Our guest for this episode is Pete Wentz, father of his namesake son: Pete Wentz, bassist & lyricist for the Grammy-nominated multiplatinum rock band Fall Out Boy.
Their long list of hit songs include: Sugar, We’re Goin Down, Dance, Dance, Thnks Fr Th Mmrs, Centuries, Uma Thurman, and a song that has a fatherhood theme to it, called She’s my Winona.
They’ve won a list of awards too long to name, but among them are:
- People’s Choice Award for Best Alternative Rock Band
- American Music Award for Favorite Alternative Rock Band
- Tons of MTV Awards, including wins for Best Group & Best Rock Video
Pete, and his siblings Hilary & Andrew, are fortunate to have Mr. Pete Wentz as their Father. Pete, the father, is a terrific guy. He’s a family man and a working man. Currently, he works at APCO Worldwide, a leading independent public relations firm that has a focus on public affairs and crisis communications.
In this episode, we talk about a variety of topics, including managing tv screen time, providing kids with the latitude to be individuals & express their personalities, and we talked a bit about some of the distinguished friends and relatives of the Wentz family.
Enjoy the episode!
Instagram: @petewentz
Twitter: @petewentz
Fall Out Boy Website: https://falloutboy.com/
Pete, Andy, Pete, & Mike Hoye (Hillary’s husband)
Pete & Pete, Son & Father
Mr. Pete Wentz, Hilary, Andy, & Mrs. Dale Wentz
Fall Out Boy – Uma Thurman (Official Video, Album: American Beauty/American Psycho)
Fall Out Boy – Champion (Official Video, Album: Mania)
Fall Out Boy – Dance, Dance (Official Video, Album: From Under the Cork Tree)
Please forgive the errors in the transcript! Enjoy the episode!
Jonathan V.: Well, thank you very much for finding time to talk today, Pete really been looking forward to it much, looking forward to hearing about your fathering relationship with Pete and with all of your kids. I believe that you have three kids, is that correct?
Pete Wentz: Yes. Another son, and a daughter.
Jonathan V.: And they’re both younger than Pete, I think?
Pete Wentz: Yes. He’s the oldest.
Jonathan V.: So, before we talk about the Wentz household, and parenting, have you had an opportunity to attend any of Pete’s Fallout Boy concerts? And if so, what’s that been like for you to see your son up there on the stage, performing in front of all of those people? What’s that experience been like?
Pete Wentz: It’s pretty interesting. I’ve been going to his concerts way before Fallout Boy, and I would go to, you know, he was with a band and they played in a club that was a converted bowling alley. And I was clearly the only person there in a tie listening to him. And that would be like in the afternoon show or something like that. So that’s probably one reason why I wear hearing aides these days is I didn’t use ear protection at the time. So the first time that I saw him, well, I went with the band. They did an early tour of England and that was kind of fun to go to and hear them, and hear in the early, early days of the internet. So there’s a song, where is your boy tonight? And then typically what would happen is the lead singer would say, where is your boy tonight? And in America, they would all say, I hope he is a gentleman. And it was interesting to go over to the UK and have the same thing happen. It just showed the early power, I think of the internet and its effect on music.
But I think one of the most memorable ones for me was early on and they played in Camden. The feeling is similar – I don’t know if you have this or had this or not – is when you watch baseball on TV, you don’t have a sense of what it’s really like. And then you get to the stadium and you walk up the steps and all of a sudden there’s the field, there’s everything. And it’s eye-opening because that’s not what you expect. So that happened to me when, so I’m going up the steps into the stadium in Camden and to see all these people in the band and all of that stuff. And that to me was pretty thrilling, pretty exciting. And obviously they’ve played since then, you know, famous venues from Wrigley field to Madison square garden, to the Hollywood Bowl.
Jonathan V.: So that’s got to be quite a different experience from the bowling alley, walking out onto the field at Camden and seeing it filled with people and your son and his band up there on stage. Rolling back the clock, what was the Wentz household like when the kids were young?
