My Chemical Romance – Frank Iero interview with Bobby from thepunksite.com
May 19th, 2005 Rexall Place – Edmonton, Alberta
As My Chemical Romance passed through Edmonton as the sole opener for the Green Day North American tour, Frank Iero was nice enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions. He was really cool and gave some intelligent answers and made for a great interview. My friend Jacey helped with some questions and pops in a few times during the interview. Thanks a lot to Frank for doing the interview and to Laura for setting it up. Enjoy!
Please Note: All pictures were taken, without permission, from the band’s site.
Bobby: Starting with the simple questions, you guys have been touring with Green Day for quite a while now. How has that been going?
Frank: Oh man, it’s been amazing. I can’t believe tomorrows our last day. It’s one of those things that you get the phone call, and since you were thirteen you wanted to tour with Green Day, at least play a show or see them or something; and when they ask you to tour with them, it kind of blows your mind. You don’t think that they are asking the right band. But this tour has been amazing. We’ve go to hang out with our heroes who treat us like peers. And we get to watch Green Day every night, so that’s pretty cool.
Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moments from it so far?
Frank: Ah man, there’s so many. I mean, the shows are just insane. The shows are unlike any shows we’ve ever played. The kids are great. In fact, it shows that we’ve been playing really well because it takes a while to get used to an arena, you know? But there’s also other memorable stuff that we’ve done outside of the show on the tour. Just hanging out. Like we all went to go see Star Wars together, the other day we went to a Water Park in town. You know what I’m talking about? That was ridiculous.
Bobby/Jacey: Yeah. The one in the mall?
Frank: Yeah, that one. They take us on dates and stuff, it’s really cool.
Bobby: How did you end up getting the opening spot? Like did they just call you, or what?
Frank: Basically, that’s how it happened. The way things work is that a tour will be planned for a headlining band. And then support bands will submit for the tour and say “Hey, we’d love to go out with you”, you know, “consider us.” So I guess we submitted for it, and they picked us. It was ridiculous too because there’s only two bands and that’s really unheard of these days. Usually it’s like a three band bill, four band bill. And for us just to be us and Green Day… It’s not like they picked us because they needed us to sell tickets or something, like they didn’t need us at all. They just liked our band, and that was really flattering.
Bobby: You guys also recently ended the Taste of Chaos tour with The Used. How was that?
Frank: That was fun. That tour was really different because it was a lot of bands that we had toured with back in the day. Bands like Underoath, Senses Fail, and A Static Lullaby we tour with… I guess two years ago and we were doing hundred person rooms, three hundred person rooms. And The Used we toured with a bunch. So it was like all our friends getting together. And when all our friends got together, we could play arenas; and that was really weird. We’d all kind of look at each other and say “Is this real?” But I guess that’s the beauty of it.
Bobby: On the tour, for your encore you guys and The Used did a cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” and now you are selling it on iTunes. Why did you decide to do that song?
Frank: Well, it was one of those things that Bert brought up and said “I really want to cover this song; I think it would be awesome if both our bands did it.” And we were like “O yeah, that’s rad!” We love Queen. We love David Bowie. But a lot of things in the industry happen where it’s like “Let’s do this!” and then it never happens. So I guess fortunately, and unfortunately… Unfortunately the tragedy happened and fortunately the song came into fruition because we wanted to do something for the disaster. So I think that kind of sparked it. We recorded our parts in L.A. right before we did the “Helena” video; and the Used did, I think, some of it in L.A. and I think Bert recorded his vocals in England. So it was weird, we were never in the same room or anything like that when we did the song. So the first time we ever did it live was a test. We did it once or twice, and they were gonna film a DVD for the tour and were like “O, it would be great if you guys both did it because you’re both here, it would be really cool.” And we’re like “Alright, we’ll try it.” We were excited to play anyway and then it was just one of those things where it was just fun to do every night, so we just did it.
Bobby: Did they film a DVD for the tour?
Frank: I believe so.
Bobby: Do you know when it will come out?
Frank: Nope, I have no clue.
Bobby: With the release of “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge”, you guys have skyrocketed up the popularity chain, especially here in Canada. You guys went from playing for 100 kids at Warped Tour to selling out arenas at the Taste Of Chaos and opening for Green Day. Why do you think that is?
