Interview from 'Rockin' On' Magazine
As I was browsing today, I came across a high quality scan of this interview with Ray and Gerard, from the Japanese magazine, 'Rockin' On'. The issue is dated April 2005, so it's a bit old, but I thought it was very interesting nontheless, so I decided to translate it for everyone. I hope you guys enjoy it!
My Chemical Romance, the new heroes who squeeze the kids emotions into a shout of ‘I’m not okay!’, return the Japan. We search for the roots of their pitch black heavy sound and blood spattered emotions.
In their first visit to Japan at Summer Sonic last year, My Chemical Romance gave us a fierce performance, tumbling around the stage and spewing sweat, water and spit. Now they’re back with their first solo tour.
Their second album and major label debut, ‘Three Cheers’, is an exceptional work. Rock, Hard Core, Metal, Punk, Emo…all of these styles fit, but none of them is exactly right. All you can truly be sure of it the album’s passion and beauty. Lyrical titles, theatrical lyrics, fierce and bewitching vocals, a solid sound with not a single note out of place, all distinctive and particular issues that would seem to draw only a certain crowd of listeners. What’s brought that album to 48 on the Billboard Charts is the impact of their single ‘I’m not Okay’, and the even stronger impact of their live shows.
When that world of blackest darkness and red blood comes alive in concert, vocalist Gerard, wearing a black suit, is reborn into a vampire music star. Hand on his hip, singing as if he’ll bite the microphone off, his expression switches by the second, from a demonic visage to an angelic smile. By his side is guitarist Frank, bent over, violently throwing his head back and forth, kicking the mic stand to the floor again and again. Gerard’s younger brother Mikey plays the bass alone, with quiet passion behind his rampaging brother. Guitarist Ray is refreshingly a metal head, and head bangs perfectly in time with Gerard. And, bringing the other members together and tying them down, lest they fly away through their own sheer force with his steady rhythm is new drummer Bob. It’s already plain to see that he’s become someone the other member’s rely on.
I was pleased to hear songs from their first album, ‘I brought you my bullets, you brought me your love’ (sadly as yet unreleased in Japan) in the set list, and listening to them side by side with the songs from the second album made me realize once more that My Chem is so much more than just ‘I’m not Okay’. Of course ‘I’m not okay’ is a great song, but the dark emotion overflowing from songs like the final song of their set, ‘Helena’ is also part of their charm, and I’d love to see the song, which will be their next single catch on just as much.
My Chemical Romance was a band begun as a last chance by a boy who sat in his basement in New Jersey drawing comics, with had a chance to rethink his life when he start work in the city. The day that the hearts of kids (and former kids) all over the world are dyed red and black is steadily approaching.
Q. You’ve just finished your first solo Japan tour. How was your second time in Japan?
Gerard: Yeah, it’s the same thing in the States and in Europe, but festivals and club tours are really different things. It’s the same difference no matter where you go, and we like club tours better, because their so much more intimate. There’s a more of a thrill because all kinds of interesting things can happen, like crowd surfing and stage diving. And you can really see what’s happening.
Ray: Yeah, shows on small stages are really fun. And the audience had just as much energy as at the festival, probably more.
Q. As far as your sound goes, there’s a big difference between your first and second albums, but when you played the songs live, you brought up the energy to the level of those from the second album, and they had just as much impact. Do you feel that your songs evolve each time you perform them live?
Gerard: Yeah, each time we do a show I feel like it gives the songs new life. Our old songs especially have gotten better because of that. I think you could say that the biggest reason for making our new record was to make our shows better, so in that way I do feel that when we play our old songs live everything is reaching the same level. There are some songs from the first record, like ‘Honey, this mirror isn’t big enough for the two of us’, that sound like they could be on the second album when you hear them live.
Q. That’s true. Your shows take songs that already have a huge amount of power, and make them a hundred times more powerful, and it’s really enjoyable to see the power of these songs increased by the life performance like that. How do you bring yourselves to such a high energy level before a show?