Pete Wentz: I live in the same community where my wife and I live in now. It’s a suburb of Chicago called Wilmette. And I think we were a relatively typical family living in the North shore of Chicago
Jonathan V.: Were both you and your wife working at the time?
Pete Wentz: Well, Peter was there and even a little bit when my daughter, I was working, my wife was not. Then she ended up becoming head of admissions at the school where Peter graduated from. So, but it was after he graduated before she went to work there.
Jonathan V.: And what line of work were you in?
Pete Wentz: Most of my career as a lawyer, I was a general counsel of a company for about 20 years. Then I went over to Northwestern’s Law School and worked in the administration and also taught a course which I still teach. And then about 15 years ago, I joined this firm that does a lot of work specializing in crisis management. And so with companies and litigation, and they’re trying to feel, what do we say to the media? How do we get our word out there? And I use my legal background to help them figure out strategy and tell the story they want to tell and things like that.
Jonathan V.: My experience has been, at least the people that I’ve known who are lawyers, it’s a really busy occupation. Was that your experience?
Pete Wentz: I think it’s interesting. Maybe a number of the lawyers you’re familiar with probably work in law firms and things like that, which is really more challenging from a work-life balance, because you’re really at the beck and call of clients and you don’t have the opportunity to maybe spend more time with your family. So I went in-house and became general counsel of a company where you would work hard, but you could balance doing stuff with your family. So I hired somebody to come work for me, I was coming from a law firm and she does, I have a five-year-old son and I’ve never been home on his birthday. And I said, well, I guarantee you’ll be home when you’re celebrating your son’s sixth birthday. That was the lifestyle I wanted, more being with a company, suited my own personality, my own interests. So I was able to coach soccer with all of my kids, coach baseball, with all of my kids.
Jonathan V.: Terrific. And what was the home life like at the Wentz household? Did you have any family rituals, things that you would all do together? Particular activities?
Pete Wentz: I think most of the time we would, until the kids got to high school, we’d have dinner together mostly every night. You know, we had a rule which you can never enforce today of no TV during on school days. That had been the rule in my family growing up and in my wife’s. And so, we made it our rule.
Jonathan V.: I had tried to Institute that in my household. I use something called a TV allowance for a little while where my son could press in a code that would allow the electricity to go to the TV. And he would have a certain amount of TV time he could use per week.
Pete Wentz: Wow. Right, exactly. Exactly.
Jonathan V.: Are there other things that you would do together vacation or other particular activities?
Pete Wentz: Yeah, we pretty much did a family vacation in the winter. And then we would go to upstate Wisconsin kind of like, it’s kind of like a camp in a sense that every family had their own house, but then you went and ate meals communally with the other families who were there. And there were people would come like, we, I want to say around six or seven consecutive years and we would go there and be the same week where other same families would come those same week. So you kind of got to know those people over the years.
Jonathan V.: Oh, that’s nice. And you mentioned you’ve got three kids Pete, a boy and a girl. What are their names?
Pete Wentz: Daughter’s name is Hillary. Son’s name is Andrew.
Jonathan V.: What were they like as youngsters, Pete, and Hillary and Andrew?
Pete Wentz: They were very good kids in the sense that they didn’t get themselves into a lot of trouble in school or elsewhere. I think particularly Andrew and Hillary, because they’re closer in age now bonded a little more, but they all, I think looked up to Peter. And since he was the older and learned a lot from him and also learned maybe from, if he got in trouble a little bit, they’d know what to avoid.
Jonathan V.: And so, thinking about fatherhood specifically, how did you approach it? It’s fairly broad question, but how did you approach fatherhood? Did you have any particular parenting philosophies?