Frank: It’s one of those things where you start out, you form a band and you write some songs in your basement and you put out a demo or a record on an indie label and you just tour because you love to do what you do. Then you run into kids on the road and they say that they enjoy your art and say that you’ve changed their life in a certain way and that’s the best compliment you can get. It makes you feel like you’re really doing something, like you’re actually changing the world. We haven’t stopped working since those days, so to take a step back be like “O wow, we’ve come this far” – that really doesn’t happen. All I know is that more kids are coming out. I have two plaques in my room, I don’t know, but I don’t see them – I’m never home. Why did that happen? I’d like to think that people heard it and knew that we were a real band and that we had something to say and enjoyed that and took that to heart. I hope that’s the reason. We’ve worked really hard. Maybe that’s it. Maybe God likes us, I don’t know.
Bobby: Do you guys think that that humongous leap in popularity could ever turn into a bad thing?
Frank: I think that anytime a large number of people hear your music and enjoy your music, that’s a good thing. I’m not stupid; I know that a lot of those people could be fair-weather fans. There’s definitely a lot more “Gerard, you’re so cute” rather then “play this song”. That’s a shame. Hopefully the kids who bought the record now and bought it because they think Gerard’s really cute will listen to the record and learn about the band and grow into it and realize why they really like it. If they don’t, that’s fine. If they’re not there tomorrow, we’ll still be doing this and we’ll still be doing this for the people that do get it.
Bobby: How did you get in contact with Reprise Records to release the album?
Frank: Well, here’s the thing. Do you remember Thursday? When they were huge – well, they are on hiatus right now, but like when they got signed, there was a signing frenzy, you know what I mean? Labels were just salivating to sign any band form New Jersey. Kids that had black hair. Kids that wrote about New Brunswick or anything. Anyone from New Jersey was getting signed and you could see that a lot because anybody that was in a band from New Jersey got signed. We were a band for maybe, maybe, two months; and major labels were calling the practice studio that we were practicing in, and that was really weird. We were just like “This is kind of bull shit. You don’t want to sign us; you just want to sign the next Thursday. We’re not going to do this.” We signed to Eyeball, put out an indie record and toured for a while because that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to make something on our own and it’s a lot better when you work for something. And then we felt it was time to make a jump, or take the next step. Eyeball couldn’t reach the amount of people that we really wanted to reach. We toured a lot without the record being really anywhere. And we were like “you know what; we’re not going to sign to another label unless we find something that really gets us and it feels like a family.” And one day we were contacted by Reprise. Reprise, Warner, same thing. And we signed for the company. Everybody that works with our band gets us. They wanted us to be My Chemical Romance, they didn’t want us to be The Used, they didn’t want us to be Thursday or whatever. And that was amazing for us. There was no stipulations, its was just go out, be a band and write songs that you love to write. So we were like “alright!” and we did. I really don’t think they thought they were going to get a really good record, and I think we wrote a really good record so we’ve never regretted that decision.
Bobby: What’s it like switching from a small independent like Eyeball to a major like Warner Music?
Frank: You feel like people are behind you, you know what I mean? It’s weird; I always thought that it would feel less like you have people behind you because it’s such a big company with so many bands. But a lot of people have our backs. A lot of people are pushing for this band to do well and for us to reach our goals. We really just have a lot of help and that’s a great thing and there’s people at the label that really believe in you and their job is to, basically, make sure you get what you want. If we wanted to, let’s say, do another David Bowie cover, they would make that happen; and that’s awesome you know. That’s really the only difference, and your record is everywhere.
Bobby: Yeah, because it’s hard to find your first one. All my friends are looking for it and can’t find it.
Frank: For that, we just say go on the internet and find it.
Bobby: I gotta ask this because I love your videos, like we were watching them at my house last night. “Helena” and “I’m Not Okay”, where did you come up with all the concepts of the video?
Frank: Because we’re just nerds. That’s how it is. We sit in our van or our bus, bus now, and just talk about stupid stuff. Read comic books and watch movies. And then the label’s like “We want to do a video” and we’re like “Okay, this is what we want to do.” Then we found a director, his name is Mark Webb. He did both our videos and he’s directing our new video that we are doing in… actually three days. And he’s like “alright, I think we should do this” and we wanted to do this, so we just kind of mixed it all together. Same thing with “Helena,” although “Helena” was a little bit easier only because I left it up to Gerard. It was about his grandmother, him and Mikey. It was their homage to her. It was creepy, because I was at the actual funeral and it resembled the funeral almost to a T. It was really weird. And some of that you wanted, and some of that just happened. But with the dancing and everything like that, well we always try to have an uplifting theme. I think our music is very ironic in that we’ll have a dark theme with heavy music and a darker theme with an uplifting message.