Gerard: Oh, yeah, right, well, when we first started the band, the process took the whole day, really, to concentrate and reach that point. And then it involved alcohol, but lately…it’s easier for me to switch it on and off.
Ray: Yeah, yeah.
Gerard: I guess you could say that changing into my clothes is kind of like a ceremony. Like, dressing in my stage clothes.
Ray: Yeah, that’s definitely true. Gerard said once that it was like putting on his game face, putting on the same clothing and doing his make up. Lately I’ve started wearing the same clothes every time, and I’ve come to understand what he was talking about. That feeling that a show’s going to being soon, that it’s time to go out on stage.
Gerard: I think it’s a good thing to wear different clothing on stage and in private. Because that also becomes a kind of switch you throw.
Q. Where did you get the idea to wear those black suits and neckties?
G. Mine is a mixture of all kinds of things. Like, I’m influenced by Nick Cave, and I’ve always been interested in dark things, I wore nothing but black in high school, and especially went I was in Art School. So it is a bit gothic. I don’t think of myself as a Goth or anything, but I do like gothic things and dark things, so I was thinking about how to fill that gap, and do something you didn’t see very often, so I decided to wear a dark suit like the kind you see in ‘GQ’. (he laughs) And I just really liked that, wearing asuit that looked like it came out of GQ, but at the same time looking like a corpse. But it actually took time to get to this point. I didn’t plan it all out at first, I started off wearing a leather jacket and a t-shirt, and after going through different steps, it became what it is now.
Q. The younger kids really love your music, but I’d like it to reach a wider audience. Because I feel like the loss and sadness in your music would resonate in a different way with listeners who had more life experience of their own. Seeing so many different audiences all over the world, what do you think it is about your music that’s captured the hearts of so many people?
Gerard: I think it’s because we’re so brutally honest. We don’t do anything forced or fake. Like, we would never make a record of trite love songs to sell an album. We’re not taking people’s unhappiness and turning it into a commodity for sale. We’re just showing it to people. And that’s why I think that people understand it who we never expected to. People come to our shows who we never thought would, it’s really surprising.
Ray: No matter what the reason is, I think that they feel how sincere we are. Not just in our albums, but at our shows, I think that they realize how passionate we are about all of this. Because this means everything in the world to us. We wouldn’t want to - we couldn’t - do anything else. That’s how serious we are about our music. And I think that’s what touches people’s hearts. Because there are bands that aren’t making music from their hearts. I think it’s cool that older people watch our shows and remember bands they liked when they were younger, that they feel the same energy and drive from us.
Q. There’s a power to shock about My Chem’s music, this is a phrase from Irving Welsh’s novel ‘Ecstasy’, where Welsh called Jungle Music ‘music with the power to shock’*, and I thought it fit your own music perfectly.
Gerard: Oh, yeah, I’d never thought of that.
Q. Melodies with strong hooks insert themselves where you’d least expect it, while preserving the flow of the song, the developments have a unpredictable charm, when I heard the second album in particular, it was just one surprise after the other. I think the most amazing thing is how the songs never lose that tension, even after you’ve memorized them. What’s going through you’re heads during song writing?
Gerard: Well, we have a really strong love for melody, and that’s why we’ve got catchy songs, and all the various things that people like about this band, because first and foremost we’re fans of that type of music. When we made the first album, we were really moved by the desire to try out all kinds of things, and a large part of the album is like the crystallization of those desires. When we were making the second album, it made us glad to realize we hadn’t lost any of that. So on this new record, our love of melody is the same as it always was, it’s just manifested itself in a complicated form. It’s exactly right, what you just said about there being surprises in it. It’s not that we don’t know where the songs are going, we think that the songs are always moving in the right direction. Even if there are moments where you feel it’s going in a different direction. And within that, there are some rough spots, some parts that surprise you. So, yeah, what you said really communicates this band’s musical sense. We’re often asked about how our songs change, but that’s the answer.