Pete Wentz: I asked my wife and I chatted about this brief, I don’t think either of us was specifically have philosophies I think you learn from how we were parented, the pluses and the minuses, and you try to avoid some of that. So when I was growing up, my father was also a lawyer. Well, the way they teach law, they use these things that are so called Socratic method, where you learn by asking questions or responding to questions. And I guess Socrates, that must’ve been the way he taught or something. So in the early days of law school, the idea of the faculty would be to grill you. So if you were on the hot seat that day, he would say something and they would just say, well, what about this? What about that? What about the other thing? And so by the end, you would be pretty worn out. My dad did that a little bit with me growing up, which probably helped me become a successful lawyer. But that’s the kind of thing I vowed. I wouldn’t do.
I did it a couple of times and I looked around at the family and they were aghast at what was going on, I think they realized that wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. So you kind of learn from that. I think I’m pretty tolerant of what they, and what they wanted to do. And there were some occasions where they would ask me, can we go do this, and it would be something that I would think to myself, you know, my wife would never let them do this, but sure, go ahead. And invariably, it came back to bite me almost every time they would go do it. It would cause some kind of ruckus or whatever, she would find out. And I would say, I wouldn’t quite swear at them, but I probably did say, I let you guys do this and you really let me down. I said it jokingly, but because they knew that they’d come to me for permission, that she wouldn’t have given. And then they knew that it came back around and did not work out for them.
Jonathan V.: Did you and your wife have overlapping roles in the parenting in household responsibilities?
Pete Wentz: I think she tended to be, and it varies from family to family. I’ve heard it go both ways. She tended to be more of the stickler for some of the legitimate rules and I tended to be more easygoing about it. And I think you have to work that way because you can’t both be one or both be the other, or there’s no guidance whatsoever to the kids. And so I would always back her up, but we might have conversations later about maybe we should’ve handled something differently.
Jonathan V.: Did you do that purposefully?
Pete Wentz: I don’t think it was a conscious thing that I did, but I think we would have a conversation if I let them and if I apologized, I don’t have examples, but if I said they could do something it’s, he might say later, are you sure they should be doing that? And then the flip side is if they came in late or did something not overly naughty as the term would be used, she might want to say, well, we should ground them for this or that. And I might say, no, I don’t think that’s. We need to do all of that. So I think it worked both ways for us.
Jonathan V.: Right, right. It sounds like, even though it wasn’t a conscious effort though, that you and your wife still made a point to have sidebars, I guess, to use a, my limited legal vocabulary, to talk about how to approach things when you weren’t around the kids.
Pete Wentz: And the other thing, I think, that we both agreed on us that there was stuff that we might’ve fought with our parents, that we would never fight with our kids. Things like what they wore, hair length, all of that kind of stuff that were big fights that we would have had with our parents. We didn’t have, I mean, we let them be individuals about how they, how Peter would wear mismatched Argyle socks for occasions, all that stuff like that. And that was just, that’s just creative personality. But, you know, we wouldn’t ever say, no, you can’t wear that or do that. We just, we weren’t going to fight.
Jonathan V.: You’d mentioned earlier, a lot of your approach to being a father was informed by your father, that you may have took some things that worked well, and made a point to not do some things that you felt didn’t work well. Are there other things thinking back on your experience, are there other things that you incorporated into your approach as a father or purposefully stayed away from?
Pete Wentz: Not so much, I don’t think staying away from, I think I’ve laid out some of the ones that I did, you know, and I think that what I’ve learned from, and always if there was an issue and part of that was there’s the lawyer in me, I think is that if there was an issue to try to have a conversation about it, rather than kind of just let the kid know that you’re mad, but not tell them why, which my father did a little bit of that. I would look at it and I think also my approach, you know, when they got grades, I was more relaxed about if the grades weren’t, where we thought they should be. We’re more relaxed about trying to get them improved versus being more disciplinary and requiring them to study extra hard or say you can’t go out or this or that, of the other things that we, you know, we really trusted the kids and they all, and my younger son and daughter went to very good colleges.
Peter’s incredibly smart. And he went to DePaul University here in Chicago for a couple of years, and then the band kind of took off. So I think that approach to learning worked because we didn’t reward them with money or anything else. So they got good grades and we didn’t go crazy if they may have not had a good grade here or there. So three of them are voracious readers.