Bobby: You just said you’re shooting a video in three days, for what song?
Frank: “The Ghost Of You.”
Bobby: Do you have any ideas as to what the concept is going to be?
Frank: Yes. But I can’t tell you. Sorry. It’s going to be huge. I promise you this, it’s going to be more like a movie then any other video we’ve done and it’s going to be enormous. Yeah, we’ve thought this out a lot. It could really, really suck, but we hope it doesn’t.
Bobby: Now I’m looking forward to seeing this video. How do you guys pick what songs you want to be singles?
Frank: Well, it’s one of those things where when we wrote the record we had ideas for what songs we wanted to hear on the radio, but we didn’t really decide any. It was kind of like “we like all our songs, you’re the label, and you decide which ones to put out.” And they were like “okay, put this one out. Put this one out. Put this one out.” If, after this one, they do another, I hope it’s “Prison.”
Bobby: On the “I’m Not Okay” video, Gerard says “I don’t wanna make it, I just wanna…” and then it cuts to the music. Can you finish that sentence for us? “I don’t wanna make it, I just wanna…”
Frank: See, the original line was… well, it summed up the entire cheesiness of the teen movie type thing. It was “I just wanna rock!” And it was just too much. We wrote a million other things, “I just wanna be myself”… ah, what were the other ones… there were so many. But we just left it open because I think you get a lot more out of it if you just leave it open and put whatever you want to put in there. In that scene, Gerard is like every kid. He’s me, he’s you, he’s everyone. It’s like, you know what, a lot of people are told they aren’t going to make it, but just do what you do best and live your life. Live it for yourself, and really just fuck everybody else.
Bobby: A lot of punk “elitists” are starting to complain about the whole “emo” trend. Guys wearing makeup, and wearing girls pants. Mark Adkins from Guttermouth went on a huge rant about it all on their site and even went to the limit of calling Gerard a “fat pink raccoon.” What’s your opinion on all of that?
Frank: I think, he’s a racist, he’s a sexist, he’s homophobic, he’s a hateful person, and it’s just wrong. We could all sit here and call people names and hate people for the way they dress or the music they like or just the things that they think are cool. But that doesn’t make us any better. It’s an awful thing where you have such a soap box, like you have a lot of fans that are into your band, and you use that to spew hate. I guess that’s his opinion.
Bobby: You guys are also heavily involved in the Shirts For A Cure project and have a total of four t-shirts on there now. Why are you guys so involved in that?
Frank: Because it’s a good cause. Definitely, maybe this sounds dumb or naive, but when I started playing music and when I started growing up, all I ever wanted to do was to change the world in some way. Make a foot print. I think the worst thing you could possibly do is to live your life and have the world be the same way it was before you were here as it is after. I think that we’re here for a reason and if we don’t do something to make the world a better place, then we just wasted everyone’s time. And if we can do something as small as put t-shirts on website and raise money for a cure, then we’re going to do that.
Bobby: Okay, if you guys could pick one person or band, dead or alive, to tour with, who would you pick to tour with and why?
Frank: Oh man… Definitely the original Misfits line up because they are just amazing. The Clash would be amazing. The bands that I grew listening to, like Black Flag. Man, if I could tour with Black Flag with Keith Morris singing, like the original line up, that would be amazing. Yeah, bands like that.
Bobby: Okay, now onto to more unusual questions that I like to ask at all interviews. First off all, if you guys were stranded on a desert island, with no food and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive?
Frank: Wow. O man. It definitely wouldn’t be Mikey, because he’s got nothing. I don’t know. I wouldn’t eat Gerard or Bob because they are just great company, and I wouldn’t eat Toro because he’d probably be the one to figure out a way off the island. So I’d probably have to eat my own leg.
Bobby: If you were the member of the opposite sex for a day, or a week, or whoever long you wanted, what would you do and why?
Frank: Man, what would I do…? I’d probably get lower car insurance. I don’t know, what would I do… that’s a good question, I’ve never really thought about it.
Bobby: Yeah, not many people do.
