None of This Rocks by Joe Trohman

Author:Joe Trohman [TROHMAN, JOE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Everything kept getting bigger. As the success of Take This to Your Grave propelled the band’s popularity and upstreamed us from Fueled by Ramen to Island Records, the stakes rose, and the necessity to write new songs and produce an expensive major-label album became the focal point. Up until then, we were a down-and-dirty punk band, for better or worse, no matter how you may perceive us. Until that sea change, we were a united front, a motley crew, all on the same page. But as things began to grow out of the DIY and into the mainstream machine, my role in the band, as the person who kept us together and pushed us forward, was becoming obsolete.

I had helped write a bit of music on Take This to Your Grave—not a lot, but some. Patrick was, and still is, the band’s main songwriter, innately talented at crafting hook-laden songs. Naturally, we lean on him for the bulk of our music. But I wanted to write more, to contribute my part. Problem was, songwriting was not something that came as naturally for me, at first. I had to hone that ability. By the time I caught up, it was clear I was too far behind. As the band’s career moved forward at light speed and the need for new material grew, I found myself lost.

I wanted to contribute music and ideas, but I didn’t know how to present them in a way that made sense. I really needed help. But I was too ashamed to request guidance, mortified that I wasn’t producing songs properly, not the way I can today. I was quite young. I didn’t know how to ask for what I wanted, not like a normal, healthy person. Instead, I asked like a tyrant pissant, pouting, stomping, passive-aggressively sneering, not understanding why me being a total drag wasn’t working for anyone.

Dissecting that abhorrent behavior, I think my problem boiled down to the fact that, at one time, I knew who I was, within the confines of the band. But amid new adjustments, I was vacillating in the cosmos of Fall Out Boy, existing on the precipice between wide-eyed, hopeful excitement—that sort of feeling you get on the first day of attending a new school—and dark, dismal apathy—that sort of feeling you get on the second day of attending a new school. Things were about to go from pro-am to the majors for the group, and I was still stuck in pro-am mode.

The moment that the band progressed to Island Records was a paradigm shift like no other. Everything went into hyperdrive once we started production on what would become our breakthrough album, From Under the Cork Tree. And it was at that time that Patrick and Pete had begun to really solidify their sort of Lennon/McCartney duo, to share in each other’s artistic spoils. This was the first time in our band’s short career—four or five years in—that I started to feel a separation and was left to my own devices.

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