The articles below arw the interview of Fall Out Boys by VJ Nicholas in Singapore indoor stadium February 10th..
Tuesday Feb 10th was crazy as I rushed to attend press conferences for Fall Out Boy at around 2pm. The boys were back to rock Singapore Indoor Stadium later that night, touring for their latest album, Folie à Deux (literally, "a madness shared by two"). I went together with film director Agung Sentausa who was busy taking the band members’ photos using his lomography camera. Agung sure made some clicking noises with his camera…
The concert was crowd with teenagers. Eventough they just used a half from the stadium, but the audiences really enjoyed the concert. The stage design was very minimalis, but the lighting design made their performance became more interesting. The crowd was screaming when their guitars started to lighten up. It sure looked expensive!
I saw Ashley Simpson, the wife of Pete Wentz, come to the stage to meet her husband. I hope that it wasn't only my ilussion.. lol..
Anyway, here is Channel [V]’s conversation with Patrick Stump (rhythm guitarist & lead vocalist) and Andy Hurley (drummer & percussionist). Pete Wentz, the bass guitarist, and Joe Trohman, the lead guitarist, were in another session.
What do you remember from your last trip to Singapore?
The show was awesome. We had a really good time. I think one of the things we feel here is that it is really very similar to the States. It feels like Florida… If it was clean! (Laughs) It’s crazy being so far away from home and feeling very at home here. So it’s always awesome to come back. It’s definitely one of my favorite places to play.
How do you think Fall Out Boy has evolved over the years?
I think you start out and you kind of are emulating your heroes. And music is very much for music’s sake. It’s very much to show off what you’re into and what you like. And I think as you get older, you kind of end up in a place where music just comes out of you, as with any art too. You should start off painting like the masters, and then discover your own voice in it. I think that’s the way we learn the basics. I think that is definitely where we are because when I look at the four of us, we’re such different guys musically. We come from such different music backgrounds. Andy and I have a lot of common interests but musically we’ve always been in different places. And there’s something, I think, really fruitful about that because it creates something different. When we started out, we sounded like bands you could point and go, “Hey that sounds like Saves the Day”. But now I think there are just elements. Andy will play something which totally reminds me of Andy. Andy has this very distinctive combination of Beatles and Slayer, as far as drum style. Joe has this very rock and roll kind of metal style. And I come from soul and R&B and blues and jazz. And Pete loves pop music like Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, that kind of stuff. That’s kind of how we have, over time, just honed those things. Now we’re able to express that in something else. Now we have a purpose. Now we can be like, “Hey we want an album that says this,” and we’re able to harness music that expresses that rather than be like, “Hey we want to sound cool.”
How is it working with Elvis Costello and Debbie Harry?
One thing that we always try to do is, we want to make sure that whatever we do on record is exclusively for artistic reasons. In all those cases, they came about totally naturally. For Elvis Costello, it was a thing where it was like, “Hey who would be the best guy on earth to sing this?” It would be Elvis Costello. And then somehow we got him, which totally blows my mind.
Is there anyone else you would like to work with?
At this point, not really. I think it’s kind of like a record by record basis. If a song calls for it, we’ll find someone who would work. But generally, it’s not a goal. I also think, to a certain extent, there are two things about that – we had also on the record; no one really talks about, Ronnie, who used to be in The Wallflowers. He played some organ parts. And that was a really big thing for us too because he’s just such a great player. We had Tony Visconti, legendary producer. He did a lot of David Bowie stuff, T.Rex stuff. He came in and did string arrangements for the record. Those things are huge for us too. They don’t get as much spotlight. I think one of the things is, contextually, a huge part of art is context. And so, thinking forward, I don’t know if I want any big guests because it gets misinterpreted a lot. A lot of people did it as the thing I was talking about – the sticker around the front of the CD that says “FEATURING”, “BUY OUR RECORD”. That was never the intent. I think maybe for the next record, we might not have anybody, just as a kind of point out that that was never our intent in the first place. It was really just for artistic reasons.
Since this is your fourth album, have you found it easier to get your messages across?
Definitely. It wasn’t possible before to have a message. It wasn’t possible before to have anything cohesive. You’re kind of learning in real time how to be a band. And I think I did it all sorts of different ways when we were starting out. I remember Andy and I used to drive out to this weird practice place. We’ll spend hours working meticulously on parts. We don’t do it that way anymore. Now we go in and we know exactly what we want. So it’s kind of like a Ouija board. You don’t know who’s moving it anymore. The music just kind of happens. I write the music but I think I get a lot more credit than I deserve because so much of it is just implicit. And Pete’s lyrics, you know, the way Pete writes lyrics affects the way I find melody in his words. The way Joe plays the part that I wrote ends up changing the part entirely. The way Andy interprets the rhythms totally changes the song. The band is the four of us. I think it did change over the course of four, or questionably, five albums.
Are there some things that you appreciate more after all the experiences you have been through?
Everyday. Today I appreciate what we’ve been able to do because things are just so different. It’s kind of like the Wild West, not in the record industry, but in a world. Like how we can bounce back from the crisis, how things are going to change. It’s not given. It’s really not, to be able to come here. We also have a really unique experience as a band because being a band right now in America is a totally strange thing. It seems like it’s different than it ever was before. We’re in this strange place where we’re a rock band but we’re popular. And this is like the first time. Rock radio stations will not play us because we’re a pop band. But then, we’re still a rock band. So, pop stations really don’t want to play us. So we’re not on radio anymore. We just have this kind of audience who supports us. And it’s really strange. I can’t think of a lot of bands I can relate to in a similar way. I don’t know. It’s a very strange time. The only other rock bands that have made it and are surviving are either totally, totally cheesy pop or are like the most respected – Coldplay, Radiohead. And we’re somewhere in the middle by ourselves, this little island, just kind of floating out there like, “Hey let’s go take ourselves half serious.” (Laughs)
You worked with Mark Hoppus on one of your videos. Did you hear that Blink is going to put out a new album? What do you guys think of that?
(Andy) Blink is one of my favorite bands of all time. I’m really stoked, obviously. I was listening to Blink all of yesterday in the plane, on the flight here. And I was just beyond happy. It’s just really cool. I want another record!
Tell us about covering The Simpsons theme song. You guys must be huge fans of The Simpsons.
Yeah we like The Simpsons a lot and obviously, our name came from The Simpsons. They asked us to do it. And we did. It was awesome. It’s pretty tough. A lot of bands have done it before. And they kind of done it in different styles. The thing is that, a lot of things that made Fall Out Boy, Fall Out Boy wouldn’t really have come out on it if we tried to do a Fall Out Boy version. So we decided to just do what no one had done thus far, which is to do the song as it is. We transposed everything to guitars so it’s basically all the stuff that’s happening in the string section and the horn section, but just on guitars. That was the whole idea. Because if we did a punk rock version, it probably would’ve sounded like the Green Day version. If we did an indie rock version, it would’ve sounded like the Sonic Youth version. So we just did the song. And it was awesome. It was really hard to do it. This song is complicated!
source : channel [V]
No comments:
Post a Comment