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. “
Check out this awesome never-before-seen footage of My Chemical Romance recording their 2002 debut album.
Nada Recording Studio has posted a great mini-documentary of the band recording I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love a whopping 12 years ago. AMAZING.
What a year it has been for My Chemical Romance. Only just forming this year and now they are on the verge on releasing their debut album later this month. It seems nothing can go wrong for these guys at the minute so I though I would be apart of the good fortune and ask Gerard a couple of questions and what the key too their success was, this is what he had to say.
Anemic: Hey Gerard, thanks for taking you time to do this interview?
Gerard: You’re welcome. Thank you for giving us one. Sorry it took a bit to respond.
Anemic: No problem at all mate, so how are you doing today?
Gerard: We’re doing very well thank you. Mostly healthy and almost all of our teeth!
Anemic: Well I must say it’s been a rapid rise for you guys to say the least, you only formed at the start of the year and now you have an album coming out next month on Eyeball Records, how are you taking in all in?
Gerard: It’s been more than would could have imagined when we started the band. From our first show we’ve been getting such a nice positive response. Getting signed by Eyeball Records really clinched it and since then we’ve been on a roll. We’re all smiles.
Anemic: So how has it been getting your material out their, I mean you guys must be doing a great live show for people to stand up and take notice of how well you guys are really doing?
Gerard: After recording we were a little rusty as far as performing the material live but after the last weekend of shows we’re back to 100%. We try to put on the most honest, energetic, and intense show we possibly can and it has paid off for us so far. It’s really like therapy for us to be up there, we would do the same show for 5 or 500 people, the same energy would be there. Getting radio play and having a pressence on the web has helped get the material out there but our biggest push has been word of mouth.
Anemic: With live shows there must be a lot of fans, how would describe you fans?
Gerard: Well it depends. Alot of people that come out to see us have just heard about us so they don’t know what to expect. Generally after we start playing alot of people just take a step back, this just happened in Deleware last weekend. I think they may think we’re going to hit them but I always try and promise them we won’t, we would never do that. We just go crazy up there. The fans that know us are all great, they are always friendly and our first biggest fan, Carlos, is the head of our street team now. The best way to describe our fans would be “diverse”. We get all kinds.
Anemic: Who has been the best band you have played along side so far?
Gerard: Pencey Prep, without a doubt.
Anemic: How was it recording the new album, was their a good vibe in the studio were you could go about things the way you wanted them too without having any hassles in the process?
Gerard: The vibe in the studio was excellent. Very positive all the way through. Geoff, Alex, and John were great to work with and brought alot to the table creatively. It was hard to finish because there was a situation where Gerard ended up in the emergency room 5 times and it slowed down recording but we were still able to come under the deadline and make exactly the album we wanted.
Anemic: What should we expect from the new album?
Gerard: Well it’s our first album so I would expect to see a band that evolves from the first songs that were written to the last. Expect a very different sound from what is out there right now. Very honest, sincere, aggresive. We make music that we would want to hear and thats why we play it so hard.
Anemic: Once the new record is out and selling to you guys plan to seel it on a global scale i.e maybe in Australia?
Gerard: Eyeball Records just got hooked up with worldwide distrobution, so the album will be available in Australia upon release I believe. We’re very excited about that!
Anemic: Who are your musical influences, I guess you would have heaps and heaps but who are the ones that stand out the most for you?
Gerard: Classical guitarists, The Smiths, The Misfits, Queen, At The Gates, Iron Maiden.
Anemic: Before starting the band what did you guys do to occupy you time?
Gerard: Ray is a film maker. Matt is a mechanic. Mikey was in college. Frank was in college as well. Gerard is an artist. Other than that we used to play video games, watch zombie movies, drink beer, hang out, stuff like that.
Anemic: Some rumours I have heard is that you guys like Bats, what’s the fascination with them, is it the Will Haven song BATS, or you just like the species?
Gerard: Haha…the whole bat thing came about at an early practice when Mikey joined and we finally gelled. Our energy just came together and a giant heavy metal vortex opened up and out flew a swarm of bats. We all saw it. It was like an awakening. After that we accepted bats into our lives. It was also while we were playing “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” so it probably had alot to do with that.
“Gerard: I think ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor because I was in the supermarket with my mom when I was like seven and it came on the PA and I sang the crap out of it. That was the first time I had sang and everyone started clapping in time with the song; other people buying produce. I knew I had a gift, it really did happen.”
11/23/2004 gerard’s interview from coffee with cojo on artsucks.com
“It’s really cool when people you know, and knew from obscurity become famous in a field you would have never guessed that they were even involved in.
Here is some back story…My freshman year of college (SVA) I became fast friends with this kid named Gerard Way. It was our "foundation year” where they lump students into “general blocks” of courses, reguardless of major. The people you are grouped with, you are stuck with, because they will be in about seventy percent of your classes your foundation year. Being that Gerard was a cartooning and illustration major with a line-art-cartoonish-comic-book style, and I had been working at Marvel Comics for the past two years; we had a lot in common. He was actually a really good cartoonist (One of the top in our class).