Ray: Our first and second albums are really different, and that’s because this time Frank helped with the song writing. When we made the first album, Frank had only been in the band for like two weeks, and he’s only playing on two or three songs on the album. So we had one less creative entity when we were making those songs. Frank joining was the best thing that happened to this band. We all have different points of view, which is what gives our songs all the different elements, but we all love the same things. We each bring our own ideas to the table, and put them together, and that’s how our songs are born.
Q. How do you actually begin the process of song writing? Do you get a vision of one entire song?
Ray: Sometimes we do. Sometimes Gerard will think of a riff, or the vocal melody, and we’ll start from there….once a riff is created, the image for the rest of the song just comes naturally. Like, the drum beat will be like this, and this will be this way…’ Sometimes a song is done exactly the way I’ve envisioned it myself, sometimes all the members add their own ideas to it, and it becomes a whole new thing, something even better than the original.
Gerard: Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. I make a list of titles on my own. Even now I’ve got a bunch on my computer. I write down a list of titles that I don’t have a song for yet, but that are titles that I’m sure I can write clever lyrics for, and when the song is done, I use them like, ‘Oh, this would fit with that title!’. When I suddenly get an idea for a title, or lyrics, before a song, I get really excited. I just write down the words just as them come to me. For the second album, what I did a lot was after the theme of the song was decided, I’d chose pick the good phrases from the stuff I’d written down, and add lines that just came to me suddenly. So the lyrics come in stages, with a lot of additions. It’s very rare that I’ll think of the entire lyrics for a song all at once, although it sometimes does happen. For example, ‘You know what they do to guys like us in prison’ was like that. The guitar parts and the vocal melody, the lyrics…it all came in the blink of an eye.
Q. Where do you get the inspiration for your titles?
Gerard: The Smiths. Morrissey intentionally gave his songs these really long, ironic titles. I thought it would be interesting do that in modern rock, in American Rock. Because they didn’t have that kind of thing. That and black humor are the two things that inspire my titles.
Q. And sometimes the titles inspire the songs.
Gerard: Right, the title tells me what kind of song it’s wanting. Although sometimes one of the other members will be playing a riff, which will become a song, and then the title and lyrics will come from that.
From ‘Rockin’ on’ magazine, April ’05, Interview by Yukiko Okuda
* I don’t have the text of this novel, so I can’t check what the actual phrase is.
My Chemical Romance, the new heroes who squeeze the kids emotions into a shout of ‘I’m not okay!’, return the Japan. We search for the roots of their pitch black heavy sound and blood spattered emotions.
In their first visit to Japan at Summer Sonic last year, My Chemical Romance gave us a fierce performance, tumbling around the stage and spewing sweat, water and spit. Now they’re back with their first solo tour.
Their second album and major label debut, ‘Three Cheers’, is an exceptional work. Rock, Hard Core, Metal, Punk, Emo…all of these styles fit, but none of them is exactly right. All you can truly be sure of it the album’s passion and beauty. Lyrical titles, theatrical lyrics, fierce and bewitching vocals, a solid sound with not a single note out of place, all distinctive and particular issues that would seem to draw only a certain crowd of listeners. What’s brought that album to 48 on the Billboard Charts is the impact of their single ‘I’m not Okay’, and the even stronger impact of their live shows.
When that world of blackest darkness and red blood comes alive in concert, vocalist Gerard, wearing a black suit, is reborn into a vampire music star. Hand on his hip, singing as if he’ll bite the microphone off, his expression switches by the second, from a demonic visage to an angelic smile. By his side is guitarist Frank, bent over, violently throwing his head back and forth, kicking the mic stand to the floor again and again. Gerard’s younger brother Mikey plays the bass alone, with quiet passion behind his rampaging brother. Guitarist Ray is refreshingly a metal head, and head bangs perfectly in time with Gerard. And, bringing the other members together and tying them down, lest they fly away through their own sheer force with his steady rhythm is new drummer Bob. It’s already plain to see that he’s become someone the other member’s rely on.
