Panic! at the Disco, Part 1 of 2
Panic! At The Disco’s Formation (2004-2005)
In 2004 Panic! At The Disco was formed in a suburban area of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was formed by childhood friends Ryan Ross, who sang and played guitar, and Spencer Smith, who played drums. The two attended Bishop Gorman High School, which is when they both started playing music together in their freshman year. They asked their friend Brent Wilson which attended a nearby school called Palo Verde High School, to join on bass. Wilson also invited fellow Classmate Brendon Urie to try out to play the guitar.
Soon after the quartet was formed they started rehearsing in Smith’s grandmother’s living room. Urie grew up in a Mormon family in Las Vegas so early on he missed rehearsals because he was required to go to church. Ross was initially the lead vocalist, but after hearing Urie sing back-up vocals during rehearsals they decided to make him the lead. Panic! At The Disco was initially a Blink-182 cover band. When the band was making their early experimental demos, they created a different kind of sound that was unlike the many other death-metal bands in Las Vegas that were performing at the time. The band had never performed a live show but they managed to sign a recording contract. “We never went out and played shows before we got signed because the music scene in Las Vegas is so bad. There's not a lot going on,” Smith said. “In our practice space, there were something like 30 bands, and every day we'd walk into that room and hear the exact same death-metal bands. So it kind of influenced us to be different. And to get out of Las Vegas.”
Urie started working at Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Summerlin so he could be able to afford the rent for the band’s practice space. All four of them left their educations behind so they could concentrate on their music. Ross had a falling out with his father since he dropped out of college, and when Urie dropped out of High School his parents kicked him out of their house. He stayed with friends until he could afford to rent his own apartment. Ross And Urie soon relied on their laptops because they had started developing their early demos and posting 3 demos on PureVolume.
They sent a link to the bassist for Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz via LiveJournal. Wentz was in Los Angeles at the time working with the rest of Fall Out Boy, so he just drove to Las Vegas to meet with the young, unsigned band. Upon only hearing two to three songs during band practice Wentz was impressed and immediately wanted the band to sign to his Fueled By Ramen imprint label, which made them the first on the new label. Around the December of 2004, the group signed to the label. Meanwhile Wentz would hype the band when possible by wearing “Panic! At The Disco” shirts, giving them shoutouts & mentioning them in interviews. At the time of the band’s signing they were all in high school, other than Ross which was forced to quit UNLV. Urie graduated in May 2005, and Wilson And Smith finished online school as they for College Park, Maryland to record their debut record.
Come back soon to read the rest of the article!
Photo attribution:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/PanicAtTheDisco.jpg
