My Chemical Romance Interview [ARTROCKER!]

Not necessarily our usual fare, but when My Chemical Romance hit Glasgow last week, Chelsea Cochrane

caught up with them for an exclusive interview.

Whilst thousands of eager teenage fans coil round the interior of Glasgow SECC we are brought past the manic group that started the queue almost 48 hours previously, and into the empty Hall 4. Once we;ve passed through four different security points and up numerous hallways, we were seated in a small but homely room, sparsely lit and scented with several candles. After a momentary wait Gerard Way and his younger brother Mikey enter the room, emanating a calm cool despite outer appearances of nervousness. And after brief introductions our interview gets underway.

Chelsea: The last time you guys were in the UK playing arenas with The Black Parade tour you had a massive stage production, various pyrotechnics and grandeur costumes but when you returned last October, for Danger Days, you’d stripped it right down. What is this tour going to be like?

Gerard:  I’d say it’s somewhere maybe right in the middle. It is stripped down in that it is mainly about the band performing and playing but there are a lot of lights. We’ve brought a lot of really amazing lights, I think we’ve got 6 semi’s full! But it is just us playing, there are no props really or anything, no settings, there’s just the band. That’s new for us really. 

Mikey: Yeah, it’s like a less is more kinda thing. We stripped everything back but it seems like more, you know. The lights seem even more impactful.

Chelsea: You took Glasgow-based band Twin Atlantic out support you last time around, why is it you chose them?

Gerard: When we listened to their EP (A Guidance From Colour) we just thought they were great.

Mikey: They reminded us of this great thing they shared with bands coming up from New Jersey in the early 2000’s.

Gerard: Their all really nice guys.

Mikey: Yeah, they kicked ass on that tour!

Chelsea: Also at your last show in Scotland you played the track ‘DESTROYA’ for the first time live, which was dedicated to Grant Morrison. How much of an influence is he on the new album? 

Gerard: Huge. He is a huge influence personally to me, too. I guess more importantly he is just a really close friend, he and his wife. I look up to them; I ask them for a lot of advice. He was a big influence on taking a chance with this record and kinda saying “Fuck it!”, but in a really good way. We are playing ‘DESTROYA’ again tonight. It’s gotten, I think, much bigger sounding.

Mikey: ‘DESTROYA’ is actually my favourite lightshow set! Grant’s one of the great thinkers and philosophers of his generation, he is one of the greats and just such a warm hearted and caring person and a huge influence on me and Gee and one of our closest friends.

Chelsea: How is it you actually became friends?

Gerard: During Black Parade I had done an interview somewhere, in Rolling Stone or Spin I believe, where I just talked about all the influences since Revenge and then on The Black Parade and I just talked a lot about his work. So he got wind of it and he was a big fan of ours. He is into a lot of great older music and older stuff but also he is into contemporary music, he is into modern younger bands too which you don’t find a lot. So we met in Glasgow at the Barrowlands, and I remember being really nervous.

Mikey: But we hit it off right away, there was a rapport right away and it was like we had known each other a long time.

Chelsea: So does ‘DESTROYA’ have anything to do with him or is it just his favourite song?

Gerard: It’s interesting, it was their favourite when we played them [Grant and his wife Kristan] the finished album. They hop over to LA sometimes too and we had them over at the studio and before we even played it for them I kinda had a feeling they were gonna love it. I remember Kristan saying “Wow that is the fucking greatest”, she loved it and they both loved it!

Mikey: They loved ‘DESTROYA’ and ‘Planetary (GO!’), those are the key jams.

Chelsea: Yeah they really stand out, ‘Party Poison’ as well.

Mikey and Gerard: Yeah, yeah!

Chelsea: Why is it you have a song named solely after Gerard’s character, Party Poison?

Gerard: It’s just a good title really. “Death before Disco”, the original title of the song, just didn’t feel right anymore. It didn’t feel like it was current.

Chelsea: Is Grant Morrison or his character (Morrison potrays Korse, the head of the fictional corporation MCR’s alter-egos The Killjoys are attempting to take down) going to be involved in the Danger Days comics?

Gerard: No, none of the characters, even our characters, are in it. It is a completely separate thing, even almost a separate setting. It shares all the ideals behind the record and the theories and the commentary but it is nothing like the videos you have seen. I think the car is probably the only thing that’s the same!

Chelsea: Gerard, you have said before that around the time a new album is released you already have ideas for the follow up; do you have any for the next one yet?

