Twenty years ago, Fall Out Boy found themselves at odds with reality. Their everyday lives consisted of slogging through an intense tour schedule and stuffing all four members into one hotel room — sometimes, lead singer Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley even slept on the hotel room floor. But in the world of Billboard charts and MySpace blogs, Fall Out Boy was interstellar, skyrocketing into mainstream success. All of it was because of their 2005 breakout record, From Under the Cork Tree.
With Stump’s penchant for pop hooks and Wentz’s clever wordplay, Cork Tree turned the Chicago hardcore scenesters into full-blown rock stars. The LP debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart, yielded the band’s first Top 10 hit with “Sugar We’re Going Down,” and even earned Fall Out Boy a Best New Artist Grammy nomination. But perhaps more importantly, Cork Tree helped the band become the therapists pumping through the speakers of a whole generation of skinny jean-wearing teens, igniting the pop-punk and emo music scene into a blazing force for the masses. It’s the kind of cultural moment that remains dizzying.
“We had no perspective on it at the time,” Wentz tells Rolling Stone.
Stump is equally bewildered when he recalls that time. “No one expected it,” he says.
Now, two decades later, Fall Out Boy are celebrating From Under the Cork Tree in all its glory. Last week, the band released a special anniversary edition of the album with remastered tracks and special box sets. Earlier this year, Rolling Stone named Cork Tree as one of the 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century and “Sugar” made it onto the list of 250 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century.
We caught up with Wentz and Stump, the mastermind duo behind the songs on Cork Tree, to reflect on making the album, its lasting impact, and all the crazy memories it created.
This year, From Under the Cork Tree is celebrating 20 years. How does it feel to look back on this record decades later?
Wentz: It’s interesting when you’re in something that is so spontaneous. It was not an overnight thing, but we were coming out of Take This to Your Grave and going right into this. It was our first record we did that had a big machine that was part of a label. At the time it was kind of like, “Oh, I wonder if this thing will come out. I hope they don’t shelf it or whatever.” [Laughs] It’s interesting to talk about it 20 years later from that perspective where you’re like, “Well, it did.”
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Stump: To your point, Pete, about the overnight thing. It didn’t feel that way, but then it kind of was. The thing about it that’s so fascinating is you can be on a little journey, you can be slugging it along one show at a time, and there’s this really gradual slow burn, but then the jump can be overnight. I mean, in that period we played something like 530 shows in a two-year span. I didn’t live anywhere officially. It was one of these things where we were so deep in it and then the jump was crazy.
What do you guys remember the most about making the album?
Wentz: There were all these different iterations of “Sugar, We’re Going Down.” I remember there were a couple of moments where we went back to the most simple version. At one point, I think the chorus was thrown out and we were like, “Patrick play the last thing you played. No, the thing before that!” This is before voice notes on a cell phone so we’re just in a room together and it’s like, “No, the last one!” And you’re just desperately hoping that the guy remembers the part that was probably a throwaway part to them.
Stump: It was actually the verse. It was really brutal. [Producer] Neal Avron is no nonsense. He’s brilliant, he’s incredible to work with, but he’s also going to tell you the truth. He sat us down and he goes, “I like this song a lot. I don’t think you have the verse that you want.” I gave him some rough ideas of what I would do differently. They weren’t really dramatic enough. I didn’t understand how big a change it needed. Basically, we kept everything from the song except the verse and that sounds like not that much, but it was the whole meat of the song. [Sings]: “Am I more than you bargained for yet?” All that stuff was new.
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That was one of the hardest writing experiences I think I’ve ever had. Usually, I work better by myself, taking somebody’s idea and hashing it out. The four of us don’t usually write in the room together but for that one, we tried so many different things. We had no choice but to really pull it together in this practice space. It was like when you do that game in gym class with the parachute where everyone has to hold it up and go underneath it. We were all holding this thing up somehow and making the song happen, but it barely existed. I get asked about that song on a daily basis, and I still never really understand how it happened. I know where the rest of it came from. I remember reading Pete’s lyrics and writing the rest of the song. I remember sitting in this corridor and being like, “Okay, that makes sense,” and “I’ll repeat this.” But the verse, I don’t know. That’s kind of magic.
You wrote the melody in 10 minutes, right?
Stump: Yeah. Most of the song, the pre-chorus, chorus, all that stuff, that was really quick. When Pete writes lyrics, they’re not really in lyric form, it’s like this stream of consciousness. Sometimes they go together really well, and then sometimes it’s a little bit more work. He’ll have this one genius sentence and it’s just floating out there in space. I have to go through his other lyrics to find stuff that fits it. “Sugar” was this thing where I was just following along and as I’m reading it, the song was just there. But the verses took forever.
This album was so pivotal because it showed where pop punk could grow. What was the thought process when it came to the sound?
Stump: Pete said something to me at the beginning of Cork Tree because I wanted to make something really weird and out there. I was like, “We’re not going to get to make another major label debut and we’re probably going to get dropped.” That’s what usually happens. I wanted to throw everything at the wall. Pete was like, “Don’t do that, just do you. A lot of those things will come out.” I stayed with the idea that we were sort of a pop punk band, but asked what could that be in different ways? I actively tried to do some weird things. I tried to push as far as I could without anyone noticing. Opening the record with “Our Lawyer,” you got a 6/8 [time signature] that was weird at the time. “Get Busy Living” has some kind of dark folky stuff to it. There were these little elements that I was trying to push.
The new box set features a concert ticket from the career-defining Nintendo Fusion Tour. What were some of the most memorable moments from that tour?
