Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday
Taking Back Sunday (left to right): Adam Lazzara, John Nolan, Eddie Reyes, Shaun Cooper, and Mark O'Connell
Background information
Origin	Amityville, New York
Genres	Alternative rock[1] Post-hardcore[2] Indie rock[3] Emo[4]
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Warner Bros. Victory
Associated acts	Brand New The Color Fred Facing New York The Movielife Straylight Run Envy on the Coast You & I Underwater
Website	www.takingbacksunday.com
Members
Adam Lazzara John Nolan Eddie Reyes Shaun Cooper Mark O'Connell
Past members
Matt Rubano Matthew Fazzi Fred Mascherino Antonio Longo Jesse Lacey Steven DeJoseph

Taking Back Sunday is an American rock band from Amityville, Long Island, New York, formed in 1999. The current members are lead vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist Eddie Reyes, guitarist/vocalist John Nolan, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell. Throughout the band's history, they have gone through many lineup changes, with guitarist Eddie Reyes being the only remaining founding member.

They have released four studio albums, with their most successful being 2006's Louder Now which has sold over 900,000 copies and peaked at #2 on the United States' Billboard 200, closely followed by Where You Want to Be which peaked at #3 in 2004. They have also had twelve singles, one extended play, two live albums and a compilation album. "MakeDamnSure" is their highest charting single to date, peaking at #8 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2006 and #48 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The band released their latest album, New Again, on June 2, 2009.

History

Early years (1999–2002)

Taking Back Sunday originally formed in 1999.

By the time their first album was released, Taking Back Sunday would go through a major lineup change. Longo left the band, causing Adam Lazzara to move to lead vocals while Shaun Cooper was recruited to play bass.

Independent success (2002–2005)

After replacing Longo with Adam Lazzara on lead vocals, the band released their first full album Tell All Your Friends, on Victory Records in 2002. Tell All Your Friends gave the band a small taste of success in the alternative rock spotlight, thanks to the singles "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "Great Romances of the 20th Century", and "You're So Last Summer". The latter song gained popularity with a music video featuring rapper Flavor Flav.

The album cover is a picture of an off-ramp, with an overlay of the album title and the numbers "152", signifying the exit where they met their friends. The number has appeared on every LP cover to date.

In 2003, guitarist/vocalist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper left the band to form Straylight Run. The loss of Nolan and Cooper put the already unstable band into a state of heightened tension. However, Taking Back Sunday added Fred Mascherino guitar and vocals as well as Matt Rubano on bass.

The year of 2004 proved to be successful for Taking Back Sunday, with the band opening for Blink-182 and appearing on the Vans Warped Tour. In addition, their second album, Where You Want To Be, was released on July 27, 2004, on Victory Records. Although sounding slightly different from Tell All Your Friends, the new album managed to do well commercially. Propelled by the single A Decade Under the Influence, Where You Want To Be went on to debut at the #3 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, with around 163,000 copies sold.

Taking Back Sunday received even more mainstream exposure by appearing on late night talk shows Jimmy Kimmel Live! where Adam had the job of hosting Loveline, as well as contributing the song This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know) to the soundtrack for Spider-Man 2. They also contributed the song Your Own Disaster to the Elektra soundtrack, and Error Operator to both the Fantastic 4 soundtrack and its video game tie-in, where it served as Mr. Fantastic's theme. An instrumental version is also used as background music in the game. In 2007, the band contributed the song What's It Feel Like to Be a Ghost? to the soundtrack for Transformers, although the song did not appear in the movie. Also, the band was featured in the Tony Hawk's American Wasteland soundtrack when they covered the Descendent songs "Suburban Home" and "I Like Food" together as a medley.

Major label debut (2006–2007)

Taking Back Sunday performing on the Projekt Revolution tour in Mansfield, Massachusetts on August 24, 2007

On April 25, 2006, Taking Back Sunday released their third album, entitled Louder Now, on Warner Bros. Records. The band's comments on the album reflected the dramatic change the band had undergone in the two years since their last release. Adam stated that fans seemed to feel their live shows had more energy than their recordings, and that Louder Now brought more of that across. Louder Now draws its name from the opening track "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?". In fact, all of Taking Back Sunday's full-length albums have been named after lyrics from songs featured on the album, but during a point where the titles hadn't been decided yet. Tell All Your Friends derived its name from "Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team)," and Where You Want To Be from "Set phasers To Stun." New Again was the first LP from Taking Back Sunday to feature a title track.

Taking Back Sunday received mainstream exposure by appearing on the late night talk shows The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, as well as the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation in an episode entitled What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?.

In December 2006, the band released its first CD/DVD documentary, Louder Now: PartOne, featuring behind-the-scenes tour footage and four live concerts. Following months of touring to support Louder Now, Taking Back Sunday appeared in the American leg of Live Earth on July 7, 2007. During the summer of 2007, Taking Back Sunday was also a part of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour, along with My Chemical Romance, HIM, and many other bands.

On October 30, 2006, the band's former record label, Victory Records, released Notes From The Past, which featured four songs from Tell All Your Friends, six songs from Where You Want To Be, and two B-sides: The Ballad of Sal Villanueva and Your Own Disaster ('04 mix). The band then released Louder Now: Part Two on November 20, 2007, a DVD of unreleased live concert footage from their show at Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, California, as well as special features such as the video for "Twenty-Twenty Surgery" that was made for Europe. The DVD was packaged with a companion CD featuring eight live tracks, two B-sides that were previously unreleased in America, and a special "Twelve Days of Christmas" track.