Jonathan V.: I’d heard that about Pete. That’s great.
Pete Wentz: He was on that old show. I don’t know if you ever remember. There was an old show called Cribs where I don’t know, MTV or somebody went to quote celebrity houses and he says, he says to the camera, I’m going to show you something you don’t see on cribs, very much books, here are books right here by my bed. And I actually read them.
Jonathan V.: That is terrific. That’s great. I understand. He’s a bit of a writer as well. I read that when he was young, he would write books about robots and he’s done some writing later in life as well?
Pete Wentz: Yeah. He and a friend, I can’t even remember how old they were now, five or six or 10 wrote stories. And they put them in a wagon and they would go door to door and try to sell them to people. So, you know, and they were like fantasy kinds of stories, but they’re not as he was going off to high school, you know, he would write stuff for high school, that I, you know, I would be blown away by how good and how creative and how interesting it would be. He’d show me this stuff and asked me what I thought. And it was just really terrific.
Jonathan V.: So, he valued your opinion quite a bit?
Pete Wentz: Yeah. And yeah. And my other kids are the same way. I mean, they’ve, they turn out to be very, very good writers and very creative.
Jonathan V.: I’ve been struck by, in addition to Pete’s obvious success as a musician and lyricist for Fallout Boy, he’s also a bit of an entrepreneur. I’m wondering if you were seeing glimpses of that at a young age as well. It sounds like going door to door selling his books might’ve been part of it is that that’s something that you saw in other aspects of his life?
Pete Wentz: As he discovered his love for the music business, he did what you would tell anyone to do of any age is he networked. I mean he would go drive a hundred miles to some concert, just if he could get backstage and meet somebody who could help him get to some other level that he would want to get to. So he drove all over the Midwest to shows and other things. He and the band weren’t overnight sensations. They really had laid a bunch of groundwork with people in the Midwest in the industry. And then obviously he would broaden his influence to New York and Los Angeles. But, you know, so every once in a while somebody would say would you sit down and my kid wants to go into music and I would talk to them about a little bit about how he did it. And again, this was pre internet where today anybody can record a song and then try to get plays on YouTube and then maybe try to get a contract somewhere. Obviously he couldn’t do any of that back then you had to kind of know people and figure stuff out. And that’s what he really would do.
Jonathan V.: Do you know where he picked that up? Do you know how he learned to do that? Was that something he learned from other people connecting in the industry? Is that?
Pete Wentz: I think he just, I think he just had that within him, the desire to really be successful with his creative passion and you know, I don’t think I, or anyone can really take credit for that obviously, so that we take credit, it will be more that we’ve allowed it.
Jonathan V.: At what age was he showing that kind of creative?
Pete Wentz: I would say right going into high school
Jonathan V.: In music. And it sounds like from a storytelling perspective, perhaps much earlier with his writing, but from, from a music perspective, he was showing that going into high school. Was he playing an instrument then?
Pete Wentz: Right. Yeah. And it took him a while I think too, to figure out what genre worked best for him. I mean, he started out very much with heavy metal and a couple of bands that did that. And then I think as Fallout boy started to emerge, it allowed him the creative outlook to write lyrics that appealed to the audience that they were going to, they were going after.
Jonathan V.: What kind of musical influence did you bring into the family?
Pete Wentz: Oh, we had a piano and the kids all took piano lessons, so they all knew how to read music, but he really picked up the guitar bass guitar. And really that’s what he’s played ever since.
Jonathan V.: When you see that interest in your kid, do you feel like, Oh, I see a flame here that I should fan, or maybe just sit back and watch where it goes?