I was pleased to hear songs from their first album, ‘I brought you my bullets, you brought me your love’ (sadly as yet unreleased in Japan) in the set list, and listening to them side by side with the songs from the second album made me realize once more that My Chem is so much more than just ‘I’m not Okay’. Of course ‘I’m not okay’ is a great song, but the dark emotion overflowing from songs like the final song of their set, ‘Helena’ is also part of their charm, and I’d love to see the song, which will be their next single catch on just as much.
My Chemical Romance was a band begun as a last chance by a boy who sat in his basement in New Jersey drawing comics, with had a chance to rethink his life when he start work in the city. The day that the hearts of kids (and former kids) all over the world are dyed red and black is steadily approaching.
Q. You’ve just finished your first solo Japan tour. How was your second time in Japan?
Gerard: Yeah, it’s the same thing in the States and in Europe, but festivals and club tours are really different things. It’s the same difference no matter where you go, and we like club tours better, because their so much more intimate. There’s a more of a thrill because all kinds of interesting things can happen, like crowd surfing and stage diving. And you can really see what’s happening.
Ray: Yeah, shows on small stages are really fun. And the audience had just as much energy as at the festival, probably more.
Q. As far as your sound goes, there’s a big difference between your first and second albums, but when you played the songs live, you brought up the energy to the level of those from the second album, and they had just as much impact. Do you feel that your songs evolve each time you perform them live?
Gerard: Yeah, each time we do a show I feel like it gives the songs new life. Our old songs especially have gotten better because of that. I think you could say that the biggest reason for making our new record was to make our shows better, so in that way I do feel that when we play our old songs live everything is reaching the same level. There are some songs from the first record, like ‘Honey, this mirror isn’t big enough for the two of us’, that sound like they could be on the second album when you hear them live.
Q. That’s true. Your shows take songs that already have a huge amount of power, and make them a hundred times more powerful, and it’s really enjoyable to see the power of these songs increased by the life performance like that. How do you bring yourselves to such a high energy level before a show?
Gerard: Oh, yeah, right, well, when we first started the band, the process took the whole day, really, to concentrate and reach that point. And then it involved alcohol, but lately…it’s easier for me to switch it on and off.
Ray: Yeah, yeah.
Gerard: I guess you could say that changing into my clothes is kind of like a ceremony. Like, dressing in my stage clothes.
Ray: Yeah, that’s definitely true. Gerard said once that it was like putting on his game face, putting on the same clothing and doing his make up. Lately I’ve started wearing the same clothes every time, and I’ve come to understand what he was talking about. That feeling that a show’s going to being soon, that it’s time to go out on stage.
Gerard: I think it’s a good thing to wear different clothing on stage and in private. Because that also becomes a kind of switch you throw.
Q. Where did you get the idea to wear those black suits and neckties?
G. Mine is a mixture of all kinds of things. Like, I’m influenced by Nick Cave, and I’ve always been interested in dark things, I wore nothing but black in high school, and especially went I was in Art School. So it is a bit gothic. I don’t think of myself as a Goth or anything, but I do like gothic things and dark things, so I was thinking about how to fill that gap, and do something you didn’t see very often, so I decided to wear a dark suit like the kind you see in ‘GQ’. (he laughs) And I just really liked that, wearing asuit that looked like it came out of GQ, but at the same time looking like a corpse. But it actually took time to get to this point. I didn’t plan it all out at first, I started off wearing a leather jacket and a t-shirt, and after going through different steps, it became what it is now.
Q. The younger kids really love your music, but I’d like it to reach a wider audience. Because I feel like the loss and sadness in your music would resonate in a different way with listeners who had more life experience of their own. Seeing so many different audiences all over the world, what do you think it is about your music that’s captured the hearts of so many people?
Gerard: I think it’s because we’re so brutally honest. We don’t do anything forced or fake. Like, we would never make a record of trite love songs to sell an album. We’re not taking people’s unhappiness and turning it into a commodity for sale. We’re just showing it to people. And that’s why I think that people understand it who we never expected to. People come to our shows who we never thought would, it’s really surprising.
