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One of the biggest bands of the decade may not make it past their second album. This is the story you don't know about Panic at the Disco.
When Panic at the Disco released their sophomore effort, Pretty. Odd., in the spring of 2008, the music press all clamored to tell readers the same story: the lengthy writing process, the cabin retreat, the musical that the band started and never finished. It was a story of hurdles overcome. The head of their label, iconoclastic emo-rocker Pete Wentz, sang the praises of the new songs on his multiple blogs. The album, a stoned homage to love and the Beatles, debuted at #2 on the charts, despite sounding nothing like the emo-cabaret of their previous offering. The band headlined two successful tours, and closed out the year with promises of a new record by spring.
But behind the tale of the uphill battle to reinvent their sound lies another tale, of the downhill slide that may still end the band. It's a story they haven't shared with anyone — until now.
Brendon Urie fidgets. He's sitting, not so still, in a secluded corner of the bar at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, where the band recorded Pretty. Odd. He's dressed in skinny jeans — a holdover from the band's earlier emo days — and a t-shirt, sunglasses pushed up into his dark hair. Throughout our conversation, he shifts his weight and bites his fingernails, until asked the central question of the day: what was it really like, recording and then touring the expectation-defying songs of Pretty. Odd.?
His sudden shift into stillness is unexpected, and he holds for just a moment before he starts to speak. "It was hard." He pauses. "It was harder than anyone really saw. It started in the cabin but it was there through writing and recording the album, through the tours. [It was] like this knot of tension in my chest, my shoulders. I never needed so many massages." He laughs weakly at the joke.
The tension still isn't easy to talk about. The band had a meteoric rise to stardom, but nothing was easy from there on out. First there was the internet backlash. Then the replacement of original bassist Brent Wilson with Chicagoan Jon Walker. And then, things got really difficult: when it was time to record the next set of songs, guitarist and songwriter Ryan Ross choked.
"Ryan tried so hard to make it work," Urie remembers. "He didn't want to let any of us down. But those songs just weren't working."
He's referring to what came to be known as the "cabin musical," a set of approximately six songs that the band wrote, then discarded, in early 2007. Only the briefest record of them exists today. Snippets can be heard in Calendar Business, a behind-the-scenes documentary filmed by the band's good friend Shane Valdés. (A more complete cabin song can possibly be found on Fall Out Boy's Welcome to the New Administration mixtape, though the band and the label will neither confirm nor deny. The song, "Nearly Witches," is credited to The Paul Revere Jumpsuit Apparatus.) The documentary's scenes from the cabin are incredibly telling. In one shot, Urie stands with his back to the camera, singing into a mic in front of a bare mattress propped against the wall. His shoulders are tense. He barely gets one line out before he throws his headphones off, muttering quietly that he "[doesn't] even know the fucking melody." It's a tiny glimpse into the tension Urie talks about, but it's unmistakable.
"We tried really hard to keep all of that out of the films," is all Urie will say on the subject.
Feeling strain over an ambitious project that's failing fast is understandable. The band threw the songs away because they knew they weren't working. But for Urie, the tension didn't dissipate.
In a separate interview by phone, drummer Spencer Smith elaborates. "There was another shoot we did, this short film for MTV [Panic at the Disco in American Valley]. We were in the desert for nine hours and Brendon barely said three sentences. They just edited around it."
Silence is one thing Urie isn't known for. He's usually the energetic frontman, dancing wildly onstage, bouncing off equipment and bandmates. But somewhere along the way, he'd begun to feel like an outsider in his own band. The feeling started when Ross turned to bassist Jon Walker for helping writing the next batch of songs, the ones that would become Pretty. Odd. It continued during the recording process, when Ross requested to sing for the first time.
"We'd written that whole first album for me, for my voice," Urie explains. "And then here he was, writing things and not handing them over. I didn't know how to take that."
Urie had also brought the band a couple songs of his own, hoping they'd make it on the album. "Ryan didn't like them. It was Spencer and Rob [Matthais, their producer] who got them included."
Both songs are short, almost interludes really, but they stand out for their difference in style. Ross would continue to deride them, especially the unfortunately-named but pitch-perfect folk song "Folkin' Around," in interviews surrounding the release of the album. He openly told reporters that he hadn't liked the song, characterizing it as "just a campfire tune," lacking in any serious artistry. Urie sat mostly silent during these comments, but would, on occasion, laugh along as though he agreed. It's painful to watch, but in private it was even worse.
When it came time to pick a setlist for the Honda Civic Tour, which the band headlined in the summer of 2008, Urie says they fought hardest over whether or not to play his songs. He and Ross would get into "epic" screaming matches. The other band members began to step back, to remove themselves from the conflict. (Smith hedges his way around questions on the subject; Walker declined to be interviewed.) With no one there to run interference, the fights got nasty. Both men said things they admit to regretting.
Ross, when asked, says he doesn't know, or doesn't remember, why he fought so hard to keep Urie's songs out of the set. "I came up with the idea for Brendon to go out alone, at the opening of the encore, as this way for him to have the spotlight. But then he insisted on playing 'Time to Dance,' which is the one song from [A Fever You Can't Sweat Out] that I just really hate."
Did he think it was the end of the road for the band? "It felt like it at times. That's why we both just let it go in the end. We both compromised. We're too stubborn so we both just gave up on fighting."
...
And that's how the summer started. The album was doing well, the tickets were selling, and the fans clearly hadn't deserted them, no matter the drastic change in sound. But the hard-won compromise didn't entirely please Urie, who began to recede from the limelight. On their previous tour, he'd talked non-stop between songs, scripted quotes about love and dreams and fucking. This time around, though, he let Ross and Walker do the talking.
The tour is documented on the Live in Chicago DVD, which includes another glimpse into the band's offstage life directed by Shane Valdés. The short look at the tour, called In the Days, doesn't illuminate the summer as much as obscure it. Any uncomfortable content has been carefully scrubbed away, leaving only four buddies, plus their entourage, on a road trip through America.
[ummmm, something goes here. their fragile peace, i guess.]
It was a fragile peace at best, Smith confirms.
As Ross began to take more of the Panic spotlight, Urie spent his time guesting on other people's albums. He appeared on the little-noticed concept musical Razia's Shadow, released by the band Forgive Durden. In September of 2008, he flew to L.A. to record vocals and piano for Fall Out Boy's Folie a Deux. Three months later, almost to the day, the album leaked. Urie was again in L.A. working on someone else's record. He received a call from Ross, who'd heard the leak and had taken issue with "20 Dollar Nose Bleed."
[this is where the article elaborates on the fight over "$20 nose bleed"]
Ross, when asked, politely declines to comment on the fight. "I thought it was a good song," he offers, but clams up after that.
[break here?]
Throughout it all, Urie has kept up the cheerful front. He has a showman's smile, capable of projecting warmth and happiness even when he's feeling none. There is the sense that "Fake it to make it" is Urie's motto, whether he'd admit to it or not.
[this is the wrap-up, the last lines]
Outwardly, they ended 2008 on a happy note. They made it through the MTV-sponsored Rock Band tour without any major conflict. They took a short break, but planned to head back into the studio and get another album out in 2009. But once again the creative process isn't gelling. The release has been postponed until 2010, though Urie sounds skeptical when asked if it'll really happen. "We haven't all been in the same room in weeks," he says a little ruefully.
I ask what he plans to do in the meantime. Solo album? He pauses in the middle of slurping the end of his soda, then sets the glass down carefully. "I don't think so," he answers. "I'll wait for Ryan. I wouldn't... I'll wait."