Fall Out Boy are having a great week – they’ve just dropped an EP under the moniker ‘Lake Effect Kid’, and in a few hours’ time, they’re playing a whopping headline set at Reading Festival.
Pete Wentz spares a few minutes backstage to talk their big O2 headliner earlier this year, new material, and wanting to score more films – Wes Anderson, if you’re reading, get in touch!
The O2 show earlier this year, it was really interesting how you did ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’ back to back with ‘Immortals’ – it felt like you didn’t mind how people had found you, you were just happy they were there.
Yeah, I think that we’re at the point where we have to blur that stuff. Your entry point… for me with Metallica, I got into Metallica on the Black album, but I think a lot of people will be like, I got into them when they were thrash, and it’s like – we don’t ever want to be the band that’s trying to appease absolutely everybody, but at the same time, we understand that God bless, we’re headlining a festival, a giant festival. We’ve got to play a set that people walk away and are like, I want to play a set where people are like – ‘Dude, you missed it! You weren’t there!’ I want to play that set.
It’s interesting because Fall Out Boy have never been the cool band.
No, and I’m completely okay with that because I feel like you like the music that you like. When you’re young like a junior in high school, you like the music that you like, just because you like it. You go off to college or university, and at least for me, you listen to the music that you’re supposed to like. Then you go into the real world, and the real world is cool but it also kinda sucks, it’s a mixed bag, and you want the music that you liked because it’s like a warm blanket. I think that we can represent that band for people, or that music.
You’ve just dropped you Lake Effect Kid EP, what was the thinking behind that?
When we were writing ‘Young & Menace’ there was a b-side to that, which was ‘Super Fade’, and we were like, I don’t know there’s not really a place for this song, it references Chicago. We had this old song that referenced Chicago that we’d never finished, we’d never figured out, why don’t we go back and figure that out. Then Patrick wrote this futuristic one which became ‘City in a Garden’, and we were like, why don’t we do this little pack together?
It feels like a moment that reflects where you came from, why do that now?
It’s two-fold. The reason we put it out before Reading is that this is the biggest thing we’ve ever played in the UK, maybe it’s the biggest thing we ever will play, and in the Chicago we’re playing Wrigley Field which is the biggest thing we’ve ever done there, so it felt like it was a moment to get some perspective, and also thank everybody who’s on the journey with you.
It also feels like it’s looking to where you could go in the future?
Totally, and I think that even ‘City in a Garden’, that’s the thought process behind that. I think it’s like looking ahead, it’s just a really wild ride and we’re just lucky to be on it, you know what I mean?
Last time you were in the UK you were starting ‘Young & Menace’, have you started playing around? Are you going to revisit some of the stuff that didn’t make it on ‘M A N I A’?
We haven’t started, it’s rough when a band or an artist has been doing something for fifteen-twenty years because then the inspiration can start feeling regurgitated so I wanna do something like a movie score or something that puts you completely out of your comfort zone, so you’re forced to recalibrate. There’s nothing on the books yet, but I think something like that. Something that just by virtue of doing it you have to take a different perspective.
How aggressively are you going to pursue that? We spoke about you doing a movie a couple of years ago.
Yeah, honestly we get pitched some stuff it’s just never been right. I feel like Fall Out Boy sits in a weird sweet spot that’s somewhere between Napoleon Dynamite and Drive, and like, those are two really weird movies. There’s no one who makes movies like that apart from Wes Anderson, and he’s not knocking down our door to score a movie. It’s such a weird spot; we get pitched action movies – we don’t do most of them. When we did Big Hero 6, it was a big deal because we don’t honestly do those things, so it’s got to be the right thing. I know our kids, and our band are so weird, it’s gotta fit a really small area.
Lastly, Reading’s such an eclectic line-up – what do you want Fall Out Boy to mean to people in 2018?
Man I like, I remember going to school and being like, you know when ‘Enter Sandman’ was big and being like, damn like, my band is on the radio – this isn’t you guys’ fucking band, you guys listen to MC Hammer or whatever, this one is mine. I wanna be that band for kids and people who are like – there’s so much music out there, and it wouldn’t have been for me, and I want to fit that sweet spot for those kids.
You’re one of the biggest bands of the weekend, but it still feels like you’re the fan’s band.
Totally, it’s cool – that’s awesome.
Fall Out Boy headline Reading on 24th August.