Pete Wentz: I think on the music part, starting with the piano, I don’t necessarily tie the piano to where he’s been today, but I think that is one where if we pushed something that might’ve been something, we pushed a little bit, because I think we both, my wife and I thought it was something that we missed doing and would love to be able to do. And so we thought at a pretty young age, like five or six or seven, that they ought to try to be exposed to the piano. And then for him, he kind of just picked up the bass because that was what he wanted to play on. He took lessons and all of that kind of stuff, but he’s really, self-motivated on the side You know, everybody says to me where you, as lawyer as manager, whatever I said, not really. I was his father and I, you know, when I could weigh in, I would weigh in on things that I had some expertise on. But short of that, I didn’t weigh in too much.
Jonathan V.: Outside of the occasional traffic ticket. What might’ve been a example of the type of thing where you would weigh in?
Pete Wentz: Well, he’d get a speeding ticket. So I’d have to, there’s one place I had to go somewhere in Indiana. I had to go with them to court. And the judge said he was going over a hundred miles an hour. And I said to the judge, I know this car, judge it go a hundred miles an hour. I don’t care what this cop says. But the other thing that I did early on, I was the band’s treasurer or whatever. And I was just fascinated. So they would go on tour, you know, they’d be driving their own bus or their own van with a cargo trailer behind. And they would come home with garbage bags full of cash. I went out of taking the garbage bags to the bank and I’d sit there with a teller who would have a money machine, and she’d be putting all this money through the counting machine and depositing it in their account.
Jonathan V.: Literally garbage bags, full of cash?
Pete Wentz: Yeah.
Jonathan V.: Wow. Going through high school, were you ever providing any sort of career coaching or I guess fathering counsel in terms of, you know, you might want to consider this or that, or were you letting them find their own way in terms of what it was that they wanted to do?
Pete Wentz: I think for all of them, it was that. I don’t think Peter really kind of knew necessarily what he wanted to do when it was in high school. Except he knew that he didn’t want to take probably a traditional career path and like so many people up where we live, where people, become lawyers, doctors, investment, bankers, MBAs, whatever. Well, that really wasn’t something he wanted to pursue. So we’d have discussion. And I said, the reason just, I push it to kind of get in, and school, I think he found a little bit boring, except if he found courses he liked, he did great. He did great on courses that he liked, and courses he was kind of bored in he did less well. And I just, my view, once I said, my view was just to have you do as well as you can. So you have the options to do whatever you want to do when that time comes. And that was really my primary guidance. Cause I think he didn’t yet know where his creative outlet was going to be.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. That’s great advice. You’d mentioned that you were pretty laid back, you know, relatively speaking in terms of grades, they didn’t have to be all A’s and pretty flexible in terms of what they wear, etcetera. What challenges did you run into as a parent? What were some of your harder moments?
Pete Wentz: Well, I think we’re pretty good about not threatening them with discipline without following through. So we just didn’t make arbitrary promises. Arbitrary things like if you keep doing this, you’re not going to watch TV for a week or something. We just wouldn’t say those kinds of things just because we would really, I think we’re pretty conscious about if we were going to provide some kind of discipline, we would carry it out or at least start to carry it out. Then we might not end up because otherwise, if you say something to discipline a kid, cause they know it’s not believable. Like you can’t watch TV for a week or you can’t play with your friends for a week or something like that. They know that you don’t, you can’t carry that out. They know you don’t even want to carry it out. So they don’t believe what you’re saying. So we try really hard not to make outlandish promises that we knew we weren’t going to keep.
Jonathan V.: Right. Yeah. I think that’s really important.
Pete Wentz: I mean, I remember him in high school at some point. I can’t remember what incident they did, but it must have involved the cafeteria or something. So three or four of his buddies and he were told they had to sit at a separate table away from everybody else. So these guys come in to school, they set their place with a tablecloth napkins, a candelabra, Peter did this and his friends, candelabra and everything else. It’s like, well, this is our table now, you know? So they turn what might’ve been a punishment into something that the rest of the school was kind of envious of.
Jonathan V.: I’ve heard Pete reference having a challenge that resulted in him going to a boot camp as he put it for a little while. Can you speak to that incident? How did you and your wife think about that decision?
