Fall Out Boy’s founding guitarist, Joe Trohman, has returned from a mental health break begun earlier this year.
The 38-year-old guitarist announced his return Monday via Instagram after hitting pause four months ago to tend to his mental health.
“Hey everyone, I’m officially back!,” Trohman wrote. “I want to thank everyone for the love and support while I took some time away to focus on my brain and get healthy for my family, my friends and myself.”
Trohman then thanked guitarist Ben Young, formerly of Linkin Park and the Deftones, for filling in during his absence, calling Young “a true gentleman and a scholar.”
“I’m stoked to be back in action,” he continued, “… and I can’t wait to see everyone on tour this summer!”
Trohman dropped the news he was temporarily leaving the band in mid-January, shortly after Fall Out Boy released a new single, “Love From the Other Side,” and revealed that its eighth studio album, “So Much (for) Stardust,” was scheduled to arrive March 24.
“Neil Young once howled that it’s better to burn out than to fade away,” Trohman wrote in the missive he shared to the band’s Instagram account. “But I can tell you unequivocally that burning out is dreadful. Without divulging all the details, I must disclose that my mental health has rapidly deteriorated over the past several years. So, to avoid fading away and never returning, I will be taking a break from work which regrettably includes stepping away from Fall Out Boy for a spell.”
The guitarist said the decision didn’t come lightly, especially considering the band — bassist Pete Wentz, drummer Andy Hurley and frontman Patrick Stump — planned to drop a new album that Trohman wrote filled him “with great pride.” But he assured fans he would “absolutely, one-hundred percent” return to the pop-punk group he helped found in Wilmette, Ill., in 2001.
Months before, Trohman released a memoir, “None of This Rocks,” in which he shared personal stories of coping with substance abuse, mental illness and growing up with a mother who suffered from severe mental illness caused by brain tumors and radiation treatments.
During an October 2022 appearance on the “Tamron Hall Show” to promote his book, Trohman said, “All of your problems start from your parents, good and bad. And trying to find validation in other places to fill that void, at least for me, never worked.
“I’m not sure if I still to this day even see all the success that I’ve had as mine. … It doesn’t satisfy me or fulfill me. I’ve been in therapy.”
Trohman is set to join Fall Out Boy for its 29-date So Much For (Tour) Dust tour, which kicks off at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on June 21. The band will make stops in Dallas and Phoenix before playing in California, with sets in Chula Vista and Los Angeles in early July. The tour concludes Aug. 6 in Camden, N.J.
