Pete Wentz

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Peter Wentz
Wentz at the Blender Sessions, Hard Rock Hotel, Chicago, 6 August 2007
Background information
Birth name	Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III
Born	June 5, 1979 (1979-06-05) (age 29)
Origin	Wilmette, Illinois, U.S.
Genre(s)	Pop punk, alternative rock
Instrument(s)	Vocals, bass guitar, guitar, piano, keyboards,
Years active	2000 — present
Label(s)	Decaydance Records, Fueled by Ramen, Island Records
Associated acts	Fall Out Boy, Ashlee Simpson
Website	http://www.falloutboyrock.com/

Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III (born June 5, 1979) is the bassist, back-up vocalist, and primary lyricist of Chicago-based band Fall Out Boy, as well as an entrepreneur.

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Sexuality
5 References
6 External links

Early life

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Please improve this article if you can (April 2008).

Pete Wentz was born Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Dale Wentz, a High School admissions counselor; and Pete Wentz II, a lawyer. He attended New Trier High School and North Shore Country Day School, where he was an all-state soccer player. After graduating from high school in 1997, he attended DePaul University where he studied political science, dropping out one semester shy of graduation to focus more on music.^[1]

Wentz recalled in a Rolling Stone interview that his earliest musical memory was listening to The Foundations' song "Build Me Up Buttercup" in the back of his dad's car.^[2]

Pete is the oldest of three children. He has a brother named Andrew, and a younger sister named Hillary.^[3]

Wentz is of Native Hawaiian and German ancestry.

Career

Beginnings

Fall Out Boy in concert. From left to right: Joe Trohman, Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump.

Wentz was primarily involved in the Chicago hardcore punk scene and was in several bands in the late 1990s. These included First Born, Extinction, Arma Angelus (alongside Tim McIlrath, frontman of Rise Against), Yellow Road Priest, and Racetraitor. He and Arma Angelus' bassist Joe Trohman founded the pop-punk band Fall Out Boy after Trohman introduced Pete to a musical acquaintance, Patrick Stump. Andy Hurley agreed to drum part-time, but only joined the band full-time later. In 2004, Arma Angelus, the band in which Wentz was the vocalist/screamer, played its last show.^[4]

In 2002, Fall Out Boy released an EP called Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket Split EP. Soon after, in 2003, the band released Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend on Uprising Records.^[5] This album would later be digitally remastered and reissued after the band's second, more successful full-album release Take This To Your Grave, on the independent label Fueled by Ramen Records. Later in 2003, Wentz and the rest of his bandmates signed with Island Records and in 2004 released an acoustic EP and DVD entitled, My Heart Will Always Be the B-Side to My Tongue through the new label.

Commercial success

After Fall Out Boy released the My Heart EP, they released their third album, From Under the Cork Tree, in 2005. Wentz wrote the lyrics to the first single, "Sugar, We're Goin Down" with his dad in Chicago; the song peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100^[6]). February 6, 2007, was the release date for Fall Out Boy's fourth full-length album, Infinity On High.

Wentz has been helping Panic at the Disco, the band he signed to his Decaydance Records label in 2005, with their second album, Pretty. Odd., which came out on March, 2008.^[7]

Other projects

Wentz has written a book entitled The Boy With the Thorn In His Side, which is a story based on nightmares he had as a child.^[8] The title is a reference to a track on The Smiths' album The Queen Is Dead. He has another book titled, "Rainy Day Kids," which was scheduled to be released February 14, 2006, but has been postponed. ^[9] In addition, Wentz is currently co-writing another book with William Beckett of The Academy Is....

Wentz's company, Clandestine Industries, distributes books and clothing and other merchandise. On August 2, 2007, fashion company DKNY joined a partnership with Clandestine Industries.^[10] Wentz himself has served as a model on the DKNY/Clandestine promo website.^[11]

Additionally, he owns his own imprint of Fueled by Ramen, Decaydance Records, which has signed several bands, including: Panic at the Disco. And other models at Buzznet, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship, October Fall, Lifetime, and The Cab. Wentz's tattoo on his pelvis, the Bartskull, is the logo for Decaydance Records, Clandestine Industries, and Bartskull Films.

He also has a film production company called Bartskull Films, which put out the DVD Release the Bats, which stars Wentz, his fellow bandmates, and several of his personal friends. The sequel is currently in the works.

