You are reading that author’s name correctly. None of this Rocks is a memoir penned by Fall Out Boy guitarist, Joe Trohman. I for one, would have never guessed someone from one of my favorite bands would ever write something so personal. It was quite eye-opening.
As expected, there was a large portion of the book spent detailing Trohman’s time in Fall Out Boy, but that is to be expected given that half of his life has been spent involved with the band. But before all of that, we spent a great deal of time learning about his childhood. This is important because you’d be right in guessing that it helped shape some of the decisions, both good and bad, later in his life. Unfortunately for Trohman, his mother was not loving. Like at all. Even more sad to learn, this was because of radiation done on her brain in the 70s. It sounds like that kind of took everything from her, while his dad spent time providing for the family as a doctor.
Aside from not getting any love from his mother, the family also moved just outside of Cleveland for his dad’s work, which had an extremely negative impact on the formative years of Trohman’s life. It was a Jewish-hating town, and as someone from Ohio, I am both not surprised, and I apologize for your miserable time here. Hillbilly’s suck. I’m glad that things started turning around for him when the family moved to Chicago. It’s there that he became obsessed with going to concerts, and it is there that he met Pete Wentz. Wentz took him on a tour when he was probably much too young to have any business going on tour, but that time in life is what solidified one of my favorite bands out there.
It was cool to hear about Patrick and Andy’s joining of the band, and it was interesting to read about how hard they worked for so long before anyone really took any notice. But that, friends, is what passion is. It sounds to me though that Trohman was still far to young to be equipped to handle that level of fame so quickly. Therapy tricks be damned! He had them in his arsenal, but he also had drugs. And easy access to drugs, and then it was all kind of downhill from there. When the band went on hiatus he was at his lowest point, and it took one “you look like crap” comment from one of his idols to decide to turn it around.
I’m just glad he is where he is now, and I think like most people, he probably wouldn’t change much of his journey. You can only look back and learn at this point. I really enjoyed getting this inside look into Trohman’s life, and I hope the process was a cathartic one for him. Now that the book is under my belt though, I’m ready for new music from the guys. Fingers crossed this year!