Fall Out Boy Postpones Tour Over 'Personal Issues'; Pete Wentz Discusses Depression in New Video

April 9, 2007

Fall Out Boy have postponed the start of their North American tour by several weeks due to “personal issues” just days after a video of bassist Pete Wentz posted was posted explaining his life-long struggle with depression.

“Unfortunately, because of some personal issues we had to delay the tour a few weeks,” Wentz said in a statement. “We want to put on the best possible show we can and know that this extra couple of weeks will give us the time to put ourselves in the right place to put on the best show we can. The shows from the earlier part of the tour will be rescheduled to the end but all tickets will be honored for all moved shows. Again we apologize. Our fans really mean the world to us and I promise the wait will be well worth it.”

The 42-date tour was scheduled to start April 18, and has now been delayed until May 11. Shows scheduled to take place at the beginning of the tour have been moved to the end of the tour, with the exception of the May 1 gig in Sacramento, Calif., which has been cancelled.

Just days before news of the cancellation, an emotional interview with Wentz was posted on www.HalfOfUs.com, a website for mtvU series Half of Us, which discusses depression, eating disorders, anxiety, stress and drug and alcohol abuse. In the clip, the lyricist discusses his failed suicide attempt and how he’s come to cope with depression.

“The darkest moment was we’d just finished recording our major-label record and two days later we were going to go to Europe, and I felt completely lost and out of control,” Wentz reveals in the clip. “At that point, I’d seen some doctors and they were kind of Hollywood doctors, so they’d given me a cocktail but I kind of like was the Drug Store Cowboy and I took the cocktail the way I wanted to take it. I got in my car and I was listening to Jeff Buckley doing Lenard Cohen’s ‘Hum Hallelujah’ and sat there and took a bunch of Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot.”

Wentz goes on to say that a stint in the hospital and finding a good therapist helped him move forward, but he concedes there will be times when he has to pull back.

“One of the biggest things for me was being honest with everybody about it, with my band and fans of my band and let them know that there are going to be times when we have to slow down so I can just make sure that everything’s intact,” he says.