Ray: No matter what the reason is, I think that they feel how sincere we are. Not just in our albums, but at our shows, I think that they realize how passionate we are about all of this. Because this means everything in the world to us. We wouldn’t want to - we couldn’t - do anything else. That’s how serious we are about our music. And I think that’s what touches people’s hearts. Because there are bands that aren’t making music from their hearts. I think it’s cool that older people watch our shows and remember bands they liked when they were younger, that they feel the same energy and drive from us.
Q. There’s a power to shock about My Chem’s music, this is a phrase from Irving Welsh’s novel ‘Ecstasy’, where Welsh called Jungle Music ‘music with the power to shock’*, and I thought it fit your own music perfectly.
Gerard: Oh, yeah, I’d never thought of that.
Q. Melodies with strong hooks insert themselves where you’d least expect it, while preserving the flow of the song, the developments have a unpredictable charm, when I heard the second album in particular, it was just one surprise after the other. I think the most amazing thing is how the songs never lose that tension, even after you’ve memorized them. What’s going through you’re heads during song writing?
Gerard: Well, we have a really strong love for melody, and that’s why we’ve got catchy songs, and all the various things that people like about this band, because first and foremost we’re fans of that type of music. When we made the first album, we were really moved by the desire to try out all kinds of things, and a large part of the album is like the crystallization of those desires. When we were making the second album, it made us glad to realize we hadn’t lost any of that. So on this new record, our love of melody is the same as it always was, it’s just manifested itself in a complicated form. It’s exactly right, what you just said about there being surprises in it. It’s not that we don’t know where the songs are going, we think that the songs are always moving in the right direction. Even if there are moments where you feel it’s going in a different direction. And within that, there are some rough spots, some parts that surprise you. So, yeah, what you said really communicates this band’s musical sense. We’re often asked about how our songs change, but that’s the answer.
Ray: Our first and second albums are really different, and that’s because this time Frank helped with the song writing. When we made the first album, Frank had only been in the band for like two weeks, and he’s only playing on two or three songs on the album. So we had one less creative entity when we were making those songs. Frank joining was the best thing that happened to this band. We all have different points of view, which is what gives our songs all the different elements, but we all love the same things. We each bring our own ideas to the table, and put them together, and that’s how our songs are born.
Q. How do you actually begin the process of song writing? Do you get a vision of one entire song?
Ray: Sometimes we do. Sometimes Gerard will think of a riff, or the vocal melody, and we’ll start from there….once a riff is created, the image for the rest of the song just comes naturally. Like, the drum beat will be like this, and this will be this way…’ Sometimes a song is done exactly the way I’ve envisioned it myself, sometimes all the members add their own ideas to it, and it becomes a whole new thing, something even better than the original.
Gerard: Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. I make a list of titles on my own. Even now I’ve got a bunch on my computer. I write down a list of titles that I don’t have a song for yet, but that are titles that I’m sure I can write clever lyrics for, and when the song is done, I use them like, ‘Oh, this would fit with that title!’. When I suddenly get an idea for a title, or lyrics, before a song, I get really excited. I just write down the words just as them come to me. For the second album, what I did a lot was after the theme of the song was decided, I’d chose pick the good phrases from the stuff I’d written down, and add lines that just came to me suddenly. So the lyrics come in stages, with a lot of additions. It’s very rare that I’ll think of the entire lyrics for a song all at once, although it sometimes does happen. For example, ‘You know what they do to guys like us in prison’ was like that. The guitar parts and the vocal melody, the lyrics…it all came in the blink of an eye.
Q. Where do you get the inspiration for your titles?
Gerard: The Smiths. Morrissey intentionally gave his songs these really long, ironic titles. I thought it would be interesting do that in modern rock, in American Rock. Because they didn’t have that kind of thing. That and black humor are the two things that inspire my titles.
Q. And sometimes the titles inspire the songs.
Gerard: Right, the title tells me what kind of song it’s wanting. Although sometimes one of the other members will be playing a riff, which will become a song, and then the title and lyrics will come from that.
From ‘Rockin’ on’ magazine, April ’05, Interview by Yukiko Okuda
* I don’t have the text of this novel, so I can’t check what the actual phrase is.