Andrew John Hurley

He was born in Menomonee Falls on May 31, 1980, and raised there by his mother, a nurse, after his father died when Andy was five. He started on saxophone as a percussion kid at Menomonee Falls High School. His sister handed him Metallica's Ride the Lightning and a Van Halen record; he switched to drums, cited Dave Lombardo as the god, and spent the rest of adolescence in death metal, then Earth Crisis, then Milwaukee and Chicago hardcore.

Before the pop-punk payday he drummed for Racetraitor, Killtheslavemaster, Project Rocket, and a stack of straight-edge and vegan-hardcore bands. He joined Fall Out Boy as the full-time drummer in 2003. From Under the Cork Tree (2005) put the band on Rolling Stone and on the Bradley Center stage. Between tours he double-majored in anthropology and history at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He stayed vegan and straight-edge and kept playing heavier bands, including The Damned Things and SECT, on the side. In a 2007 Alternative Press interview he described himself as an anarcho-primitivist and admitted that a touring rock career contradicted the creed; he still had to make a living.

English teacher James Kuse remembered running into the freshman in a hallway and, later, a kid who fit the profile; OnMilwaukee covered that local stretch around a 2007 Bradley Center date. Birth and childhood belong to Menomonee Falls, not a generic Milwaukee music-bio shorthand. The Falls still sends teenagers to the shows.