helpful and he was like listen, you probably trusted him.

Yeah, and he and he was like, you know, this is what the score is doing, you know what?

You know, and it’s like yeah, that’s great.

That’s that’s awesome.

We went the song that we did for that was going to be for Shrek.

1:46:11

We did with Butch Walker who’s a super musicians.

Like one of my favorite people, one of my favorite producers and we just weren’t listening.

You know, I mean, we just like I knew better and like I maybe had a fear to I’m sure when you’re afraid you’ll I must have to draw a line in the sand when you’re scared.

1:46:28

Like, I got a stick to this.

I mean like success is also the like this funny drug where you’re like, oh I everything.

I do like works.

Yeah, and then like, when it doesn’t you’re like mmm, you know, like well, yeah.

And that’s another famous examples.

Yeah, I mean and that’s a, we all do better with a bit of oversight.

1:46:45

Oh, yeah.

In general.

Oh, hundred percent like M Night Shyamalan.

He does sixth sense.

It’s such a perfect movie that I think, from that point on, he was like, well, I don’t need to listen to anyone ever again.

But it’s beyond armchair.

Oh, there’s a danger in it.

Like and that’s one of the things that I love about one of the things I love about being a band is like you’re constantly bouncing ideas and I’m constantly getting people telling me like that idea sucks, you know, but like we’re in the thing so it’s like a lot easier, you know, like it’s like a real writers room because it’s like, we’re all in it.

1:47:14

We’re all invested.

No one saying it because they’re justifying their thing.

Like it’s they think it sucks for the betterment of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah individual.

But it is hard to hear that.

Oh, it’s First, it’s only just like the it’s the worst or like, you know, like I’ve had like multiple times where people were just like, you know, like okay with our new record.

1:47:34

We are records was coming out September 15th.

We push it to January 19th, and honestly when we got to like the deadline of like like we’re this is what we need to turn in in order to have it come out in September 15.

I like talk to Patrick.

I was like this record is just mediocre.

1:47:50

It’s like not good enough and that’s like a rough conversation to have with each other’s work.

Position to have with yourself and like we kind of had a publicly to where we were.

Like we’re pushing the record back three months right?

Like it it just until you agree with you or yeah, Absol, that’s good.

But like it’s just one of those comes out.

1:48:07

January 1919, but like, will see him.

Call Mania Mania.

Yeah, January 19th.

Well, this is very timely timely but like the, the whole thing is Is that like, you know, like I can’t imagine turning to like my kids and being like, well, I’m gonna be gone for like six months on this record that I think is like, kind of good.

1:48:28

You know, I mean, like, it’s like that’s rough.

Yep.

Has to be worth it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in my own experience just making movies is I just have to make the movie.

I want to see because God knows if it’s going to make money, God knows if critics are going to like it got there’s all these variables.

1:48:43

I have zero control over and so at the end of the day I better walk away with Than that.

I wanted to see really bad, you know, total and I have to imagine an albums like that too.

It’s like you’re so upriver from whether or not.

It’s going to be well received or yes, people buy it and the beauty of like and I think this this might be different than a film.

1:49:03

I’m not sure.

But like the beauty of the album is like a snapshot of a time and I mean like and it becomes different ten years later and if you put out another album It’s like a companion piece or not.

It’s a departure or whatever, you know, like they’re all just snapshots, you know, like and and yeah, you live and die by.

1:49:19

Like if you’re a pop artist you live and die by like you’re successful your last successful thing.

Yeah, but I think that you’re like next successful thing is only, you know, like whatever.

Like, you know, like a great song or whatever like is is, is it’s, you know, is the thing itself, you know, I mean, like so you can like have like three albums that don’t make any sense and then you have one.

1:49:42

We’re like it just like I always get it back.

Yeah.

Yeah, you look at like Maroon 5 or Pharrell or whatever like You it’s just like a great song away, right?

Yeah.

And luckily for you as a musician, the expenditure.

Although it’s a lot.

I’m sure it’s you can kind of keep swinging.

1:50:01

You give someone you get a lot of at-bats.

You get a lot of at-bats, but you don’t get a lot of at-bats with like if you’re on a major label, you don’t get a lot of advice.

If you have a lot of strikeouts one or two strikeouts.

You don’t get a lot of at-bats with people supporting you right, you know, like that.

1:50:18

You’re swinging on your own, you know, I mean, yeah, so you leave tomorrow morning to Berlin tomorrow morning to Berlin and I’m very grateful that you took time out of your last few hours before you for having off.