Frank: Yeah, I don’t know. Nothing is ringing a bell. Sorry. I’d probably just sit home and eat chocolate cake, that’s all I would do.
Bobby: Okay, here’s a question from my friend Tyson, he’s wanted me to ask this at an interview for so long now. Rosie O’Donnell or Whoopi Goldberg. Who would you do?
Frank: Wow… Christ… Man, there’s no like secret C choice?
Jacey: No happy medium.
Frank: Man. Could I at least give Whoopi Goldberg eyebrows?
Bobby: Yeah.
Frank: Okay, Whoopi Goldberg with eyebrows.
Bobby: Could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk or something that do on the road.
Frank: Umm, okay, let’s see. I’m trying to think of things that won’t embarrass anybody. One thing, just one?
Bobby: Well, how ever many you want to tell us.
Frank: I’ll give you one about everybody. Ray’s never around. Ray will constantly be on his phone, playing a video game or playing guitar in the back lounge with earphones on. Like you will not see him, you do not see him at all. That kid is dedicated to technology completely. Bob is addicted to “24” – the television show. Mikey will be broke at the age of thirty, but have every DVD, comic book, and video game known to man. Gerard, this is probably widely known, but I will assure you, Gerard is as close to genius as you could possibly get.
Bobby: Okay, I guess that’s about it. Do you have any final thoughts you want to add?
Frank: Whatever you do, don’t ever be full of shit.
Bobby: Alright, thanks a lot for doing the interview.
“Musician Interview with: Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance”
Recently, I chatted with Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and below is what he had to say: FLES: What are your favorite songs from “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge?”
Gerard: The most special song to me is ‘Helena,’ which is about my grandma. I think my Favorite song to play live and my favorite on the record is ‘You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison.’ I think it’s very important for us as a band to write songs like prison because it’s kind of constantly breaking boundaries of what could be done by a modern rock band and still work. I think it’s important to do those things and take risks. I think it’s the most important song on the record for that reason.
FLES: When you went into the studio to record the album how many songs did you have and how did you decide which ones would make it onto the album?
Gerard: We actually went into pre production with not that many, I think we had about half a record, then we got really inspired and ended up writing a whole bunch of songs, tweaking sections of songs we previously had and fragments [of songs] became songs. We had become so inspired we got finished with reproduction a week early. I’d say there really isn’t anything left over, but like two songs. One of which was kind of a joke and the other one was an acoustic thing we wanted actually wanted to have the whole band but by then we didn’t have time to redo it.
FLES: How long did it take to record the album?
Gerard: I think only two months. I think we would have gotten it done a little faster than that but [producer] Howard [Benson] wanted to kind of paced the record because we started moving so quickly, because it was so spontaneous. He said, sometimes if you make a record too fast it gets away from you then when your done with it you realize there’s lots of stuff wrong with it. So there were lot of moments were [we] had to stop for a few days here and there.
FLES: How do you decide which songs are releases as singles?
Gerard: We don’t. I think it’s the smartest thing a band can do is not to decide what your singles are because then you don’t write songs to be singles. We let the label decide. That way you can literally honestly say to yourself we don’t write singles, we write records, and you can really retain your artistic Integrity that way. So we gave them [Warner Brothers] the record literally sight unseen and said “here pick the singles, if you find any at all.” They found four, at one point there were six songs they were very excited about, then decided on four of them.
FLES: What was your reaction the first time you heard one of your songs on the radio?
Gerard: It was off our first record, [I Brought You My Bullets You Brought Me Your Love], and I heard ‘Vampires Will Never Hurt You,’ on a college radio station and it was probably the biggest thing to me in the world. To this day, even hearing “Revenge” songs on commercial radio isn’t as big a deal as that first time hearing it on just a college radio station. I think it had like a hundred mile radius.
FLES: Does the band have any plans to release a live CD/DVD?
Gerard: We have been filming footage since the last warped tour and we still have a camera out. I don’t know, we’re talking about it. We feel usually people will put out DVD’s in order to sell as many DVD’s as they did records. That to us is kind of a cheap and sleazy thing to do, ‘cuz their hot at the moment so lets rush a DVD together and get it out. If we put one out it’s going to be because we have so much footage that really tells the complete story of the band as far as we when we had signed to a major [label] the process of recording a record, making the record, and then busting our ass touring on it for the whole time. I think, if we get enough footage to warrant a DVD, we’ll have one. Live CD is something we never actually talked about. We’re kind of one of those bands you need to see live in order to get it. We don’t know if a live CD would work for us but it might, I don’t know.