Pete Wentz: As I said, I think he was not as disciplined at school as maybe he could have been; someone had suggested this place to go. And I think after much discussion for some period of time in the summer. And I think we regrettably I think set him off and I think it was not a very good experience for him. And so something we regret.
Jonathan V.: For parents that are considering something like that, is there advice that you would give>
Pete Wentz: You have to really look into it and I think you really have to listen to your kid when they’re there. And I think he may have sent us a signal that say, I need to come out and get out of here. And we may have not been as, we may not have noticed that as quickly as we should have.
Jonathan V.: Well, thanks for speaking to that. I think that it’s good for other people to hear that that might be a decision that you would not repeat so that they can avoid that potential pitfall. What’s it been like for you transitioning to parenting adult kids and how did that play out? Maybe over phases. So when they become technically adults at 18, perhaps more still involved as a parent or counselor and then perhaps less over time, or how did that evolve for you in particular?
Pete Wentz: I think it has evolved to being more of a counselor. I mean, not as much with Peter as with my, because he was by the time he was not much over 21 or 22, he was pretty well on his way to being where he is today, even though it was going to be a while. But I remember me asking him, how will, you know, when you’re successful? And he said, well, dad, there are 20 bands out there that would die to have this contract that we’re signing tomorrow. So even though at that point, you couldn’t see success. You saw the recognition that people in the industry were giving the band. And so from that standpoint, obviously it just multiplied to the success they are today. So, you know, we talk from time to time about Mo we don’t talk too much about fathering because, he’s doing his own thing with his kids and they seem to be pretty well engaged.
My daughter, because she kind of was trying to figure out her way after she graduated, we worked on if she wanted to get into social work. So I helped her with the process of doing that. And then my younger son has his own creative outlets, just do marketing for comedy, but then he just, he’s founded kind of an arts organization that publishes a magazine or has until COVID and things like that. The only story I’ll talk about all three of them is whenever I take him to the airport, I always drop him off and I say, how much money do you have on you? And invariably the number is like $6. So they know a good old dad is going to fork over a couple of twenties right on the spot.
Jonathan V.: My understanding is that Pete continued to live at home for quite a while. After he made the decision to leave college, to continue pursuing the career with his band. How is that dynamic, how was it for you and how would he recommend that people approach it?
Pete Wentz: You treat them a little bit like, like adults, he wasn’t around that much, but he lived on the, his room was on the third floor and the steps to the third floor were kind of creaky and are outside where my wife and I were sleeping. So whenever he came in late, he would try to go up the stairs as quietly as he could, but then variably, it would creak. And my wife and I would at least look at either as well, he’s home now. I mean, not that we would go chastise him for it. We just knew whenever he was home, it was fine. I mean, but he did his own thing when he was even living at home and we did family stuff together as we always did. But when he was at home, he was still working to do what he wanted to do.
Jonathan V.: You’d mentioned before some validation that Pete had with his career, with the contract, was there a point in time where you felt he had made it?
Pete Wentz: I think when I went to the UK, as I mentioned, and just saw how their music kind of had spread beyond the US that was one. And I think the other, as I mentioned, was seeing him at the ballpark when that happened, you know, but they’ve had so many moments since then they have a Grammy nomination. They played at Obama’s first inauguration. You know, we met the vice president. We spent some time with the vice president, you know, it was great. It’s wonderful.
Jonathan V.: So, my understanding is that in the absence of our current democratic presidential nominee, that Pete and Hillary and Andrew would not exist today, is that right?
Pete Wentz: That’s right. My wife and I met working for him and got to know, obviously very well then. And while I was vice president, somebody from his office called because I guess the band was playing in Washington and we arranged for his granddaughters to go backstage and meet the band they arranged for my son and my grandson and my wife and I, or his office did, and we went, came in and spent a half hour with, with Biden at the White House, which was great. Obviously we’re excited that he’s the candidate, we’ll be more excited hopefully when he wins.
