Mikey asked. Whatever's in [] is what I added.
"Fall Out boy are in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), the second stop on a back-to-basics club tour to promote their new album. They drove down from Boston this morning in a rented Dodge minivan and are currently lounging in the makeshift dressing room of a North Philly dive bar, across the street from Floyd & Diann's Tire Service. A camera crew from Fuse is here, and a gaggle of pubescent girls await a meet-and-greet just outside the door. And over in the corner, Pete Wentz is unzipping his pants.
Armed with an empty 16-ounce Poland Spring bottle, Wentz- Fall Out Boy's 29 year old bassist and mouthpiece- turns to face the wall. While the rest of the room averts their eyes, he hunches he back and takes what is, by all appearances, a brief yet wholly satisfying piss.
'All right,' he says, zipping back up. 'We ready?'
Pete Wentz has built his life around making the private public. In an age when all reality is televised and the most intimate of details are broadcast via Facebook Alert, Wentz is the king of the overshare- penning songs that flaunt their autobiographical provenance and blogging obsessively about everything from his 2005 suicide attmept to his favorite skate shoes. Unguarded and unashamed, he's the quintessential 21st century rock star- a penis-flashing Twitter stream come to life.
Wentz has been mocked mercilessly for his atention-mongering. He's been branded an asshole, a sellout, a fucktard, a fame whore, a twat, a dick and a closeted gay douchebag-- and those are just the comments on one Perez Hilton post. But as Wentz puts it in the Fall Out Boy will encore tonight: I don't care what you think as long as it's about me.
'Being famous is like being in the WWF (World Wrestling Federation),' Wentz says. 'When we first came out, I was Hulk Hogan. Kids loved me. Now I'm more like the Undertaker. The thing people don't understnad is, the boos are the same as the cheers to me. I just love to wrestle.'
Two days later- sunny Los Angeles. FOB are shooting a video for their new single "America's Suitehearts" at a hangar-sized soundstage. The set resembles a ghoulish Hollywood carnival, complete with zombie starlets, a moat of toxic sludge, and a giant red merry-go-round where the band will perform before a pack of bloodthirsty paparazzi.
The cameras roll, and the carousel begins to spin. As teh fake photographers swarm, the members of FOB circle one by one into view. First comes guitarist Joe Trohman- Crazy-haired and slightly dazed-looking, in red suede boots and a matching fez. Next, Andy Hurley, the bearded, tattooed drummer, in a leprechaun-green tuxedo and no shirt. Singer Patrick Stump, wearing a canary-yellow tailcoat and a feathered top hat, looking like a debonair chicken. And finally- in kneehigh leather boots, gold lame hot pants and a black lace headpiece so ghastly Cher would have worn it to the Oscars and once did- comes Wentz, looking like some kind of gay glam gladiator, an evil skelton smile plastered on his face in black and white greasepaint.
It's not hard to find reasons to make fun of Wentz, His swooping bangs and disproportionately large head make him look disturbingly like a grown-up version of a Garbage Pail Kid. He wears girls' jeans and toils in a genre known more for its interest in cosmetics than for its contributions to the pop music canon. His lyrics are more self-indulgent than a luxury-spa retreat. Pictures of his penis have wound up on the internet. He plays the bass- and not very well.
Yet this self-described 'dirty, shitty boy' is also, improbably, the world's biggest rock star under teha ge of 30. (Try naming one bigger.[cough cough Rita here, RYAN.]) He has his hand in a clothing line, an MTV show, a chain of bars and his own record label. Riding the cresting twin waves of emo and MySpace, FOB transformed themselves from four midwestern kids with funny names and bad haircuts to one of rock's last reliable record-movers, selling a combined 4 million copies of their last 2 albums. And today, over in the band's dressing room, curled up on a checkered sofa, sits another keystone of Wentz's growing celebrity: a very pregnant Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. She and Wentz were married last may; they're expecting their first child, a boy, literally any minute. 'Hey babe,' Wentz says during a break in shooting, He bends down and kisses her cheek. 'Feeling okay?'
