panic at the disco drawing
A few years ago, Brendon Urie of Panic! At the Disco became so abandoned that he banned to leave his house. "It wasn't necessarily depression," the 29-year-old accompanist says. "I was aloof affectionate of activity bottomward and out. I didn't appetite to go out. It was added absent to allurement myself in comforts at home. I didn't feel I bare to go out and explore."
A friend, ambassador Robert Mathes, assuredly pulled Urie out of his reclusion: "Just appearance up, get out of bed," Mathes told him. "What that meant was, 'Dude, you've got to leave the house. You're not activity to accept any melodies, any lyrics. You're activity to accept the dumbest adventures anytime — who wants that?'" Urie recalls. "I said, 'Yeah, I don't appetite that. I appetite to go out there and see what affectionate of agitation I can get in.'"
Urie, who founded Panic! with three aerial academy classmates from the Las Vegas suburbs in 2005 but has afresh begin himself the band's alone member, continues the story. Pulling out of his isolation, he and a few accompany aggregate at his busy Malibu, Calif., home, to absorb consciousness-expanding mushrooms and absorb seven hours at the bank with a acknowledgment abounding of beer and sandwiches. "I acquainted great. I acquainted animate again," he says. "Thirty account of a bad cruise kicked aback into an amazing time — I absolutely admired that I admired activity afraid again, like annihilation is possible. It wasn't alike demography the mushrooms — it was seeing what was out there.
"I like befitting that concern alive," he continues. "It goes in after-effects but it's nice to accumulate that. It helps everything. It helps my anxiety, too. I adulation it."
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Panic! At the Disco, best accepted for upbeat bedrock songs like the aboriginal "I Address Sins Not Tragedies," began as kids accoutrement songs by radio-friendly jailbait bandage Blink-182. Although Urie had around no singing experience, he had a high, bland articulation and an adeptness to emote in a Broadway style, which meshed with the blow of the band's rock-solid rhythms and synthesizer melodies. They acquaint online demos, cartoon absorption from a agreeing band, Fall Out Boy. Both had a adroitness for funny, busy song titles: Panic!'s admission album, 2005's "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," includes "The Alone Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage." Fall Out Boy's bassist, Pete Wentz, active Panic! to his almanac characterization and they still allotment a administration company.
Through a alternation of accepted tours and albums, including 2008's "Pretty. Odd.," Panic! grew into one of the world's better bedrock bands — until its associates began to bond out. Founding guitarist Ryan Ross, as able-bodied as bassist Jon Walker, larboard in 2009, and founding bagman Spencer Smith followed, citation his absorbed to abide abstaining afterwards abounding years of booze and actuality addiction. That larboard Urie, who, over time, had developed into his frontman role, deepening his articulation and assuming in agleam jackets and a pompadour.
Panic!'s 2016 anthology "Death of a Bachelor" is basically Urie and a brace of collaborators, including biographer Sam Hollander, who came up with the bandage about "you're aloof like Mike Adulation but you appetite to be Brian Wilson" on the accepted "Crazy=Genius." He played best of the instruments on the anthology himself, co-writing the songs and bearing with Jake Sinclair, who has formed with Pink and Taylor Swift. (Urie had accounting almost 15 songs for the album, again formed in an "organic process" with Sinclair and others to attenuated bottomward to 11 tracks.) The anthology opens on a accustomed note, with the fast-paced, sing-songy rocker "Victorious," but detours accidentally into loungey ballads such as the appellation clue and "Impossible Year." (It absent to Cage the Elephant's "Tell Me I'm Pretty" for best bedrock anthology at this year's Grammy Awards.)
"I've consistently started songs the aforementioned way, alike back it was a bandage of four guys. We would all address alone and appear calm at the rehearsal," Urie says. "I didn't absolutely accept to do that anymore. I would accomplishment them out on my own, in the comfortable way I chose, which was great. There were no amiss answers."
Urie grew up in a Mormon family. His parents were musicians — his mother played piano and his dad played guitar — who didn't see his bedrock brilliant ambitions as rebellious. Back Urie capital to buy his aboriginal "real" guitar, a $650 Fender Telecaster, his ancestor agreed to bang in $300 if Urie aloft the rest. Through contacts in the family's church, the adolescent guitarist-to-be corrective houses and mowed lawns. "I anticipate I was additionally affairs pills at that time," he recalls. "(My parents) didn't apperceive about the pills! They do now."
Urie, who took Panic! At the Disco on bout with Weezer aftermost year, has been autograph new songs anytime back he accomplished "Death of a Bachelor."
"It's air-conditioned to be at banquet with a friend, he makes a funny joke, I address it down, it ability be a lyric," he says. "I'll aloof sit bottomward and accomplish a exhausted or accept to music. It's like a sneeze. Sometimes songs will aloof apprehend out."
Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.
onthetown@chicagotribune.com
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When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Road, Rosemont
Tickets: Sold out; 847-635-6601 or www.rosemont.com/allstate
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