In April 2007, Pete came out with his own signature Squier Precision Bass. It has a black body with a red shell pickguard and special graphics that include Wentz’s own red design on the body, plus a black bat/diamond fingerboard inlay at the 12th fret. It also features Wentz’s signature on the back of the headstock.^[12]

Wentz opened a nightclub in New York with his bandmates as well as members of Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is..., and Cobra Starship; the bands' managers are also involved in the enterprise. Called Angels & Kings, the club occupies the former space that housed the Orchid Lounge, on 11th Street near Avenue A. Notable guests, such as Tommy Hilfiger, arrived for the grand opening on Monday, April 30.^[13]

Pete was in a multi-episode arc of the show One Tree Hill, appearing first at Tric (the local all-ages club in Tree Hill) with the entire band. The band first appeared in an episode "An Attempt to Tip the Scales", where they played their single "Dance, Dance" and went on to appear on Peyton and Ellie's (also One Tree Hill's album) tribute album, "Friends with Benefit" to support breast cancer awareness. Pete made his first solo cameo in the episode "When It Isn't Like It Should Be" as the romantic interest of Peyton Sawyer, a senior at Tree Hill, who had booked the band to play at Tric. The band continued to influence the One Tree Hill musical soundtrack, but the show no longer had a role for Pete specifically, except in name and reference only.

On February 6, 2008, it was reported that Wentz was the leading candidate for writer Diablo Cody's follow-up film to Juno. The movie is said to be about an emo-band, with Wentz playing the role of the frontman of the band. The other two candidates are said to be Joel Madden of Good Charlotte and One Tree Hill's Chad Michael Murray.^[14]

On February 24, 2008, Wentz appeared in comedian Jimmy Kimmel's video "I'm F*cking Ben Affleck" as a chorus member (along with many other celebrities). The video was in response to one made by Kimmel's girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, "I'm F*cking Matt Damon".

Personal life

In February 2005, Wentz attempted suicide by taking an overdose of the anxiety medication Ativan, and as a result, spent a week in hospital. Commenting on the event to a magazine, he said:

“

I was isolating myself further and further, and the more I isolated myself, the more isolated I'd feel. I wasn't sleeping. I just wanted my head to shut off, like, I just wanted to completely stop thinking about anything at all.

”

The suicide attempt was soon put into song form, "7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)" and was released on their album, From Under The Cork Tree. After this event, Wentz moved back in with his parents.^[15]

Wentz later spoke of his suicide attempt to the support site Halfofus.com and cites Jeff Buckley's version of the Leonard Cohen classic "Hallelujah" as a song that saved his life.^[16]

In March 2006, nude photos of Wentz were posted on the Internet to the LiveJournal celebrity gossip community Oh No They Didn't. The LiveJournal poster reported that she received the photos third-hand, and that Wentz originally sent the pictures to a woman with whom he allegedly had romantic interests. After the pictures spread across the Internet, Wentz posted a response on Fall Out Boy's website and blog asserting that the pictures were stolen from his T-Mobile Sidekick, and that after "feeling badly about this for about 24 hours, I am now ready to get back to laughing."^[17] The video for the single "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" contains a scene that references to the incident.

In a Rolling Stone photo shoot, Wentz and singer/actress Ashlee Simpson-Wentz (then ashlee Simpson) took a picture together for the opening of Wentz' bar, Angels & Kings, and were labeled as a couple. Eventually the two began to acknowledge the relationship. On February 28, 2008, it was revealed that Wentz gave Simpson a promise ring. Ashlee Simpson announced that she is not pregnant and that the promise ring simply means that Pete hasn't asked her dad yet.^[18] On April 9, 2008, Simpson confirmed on an episode of TRL that she and Wentz were engaged.^[19] On April 14, 2008, rumors surfaced that the couple are expecting a baby but soon after these rumors appeared, Pete emailed MTV News to say that these rumors resulted from a "witch hunt" and that Simpson was not pregnant. Wentz soon married Simpson in Encino, CA on May 17, 2008 at Simpson's parents residence, and Joe Simpson, Wentz's father in law, officiated at the ceremony. Simpson took Wentz's surname, and is now professionally known as Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. ^[20]

On May 29, 2008, a blog on Pete's official site, friendsorenemies.com, confirmed that wife Simpson-Wentz is expecting their child, due in the fall.^[21]

Wentz has maitained a personal and professional relationship with John Mayer, despite Mayer's status as Jessica Simpson's ex-boyfriend, a relationship that sparked its own media frenzy.

Sexuality

In a Blender interview in March 2007, Wentz alluded to being bisexual, stating that he has kissed males before and that "anybody above the waist is totally fair game."^[22] In the May 2007 issue of The Advocate, Wentz opened up about his sexuality, stating that he is sexually attracted to males, but he hasn't had sexual relations with other men because "I'm not a fan of penises".^[23]

He explained later in an NPR story in November 2007, saying, "I would never come out and say I'm gay, because I'm not gay. There's part of me that kind of wishes I was gay, and I think that comes from anybody constantly wishing they were in the minority and constantly wants to be fighting everybody off."^[24]