Well, Gerard was best friends with this guy Todd. Todd was a funny guy, but I didn’t really hang around with him. I was a DJ for our school’s radio station (WSVA) at the time and I was dating this girl Cheryl.
A few months later I broke it off with Cheryl…Time passed and somewhere along the line (I can’t remember how long exactly) Todd started seeing Cheryl. Of course that’s when Todd would want nothing to do with me (being that he was with Cheryl now), and it’s also where I lost touch with Gerard (Naturally, he being Todd’s best friend and all).
Well, I would run into Gerard in school over the years from time to time, and I remember seeing one of his cartoons printed in "THE BIG BOOK OF THE WEIRD WILD WEST" which was part of one of my favorite graphic novel series’ (THE BIG BOOK OF).
Then in 2003 sometime I ran into Gerard walking down Third Avenue right off of St. Marks Place. I hadn’t seen him in like seven years and his name slipped my mind, but I was sure it was him.
I followed him, he was going pretty fast “MARK!” I yelled to him, and he turned around. He looked at me with the expression of searching one’s memory to place a face.
“Cojo?” He said, then corrected me “It’s Gerard by the way, where did you get Mark from?”
“I don’t know, maybe St. Marks? I was just drawing a blank on your name, I’m sorry, but I knew it was you and I had to stop you, how ya been man?” I asked.
Irarely run into old classmates so I offered to buy him a cup of coffee. We were right in Cooper’s Square so we hit a Starbucks (If you’ve never been in Cooper’s Square, you will be amused to learn that there are three Starbucks Coffee shops within sight of one another…it’s really freakish).
I paid for his coffee and we shot the shit. He blew my mind telling me that he’s the lead singer for a band called “MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE” and that they just got back from touring Europe. What the fuck? A far cry from cartooning.
I told him about all the weird work I’ve been doing. It’s so rare that I actually run into someone from school who is successful and doing something they love. It was really refreshing. I took a few photos of him as we talked. I’m weird with documenting things- as if you haven’t noticed.
We left Starbucks and kept shooting the shit. Having nothing to do he decided to join me for the rest of the afternoon. We walked over to the Virgin Megastore on 14th and he pointed out the magazines his band had been spotlighted in and what music he’s into and what not.
It was funny cause he’s like: “We’re in Alternative Press all the time” and I was like, “Hey, I worked for A.P., I did stuff for the Warped Tour a few years back and actually visited their office in Cleveland!” (-author’s note: you will read about this Cleveland trip in the past updates after the site hard launches in Feb-). It was cool cause we knew the same peeps.
I showed him the magazines I was in, and turned to the pages to show him the artwork. One neat thing about being in magazines is that you have a mini portfolio of your work at any magazine shop you walk into in the country.
Well, he invited me to see his band perform at THE KNITTING FACTORY the next week. I told him I would try to make it, but I was really slammed with work so I probably wouldn’t be able to make this one, but I’d really like to do an interview with him or him and the band sometime where I could record our conversation.
Like just hang out and shoot the shit with them (cause he’s just a down to earth Jersey born kid like myself) and pitch it to magazines afterwords, accompanied by a portrait I would do of their members. He was like: “Man, I wish you had a tape recorder on you now, the stuff I’ve been saying is good shit, totally printable shit!” And he was right, I really was digging at him about what happend that got him to make the transition from art into music and was getting the “real” answers, not the way a rockstar talks to a reporter, but the way an old bud you goofed off with in drawing class and you haven’t seen in years talks to you.
I told him I’d look out for his band in the mags and if I saw something or could help em’ out I’d spotlight it or give him a buzz. He thanked me for payin’ for the Starbucks and then I caught a train uptown.
Well, September Maxim’s Blender did a whole page on MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, showcasing them as the next big thing. Then last week I was out with my girl and we walked by a magazine rack, and on the cover of AP (Alternative Press) was Gerard and his band in some serious Rigamortis style dead make-up.
“No SHIT!” I exclaimed, and picked it up. I explained to Tracy (my girlfriend) the story of how I knew this guy. That night I was flipping through the channels and I came upon MTV and what the fuck, there was a MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE video! Same day as I saw the cover! The song was catchy as hell. I couldn’t believe it. I was like: “No crap… they are gonna be huge!” Just after their song, a yellow card video started. I guess that’s their genre. I asked Ink’s brother (17 year old semi-pro skateboarder) Mikey if he knew of My Chemical Romance. He told me he’s a fan, has their albums. I asked Jain, and she was like, “Um yeah, they are actually a really popular band! They’ve been out for a while.”
So I guess this update is long overdue, and so is a congrats to Gerard. Keep kickin’ ass man! Next time you are back in town, give me a buzz.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
