Pete in NME!
Here! I have transcribed the NME interview with Pete that is accompanied by a gorgeous picture of Pete that will get uploaded soonish. I shortened all the Fall Out Boys to FOB, but NME has decided to refer to Panic! as P!@tD.
The cover says, next to a wee version of the Pete picture, "Sugar We're Going Up!: Inside Fall Out Boy's Emo Empire." (Note: this is next to a headline about Morrissey. Pete probably wet himself.)
The inside header says, "He's in America's best new band. He runs his own rock'n'roll empire. He's the overlord of the new emo revolution. Meet Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz, the mastermind behind the new US invasion."
The article: Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III is many things to many people. To the legions of Fall Out Boy fans, the self-proclaimed Overcast Kids who furtively stalk his every move, he is their bass-slinging emo godhead and you only have to dip a toe into the narcissistic netherworld that is MySpace to find hundreds of girls who would readily gouge out an eye if it meant they could stand in his presence for a moment. Conversely, to the haters, he is the very manifestation of mainstreemo's manifold evils: eye-liner, pubescent angst and attention-seeking song titles such as "I Liked You a Whole Lot More Before You Were a Fucking MySpace Whore."
But to towering hip-hop impresario and FOB fan Jay-Z, Wentz represents his brightest -- and presumably his whitest -- student. Why? Because over the past year, bolstered by the meteoric success of his day job, Wentz has taken a leaf out of the Rocfather's book and done the impossible: he has become pop-punk's fist bona fide entrepreneur. He is, for instance, the proud owner of a clothing line -- Clandestine Industries, a business which also publishes Wentz's literary concerns, such as an impending novel recently co-written with The Academy Is... singer William Beckett. [Emphasis Eleanor's.] He also runs a film production company (Bartskull Films) and, perhaps most intriguing of all, his own record label, Decaydance Records.
Granted, the fact that a bass player in some band has started his own label is hardly the kind of story that sets pulses racing -- after all, the history of rock is littered with dozens of successful artist-run labels. What has set Decaydance apart is Wentz's seeming infallible A&R midas ouch, causing true-blood label folk across the US to grate their teeth in restrained annoyance. In fact, his talent at sourcing acts has not gone unnoticed by the suits upstairs.
"It's been weird," he coughs down the phone. "Because of Decaydance, I've had several major labels pleading 'Please move to New York and do A&R for us,' but that's not proactive for FOB, obviously. That's not what interests me. The interesting thing about Decaydance is that I totally run the whole operation. I don't answer to anybody, and if something fails, it's on my shoulders."
So does he think that his position as a recording artist gives him an advantage over your typical A&R stooge?
"Absolutely," he whispers, conspiratorially. "From being on tour and seeing bands play and interacting with kids, I can definitely tell the difference between a band that have an actual buzz on them compared to a band that have created some fake MySpace buzz on themselves. And the other thing is that Fall Out Boy's fanbase are really good at picking winners and finding bands that lay in uncharted territory. Being in a band is just that extra resource I can tap into."
You only have to look at the overnight success of Panic! at the Disco to understand what the man is capable of. In fact,it was thanks to the Las Vegas quartet that Wentz decided there was more to life than swinging a bass around his neck and chasing skirt in the first place.
I really had no aspirations to start a label to begin with -- when I found the Academy Is... I just made sure they got signed to Fueled By Ramen. But when I found Panic! at the Disco, I was like, 'Holy fuck! I have to work with this band! It was from that moment I realised I wanted to start a label."
Let there be no doubt, Decaydance is an emo label. But it'sa fact mitigated by the diversity of talent Wentz has managed to sign, from P!@tD's ostentatious, Killers-style glitz to hotly tupped backpack hip-hop stars Gym Class Heroes, whose playful track, "Taxi Driver" reads like a who's who of ghosts of emo past. (Sample verse: "I took Cutie for a ride in my Death Cab / She tipped be with a kiss, I dropped her off at the meth lab / Before she left she made a Dashboard Confessional.")
"Decaydance is about working with bands that I've discovered, that I love, and that I wwant to bring to people's attention," says Wentz. "Every band on the label has to be somebody I believe in."
How exactly does he sqare his status as a burgeoning emo-mogul with his position within FOB?
"I think..." he starts hesitantly. "I think they're pretty supportive. I think everybody knows FOB are my main concern. But hte bigger problem is that as FOB gets bigger, how much that will impact the artists on the label. I don't want it ever to get to a point where people are saying, 'This band is big because simply because they're associated with Pete from FOB.' And I know that's definitely a danger."