Jonathan V.: Have you stayed in touch over the years more recently?
Pete Wentz: Yeah. We used to see him when he would come here at a fundraiser once a year, or I saw a little bit of family in Delaware and I would see him on occasion back there. You know, we were scheduled to go to a fundraiser that I think was the last one in person in Chicago. And then it got canceled cause of COVID right. Just as COVID was really reaching the national consciousness and they canceled it.
Jonathan V.: I understand that she has some claims to fame on her side of the family as well. Is it her father that was the us ambassador to Sierra Leone?
Pete Wentz: Her father’s USA, ambassador Sierra, Leon, and Colin Powell is a cousin.
Jonathan V.: Wow. That’s something. Have you ever met him?
Pete Wentz: Yes, several times.
Jonathan V.: That’s great. He was a, I guess in my chain of command, I was in the Marine Corps as an enlisted guy. So he was many levels above me during Desert Storm.
Pete Wentz: My wife’s father passed away. He came and spoke. He was very gracious. Very, very nice.
Jonathan V.: What’s one thing that you think you might’ve done differently as a father
Pete Wentz: And obviously my kids probably would certainly my wife would probably disagree. I don’t have a lot of regrets about it. I think one thing maybe would be that if something was irritating me at some point, it might come to a head and I might say, or do, not in terms of physical-ness, let’s say or do something that might have been an overreaction to something that was going on. They always would say, if they see me grinding my teeth, they know the troubles ahead.
Jonathan V.: That was you tell? Huh? What are three words that you think your kids or your wife might use to describe your parenting style?
Pete Wentz: I think laid back; I think tolerant. And I think just when I speak about tolerant, I was tolerant to them, but I think all of them are very tolerant of other people’s lifestyles, habits, whoever they are, wherever they want to be, whatever they want to do. I think all of my kids are incredibly tolerant about that, which makes me incredibly proud. So, but I say if I had three words, I would go back to, I think, laid back, tolerant. And I think I was kind of fun. I don’t know? Curious to see what they would say about that, but I think I was kind of fun to be around.
Jonathan V.: How were you fun?
Pete Wentz: Oh, I would just do stupid things. Like, you know, Halloween, I would put a mask on and I’d come to the front door and as if I were trick or treating and pretend to scare them and kind of things like that. Just silly kinds of things.
Jonathan V.: That’s great. That’s great. What’s something that you might’ve learned from your kids or war from being a father from that experience?
Pete Wentz: You know, I think just as I say that they were pretty tolerant. I think I learned and admired, how they were, how they treated people. The one thing I know all three of them are incredibly good with people and are patient and thoughtful and kind of take care of people. Maybe people they don’t know way more than I would. So I kind of learned a little bit from that and just how they deal with other people. That’s been interesting to see.
Jonathan V.: It sounds like it’s a common thread among all three of your children, Pete being a more public figure, it’s easier to have visibility into some of the things he’s done, but he’s been involved in a variety of different charities and was apparently very ecologically conscious at a very young age as well. And it sounds like that would be encouraging to see in your kids that they care so much.
Pete Wentz: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that, you know, as I said, I’m proud of that trait in all of my kids. I think that’s been nice to see.
Jonathan V.: What advice would you give to other fathers?
Pete Wentz: I can say this, but I also have the benefit of hindsight with what I’m about to say, which is, you know, you really can’t choose the path for where your children are going. I mean, when the company that I was with sold, I talked to, I think, a career counselor or a psychologist or someone just to kind of figure out what am I going to do now that the company I loved being with was sold. And she said that she had a lot of clients in their forties and fifties who had been really in effect, program to be lawyers, doctors, whatever they were, investment bankers, bankers, whatever. And a lot of them, when they were 40 or 50 woke up and realized they’re pretty unhappy with what they were doing, even though they were making money doing it. And that kind of confirmed to me that I didn’t really want to do that with my kids, if I could help it. And obviously I would say that the benefit of hindsight, obviously Peter’s band and I’ve been successful, or my younger son had found a passion that worked for him and can pay the bills. He might be looking at me and saying, wait, why didn’t you steer them more correctly? I still don’t believe that’s the right approach, but I don’t think it’ll work. And my kids certainly are living proof that letting them pursue their dreams does work, but it’s not going to work for everybody. And as I say, what Peter did was he didn’t just decide one day to be a musician. He from probably the time he was 13 or 14, did all the stuff that you need to do to be successful in the music business.
