About a Boy

Chicago's North Shore hardly seems the crucible for edgy punk-pop. But with a new CD that's already gone gold, and jam-packed concert crowds, Fall Out Boy has burst out of the suburbs (even though most of the band members still live with their parents).

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Photo: Paul Natkin

At first, the band had a tougher time establishing themselves nationally. Most of the shows on the first tour were canceled. On later tours they played to audiences of two and one, and even the sound engineer abandoned them one night in Nebraska. They slept on the floors of fans' apartments and crossed Arizona in the summer of 2003 with the heat on in their broken-down van to cool the engine. "It melted the molding on the windows so that it would rain inside the van," Wentz recalls.

The Internet provided an easier way to reach fans. Before they had a major label behind them, Fall Out Boy made their songs available on the music Web site purevolume.com (to date, their songs have been played on the site more than five million times). They also became a presence on myspace.com, an Internet meeting place, interacting with fans in chat rooms and keeping online journals. "We realized that there was this group of ears and voices that weren't being catered to," Wentz explains. "This Internet counterculture definitely appeals to them and allows them to hear music and be part of communities that they wouldn't be through TV and radio."

Judging by the crowds at Fall Out Boy's Warped Tour show in Chicago and in Cincinnati the day before, their fans are mainly girls between the ages of 15 and 20, drawn by Stump's pleading voice and the band's quirkily good looks. (There also were plenty of boys at the shows, showering the stage with T-shirts and forming enormous mosh pits, both at Wentz's urging.)

Something deeper also fuels the fans' response to Fall Out Boy's songs, which the band members write together. The music's ascending melodies, mammoth guitar hooks, and manic structure-Fall Out Boy's songs rise and fall and shift tempos like roller coasters-are a natural complement to oversize teenage emotions, when every twist and turn in life feels momentous. Similarly, the lyrics Stump assembles from Wentz's notebooks mix heart-on-sleeve yearning and cleverly sarcastic humor into a potent evocation of teen life. "You can really relate to what they say. It's the anthems of your life and your day," Ashley Winkiel says.

"It's shocking, every time you interact with someone who says, ‘Your songs changed my life' or ‘got me through this period,'" says Wentz, who has an undeniable way with an epigram. "I'd burn the city down to show you the light" (from "Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year") is a pretty good example of the emotional scale Fall Out Boy operates on. They can flash a tongue-in-cheek wit, too: "The ribbon on my wrist says Do not open before Christmas" (from "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued.")

Photo: Paul Natkin

With a combination of emotional intimacy and hyperactive energy, the band brings out the wilder side of quiet, shy kids like Leigha, a freckled, moon-faced, soft-spoken Cincinnati 16-year-old with curly reddish-brown hair. She's never been to a rock concert-her father, whom she describes as strict, won't allow it-so she and her 15-year-old sister told him they were going to the mall but sneaked off to see Fall Out Boy. They're perched against a railing, part of a long row of kids that stretches along the ground and up a stairway overlooking the stage that's been erected in a corner of Cincinnati's Riverbend Music Center. (The Warped Tour scatters make-shift stages across parking lots and food courts of outdoor stadiums. With the cramped array of merchandise booths and the scruffy performance areas, the festival typically resembles a cross between a third-world bazaar and a summer music camp.) "I'm madly in love," Leigha declares. "They're real hot and they sing great. I love the way they spin."

Fall Out Boy's shows involve a great deal of spinning. While Hurley, stripped to the waist, tattoos emblazoned on his chest and arms, powers the songs with thunderous drumming, Stump, Trohman, and Wentz whirl and jump around the stage without missing a note. Meanwhile, waves of bodysurfing kids tumble over the crowd barricade into the waiting arms of security guards. Many of the surfers snap a quick up-close photo once they land on their feet before being nudged to the exits.

At the end of each show, Wentz tries to bring the crowd and the band together in a moment of communion. "For the next three minutes, let's pretend the world outside doesn't exist. Let's live this fucking moment," he urges before Fall Out Boy launches into "Saturday." Shedding his instrument, Wentz takes a microphone and clambers up the crowd barricade. While Charlie Mark, back to the wall, wraps his tattooed arms around the bassist's legs to keep the fans from pulling him under, Wentz reaches the mike out to the singing crowd and clutches fans' hands.