Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz isn't done mixing it up yet

When Fall Out Boy returned in 2013 with ‘Save Rock and Roll’, people were confused. A rock band staking a claim for a genre with an album that was decidedly not rock, what gives? Three years later, it all makes sense. Fall Out Boy have always looked a little further than most and now, as they headline Reading Festival, it seems everyone’s caught up. Speaking to Pete Wentz a few hours before they take to the stage though, it’s painfully clear Fall Out Boy aren’t done keeping on just yet.

“We always were always influenced by all these other genres and now kids, with how they consume music, genre matters so much less now. People know, just because you’re a fan of this doesn’t mean you can’t be a fan of that. I look out and I see Twenty One Pilots or Panic! At The Disco and that’s what they’re doing. They’re bending it all and mixing it all together. They grew up like that. I feel like we’re as influenced by Slayer as we are by Lil’ Wayne as we are by Moombahton. It’s all over the place. It’s so refreshing that you can include different ideas, as long as it’s not a parody. The wildest thing to me is that some kinds of music and art gets stuck on this one thing. This is what it’s going to be forever. ‘This is what rock music is going to be forever, it has to be this.’ Dude, imagine if people in silent films said that. What, we would just never have Star Wars? There’s room for all of it. I appreciate a lot of the music, I went to a Guns ‘n’ Roses concert the other night and I thought that was fucking cool. I wanted to see the Guns ‘n’ Roses/Metallica tour so much when I was little and I wasn’t allowed. Then I also watch videos of Kanye on a floating stage. This is bonkers. Thirty years ago, Axl Rose would have been doing that 100%.”

[sc name="pull" text="It’s so refreshing that you can include different ideas, as long as it’s not a parody."]

As wild and hyperactive as it all sounds what Fall Out Boy are doing, and have always done, is very simple. “The thing I’ve always loved is inclusion. From the community we came from, it’s inclusive. If you’re weird, you can be part of it. If you’re not weird, you can be a part of it. You just have to be tolerant and contribute.”