I’ve really enjoyed coming to know you over at the Hansen’s and I’m glad I got to know you in that capacity where you were just as nice human being with kids who clearly loved his kids and we could relate.

1:50:40

Yes.

I stay tuned.

If you’d like to hear my good friend and producer, Monica badman point out.

The many errors in the podcast, you just heard.

I’m Monica, welcome to the fact-checking portion of Pete.

1:50:58

Wentz.

How are you?

Great.

Great.

Did you find a lot of stuff?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, there is a lot of stuff.

Okay.

This took me a long.

This episode took me like four days to get through, really.

Yeah.

Well, I hope it doesn’t take the average listener that long.

1:51:14

Yeah, it was tough.

Okay, so it was a struggle.

Okay.

I’m glad you are here and got through it and your own life because of it.

Yeah.

You’re welcome.

Okay, so you guys discuss a documentary about the oakwoods apartments.

1:51:33

Very good documentary.

Yeah.

Well, hi.

We highly recommend it.

Yes, and it’s called the Hollywood complex.

Okay, which we did not say, are you did not say, and you said it was on Netflix, and it’s not on Netflix anymore anymore.

1:51:50

Maybe never.

I don’t know.

That wasn’t come on and off.

They license them for periods of time.

It was at one point on Netflix.

That’s where I saw it.

Well, that might be true.

Okay, but it couldn’t be true today.

No, it’s definitely not true today, but you can find it on YouTube.

1:52:08

Oh for purchase.

No.

Amazon video my Tunes.

Hmm.

I should have said, iTunes first because that seems like iTunes.

Well that and I think that’s where people would go first and Google Play Google Play, okay.

1:52:24

Anyway, so everyone should check that.

It’s very good.

Document is, I looked into Pete’s bar a little bit.

Uh-huh.

You dug or I don’t know.

I didn’t know that he had one.

So, that was interesting.

So, so angels and Kings right?

1:52:41

New York City.

First opened in 2007.

That’s when he was talking about.

Did he mention or did I am, I remembering reading that Tommy Hilfiger was at the opening of it.

Did he mention that?

No.

Oh, that’s on the Internet.

Oh, yeah.

Quite an esteemed guests to have on your first night.

1:52:58

Oh, yeah, Tom Tom.

Eh it closed down.

Yeah in April of 2012, but then they opened a second location in Chicago in 2008.

1:53:15

Then a third location in Barcelona.

No, huh, uh, huh, and then a fourth and Hollywood.

I wouldn’t know how to open.

A one in my backyard.

Much less right Barcelona, so we try.

So they’re successful in there still.

1:53:30

Well, yeah.

Well, they were report they were successful.

But then in 2011.

No, I’m sorry, the Hollywood, the fourth location Hollywood opened in 2011.

Okay.

In the Chicago location is the only one that’s still open.

1:53:48

Okay, open it still open.

Yeah.

I don’t know if better than any bar.

I’ve started, maybe Pete has left.

I don’t know.

We don’t know.

No, well, I’ll check it out though.

If you’re in the windy city, go over to Gibson’s, grab a steak and then finish the night out at Angels and Demons angels, and Kinks, angels and kings.

1:54:13

Okay, so Pete also talked about how his grandfather met Muhammad Ali on a plane member.

He found that.

Yeah, he was the Ambassador dude, Nepal or something crazy.

Um, no Sri Lanka.

Won’t stop saying, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

1:54:28

I this these are, this is what - yeah, sorry, sir future claims, but he was, he was a sort of unclear as to why he thought it had something to do with Jimmy Carter.

Are you okay?

Um, but it was because so the Olympics, the Summer Olympics of 1984 hosted by Moscow.

1:54:51

Okay, of the Soviet Union at that time and and we’re sure moscow’s in the Soviet Union.

It was okay.

Yes.

I can say that.

I agree. 100% confidence.

Okay, and our president at the time, Jimmy Carter.

1:55:08

Led a boycott of the Olympics.

Oh, okay, because the Soviet Union failed to comply with a deadline to withdraw, its troops from Afghanistan.

Mmm, in 65 countries, boycotted that Olympics yet.

1:55:24

We’ve been there now for 14 years or something crazy.

And people still attend.

Our Olympics will come back, whatever we do.

What’s good for the goose may not be good for the gander, correct?

So they met what was so what’s weird is Jimmy was boys.