Gerard: It’s weird because I don’t like talking much about what I think it will be anymore because I usually find that I am wrong. I mean, I had gut instincts at least visually about Danger Days and I was right about it and that’s what we ended up doing. I’m forming some stuff now but… I would love to just go record but being on tour makes that difficult. If we could get in a studio now I would just love to make some music.

Mikey: Yeah, the new sound just kind of finds you. You can’t plan it or guess what it’s going to be because you’ll usually be wrong, but you’ll always be pleasantly surprised. You can never formulate what you’re going to sell you will just end up where you are supposed to be.

Chelsea: Music videos have always been a very important part of My Chemical Romance’s visual element and often carry on a story with each album’s singles, but your characters died at the end of the last video; are you planning a come back for them now or doing something different?

Gerard: Well we are going to take a break from the story for a bit until it feels like we got to the song that makes the most sense to do the last part. To me it feels like ‘Only Hope (For Me Is You)’ is the best one to do for the last part of the video so when we get there…I have lots of ideas but I like to keep it loose and I don’t over think it. I like to finalize things a week before, sometimes day of.

Chelsea: So ‘Planetary (GO!)’ is your next single, what is the plan for the music video?

Gerard: We are going to try and do something that we have never done before, I think we are going to perform with a real audience and make something visually cool looking-  like it needs to be shot on all kinds of crazy different cameras. A live video but I think it’s going to look more artistic than that, I see big LED’s in my head, lot’s of lights and colours and sweat and audience but kinda more like a party!

Chelsea: Kind of reflecting your new tour set up then?

Gerard: I think so yeah. We are making it right now so obviously a lot of who we are right now is going to be in that.

Chelsea: Over the years you have all changed as a band and a lot as people since ‘Life on the Murder Scene’ came out, have you got any plans for another documentary?

Mikey: We have been talking about that actually because the 10 years is coming up and we have been talking about putting together a documentary of sorts. That’d be really cool we think.

Gerard: Yeah it would be nice to do a follow up to that. I feel like what’s great about “Murder Scene” is to me it’s more than a biography about a band and I think it would be nice to catch up, so to speak, to what things are like now because that was about 7 years ago.

Mikey: Yeah a new version of that would be pretty great!

Chelsea: As you mentioned there the 10^th Anniversary of your first album “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love” is coming up, do you have a special release or gig or tour planned?

Gerard: We are talking about all those things yeah. We want to do something really nice for the fans like some kind of cool package. Frank and Mikey have kept a lot of the original materials and show fliers and stuff so we are hoping to do a lot with that.

Chelsea: Like replicate them and put them in a pack or something?

Gerard:  Something, yeah. I have every single scrap of paper I’ve ever written lyrics on and like a giant thing just sitting in my office.

Mikey: I have one of those photo books filled with show fliers and old set lists and day sheets, I have a bunch of those and then Frank has absolutely everything. My stuff is kind of scattered but his is complete, he has everything ever. 

Fraser: There are a few bands, such as Coheed and Cambria, who play through their entire albums. For their tenth anniversary they are touring America with just their first album, is that something you guys are considering?

Gerard: Yeah, we are talking about it. I know Thursday is doing the ‘Full Collapse’ tour right now.

Mikey: Yeah, we missed by like a couple of days, I was so bummed!

Chelsea: You recently recruited a new drummer, Mike Pedicone from The Bled. How is it playing with him and has he fitted in well with MCR?

Gerard: He is a fantastic rock drummer and I think that is really why he is very much like us. The Bled is obviously a heavier band in some ways but if you listen to Bullets that’s a pretty heavy record with elements of post-hardcore and metal on it. We fit together super great, it just gelled instantly and we love playing with him live.

Mikey: We are having a great time with him, just having a ball up there.

Chelsea: Will he be sticking around for festivals?

Gerard: Yeah!

Mikey: There is no… It’s like (James) Dewees is one of our best friends, Pedicone is one of our best friends, and we are all friends playing so there is no titles or this or that.

Fraser: You guys definately look like you’re having fun playing together, especially in Edinburgh last year.

Mikey: That was my favourite show on that tour!

Chelsea: We asked a fan for a question and they wanted to know is Party Poison’s jacket influenced by Akira?

Gerard: Definitely! The iconography as well, I try and make it my own but it is definitely inspired by Akira.

Source: Artrocker!