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INSIDE COVER
MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
FOR THEIR FOURTH ALBUM, the MCRmy could've made a cred record to show how "punk" they are, or a boring, safe record that would Nickelback jealous. Instead, the band decided to kick everyone's ass - including their own.
SPECIAL: 70 MOST ANTICIPATED ALBUMS OF 2010
Kiss the aughts goodbye, friends! With a new decade comes a whole new batch of albums we can't wait to load into our iTunes, including discs from 3OH!3, THE ACADAMY IS..., BRING ME THE HORIZON, THE GET UP KID, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK, THE YOUNG VEINS and many more.
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ABANDON HIP!
FOR CLOSE TO A DECADE, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE SPENT THEIR LIVES AS SCRAPPY KIDS THRASHING IN BASEMENTS, UNWILLING POSTER BOYS FOR GENERATION WARPED AND CLASSIC-ROCK REVIVALISTS "SAVING" DISENFRANCHISED YOUNG PEOPLE ALL OVER THE GLOBE. AS THEY READY THEIR FOURTH ALBUM, THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING EVEN MORE DARING: BECOMING A ROCK BAND.
Story by Jason Pettigrew; Photos by Phil Mucci
THE ARTICLE
LOCATED IN THE HEART OF HOLLYWOOD, Sunset Sound is a bona fide bulwark of rock 'n' roll. The studio has fostered some of the most important and exciting records in the history of recorded sound, from the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street to the Doors' L.A. Woman to Led Zeppelin II Yet despite its history and state-of-the-art technology, the facility is (to the first-time visitor, at least) a royal pain in the ass. The series of wood-paneled hallways lead to adjacent studios and common areas with multiple exits, so if you're not paying close attention you could end up landing in the wrong mixing suite, a storage room, outside under a basketball hoop or in the parking lot. You half expect one of the doors at the end of these hallways to lead to a soundstage hosting Daisy of Love or, at the very least, a Baja Fresh manned by rock dudes from decades past. (Someone tell one of those Night Ranger twerps the hot sauce station needs refilled.)
On the theoretical tip, Sunset's layout is the perfect metaphor to describe the artistic trajectory of My Chemical Romance. Think about it: When anyone expected the band to go in one direction, they ricocheted toward something else. MCR -- frontman Gerard Way, guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro, bassist Mikey Way and drummer Bob Bryar -- went from no-name underdogs slogging it out in basement gigs and dank clubs to highly unlikely major-label stars in two years, eclipsing many of their colleagues and mentors. After conquering Generation Warped, they cut their ambition loose with the high-concept, classic-rock pageantry of The Black Parade, reinventing themselves as the Sgt. Pepper of the Adderall set, while piquing the attention of both critics and a legion of older music fans willing to remove their arthritic talons from the musical memories of their youth to realize that yeah, maybe there were some new bands worth checking out.
In 2009, My Chemical Romance wrote and recorded close to two albums' worth of material with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine) at the helm. But unlike a writer burdened by a miniscule sense of direction -- or a lesser band of musicians willing to give up control and vision for alleged economic certainity -- MCR know exactly where they want to go. Not surprisingly, the current artist-hostile climates of download culture and the diminished value of music have made the band even more passionate toward their craft.
"I think that our audience is our audience," says Gerard Way, sitting on the end of a black leather couch in one of Sunset's mixing suites. "I haven't noticed a lack of devotion to our band. What I've really noticed is that there's a level of excitement for My Chemical Romacne that I did not expect. From basic encounters that I've had -- in line with people for coffee or random people at comic-cons -- there's this crazy anticipation for a My Chemical Romance record. I feel like if we're not making music, something is missing. I don't know how much current culture weighs on us."
He pauses to light a cigarette. "I think subconsciously," he begins, exhaling some smoke, "we're hostile right back."
THE MOOD AT THE STUDIO is equal parts enthusiastic and productive. As the band listen to some rough mixes O'Brien made for them a few days prior, acclaimed engineer Rich Costey is in one of the other suites, preparing final versions. The band members (minus guitarist Toro; more on that in a bit) share laughs with some studio assistants (it's the day after the Heene family "balloon boy" story broke) and pass around takeout menus, preparing for the long evening ahead. When Iero enters the studio, Gerard greets him with a big smile and a high-five like he hasn't seen him in years. Given all of the positive vibes surrounding them today, it's downright hard to fathom that approximately 16 months ago, My Chemical Romance were on the precipice of disintegrating. Two weeks before this writer arrived in L.A., he revealed the assignment to a member of a prominent New York/New Jersey band. "Wait," the band dude responded, sincerely but shocked. "They're actually making a new record?"
