The (Fall Out) Boys Are Back in Town

The (Fall Out) Boys Are Back in Town,Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, and Andy Hurley return home to famed Chicago venue Metro two decades after their first headlining gig there to debut their new album ‘So Much (for) Stardust’ and reflect on their emo and pop-rock legacy.

The (Fall Out) Boys Are Back in Town

The first time Fall Out Boy headlined the Chicago rock club Metro could’ve been the last. The gig was a substantial step for a band that, until then, had been a bare-bones project: top billing at the venue where they’d seen their heroes. “That was the biggest show we could imagine playing,” says Patrick Stump, the band’s singer and guitarist. “This is your one shot.” It was February 2003; they’d just solidified Fall Out Boy’s lineup (of Stump, bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley) after a little over a year and were preparing to prototype emo-pop with their debut, Take This to Your Grave, in a few months. (That night, they played the standout anthem “Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy” for the first time.) Stump and Wentz wanted to take time off from school for the band — even though Wentz was just shy of graduating with a political science degree — and hoped seeing such an important show would convince their families to allow it. When Fall Out Boy made their Metro debut in 2002, they’d opened a four-band bill for $75 — which helped cover the cost of a paper cutter to make flyers for the event. This time would have to be different. “We were like, ‘How do we get some production?’” says Wentz, also the band’s unofficial creative director. “And we couldn’t really afford anything.” But bach party props? Those come cheap. “So we had these giant inflatables,” Wentz continues, “and they were penis-shaped.”

Taller than the whole (famously short) band, in fact. When they threw the balloons into the crowd that night, some made their way up to the balcony where their families were sitting. One reached Wentz’s mom; another whacked Stump’s grandmother. “This is actually insane,” Wentz remembers thinking. “After that, it was the first time my parents were like, ‘Well, maybe you should just take a year off from college and do that.’”

Photo: Elliott Ingham

Wentz had been thinking about the sustainability of the band as much as Trohman; it shows on Stardust. The title track, which closes the album, candidly addresses the expenses of fame: “I need the sound of crowds or I can’t fall asleep at night.” In the catchy, carnival-jingle bridge of “Flu Game,” Stump cries, “Someday every candle’s gotta run out of wax / Someday no one will remember me when they look back.” Then, on the next line, the band finds a semi-solution: “Can’t stop, can’t stop till we catch all your ears though.” Wentz is clear the end of the band isn’t on the horizon, even as early peers like Panic! At the Disco hang it up. (After all, Paramore just released a well-charting new album, and My Chemical Romance is wrapping up a highly successful reunion tour.) But more than ever, he wants to make sure they have no regrets. “We approach everything, I think, like, We are giving it our absolute all. We’re not planning on going to overtime,” he says.

When Fall Out Boy arrived at Metro for sound check that afternoon, there were already dozens of fans lined up on the sidewalk, braving the wet winter slush for their 46th, 31st, 24th, or even first Fall Out Boy show. Wentz knew what they were looking for. “I think people often have nostalgic FOMO, where you’re like, Wow, I wasn’t old enough or I didn’t live in the right city,” he says. And as much as they wanted to push forward, the band was looking for a taste of the past too: Would playing “Other Side” in their old favorite venue feel the same as some of their earliest songs? It did. “If you were like, What did it feel like then? This is what it felt like,” Wentz says a few days after the show. “It felt exactly like this.”