Simpson wipes a smudge of his makeup of her face. 'I hope he comes out soon,' she says, lifting her shirt to expose her colossal belly. 'He's killing my bladder.'
America's Funniest Home Videos is on, and Wentz plops down on the floor to watch. He scoots backward between her legs, resting his chin on her thigh and his head gently against her stomach. She strokes his hair, brushing the bangs from his eyes. On the TV, a fat lady tumbles off a trampoline and into a fence. They both laugh.
Wentz allows that the pregnancy sped things up, but he always knew they'd be married someday. He courted her publicly and relentlessly, babbling about his crush in magazines (both were dating other people) and e-mailing her often. 'I hunted her down and shot the dart in her,' he says. 'I just had to wait for her to collapse.' Now they live in Beverly Hills mansion just up the road from Posh and Becks, whith his-and-hers bulldogs and a son on the say. 'Basically, I'm married to the person I'd be jerking off to.'
The band's new album is called Folie A Deux, French for a shared madness of two-a psychological condition in which two people suffer from similar delusions, each feeding off the other's psychosis. (Wentz read about it in Newsweek.) The textbook example is Romeo and Juliet [or Mikey and Marlee], but Wentz swears the title isn't about him and Simpson. Instead, it's about fame- the toxic symbosis between stars and their public.
Wentz has always lived his life in the spotlight, mostly by design, But since he married pop's most notorious little sis, he's become a red-hot tabloid magnet, hounded by paparazzi outside Starb ucks like any Hollywood celebutard. 'Pete would never be on the cover of people if it weren't for Ashlee,' says Perez Hilton. 'Before her, he was just that guy in the band who wore eyeliner and spent a lot of time on his hair.' As Ashlee's due date nears, the paps have staked out the couple's home 24/7, hoping to score some pictures of the mommy-to-be en route to the hospital. The morning after the video shoot, I meet Wentz and STump for breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Wentz arrives a half-hour late: The paps pounced before he'd pulled out of the driveway, and he spent the next 30 minutes zigzagging around the Hollywood Hills trying to lose them. 'It's weird,' he says sliding into the booth. 'Spending your life being followed by people who want a picture of the person sitting next to you.'
'Welcome to my world,' Stump snorts.
Wentz [sucks to this- he's gonna be W from now on.] likes eating here because the paps can't get in. Still, he sits with his back to the wall, his eyes darting nervously toward any peripheral movement. 'I'm paranoid pretty much all the time,' he says. A few nights ago, he was in the kitchen when he saw someone on the security monitor: a man, scaling the fence. He ran outside; the intruder hoppeed in his car and sped off, smashing the Range Rover on the way.
W sets his sunglasses on the table and picks up the menu. Truth ber told, he doesn't look great. Dark bags ring his eyes, and his skin has a waxy, jaundiced pallor. He says he sleeps three hours a night- sometimes less- and pops Ambien like Tropical Skittles. 'I can take three Xanax bars and not feel a thing,' he says. 'It's kinda scary.'
We haven't been seated long when who should walk in the restaurant but W's buddy John Mayer. 'Oh, shit!' W says, jumping up to give him a hug. 'What's up, dude?'
Mayer answers with a hearty clap on the back. 'I just sent you an email! How's the 32-month pregnancy?' He turns to Stump. 'I swear to god, they're making a superhero over there.'
Close friends who- had things turned out differently with Jessica- might have been brothers-in-law, W and m set online tounges wagging last spring when they engaged in a breathless bromance on their respective blogs. (W praised M in a post called YES, IT'S A CRUSH and two days later, M responded with a gushing note titled CRUSH REQUEST ACCEPTED.) 'Pete has this fabulous meta-awareness,' M says. 'Some people mistake it for narcissism, but it's really just his ways of playing with the idea of PW. His genius is that he's always one step ahead.' M also admires the way W has navigated the perils of tabloid romance: 'To have this beautiful relationship with someone who gets attacked so often, and to handle it with such grace and respect- I just find that really impressive.'