Out in the Olympics yet.

1:55:39

Somehow Pete, Wentz is Granddad and Muhammad Ali were on an airplane because it over there because they’re sending a big fuck you to Jim.

They weren’t going there.

They were According to Pete.

What he was saying is they were recruited by Jimmy Carter.

They were part of this coalition to to convince other countries not to go side note.

1:55:58

I think this is so unfair.

When they ask Olympians to not be a part of something room.

There’s also a documentary and they were calling on black athletes.

Not to attend but then some went and then They gave the black power sign on the podium to rumor that whole thing of vaguely.

Yeah, it just seems so unfair to go to somebody.

1:56:15

Okay, you’ve worked with yeah, 20 years.

And now you got a fucking shoulder.

This whole thing.

I know.

Fuck you.

I agree.

Yeah, but then if they don’t, if they do it, then they can, they could also lose their career because of that.

I don’t know what career Olympians have other than going to the Olympics.

1:56:31

That sucks.

That’s true.

Yeah, that is hard to get endorsements for skipping the.

Oh, yeah, but after the Olympics, a hike, what have we seen?

Liberated people who quit the Olympic team in protest.

Maybe if there were some opportunities, you know, to monetize that decision.

1:56:47

I’d be more sympathetic but I’m not.

Well, they also have to work in high schools and colleges after they after they go to the Olympics and they coach that sport.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, I still don’t know why you hire a guy who quit to run your wrestling program and Western, Michigan University.

1:57:09

Sorry, okay.

Um, we can delete this part may be or we can keep it in but he talks about a book that the band 108 wrote or the guy from that band wrote about Krishna core.

1:57:26

Okay, and I scoured the and find it cannot find it anywhere.

Probably self published in his garage or something.

Maybe a big component of that Pete maybe Rose bizarre.

The ladder.

Yeah, a big component of that hardcore scene in the early 90s with ziens, you know, a lot of a lot of guys publishes things.

1:57:51

Oh, yeah.

Friends of mine had ziens.

They were.

Yeah, you basically just made him over at Kinkos, you know, so maybe this was more of a Zine.

He’s referencing Z.

I have to probably be hard to find on the internet.

Is it short for magazine?

I think it’s a cooler version of the word magazine.

1:58:06

Cool or end quote unquote, Yancy Kirsten also.

The word magazine.

So lame Rose magazine.

Sounds like maggots something, your parents would read a magazine.

Okay, then Pete mentioned.

1:58:25

Okay, so Pete talks about in needed to like crazy cons.

What happens at crazy concerts?

I had really turned out because I had no idea.

Sure.

I don’t know that for other people.

I don’t go to that type of know you’re a cheerleader.

1:58:41

Yeah, I went to Britney Spears concerts and stuff and watch friends over and over.

Not just a lot of friends, but he mentions the Wall of Death.

And you acted like you knew what that was, but I didn’t.

I was fibbing.

You were OK guy would get your can I guess?

1:58:59

Yeah.

Okay.

Is it is it like you stand on something really high like some scaffolding for the equipment and then you die you do a crowd dive.

No, but I would have guessed I would have guessed some sort of crowd surfing.

1:59:15

Yeah.

Thank to just like a stage diving is what we call the yeah, but it’s not.

That at all.

It’s a true reenactment of War.

Rob.

You can tell me if I’m wrong.

But this is what the internet says.

It’s a true reenactment of War.

1:59:31

That’s two sides.

Split down the middle charged towards each other with the hope of survival.

Oh, okay.

I’ve never witnessed that many, many a show.

I attended.

That is Loomis raised ocular in the Chicago area or something.

1:59:48

It was okay Rob who’s from Chicago confirms.

That that was really popular, the Wall of Death is popular.

Yeah, did people die.

I’m sure we would have read it, you would know about the term Wall of Death of people were dying from it.

I bet that’s my guess.

It says a true reenactment of War.

2:00:05

So I’m going to assume there’s some Carnage.

Sure involved.

Okay, so you discuss Ted Nugent.

Uncle Ted.

Uh-huh.

And you should he adopted his second wife from Hawaii.

Yeah, and that’s very close.

2:00:22

He got guardianship over.

Yeah.

He dated his 19 year old when he was 30 and then made herself made himself her legal guardian with the parents permission if you believe VH1 Behind the Music, yeah, I do.

Yeah, he asked, he asked if he could do that, they greet.