FLES: Well, we’ve seen MCR about 5 times in concert and I think a live CD would be a great. I think you guys are really good live.
Gerard: Thank you very much. I think it would be cool. Maybe in between not this record or the next but after the next record it might be a good idea to put out a live CD.
FLES: How much preparation went into planning and performing “Under Pressure” with The Used?
Gerard: I’d say a fair amount, not a lot. As far as preparation it was really just go ahead and do it. Two bands in two separate countries we had a very small window of opportunity in which to do it. Two of my guys flew out a day early to LA before we started some tour and I was out there and did my vocals. The Used based off of our template of the song put their parts over it and then it was together. We didn’t play it live together until a week into the Taste of Chaos tour. It was pretty much let’s go head and go this. We tried it for two sound checks then we played it live.
FLES: Is iTunes the only place to purchase the song?
Gerard: Yes.
FLES: Will My Chemical Romance and The Used collaborate on more songs in the future?
Gerard: It’s hard to say. We’re such good friends and we’ve known each other for a long time, I’m sure that’s a possibility. We love collaborating it’s a very cool thing to do; especially if it’s for the right reasons. The thing about Under Pressure, it was for a good cause.
FLES: Do you have any Idea how much money the song raised for the Tsunami Relief?
Gerard: I Believe when it came out $25,000 dollars was initially raised and I think it’s still up in the top three (at the time of this Interview) at iTunes and still raising a lot of money.
FLES: Has the popularity of My Chemical Romance taken you by surprise?
Gerard: It really has. We really believed in ourselves. We believed in the music, we believed in the record, I think a lot more than a lot of other people did. We kind of always knew it was going to be something very big, in terms of speaking to people but we were very surprised by the same element were not use to we’re use to being normal guys. That’s the whole idea behind the band that were very private normal people that when we get onstage we become like these extraordinary characters almost like superhero’s that’s kind of how it works. It started carrying to offstage and we became really the same offstage and that was really strange for us and it’s harder to deal with especially if your bunch of guys that are just like geeky comic book nerds that have no privacy.
FLES: Where Do You See My Chemical Romance say five years from now?
Gerard: In five years, I would see us getting ready to put out a new record after the next one. We’ll probably put out another record after this then tour extensively on it. Then I’d like to see the band take a break for a little while to reevaluate themselves as individuals and as a band and to kind of evolve again as a band, I think that’s really needs to happen and I think some of that stuff only happens from breaks. I see us probably as almost a completely different sounding band with the same ethics. Maybe on a different level I’m not really sure. I know we’ll still be doing this though.
FLES: Any idea when the next album will come out?
Gerard: We want it to come out two years to the [release] day of Revenge. We probably would have called the record sooner but Revenge ended up doing so well that we’re going to continue to tour on it.
FLES: What was it like for you to tour with Green Day?
Gerard: We’ve been on it for about a week now and we’re probably on the seventh show. I’m going to say for the record they are the nicest guys we’ve ever met. We’ve never seen a band reach out to us so much in so many ways, in a live set, on a person level. They really make us feel like fellow musicians. We’ve toured with bands that were only slightly bigger than us or at our level that acted more like rock stars. They don’t even act like rock stars, they’re just a punk band and they put on the greatest, greatest fucking show in the world. I definitely think they’re the greatest rock band right now.
FLES: What are your thoughts on being nominated for “Golden gods” award?
Gerard: You know I just found out about that. I’m not very familiar with the golden gods award but I am very familiar with Metal Hammer who does those. Metal Hammer is a really supportive magazine and its really great. I wasn’t aware of the award but it feels awesome to be nominated for anything. We kind of stay away from press though, positive or negative, we kind of live in a bubble. It’s good to not want nominations and it’s good to not strive for nominations, If you get them it’s kind of like frosting, it’s a bonus. We were use to for so long being the band who was kind of underrated and we were use to not being nominated for stuff and use to being under the radar for so long even though, we felt we deserved a little more recognition. In a reader’s poll two months ago we were the most underrated band now were the most overrated band. It’s funny to go from underrated to overrated so quickly. You get so exposed it becomes less cool to be into your band.
FLES: I have a feeling My Chemical Romance will be nominated for quite a bit of awards in the future.
