Talking with Brendon Urie, frontman of Panic! At the Disco.
First off, Can I get a brief history of the band?
A brief history, um, well Ryan, Spencer and Brett were in a band for like three years playing pop-punk music and I joined like two years ago, I’m the newest member, and I just met the bass player by transferring high schools, and he just offered to let me play guitar for his band for a little bit, so I was playing back up guitar, then back up vocals then a month after that the band said that I was the singer. Good shit.
You guys had a unique experience getting discovered by Pete Wentz, can you tell me a little about how it happened?
m yeah, we recorded demos on our laptops, and sent them to Pete Wentz’s live journal and he sent them out and then came down to Vegas, because they were recording in LA, and he just watched us practice and offered to sign us after that.
Regarding the Pete Wentz and Brandon Flowers arguments, it was also rumored that you guys were against The Killers, is this true?
No, not at all. We were just dragged into that.
How would you rate the music scene in Las Vegas ?
It sucks, it’s horrible. There’s no support for bands, there’s no places to play.
Out of the touring you’ve done, do you have any favorite places to play?
Um, I don’t know, we’ve had a couple of favorite shows. I think the house of blues in Atlantic city was one of our best shows and Myrtle Beach as well, and I think on our second tour of the Fusion Tour, Minneapolis, Minnesota was a really good show for us.
Did you enjoy playing at the Nintendo Fusion Tour?
Yeah, it was a lot of fun obviously, there were a bunch of kids coming to every show, there was really no disappointment, we had a good turn out so it was a lot of fun.
“A Fever you can’t sweat out” has been climbing the charts and has been gaining a lot of exposure lately, musically, what direction do you see your next album going in?
Pretty much the last song of our first album is gonna be like the first song on our new album and we just want to kind of. we just don’t want to be like labeled like dance punk, rock band or whatever, we want to go in a direction more towards the musical sense like theater, like orchestra stuff
Many people, some being labeled as, “seasoned punks” are against bands marketing themselves on internet websites such as myspace and purevolume saying that it makes things too easy. What are your thoughts on myspace and purevolume and other outlets like that?
I think its stupid to say that its too easy, I think the whole idea of having to pay your dues is kind of stupid, I mean if you don’t have to pay your dues, then why do extra work if you don’t really need to, I think the internet helps us out a lot, it was like our biggest thing, before we ever played a show, we got signed. We pretty much used purevolume and myspace to get recognized and to create a fan base on the internet and it’s been great so far.
I’ve heard that the name “Panic! At the Disco” is associated to The Smith’s song, “Panic.” Is this true? If so, is there any reason why you chose this particular song to influence your band name?
Um, its probably true, when we wanted to change the band name, we really just thought that.actually its from a band called, “Name Taken” and they have a song called Panic as well and in the song it says “Panic at the disco” and it was kinda a toss up between that and The Smith’s song that says, ‘burn down the disco’ and for whatever reason I mean we just thought panic at the disco sounded weird, where like you know, people might not get it but it sounds pretty funny and pretty weird, so we’ll keep it.
What bands or artists would you credit as your main influences?
I‘’d say bands like Third Eye Blind, and Counting Crows and Queen, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, those are some bands that are pretty big influences to us.
Can you tell me a little bit about the tour you are on now?
It started off about two and a half weeks ago, its with The Academy is., Acceptance and Hellogoodbye, we actually just got back from UK about a two week tour in the UK with the Academy is.. and that went well and this [tour] is another about 2 months, just a national tour, we’re pretty much just hitting all the big cities.
Yeah I actually tried to get tickets to the one in Cincinnati, but that sold out REALLY fast.
Yeah, thank god I mean its been awesome that these shows have been selling out so quickly.
Alright, well thanks a lot, and have a great rest of the tour.
Thank you very much.