2:00:40

You imagine me signing over one of my two daughters to a 30 year old rock star in a loincloth, which is what he wore at the time, depends on his Personality.

Yeah, you’d have to be a pretty persuasive personality.

He’d have to have charisma.

2:00:56

Burn.

I’m gonna guess that her parents probably weren’t in very involved in her life.

Careful.

Now you could use viable.

I’m gonna get okay.

Okay, I pressed a no knowledge, right?

No knowledge.

I’m just saying, yeah, they probably didn’t have it in lover.

2:01:16

They were looking forward to more date nights.

Probably, she’ll be in Michigan, their Hawaiian.

So, their culture is a little different.

Yeah, then yours, right?

Okay, then you mentioned your favorite biography Titan.

Mmm full title is tighten the life of John D Rockefeller senior by Ron, chernow, correct?

2:01:36

And it’s approximately 800 pages.

So when you brought that up, I feel I need two full discloser full disclosure and I always feel guilty when I say, I’ve read a book that I’ve really Listen to.

I’ve listened to that book, three times.

It still counts.

Yeah, for me, it does.

But I can see where people are like, more impressed that you read an 800-page book than listen to it.

2:01:56

Hundred page book.

Yeah, but for me, it’s because much quicker if someone reads it to me, then I have to read it.

Sure.

Yeah, Pete suggested that Cecil B Demille owned the park.

I assumed he meant Griffith Park and that’s incorrect.

2:02:13

Is that what he did?

Because I suggested that I think that he owned Laughlin park.

I think that’s what park we were talking about 0 because this is 40 acres or something.

And I feel like when he first moved here, but maybe I’m more fertile.

Laughlin Park is the park.

When Griffith Park is right there.

2:02:29

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

It’s hard to say.

Okay, hard to say but he doesn’t know Griffith Park in case that is at North Central Park.

No, no, no.

No, but do you know who owned Griffith Park first?

Or who know Griffith?

2:02:45

J Griffith?

Oh, that’s a cool name.

Is it.

I should do a little more research because what if that was like, okay, I have name.

One of the girls Shepherd name is j Griffith.

But okay, I’m gonna have to look into that, a little, a little further, but I think it’s a cool name and I hope it’s right.

2:03:07

Okay, so, so you see you spouted off a lot of stuff about Rockefeller and the amount of money.

Hmm, uh-huh.

In relation to the GDP.

Yeah, and to today.

Right.

You were saying, yeah.

Okay, so I looked it up and John D.

2:03:25

Rockefeller who became the first billionaire.

You’d said that.

By the time, he died in 1937, his acids equaled one point five percent of America’s total economic output.

2:03:41

There you go.

Yeah, and what’s our current economic?

Well, it said to control, an equivalent share today would require a net worth of about three hundred and forty billion dollars.

Boom, more than four times that of Bill Gates.

Currently the world’s richest man, whose net worth is 86 billion, but didn’t you just tell me that?

2:04:01

Bezos?

Yes, I did.

I was right.

I was told that information Monica film the commercial with Jeff Bezos and only girl on to say that by the time this comes out.

Yeah.

Next year.

We’re allowed to say that.

Yeah.

Right by then.

We will be allowed to say okay people don’t know who Jeff Bezos has we weren’t even on.

2:04:19

Okay, I’m gonna step to what if you’re contractually forbidden to ever say that word the name, Jeff Bezos mean close to, I wouldn’t be that surprising fact.

He was very nice though.

Yeah, and I was deaf and suspiciously muscular nowadays.

According to you.

2:04:35

Well, I showed you a side-by-side picture.

Anyone who’s not down the side by side picture of him from like 20 years ago.

Now, he looks like he had a body transplant with Mel Gibson.

I wonder if we should post it on the website.

Oh, that would be great.

2:04:50

I think that would be helpful for people to see what’s possible.

Yeah.

So right now, if you’re in your late 20s, and you’re a computer programmer and Tech at all, and you think I’ll never look like Mel Gibson.

Braveheart not true.

You could if you decide yeah, yeah, you don’t like that.

2:05:06

I’m using Mel Gibson know, for the example of a I’m Bob.

That’s not why.

I just have a little more information than you because I’ve now seen him in person.

Right?

Right, right.

And you’ve seen a picture and I, you know, your little inaccurate.

2:05:22

But that’s okay, right?

It’s really nice and he’s not, he’s not the richest person in the world though.

I was told he was, um, I saw that your, I saw that he had the title for a minute.

Yeah, even that’s a little.