While the two pals catch up, Stump sits in silence, awkwardly picking at his huevos rancheros. Though he obsitantly FOB's frontman, S takes a backseat to W both onstage and IRL. Partly it's good for business; their well-known division of labor-W writes the lyrics, S the melodies- keeps W's antics front and center, while S is largely a blank slate- a golden throated delivery system for someone else's emotions., the plain white cracker to W's cheese. But it's also a function of personality. A self-described nerd, S says he has 'terribly low self-esteem' and shuns the spotlight whenever possible. And though he's a gifted producer who's been invited to make beats for superstars like Lil Wayne and Jay-Z, he always finds a way to say no. 'I'm just a fat white dude from Glenview, Illinois, [ILLINOIS FTW.]' he says. 'As a hip-hop fan, I don't want me doing hip-hop.'
According to W, S 'has this amazing ability to hide in plain sight.' Sometimes, though, it's unclear as to whearther he's hiding or just not being seen, Take the night of the presidential election, when they were both in New York. W attended a b-day party for Diddy, where he cheered teh returns alongside Jay-Z, Ben Stiller, and Kenneth from 30 Rock. S, meanwhile, watched CNN from his hotel room alone. 'Dude, you should have called me!' says W when he hears this news. But it's clear from S's face taht it wouldnt've mattered.
Still, the two are about as close as friends can be. S was the best man at W's wedding, as well as the one who 'talked him off the cliff' when the penis photos hit the web. 'Things literally could not have gotten worse,' W says now. 'I was just a wingman for my cock.'
Often however, the pair's folie a deux doesn't leave much room for numbers trois et quatre.The first time I meet Andy, in his dressing room at the video shoot, he's feeling suicidal. 'If the Packers [Green Bay Packers, football team] don't get this first down, I'm gonna kill myself,' says the drummer, watching his beloved Packers struggle against the Vikings [Minnesota Vikings]. When Green Bay's kicker misses the game-winning field goal, H smals his iPhone onto the table, gets up, and starts punching the metal door frame, and doesn't stop for 45 seconds.
Let's face it: the dude's a little weird. [WTF. HOW DOES HE GET TO SAY THIS.] A self-described 'anarcho-savagist,' H believes that civilization is on it's way out, and the sooner, the better- he opposes conservation, supports ecoterrorism, and plans to use his FOB money to buy land in northern Wisconsin and ride out the apocalypse. He shares a house in Milwaukee [Wisconsin] with four vegan straght-edge buddies, where they play kickball on Thursdays and practice jujitsu every morning. They call it Fuck City. 'I don't really get into that red-carpet stuff,' H says, somewhat unecessarily. 'I like to keep things pretty simple.'
Talking with H, you get the impression that he's completly content to play the drums and go home to his Boca Burgers and Alan Moore comics. Joe Trohman, on the other hand, wants to do more. 'I do feel left out a lot,' the guitarist says. At 24, he's teh youngest of the Fall Out boys, and he plays the role of kid brother well- splurging on old Nintendo games and $500 Storm Trooper figurines, finding funny YouTube videos for the guys to watch (the latest favorite: Chimpanzee Riding a Segway [FTW]). If FOB were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, W would be Leonardo, S would be Donatello, H would be Raphael, and T, all agree, would be Michelangelo- the 'party dude'. 'Joe is a free spirit,' S says. 'He's just off in Joe Land, which is an awesome place to be.'
To hear T tell it though, Joe Land isn't always so awesome. 'It does get frustrating, not being able to contribute,' T says. 'I mean, it's hard to be labeled a background guy, someone who's just along for the ride- it's hard. I started FOB, you know?' He wrote a few songs for the new albume, but they were all cut, last minute, 'It's kind of a bummer, to work so hard and have it all come to nothing. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing anyone, or I'm ungrateful,' he stresses. 'Because I'm very happy to be part of all this. I'm afraid the guys are gonna read this and wish I'd talked to tehm first- which maybe I should have. But sometimes, it doesn't feel like I'm even in the band."
God, that's all I can bear to write. There's one more section, but my wrist hurts and if you really want it, I'll send it to you.
The rest of it is about Pete. .__.
You can see why we're so pissed about it.
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