The cover says, next to a wee version of the Pete picture, "Sugar We're Going Up!: Inside Fall Out Boy's Emo Empire." (Note: this is next to a headline about Morrissey. Pete probably wet himself.)
The inside header says, "He's in America's best new band. He runs his own rock'n'roll empire. He's the overlord of the new emo revolution. Meet Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz, the mastermind behind the new US invasion."
The article: Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III is many things to many people. To the legions of Fall Out Boy fans, the self-proclaimed Overcast Kids who furtively stalk his every move, he is their bass-slinging emo godhead and you only have to dip a toe into the narcissistic netherworld that is MySpace to find hundreds of girls who would readily gouge out an eye if it meant they could stand in his presence for a moment. Conversely, to the haters, he is the very manifestation of mainstreemo's manifold evils: eye-liner, pubescent angst and attention-seeking song titles such as "I Liked You a Whole Lot More Before You Were a Fucking MySpace Whore."
But to towering hip-hop impresario and FOB fan Jay-Z, Wentz represents his brightest -- and presumably his whitest -- student. Why? Because over the past year, bolstered by the meteoric success of his day job, Wentz has taken a leaf out of the Rocfather's book and done the impossible: he has become pop-punk's fist bona fide entrepreneur. He is, for instance, the proud owner of a clothing line -- Clandestine Industries, a business which also publishes Wentz's literary concerns, such as an impending novel recently co-written with The Academy Is... singer William Beckett. [Emphasis Eleanor's.] He also runs a film production company (Bartskull Films) and, perhaps most intriguing of all, his own record label, Decaydance Records.
Granted, the fact that a bass player in some band has started his own label is hardly the kind of story that sets pulses racing -- after all, the history of rock is littered with dozens of successful artist-run labels. What has set Decaydance apart is Wentz's seeming infallible A&R midas ouch, causing true-blood label folk across the US to grate their teeth in restrained annoyance. In fact, his talent at sourcing acts has not gone unnoticed by the suits upstairs.
"It's been weird," he coughs down the phone. "Because of Decaydance, I've had several major labels pleading 'Please move to New York and do A&R for us,' but that's not proactive for FOB, obviously. That's not what interests me. The interesting thing about Decaydance is that I totally run the whole operation. I don't answer to anybody, and if something fails, it's on my shoulders."
So does he think that his position as a recording artist gives him an advantage over your typical A&R stooge?
"Absolutely," he whispers, conspiratorially. "From being on tour and seeing bands play and interacting with kids, I can definitely tell the difference between a band that have an actual buzz on them compared to a band that have created some fake MySpace buzz on themselves. And the other thing is that Fall Out Boy's fanbase are really good at picking winners and finding bands that lay in uncharted territory. Being in a band is just that extra resource I can tap into."
You only have to look at the overnight success of Panic! at the Disco to understand what the man is capable of. In fact,it was thanks to the Las Vegas quartet that Wentz decided there was more to life than swinging a bass around his neck and chasing skirt in the first place.
I really had no aspirations to start a label to begin with -- when I found the Academy Is... I just made sure they got signed to Fueled By Ramen. But when I found Panic! at the Disco, I was like, 'Holy fuck! I have to work with this band! It was from that moment I realised I wanted to start a label."
Let there be no doubt, Decaydance is an emo label. But it'sa fact mitigated by the diversity of talent Wentz has managed to sign, from P!@tD's ostentatious, Killers-style glitz to hotly tupped backpack hip-hop stars Gym Class Heroes, whose playful track, "Taxi Driver" reads like a who's who of ghosts of emo past. (Sample verse: "I took Cutie for a ride in my Death Cab / She tipped be with a kiss, I dropped her off at the meth lab / Before she left she made a Dashboard Confessional.")
"Decaydance is about working with bands that I've discovered, that I love, and that I wwant to bring to people's attention," says Wentz. "Every band on the label has to be somebody I believe in."
How exactly does he sqare his status as a burgeoning emo-mogul with his position within FOB?
"I think..." he starts hesitantly. "I think they're pretty supportive. I think everybody knows FOB are my main concern. But hte bigger problem is that as FOB gets bigger, how much that will impact the artists on the label. I don't want it ever to get to a point where people are saying, 'This band is big because simply because they're associated with Pete from FOB.' And I know that's definitely a danger."