Departure of Fred Mascherino and New Again (2007–2010)

In October 2007 the band announced that Taking Back Sunday and guitarist Fred Mascherino would be parting ways, which came after he decided to focus on his then upcoming solo album with The Color Fred. He was later replaced by Matthew Fazzi^[5] , who would provide guitar and backing vocals.^[6] Mascherino went on in later interviews to reveal: "There were just problems between the five of us about writing, who was going to do it and how we were going to do it, we weren't being very productive because we were fighting too much about that stuff. The band was more about cooking food than making music."^[7] This statement lead to the band writing the track "Capital M-E", which features lyrical references to Mascherino's departure and the comments he made afterwards.

On November 6, 2008, Taking Back Sunday revealed in Rolling Stone that their fourth studio album was to be titled New Again and would feature the tracks "Winter Passing", "Lonely Lonely", "Catholic Knees", and "Carpathia". They stated that "Winter Passing" was "...a slow dance like the last song at your 8th grade dance [that] moves more like an R&B tune than a rock and roll song", and that "Carpathia" will include the first bass solos in any Taking Back Sunday song. They also commented that "Catholic Knees" is "one of the heavier songs we've ever written", and that "Lonely Lonely" is "relentless – two and a half minutes of punching you in the face".^[8] In the build-up to the release of New Again, the band released a number of tracks, first of which was "Carpathia" on December 21, 2008, as a free digital download to those who purchased the band's Christmas holiday set^[9], with a physical limited vinyl release of the track as well as a live version of "Catholic Knees" released on April 18, 2009^[10], secondly title track "New Again" as a free single download from the band's website on April 16, 2009, followed by the first full single "Sink Into Me", released on April 20, 2009, premiering on BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe show, and being made available digitally short after. On May 16, 2009, "Everything Must Go" was released to stream on the band's MySpace. Every Monday, the band released a new song on their MySpace from New Again labeling it "New Music Monday".^[11]

During their tour supporting New Again, the band played in Dublin, Ireland where guitarist Matt Fazzi fractured his foot.^[12] Despite this, the show in Belfast, Northern Ireland went on and the rest of the tour was completed, which included stops in the UK at Sonisphere Festival and the Kerrang! awards show.

On August 18, 2009, the band released a digital live album entitled Live from Bamboozle '09. The album consists of 13 live tracks recorded while the band played at The Bamboozle in May of the same year.

In September 2009, the band announced they will be co-headlining with The All-American Rejects and Anberlin for a full U.S tour. They are also set to release a live acoustic DVD following the tour, around springtime 2010.

On February 12, 2010, the band released an unreleased b-side from New Again titled "Winter Passing" on their official website.^[13]

Throughout February and March the band played the Australian Soundwave tour, playing songs from a variety of their albums and to massive crowds of almost 30 000.

Reunion of Tell All Your Friends line-up and fifth studio album (2010–present)

On March 29, 2010, Matt Rubano and Matthew Fazzi announced that they were no longer members of Taking Back Sunday.^[14][15] The band's official website also posted a picture of the original line-up with the members' eyes crossed out, indicating a possible reunion of the Tell All Your Friends era lineup.^[16][17] On March 30, 2010 Eddie Reyes did an interview with 103.9 WRCN and confirmed a line-up change; however, he did not confirm the new members. He also mentioned the band's intentions of recording soon.^[18] On March 31, 2010, tbsnewagain tweeted a link to a video announcing the new lineup of the band. The video ended with a quick stream of words which ended with, "Sometimes it takes some time to remember where you were headed in the first place and the people you intended to go there with. There's no hard feelings, just the future."^[19] On April 12, the band made an official announcement confirming John Nolan and Shaun Cooper have re-joined the band. It was announced that they will soon begin the recording process of their fifth studio album with Louder Now producer Eric Valentine.^[20] On the same day, Adam Lazzara did an interview with Alternative Press, in which he discussed how the original line-up got back together and how both Matt Rubano and Matt Fazzi were not fired, but rather "let go". The band has recently finished writing in El Paso with around 15 songs completed, according to Mark O'Connell's Twitter. Pre-production on the new album began on August 17, 2010, the same day their live acoustic album Live from Orensanz was released.

Discography

Studio albums

• Tell All Your Friends (2002)
• Where You Want to Be (2004)
• Louder Now (2006)
• New Again (2009)

Members

• Adam Lazzara – vocals, occasional guitar (2001–present), bass, backing vocals (2001)
• John Nolan – guitar, vocals, keyboards (1999–2003; 2010–present)
• Eddie Reyes – guitar (1999–present)
• Shaun Cooper – bass (2001–2003; 2010–present)
• Mark O'Connell – drums, percussion (2001–present)

Former members

• Matt Rubano – bass, backing vocals (2003–2010)
• Fred Mascherino – guitar, vocals (2003–2007)
• Matthew Fazzi – guitar, backing vocals (2008–2010)
• Jesse Lacey – bass, vocals (1999–2001)
• Steven DeJoseph – drums, percussion (1999–2001)
• Antonio Longo – lead vocals (1999–2001)

Line-up history

Timeline

References

External links

• Official website
• Official myspace
• Complete Discography of Taking Back Sunday
• TBSUnion.com Fansite
• TBSHub.com Fansite