None of This Rocks

August 1, 2022
In this bloated memoir, Trohman, lead guitarist of the pop punk band Fall Out Boy, wisecracks through his journey from being a midwestern misfit to becoming a rock star. Raised by a mentally ill, emotionally distant mother, Trohman felt ill at ease as one of the few Jewish residents in 1990s South Russell, Ohio, where his family was treated with “genuine curiosity and legitimate revulsion.” But punk music came to the rescue. After moving to the Chicago area, he clawed his way on stage, culminating in a tour when he was 15 as the “fill-in bass player for Arma,” and went on to form Fall Out Boy in 2001. The band’s massive success was liberating, but also led to crippling self-doubts about his creative role, especially after submitting “what I thought were my best tracks, only to have them ignored” in the recording studio. Along with band drama, he dealt with drug addiction (“volleying between uppers and downers”) and suffered “raging depression and anxiety,” but music saw him through to the fulfillment he eventually found in starting a family. Trohman’s musings are punctuated by his somewhat grating humor (he jokes about putting his kids in “some sort of murder bag”) and a meandering narrative. It’ll thrill hardcore fans, but will prove of limited appeal otherwise.

August 1, 2022
A debut memoir from the lead guitarist for Fall Out Boy. Trohman's first book feels less like a traditional memoir and more like a surprising confessional from the guy sitting next to you on a cross-country flight. Even at 37, the author already has a fascinating life story. When he was 15, he went on his first punk-rock tour, following a few years of therapy prompted by his struggles with antisemitism in his elementary school and his tumultuous relationship with his mother, who was coping with brain cancer. Stunningly honest about his depression, low self-esteem, and drug addiction, Trohman also has a charming literary voice of his own, using self-deprecation and clever quips to keep things moving briskly. He writes fondly of a friend who was able to "pull me out from my tightly wrapped burrito comprising seven layers of beans, cheese, and shredded self-hatred" and how his inner voice nagged him into speaking to the woman who would become his wife. The author's storytelling is sometimes uneven, straying off into odd asides about Corona commercials or his vasectomy while quickly glossing over stories about the formation of Fall Out Boy or its little-discussed hiatus. Though Trohman has been in two bands each with bassist Pete Wentz and drummer Andy Hurley, he offers little about what they are like offstage or how fame has affected them. Instead, he provides more about his work composing music for TV shows and commercials, which didn't really work out, and his recent interest in writing and producing his own comedies. Ultimately, Trohman's tales are thoughtful and interesting enough to keep most readers engaged. "Looking back at old footage of myself," he writes, "it was as if I were the physical manifestation of full-blown hypermania, though it's clear now that this acting out was my way of releasing all the negative energy I had stored up from years of trauma." A rock star's intriguing memoir ends up revealing way more about his compelling life than his famous music.

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August 26, 2022

Trohman, lead guitarist of the pop-punk band Fall Out Boy, whines and berates his way through his life to this point in his life (at age 37), vacillating between self-hatred and rock star status. He grew up in an upper-middle-class environment with a doting, workaholic father, and a mother who suffered from and eventually died from multiple brain tumors. He is open about his own struggles with depression, his complicated relationship with his mother, drug and alcohol misuse, and his experiences growing up Jewish in small-town Ohio before his family moved. He relates how Fall Out Boy's cofounder, Pete Wentz, convinced Trohman's parents to let him go on tour at 15, and how the success of his band has allowed him to work on other music and entertainment projects. Fall Out Boy fans will be drawn to this memoir, and readers interested in pop-punk history might find some entertainment. There is little, however, about personal relationships among band members or the band's ups and downs. VERDICT Trohman's self-deprecating humor and rambling asides sometimes take away from what is otherwise an important discussion about mental health.--Rebekah J. Buchanan

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