Pete Wentz: 'Fall Out Boy aren't breaking up'

Plus, he chooses between Beatles or Stones

Joe Bosso, Thu 5 Nov 2009, 7:02 pm GMT

Pete Wentz: 'Fall Out Boy aren't breaking up'

Pete Wentz addresses Fall Out Boy breakup rumors in our interview (© © Kabik /Retna Ltd./Corbis)

Pete Wentz finds it "odd and slightly amusing" that his band, Fall Out Boy, is issuing a greatest hits collection.

After all, it's been only four years since the Illinois-based foursome released their major-label debut, the multi-million-selling From Under The Cork Tree, and since that time they've put out just three other albums.

"Greatest hits records are a funny thing," Wentz says. "I always think of them as being from bands with loads of huge songs. Fall Out Boy, we're kind of a different group."

Indeed, the appearance of a greatest hits set (the official title is Believers Never Die - Greatest Hits) is fanning the flames on Fall Out Boy fan sites with rumors that the band (which also includes singer-songwriter and guitarist Patrick Stump, guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley) might be pondering a breakup or a split from their label.

Wentz, bassist and lyricist for the group, record mogul (he runs Decaydance Records, home to Panic! At The Disco, Cobra Starship, The Academy Is...among others) and all-around media darling (he married singer Ashlee Simpson in 2008; the two have a year-old son, Bronx), takes on these issues head-on during the following MusicRadar interview.

"People want us to say 'we're breaking up'...It's just that we've been doing this for seven or eight years, and we need a break."

He also graciously answers some questions from MusicRadar readers - and one mind-twister of our own.

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Whenever a band releases a greatest hits CD, two things come to mind: A) the band is breaking up or B) the group is leaving its label. Any truth on either of these fronts?

"I'd say no to both. We're not leaving our label 'cause I know we own them records still. And as to the breaking up, people want us to say 'we're breaking up' or 'we're taking a hiatus.' It's just that we've been doing this for seven or eight years, and we need a break.

"People want an answer of when we'll be back, and I think it's impossible…it's unfair to say when we'll do Fall Out Boy again. It's hard to be creative. You just feel compressed all the time. We just want to let ourselves decompress."

MusicRadar