Wentz: I remember there was this moment where it’s like you’re the biggest band that gets file-traded in peoples’ parents’ houses, and there’s a moment where you kind of reach critical mass and things can go different ways. On that tour, we ended up playing one arena and I remember thinking people would start with the idea of “selling out” or something. It was like, “Why not?” Listen, we grew up in hardcore bands and with the idea of leaning into and creating satire and provoking conversations about it. At one point we were like, “What would be the most ‘pop’ thing we could do?” We thought, “What if we did a costume change?” On that tour we did a little intermission and a costume change, which was so ridiculous. The rooms were not designed around that. I remember thinking, “This will get people talking.” It was just more confusing for people than anything else.
Stump: Speaking of costume changes, I remember that was Panic’s first tour, right?
I was going to say, that’s very Panic! at the Disco-coded.
Stump: It was really funny. They were touring in a van. At this point, we had the bus and we were starting to have production, and we could put in all these ideas. This was their first tour ever. So they rolled out of the van in suits and everything.
Wentz: They had a crazy thing where they didn’t want to be seen not wearing the paisley suits. So when the rest of us would fly to Europe and wear basketball shorts, they would fly in the paisley suits.
Stump: I remember this one drive we did. It was through the desert in Arizona or something, and they popped out of the van in the paisley vests. I’m like, “Dude, it’s hot. You don’t have to do that.” But they were committed to it. I wish people could have seen that.
What was it like for the band to take off in 2005 and balance playing on Warped Tour while hitting up TRL between stops?
Wentz: You couldn’t really feel it most of the time that year, even though we were breaking. We were traveling, and so we’d be in airports or going to a hotel and then going to morning radio. Most of the time, we were in beige waiting rooms with bad lighting and our publicists being like, “Don’t screw this up, blah, blah, blah.”
I can’t speak for the other bands that were on that Warped Tour, but our record… They tried to work it at the label, but they were like, “It’s kind of not doing anything.” Our fans literally made it happen by making the [“Sugar, We’re Going Down”] video go up TRL. That Warped Tour, I feel like that was the moment where it reached critical mass. It was the first time where you would get off the bus to brush your teeth, and there were just people there and it was like, “Oh, there’s something happening.” You wouldn’t feel it in the beige waiting rooms.
Stump: It was surreal because so much of it was really unexpected. I know that sounds silly because it’s always unexpected when you succeed. But there was something about it that really didn’t match the experience that we were having where we were just kind of smelly and barely covering the price of the one hotel room we would all sneak into and sleep on the floor. Then I remember we got nominated for a Grammy. I got a text on my phone, and it was like, “Oh, congrats on the Grammy nomination.” I thought someone was teasing me. I thought they were kidding.
Even when we went to the VMAs… It was crazy. I don’t think what that was like really translates into modern culture anymore. It was this massive event. So we go there and we’re like, “Excuse me, we probably shouldn’t be here. We probably don’t belong here.” And then they announced our category and the camera people all pan to other artists. When they announced Fall Out Boy, the camera people were running over to us scrambling to get the shot. The whole thing from Warped Tour on… I felt like I was watching it happen to somebody else.
I know Oceans Calling was the last Fall Out Boy show of the year but I have to ask… Are there any plans to do a dedicated From Under the Cork Tree anniversary tour?
Wentz: I don’t think that there’s an anniversary tour planned. We’ve always been the kind of band that shies away from that. The idea of nostalgia is a funny thing, right? I’m so nostalgic for so many films and music, we all are. We’ve just always wanted to create new art and not lean into the nostalgia of it. That being said, we went out and we did Days of Fall Out Boy Past and it was so much fun because we revisited songs that we hadn’t played. Some of ‘em we’ve never played before, and I realized there were some deeper cuts that were really important to people. It was shocking when people would sing along and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t even think people cared about this song.” It was really revitalizing. The thing that I could see… Should I pitch Patrick right here?
Stump: Let’s do this. Let’s see what you got.
Wentz: I was listening to Metallica S&M, and I was thinking it would be so fun to hear Fall Out Boy songs with a symphonic element of some kind. I don’t know if that would be From Under the Cork Tree, but I think it would be our greatest songs or whatever.
Stump: I’m the orchestra guy, I’d do that.
Wentz: Ravinia… a bottle of wine…
Stump: That’d be fun. I say that, and then I’m like, “I’m going to have to do a lot of orchestration. That’s going to be a lot of work for me.” It sounds fun, though.
Wentz: This is not a Ravinia announcement.
Stump: But also hey, Ravinia, bring us there. We’ll do it in an orchestra…
A lot of bands do anniversary tours. I’ve seen amazing ones where bands have done really great tours where they play the record, but I’ve also seen people do it in a really cynical, money grab way. I can’t wrap my head around how to do it in an earnest way. I know this sounds funny, I make pop music and people believe that the only reason you could possibly want to do pop music is for money. But I swear to God, I’m not motivated by money. What’s the old Beatles joke? The one where John Lennon’s like, “Let’s write a swimming pool.” I’m never going to do that. If people want to see us perform Cork Tree, they should come see us now.
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What do you think it is about Cork Tree that continues to have an impact?
Stump: One of the things that has always been important to me, and speaks to the longevity of this record, is that we never really stopped playing any of those songs. I never wanted to. There are records that tanked, and it was really hard to play those songs because it hurt to think about ‘em. But in general, I never like to pretend a record didn’t happen. I never like to play a show without touching a record. Ever since Cork Tree came out, our sets have a substantial amount of the album. I have more respect for the album now than I did when I was a kid. Now, when I play those songs, I care about ’em a lot more than I did in 2007 because I understand what it means to people. It creates this responsibility.
Wentz: So much of this album’s impact is a testament to the way alternative music has always thrived and created this counterculture. It just echoes on forever. There are some records that were so important to me and to us growing up and to see other people embrace ’em… Now when you go out and you see someone wearing a Screeching Weasel t-shirt or The Descendants. It’s like, wow, it lives on. The kids are all right.