But yeah suspicious.

2:05:38

Yeah.

Okay, so in regards to you talking about how the industry has changed the film industry.

Mmm.

You said that the Year Without a Paddle came out Paramount, Paramount Studios released 12 movies and last year they released for.

2:05:58

Yeah, those are gases for sure.

Yeah.

So without a paddle came on 2004 and released 16.

Movies Paramount only 16 movies that year.

Okay, and in 2017, they release 13.

Well, they did.

Yeah, so it really are some of them under an umbrella title.

2:06:18

Like they had Paramount Vantage and some of these other things.

Some of these must be believing that I still came from the studio studio.

Yeah, and I wonder if someone though the were released just on VOD and not the intricately.

Well, when I looked when I looked at the titles, I almost wrote them down, but that’s recognized all of them.

2:06:35

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Well, that’s most part.

Okay.

I was wrong.

I guess you got you caught me.

You got me in your crosshairs.

That’s the first time.

I’m probably these.

Yeah.

Yeah, we should.

2:06:52

Okay.

So you also said and maybe this was just a misspeak.

But you said Jazz originated in Chicago and traveled to New Orleans and that’s the other way around.

Okay, and I wouldn’t have even said it originated in either of those places.

2:07:07

I only meant to say that the Mississippi and those those paddleboats in the casinos, on them and all that stuff, kept influencing different regions, like different Jazz types would migrate north and south on the Mississippi.

2:07:26

Again.

I learned that in a jazz history class in 1995 so I could certainly be wrong at this point.

Yeah, I don’t think I think it I don’t start advancing about is what?

Yeah, you can relax.

Yeah, take a breath over there.

Oh, yeah.

Um, sorry.

2:07:41

New Orleans though.

Okay, but it did it did travel.

Make its way up to Chicago.

Okay.

We, and then you talked about country music.

Mmm is kind of the only genre that it sells a lot of albums.

2:07:59

Yeah.

And selling CDs, and I looked into that a little bit and we could have guessed this and you probably have already guessed, why.

Cuz Hillbillies don’t use computers.

No, but close no because their demographic.

2:08:16

Yeah, the median age is much higher for country music listeners right there more.

Right, they’re used to going into stores and buying CDs and stuff like that.

Yeah, they’re not as tech savvy.

Hmm, not yet.

Um, okay.

2:08:34

I just wanted to clarify that, you said, M Night Shyamalan made the sixth sense.

And then by your estimation, Yeah, by your estimation decided, he’s to stop listening to people.

Yeah, and we don’t know him at all.

2:08:49

We didn’t ask.

And we just don’t know if that’s true at all to make sure that was said, no.

The only thing I’ll say that is true and known is that if you make the Godfather.

Your opinion holds a lot more way host Godfather than it does pre Godfather.

2:09:08

Yeah, which can be very dangerous for a lot of artists.

I’ll stand by that.

Yeah, I think that’s true.

Yeah, but we don’t know anything about.

I’m not sure.

I’ve never met him never hung out with him.

Now you could have lived, I can say by my estimation movies have gotten precipitously worse.

2:09:23

Yes, I agree but we don’t really knows why.

Yeah, we don’t there’s so many reasons movies.

Yeah, they can go sideways.

Am Okay, and lastly Pete’s album releases January 19th, and we got really excited about that because we were like, yeah, that’s so timely.

2:09:46

Oh man.

This is not gonna be out in time.

It’s not timely and I wanted to apologize to him or just so the world but there’s really nothing to apologize for because let me tell you why you would you would owe everyone an apology if it had gone the other way.

2:10:02

A.

So it let’s say that they were listening to it in December.

And you said, it’s coming out, December 20th, and then was gonna come on 20 February.

So, they were pissed and they had to wait.

But this is they’re going to learn about it.

It’s already out.

This is only upside.

I think if you’re going to air in One Direction, I think we are in the right direction.

2:10:19

Don’t tell me who to apologize.

Okay, I’m so sorry.

The owe me an apology.

That was it all done.

That wasn’t bad.

Yeah, he really took me a long.

Can’t really?

I have to reiterate gotta long.

It took me to get through.

2:10:35

Yeah, and this is a process for you.

You’ll probably get more streamlined right about the whole the way you attack this.

You don’t know, okay.

Depends.

It just depends if I have a huge chunk of time.

2:10:50

That’s better, but that’s hard too high.

I know you’re very busy.

That’s all.

I love you.

Thank you.