Breaking Tradition

I think guys are pretty shitty at multi-tasking,” Fall Out Boy lead guitarist Joe Trohman laughs during a recent tour stopover in Washington DC.“So it's better for us guys to focus on one thing at a time. I personally don't believe anybody's good at multi-tasking. I think even when someoneseems like they've been working on a lot of projects at once, in real time they probably haven't. It's very hard to sit there and change mindsets constantly. I prefer to put [total] focus into each thing that I do, therefore hopefully it won't come out like crap.”

Despite their multitude of ventures, this career tunnel vision means the Chicago pop/punk/rockers have never sought to undertake any half-heartedly. Thus, after four mega-selling studio albums, a comic book, fashion line, video game remake and more, in 2009 they announced an indefinite hiatus to pursue other projects. Frontman Patrick Stump released his solo debut, Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley played in metal supergroup The Damned Things and bassist Pete Wentz kept busy with electro-pop project Black Cards, wrote a novel and hosted reality showBest Ink.

In February, their comeback was confirmed. Alleviating any fears their drawing power had waned, the global success of latest LP, Save Rock And Roll - featuring collabs with Big Sean, Courtney Love and Elton John - has cemented their major player status.

“I think the word fresh is a good attachment,” Trohman enthuses. “We're not sitting there going like, 'We're here to save rock'n'roll'. We're putting into play the thought that rock'n'roll doesn't have to be this traditionalist style of music. If you want to be traditionalist about it, go listen to Dixieland jazz, Christian gospel music and Delta blues, which is where a lot of it came from, and old country stuff. 

“Otherwise, it really doesn't just have to sound like Led Zeppelin, whom I love, or Black Sabbath, whom I also love. It should be constantly pushing things forward, constantly changing and growing, and I think it's been doing that since it was dubbed 'rock'n'roll' in the fifties. To turn it into a retro genre will only bury it six feet under. So that's sort of what we're trying to get across; the idea that it should be pushing boundaries and doing something fresh.”

So the 'retro rock' movement doesn't really wash with him? “I'm not saying it doesn't wash with us,” the axeman clarifies. “I think a lot of it can be great, and a lot of it can be done in a really interesting way. If you listen to our records, we incorporate plenty of that. We incorporate tonnes of classic rock influences. We also don't limit ourselves to what we listen to, and we're not out there trying to write someone else's record that was written thirty years ago.

“[Classic rock] is an important part, just as much as music itself. Tonnes of classic genres are very evident within our back catalogue and our new record. It's just that if you believe that only classic rock, or only old blues rock [is] the only rock that should exist then you're stagnating rock's growth and the idea of rock becoming this future music. Rock is an attitude and it is a mindset, too.”

Australian fans will witness this forward-thinking ethos on stage during their upcoming arena tour with Melbourne's British India. This followsFall Out Boy's intimate theatre shows here in March. “We didn't go away for maybe a long time in terms of actual time, but in the music world nowadays, where everything really relies on the fifteen minutes and then refresh your blog kind of timeframe, three-and-a-half, four years is kind of a long while. We know we still have a lot of real diehard fans in Australia, but as far as the response [in March], we had no idea that would come into play. That obviously warranted us coming back and doing something bigger.”