Patrick Stump
Lead singer, composer and rhythm guitarist of the band Fall Out Boy.
Joe Trohman: (referring to Pete and Patrick) You guys should just make lo- You guys should get married.
Patrick: We are. "Fall Out Boy Hard Rock Live Interview (Dance, Dance)"
I hear all sorts of things slung at us, one of my favorites being the "boy-band" accusation. I'm like, 'Boy band? I'm fat! If we were a boy band, I'd look good, I'd dance and I'd be charming - so what the fuck are you talking about?' I write songs, that's all I do.
There's so many accusations that are so ridiculous about Pete Wentz that are taken as the gospel—people just assume that he posted pictures of his penis on the internet. That is the stupidest fucking thing thing I've ever heard. Why on earth would you ever do that?
I'm not a drummer anymore, on my gravestone, if there is one, if anyone writes anything about me besides hopefully being a dad, it would be that I sang in my band when I was in my 20s. So I was like, "Yeah, I should probably focus on this a little more," so I just practiced a lot. (When asked about his singing.)
Right now I'm in Hollywood—I don't like Hollywood, it's not really my style. But I've found my own little niche here where it's not bad. It's one of those things where I've been on an extended work trip here for 2 years. I still technically live in Chicago and I'm dying to get back. That's one of the big things for me, I go back to Chicago when I want to hang out. I'm weirdly very proud of my city, and I hope, God willing, I die there.
I think one of the things if you look at minimalism or expressionism, there's various movements in modern composition that I think you can see really natural relations in pop music, so I mean I always look to that in pop music.
I'm probably the only guy in the world that likes to eat black licorice.
Patrick: One of my favorite rumors about myself is that I am 31, which is just about 10 years off, so...
Pete: He's 41, you mother fuckers.
I don't think we care anymore about what we're gonna do. We're just gonna be our own band and we're not gonna pretend to be any more rock or any less whatever than we are. We're kinda hardcore kids, we're kinda a metal band in this weird way, we're kinda into soul, we're kinda into folk, we're kinda into a lot of stuff and we're just gonna do whatever we do.
There was a weird moment where—I was still a drummer, I always saw myself as a drummer—and we got nominated for a Grammy, that was really crazy, and I was sitting there and Stevie Wonder was on stage and I remember thinking "Wow, I really need to take [singing] more seriously!"
It seems to me like people want to fight just for the fight, not for the ending result and I think that's crap, I think that's silly.
We could be hardcore, but I'm not screaming.
First off, we came from hardcore bands, and, in a lot of ways, we still see ourselves as a hardcore band. That said, that's just how we play. I don't know how else to play when you're in a rock band. If you're in a rock band, that's how you're going to do it.
He's not cocky because of Fall Out Boy, he's cocky because he's Pete Wentz.
What's so funny about i don't get it...
I think Joe's underappreciated, I think Andy's underappreciated, I think Pete's underappreciated, I don't think people know how good he is. I think Neal [Avron]'s underappreciated, but if anything, I feel overappreciated. I think Patrick Stump gets enough attention.
Here's the thing about Kelly Clarkson. At the end of the day, she's an amazing singer, and you can't fault her for that.
YES, I'm short and VERY pale!
I've heard a lot of really awful, negative things said about Pete, and it's like, “Dude, you don't even have a clue how honest and real that guy is” for the amount of crap that people talk about him. Pete said it, and it's true, they make you into a wrestling character. And it's also like reality TV editing. It's really easy to cut somebody in rolling their eyes when that might not have even happened next to the thing that it's being shown next to.
Yeah, I've been writing a bunch of new stuff, but it's all secret. In fact, I may or may not have been writing stuff this entire interview.