Jonathan V.: And you touched on that earlier and just to, if you wouldn’t mind, if we could explore that just a little bit further, is there anything that you did as a father either you think perhaps by example or by tutelage by instruction that helped to instill that that sense of work ethic or hustle, time management, all of these characteristics that it seems like Pete has put into play in order to help increase the likelihood of success in his chosen career?
Pete Wentz: No, he saw me working at being successful on doing something that he knew I really liked doing. And I think, you know, if there was anything that came back, then it would be that, that I suspect that he wanted to then say, well, I want to do something that I can be successful at. And maybe that drove him a little bit more to go do that, that kind of stuff.
Jonathan V.: I think it still requires that hustle even nowadays, it’s certainly potentially easier to get your music out there with YouTube and all of these Sound Cloud and all of these other channels, but you’re also competing with many more people trying to do that. I had talked with one guy who has made a career out of his YouTube channel, but he also talked about the five or seven years that he had spent building that and living on virtually nothing with his wife supporting him. So people look at the overnight viral video, but they don’t look at the seven years that went ahead of that.
Pete Wentz: Exactly. Exactly.
Jonathan V.: Anything else come to mind, any other advice or things that you think might be helpful for fathers that are listening?
Pete Wentz: I guess just a story to add on, to provide some color, maybe to some of other things I said, you know, Peter early on was a vegetarian, then a vegan. And so, you know, again, when you’re getting back to tolerance and understanding, you know, it wasn’t, we didn’t kind of take issue with it, even though it kind of was way early on for people ended up being vegan. So we didn’t kind of let him do his thing and, you know, eat Cheerios with almond milk or whatever soy milk or whatever, things like that. My father of course offered him $100 to drink a glass of milk and he turned it down.
Jonathan V.: How old was Pete when he was?
Pete Wentz: You know,15 maybe.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. It’s fairly common nowadays, but I could see back, I forget exactly how old Pete is. That would have been pretty unusual. Were there any areas where it was a hard, no, or off-limits where you were just like, this is a firm line, these are particular lines that we won’t let you cross?
Pete Wentz: No, I don’t think so. I mean, obviously, as I said, you know, Peter was, you know, less of a traditional student than others, but he never got into the issues that other kids have gotten into, whether it’s excessive drinking or drugs or things like that.
Jonathan V.: It seems like him and his band members at Fallout Boy have, have managed to navigate a pretty good line and avoid a lot of the traps that some other bands have fallen into.
Pete Wentz: They are. And I think that they really are a good partnership together because I think they like one another and I think they respect what everybody does. That’s really worked out very well for all four of them.
Jonathan V.: That’s great. Well, thank you for your time. You’ve been very generous with your time. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. I think you’re an excellent father and you’ve got three wonderful kids that are proof of it.
Pete Wentz: Well, fortunately, I gathered part of this. You don’t have to ask them how much of what I said is true. So I guess I’m safe.
Jonathan V.: You’re off the hook. Well, please pass along my, thanks to Pete as well. I enjoy his music and I think he’s been a good example for other people that want to pursue that type of career. I mean, his work ethic, his hustle, and especially his approach to doing it, you know, avoiding the party scene. And like I said, the drugs and all of the other pitfalls that unfortunately take down some of the people that we would love to have today. Had they not gone down those paths? Yeah. Almost make you very proud. Well, thanks again, Pete.
Pete Wentz: My pleasure.
Jonathan V.: Take care.
Pete Wentz: Have a good one. Bye.