Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008

by Chris Payne

2000 was like the last year of the nineties instead of the first year of the 2000s, if that makes any sense. 2001 was something new.

"long century" strikes again

The music business has a tendency towards denial.

Punk rock is and should be inclusive. That’s the one thing I know. No matter what your definition of punk is, everyone would say that it’s inclusive, it welcomes outsiders. Freak flags welcome. Wave ’em around.

That’s where the main idea for the lyrics to “The Middle” came from.

“There’s two touring bands we have to pay, how much do you guys want?” And Geoff was like, “You’re not gonna pay us, we live here.” “You sure?” “Yeah.” That was the mentality.

I vividly remember not going to a party on a Friday night to just listen to Full Collapse, alone. Which is a pretty emo thing to do. Shun social interaction and just listen to music.

Now seeing how the internet has turned out, I feel pretty gullible in a way, but at the time, it felt very pure. Very sweet. It felt like maybe the internet would be the great equalizer and bring art to the suburbs and bring subculture to people who needed it. And people who didn’t even realize they needed it.

That’s where “emo” as a dirty word I feel comes from, from hipsters, because it’s not as cool as the Strokes. Nothing’s as cool as the Strokes, though, you know what I mean?

We were listening to the radio and Howard Stern was on, and they started talking about the first plane hitting. At first, because it was Howard Stern, we thought it was just a really tasteless bit. We started switching around and hearing it on regular news channels. And as we started getting close to LaGuardia, we could see the skyline and actually see the smoke coming out of the buildings.

Traumatizing, you know? Traumatizing for years and years after that. It was a big wake-up call for mortality.

9/11 was a pivotal moment for everybody in that area. I was a senior in high school, and it greatly changed my trajectory. I know it did that for Gerard as well.

There was a point where the hardcore scene was just preaching to everyone, like no one was good enough: “Oh, you’re vegan, but you drive a car!” The reaction to that was like, “Let’s just be about moshing.” Or the more visceral reaction was to make jokes that weren’t PC. It weirded me out.

Local teenage girls were way into them. It was cool to see these little kids fangirling over this band while I’m like, “Do you know who these dickheads are?”

“Infamy is bigger than fame.” If half the people hate you, the other half are going to defend you to the death.

You had these bands making music that was catchy and universal, but came from places no one gave a shit about.

The religious oppression creates adverse extremities everywhere you look. I think that’s why the straight-edge scene became this nationwide phenomenon.

“Straight edge” got classified as a gang by the police in Utah.

I really thought I might see this guy die onstage. But what a way to go.

“You’re the number one most illegally downloaded artist in all of Universal.” CHRIS CARRABBA: My response was, “That’s amazing.” RICH EGAN: “Oh, that’s killer!” CHRIS CARRABBA: And the guy said, “Right?! What are we gonna do about it?” And I said, “I guess . . . hope more people download it?” They started yelling at me instantly. RICH EGAN: They’re like, “We need you to do a PSA and speak out against downloading!” Chris was really pissed. He goes, “Those are the kids that come to my shows. The fact that you’re selling less because of it is not my problem.” CHRIS CARRABBA: They went red-faced.

What happens when subculture goes mainstream?

And I think about that all the time. I hope her nose is all right.

They had Flava Flav lip-synching John’s parts.

When Fall Out Boy was getting to the point where they would sell out shows locally, they played a secret show under the name Saved Latin.

I wouldn’t say we were like oil and water, but we were like oil and vinegar. On its own, it’s not great, but together

Pete, Andy, Joe, and Patrick are all smarter than the average person in the hardcore scene.

I don’t know if you remember what Asbury Park looked like in, say 2001, but shit was not cute.

The boardwalk had fucking Weird New Jersey haunted fucking vibes and you know, the creepy mural of the clown with the fucking mouth and all the paint peeling. Everything’s closed. You see rats scurrying across the boardwalk. Shit was dicey, bro.

Love the WNJ shoutout

Every band was starting to aim for this intelligent poetic lyricism, this sort of East Coast poetry, with long song titles.

they were a vampire biker band to me. I loved it.

These guys have long hair! Are we allowed to have long hair now?”

I remember in Vegas at the Hard Rock, they were having a big convention. Everyone’s sitting on their computers, watching a corporate lecture onstage and we’re just walking up drunk to people like, “You’re doing a good job!” “Really? What are you working on?”

But any type of reality celebrity eye-fuck-fest is a bad thing for the world.

Gerard was an avenging angel from some comic book galaxy here to tear down the world.

They wanted to write a song from a really great John Hughes movie soundtrack, you know?

Taking Back Sunday had finished Where You Want to Be and we were so proud of it. My Chemical Romance were our friends and we let them hear it. They’re like, “Oh my god, your record’s so good, wanna hear our new record?” They played us “Helena” and I’m like, “FUCK!” And then they played us “I’m Not Okay.” After hearing those two songs I wanted to go back and rerecord our shit.

We definitely went with Atlantic one time to Applebee’s in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Chili’s in the Long Island music scene was a very important piece of the puzzle. That’s where everybody would go after shows.

The fashion was to dress a little more androgynous, or feminine . . . while also writing lyrics about killing girls. Kind of a weird juxtaposition.

Maybe some of the indie scene, but you can’t go and be a part of the indie scene when you’re fucking seventeen. They’re gonna look at you like you’re a little idiot.

Max is a smart fucking guy. EBEN D’AMICO: He’s the first person who wrote meta music, about emo.

Most people think of popular kids as jocks beating them up; for me, it was a kid who was artsy, but a bully about it.

At Sarah Lawrence, a lot of people are gay, dudes and women. I was sort of successful with girls at the time because I was an artsy kid, and a straight guy—or whatever I was, ha! Seemingly straight . . . And so at that point I was getting more hate for being the, quote, unquote, popular, successful guy

than I was for being too weird or artsy. So that all came out on “Admit It!!!”

If you went back ten years in the scene, there’s people just getting picked on by horrible, homophobic jocks. But once punk started to become more popular generationally, there were people in my generation who were getting picked on for being norms. You’d have the most...

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Jewish comedians were always a big influence on my sense of humor;

making fun of yourself or ma...

the world, but for a serious reason. There’s a reason those comedians exist—Jewish people were marginalized, l...

My grandparents didn’t speak to me or my family because my mom married a non-Jewish guy, an Irish-Catholic dude.

For most bipolar people, you have a manic episode, and it’s so foreign to reality that later on, you can just chalk it up to, “Oh, I thought I was Jesus. Oh, I thought I was gonna be the next Kurt Cobain.” But at the time, people were telling me I was the next Kurt Cobain. That made it very difficult to deal with.