Gerard: Thank you. We have a good feeling about that stuff too.
FLES: Gerard, Thank you for your time.
Gerard: No problem. Thank you very much.
My Chemical Romance is from Newark, NJ and tour on a regular basis. Their music in on Warner Brothers Records and is available at the usual outlets. Online users may purchase their music at Amazon.com. For more band information visit the official My Chemical Romance website . To sample music by My Chemical Romance visit their page at myspace.com.
HT: Some people are just beginning to discover your success. How long has the band been together and jamming?
Gerard: The band has been together 3 years. Another interesting fact is that the band has yet to “jam.” It’s never been the kind of situation where we sit around and search for songs. The songs find us, we assemble, and put the pieces together.
HT: You guys write music that follows some type of concept. Does this help you write the music and do you mind giving us a breakdown of how a concept is brought to the writing table?
Gerard: The concepts for the songs almost always come from the music. How the music makes us feel dictates where the direction lies. Occasionally, the song concept will come from a long list of unused song titles I have sitting in my mom’s computer. They will sometimes find a home.
HT: If you were stranded on a deserted island with only 3 albums to jam out to, which ones would you choose?
Gerard: This is a tough one but I would probably go with The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths, Walk Among Us by The Misfits, and Music For Airports by Brian Eno.
Gerard: The band was nervous, scared, excited, and anxious but all very positive and looking forward to what we were about to make, which, by the way, had no definite shape or sound.
HT: You guys have been on tour forever! What’s one of the things you love most about being on the road?
Gerard: The camaraderie you share with your band mates and other bands is priceless. The victories and defeats you have everyday are immeasurable when compared to other lifestyles or careers. The risk and hardship are great but when you have 3,000 people sing back your words, you win like no one ever wins.
HT: Gerard, does anyone ever mistaken you for Billy Corgan?
Gerard: When I was younger, it would happen all the time. When he shaved his head, people thought I was him with a wig on. He is, in fact, a lot taller than me.
HT: We are in a new age of music with new gadgets to accommodate that music, and it’s pushing us into the future. How do you position yourself on music downloads, for or against?
Gerard: Downloading is a good thing, protected under the federal laws. The way I’ve always felt about music downloading is this. If you are curious and want to find out what a band sounds like, then go download it. If you like it, go buy it. If you hate it, well then there’s really no reason to buy it. But ultimately, a band’s record sales support them personally, so if you want the artist to be able to go live and work then you should pick up their music… for the cheapest price possible.
HT: What’s a question you wish was never asked from a fan or interview?
Gerard: Hmm…“Would you please bite me on the neck?”
R.P – In Skylines and Turnstiles awkward silence is mentioned – who out of the band is most likely to break an awkward silence first?
F – To break it…Mikey Way
R.P – And how?
F – Catchphrase!
G – Hmm, I think Ray Toro right probably break an awkward silence.
F – I had a different answer
G – Who in the band likely to break an awkward silence. It’s a tie between Ray Toro making a joke or Frank making a smart ass comment. One of those two things will break up an awkward silence, me and Mikey will just sit there and let it go.
R.P – Slightly different from Frank’s answer
G – What…Who he say?
R.P – He said Mikey
G – Ah
F – Catchphrase
G – That’s right!
F – He just walks in a room and goes nooner
G – Yeah that’s true, that’s true
F – Ahh so you were wrong!
G – Well no it’s all agreed really, I think me and Mikey have the catchphrase thing. “
frank: I spilled coffee all over me. thank you. I was so excited that we won! I high fived fall out boy… and then spilled my coffee i’m sorry. uh we have some people we wanted to thank real quick
gerard: first thing we uh, we wanna thank our fans because they are the best fans in the world. that the main thing. we’ve got some people at home. our crew, our work crew that sticks by us every day and we know they’re home so we want to shout out to them incase they’re watching.
earlycuntsets.org website sources – where I got all my mcr pictures
first of a series. due to tumblr limits on how many links you can post. this full idea will be continued on future posts. for now here’s 2002- ½ of 2007. this is pictures. will make a separate post for youtube/recordings.
been needing to fully source my website so here we go! wanted to share with other kool mcr fans.
