I was actually signed at a very young age - I was 12 - and one thing led to another, and I ended up in a mutual split from the label. But it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened, because I was able to kind of leave the industry side of it for a minute and focus on the independent side.
Not many get a chance to hit the career re-set button.
What I did before in my career you can pretty much throw out the window. Out of sight, out of mind.
When you step foot into your first professional tournament, everything you've done in your amateur career really doesn't matter any more.
Whatever notoriety Fall Out Boy used to have prevents me from having the ability to start over from the bottom again.
I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.
It's weird. I went so far away from music that I had to re-invent music again. I had to come back to music. I had to put music with an agenda down and at least write for my son, write to keep writing, but the idea of having a music career had to go away for a while.
I had done a sitcom and a movie and hosted the Emmys, and all of a sudden, I lost everything. As someone put it at the time, I was suddenly like a Ferrari in neutral.
When you get to Hollywood, you have to start from zero, whatever you've done before.