“A WHOLE LOTTA EMO TOUR 2005 – SWEET vs HUGE. THE REVENGE. COMING: APRIL 2005”
I can’t find any results when I google the above text, but there are three separate 2005 livejournal accounts referring to this tour as the 01/27/2005 – 01/28/2005 english dates (liverpool & brixton) 11/06/2005 (glasgow) and 02/04/2005 (islington)
if you recall my post about fans making gifts (ie. frankie bracelet foundation) for mcr, the gifts were to be presented to them on this tour. and their post is where I got the picture above.
my question is: why are the dates scattered almost a year apart?
I guess just different dates of the same tour? january, february, april and november just seems scattered.
as you can see mcr isn’t on the bill even so maybe this tour flew under the radar. was just surprised to have never heard of this tour like ever. lmk if anyone has!
also @xxv4mpyf4ngzz some follow up on the receiving of these gifts:
“I said hey to Ray quickly and apologised for not bringing him socks. He said it was OK. Soaf and Rosie showed him their “I wanna be the next Ray Toro” t-shirts and he got a bit excited.
We went over to say hi to Frank, Lozi gave him the bracelets she had made him. Frank loves bracelets, true story. Alison presented him with THE SIGN. Frank: “Ass needs tappin’? That’s straightforward!” Us: *gigglegiggleROFL*”
what did their sign say for frank to say that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“mikey’s way” before hitting the road again, heading for Germany, the band members take a lunch break… The waiter asks them if they prefer sandwich bread or a “French baguette”? The Way brothers choose French bread. Once served, Mikey Way’s face falls in front of his roast beef sandwich. “It’s raw!”, the bassist wonders. (the only time of the day when he spoke…) “That’s normal, it’s eaten like that!”, his brother replies. “Oh? Okay…”
“It was unmanageable on the day of the concert. It’s too much stuff in one day. As a result, we rarely have time to enjoy the places where we stop for more than a day.” Gerard then joins the rest of the group in front of the Carrousel du Sacré-Cœur. Together, the five of them happily indulge in a photo shoot organized for an English teen magazine. The photographer is keen to take advantage of the very ‘Frenchie’ setting of the Montmartre district. Under the astonished gaze of a few tourists who wonder what is going on, the group takes their place in front of the merry-go-round. “This is the first time we’ve been asked to smile for a photo shoot!” laughs Ray Toro, guitar. A fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film, the group then recognizes a few places seen in the film Amélie Poulain. The tour continues, with a few comments on French architecture and culture. As soon as they arrive at the first comic book store, everyone forgets their fatigue and doesn’t waste a second rushing to buy the new Star Wars figurines and other comics.
A customer stares at Frank before asking him if he’s in a band: “Do you play in The Cure?” Frank bursts into laughter and answers in the negative before going to tell the others his little story. After a few purchases (Misfits figurines, etc.), it’s already time to get back on the tour bus. “We write a lot on our tour bus. We’ve practically converted the ‘lounge area’ into a studio! We’ve already written a few songs. We might even go back into the studio after the tour. It’s a bit different, but it’s a logical evolution since Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge,” says Gerard Way, who recently did some backing vocals for Every Time I Die’s new album. But the band’s current news is on the road. “We’re thinking of doing another tour in the United States in September,” Frank continues. “For the moment, nothing is certain, but it could well be that we open for a big band with whom we’ve already played…” Green Day? “We can’t say anything,” smiles Gerard. In any case, playing with Green Day has taught us a lot. Just by watching them. They can fill stadiums and keep a constant communication with the audience. Billie Joe is an incredible frontman. We are much better on stage today, partly thanks to opportunities like these. It’s amazing to go from 300 people to 10 or 20 times more. A real challenge for us and also the best learning for a young band. […] Otherwise, we really want to do splits with other bands. We were talking about a split 45 with Alkaline Trio, it will be done according to our schedules.“ Time is on your side!”
more shots from that day from “97x 2007 a look back” and mcrs recount of the game
frank: ahh shoot. that sucks
gerard: wow.
frank: yeah. that was me laughing at him
gerard: I was probably terrible. I was always terrible at kick ball. oh look at that hair though. It doesn’t really matter how good I am
frank: [laughs] when you got locks like that
frank: oh wow what is that? oh that’s like a burger king crown of some sort. how’d that happen?
(below is about a different kickball game from around the same time)
gerard: oh yeah so we show up and they’re like “you guys are gonna get to play kickball and we had done this one and had a lot of fun. and we were like cool we’re gonna play kickball again alright? and uh it was right around this time actually. because this was like warped era I guess it looks like
frank: yeah. I think we went through like a kickball.. thing
gerard: thing. yeah. and so we show up and there is a team. a professional.. team
frank: a professional kickball team
gerard: of 45 year olds drunk dudes. and their only objective was to completely destroy us. we thought we were gonna get to play with fans
frank: [laughs] yeah. we were like "so wheres the kids that we’re supposed to play with and they where like "oh. they’re here. these-these old men that are throwing up in the corner. when they’re done throwing up they’re gonna beat you in kickball. and we were like "ok” and they were like [the radio censored what ever frank said lollll]
gerard:I remember I wiffed.
frank: [laughs] it was awesome
gerard: there was a ball that came at me and I kicked and I wiffed. and they just laughed. I think I walked off
frank: I think you did.
gerard: yeah. I walked away.
frank: at some point we convinced them that we were yknow changing places on the team and we just left. and they ended up playing the rest of the game by themselves
gerard: yeah. basically
frank: they didn’t even know
gerard: no idea
frank: and I think they didn’t win. [laughing] I don’t know
this video originally had a fanmade parody dub but audio has been removed because of a derogatory comment. thanks to @bondilluns for translating the spanish parody dub otherwise i would never have known!
“mikey’s way” before hitting the road again, heading for Germany, the band members take a lunch break… The waiter asks them if they prefer sandwich bread or a “French baguette”? The Way brothers choose French bread. Once served, Mikey Way’s face falls in front of his roast beef sandwich. “It’s raw!”, the bassist wonders. (the only time of the day when he spoke…) “That’s normal, it’s eaten like that!”, his brother replies. “Oh? Okay…”
“It was unmanageable on the day of the concert. It’s too much stuff in one day. As a result, we rarely have time to enjoy the places where we stop for more than a day.” Gerard then joins the rest of the group in front of the Carrousel du Sacré-Cœur. Together, the five of them happily indulge in a photo shoot organized for an English teen magazine. The photographer is keen to take advantage of the very ‘Frenchie’ setting of the Montmartre district. Under the astonished gaze of a few tourists who wonder what is going on, the group takes their place in front of the merry-go-round. “This is the first time we’ve been asked to smile for a photo shoot!” laughs Ray Toro, guitar. A fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film, the group then recognizes a few places seen in the film Amélie Poulain. The tour continues, with a few comments on French architecture and culture. As soon as they arrive at the first comic book store, everyone forgets their fatigue and doesn’t waste a second rushing to buy the new Star Wars figurines and other comics.
A customer stares at Frank before asking him if he’s in a band: “Do you play in The Cure?” Frank bursts into laughter and answers in the negative before going to tell the others his little story. After a few purchases (Misfits figurines, etc.), it’s already time to get back on the tour bus. “We write a lot on our tour bus. We’ve practically converted the ‘lounge area’ into a studio! We’ve already written a few songs. We might even go back into the studio after the tour. It’s a bit different, but it’s a logical evolution since Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge,” says Gerard Way, who recently did some backing vocals for Every Time I Die’s new album. But the band’s current news is on the road. “We’re thinking of doing another tour in the United States in September,” Frank continues. “For the moment, nothing is certain, but it could well be that we open for a big band with whom we’ve already played…” Green Day? “We can’t say anything,” smiles Gerard. In any case, playing with Green Day has taught us a lot. Just by watching them. They can fill stadiums and keep a constant communication with the audience. Billie Joe is an incredible frontman. We are much better on stage today, partly thanks to opportunities like these. It’s amazing to go from 300 people to 10 or 20 times more. A real challenge for us and also the best learning for a young band. […] Otherwise, we really want to do splits with other bands. We were talking about a split 45 with Alkaline Trio, it will be done according to our schedules.“ Time is on your side!”
“we had a HUGE meeting. the bus is always dirty. doug has just given up trying to clean the bus and he’s laughing but he knows it’s true cuz there’s no room for any thing. and – cuz we fucking live like animals” – blue short sleeve button down peak drip lotms ray
gerard: hwell olriyeet we came to get down to get down to get down. let me tell ya’ll a story, about five beauutiful boys done went to jail. done went to jail. here we go here we go
“my chemical romance are in that very small category of musicians who remain completely true to their own artistic beliefs, and at the same time have massive commercial appeal”