The touring campaign for The Black Parade had the band traveling all over the world for two-and-a-half years. The experience left them feeling like a 3 a.m. steak dinner from an all-nigth dinner: burnt around teh edges and way too tender on the inside. Granted, the trek wasn't all bad: The 3,000 fans showing up at an airport in South America gave MCR a genuine Beatlemania moment. After the first leg of the arena tour, Mikey took a leave of absence to lay down some semblance of domestic life with his wife Alicia, leaving longtime guitar tech Mike [sic] Cortez to cover the bass duties on the band's brilliantly burning stint on the Linkin Park-curated Projekt Revolution tour. During Projekt Rev, Gerard got married to his soul mate (Mindless Self Indulgence bassist Lindsey) and was wrapping up the first installment of his acclaimed Dark Horse comic The Umbrella Academy.
Other band members weren't that lucky: Although Iero got married in March 2008 to his girlfriend Jamia, he had to bow out of the Pacific Rim part of the tour when on the band's flight to Japan, he began to bleed profusely from his nose and mouth. Weeks before the trip, the guitarist had some impacted wisdom teeth removed, but the surgeon damaged the bottom layer of his sinuses, resulting in a massive infection. ("It smelled like rotten turkey!" he remembers, laughing at the experience.) Later on, he was diagnosed with a stomach ailment that required him to take a regiment of steroids and antibiotics that, in his words, "made me feel fat and horrible."
But if you require a poster boy to convey suffering for your art, look no further than Bob Bryar. He was manning the first float in My Chem's psychic Parade march, after a round of blood poisoning from a burn injury on a video shoot formed an abscess on his brain. But that, too, was only the beginning: Three-quarters of the way through the New Jersey club set on the band's The Black Parade Is Dead DVD, the tendon on his ring finger snapped, and rolled up his into his elbow. "It's like a hoodie string that popped," he says, rolling up the right sleeve of his Dark Funeral hooded sweatshirt to show the lump where his new tendon was installed. Pete Parade of the Offspring was called in to coverthe band's European commitments, But when Bryar felt confident enough to rejoin the band, fate handed him another bitchslap.
"I went from Chicago O'Hare to Los Angeles to fly with the guys to Australia," he remembers. "I lifted up a can of soda in the airport and it sent a shock up my arm so hard, I dropped the can. At that point, I said 'I can't do this.'" Undaunted, the band enlisted Thrusday's Tucker Rule to rev the sonic engine room for their fans Down Under. Bryar eventually rejoined the band for the post-Projekt Rev U.S. club tour, holding his sticks between his first two fingers, only to later face some cold possibilities in an operating room. "Right before they put you under, [the surgeoins] tell you that you can come out of this being able to relearn how to do everything and get stuff right, or you can come out never playing again. But I couldn't play anyway, so I decided to take the chance."
The grand stroke of irony about The Black Parade is that the fictional construct the band created was manifesting itself in reality. When the band landed in the U.K., Britain's archconservative tabloid The Daily Mail branded MCR as a "death cult," misaligning the album's storyline as evidence. In Australia, Gerard was visibly shaken upon learning that many of the band's fans were targets of violence by goons, a situation seemingly prefacing Mexico's warring "emo cleansing" rock subcultures by a year. But the most egregious mistake about the Black Parade tour was that it was the dictionary definition of relentless. Everyone in the band readily admits that instead of ending on the high that was Projekt Revolution (which had both fans and critics agreeing that MCR owned the tour), their fatal flaw was the theater campaign that followed at the top of 2008. When the members look back on that time, they felt more like foxhole buddies than a rock band.
"At one point during that tour, Frank looked at me and said, 'You're not having fun, are you?'" Gerard remembers all too well. "And I said, 'No, I'm not. But thank you for asking.'" He erupts into laughter. "It had nothing to do with the fans or the songs. By then, I felt that I had grown away from what a lot of The Black Parade songs were about. The beauty of the songs on Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge was that when we played them and our lives changed, they started to mean different things. About 16 shows after Projekt Rev, my voice started cracking, and I felt disconnected from everything. I became numb that The Black Parade was beginning to feel like real life."
On May 9, 2008, the band headlined Madison Square Garden on the final night of the touring cycle behind Parade. The men of My Chemical Romance had simultaneous feelings of joy, sadness, exhaustion, and blessed relief. Gerard has fond memories of the night, despite being informed by management that immediately after the show, he had to go back to his hotel room and approve the final edit of the band's The Black Parade Is Dead live DVD.
"It was like, 'Fuck, I've been living this for two years," he remembers, rolling his eyes at the very memory. "Now I gotta go watch it?
"We wanted to be sensational with our music," the singer says, putting his feet up on the couch. "We have never had some kind of shock-rock agenda, nor do we have the desire to please people anymore. I'm fine with that."
WITH THE PARADE HAVING LEFT TOWN, the band members set off on personal pursuits, including, but not limited to domestic bliss (the Way brothers), adventures in home recording (Iero's hardcore-punk outfit Leathermouth), wedding plans (Toro) and surgery (Bryar). The band swear that unlike most outfits who have to look at the same faces daily for 28 months, the grueling touring experience never got inwardly hateful. They kept in touch via texting and e-mails, and reconvened at Toro's wedding in August 2008. However, no one could deny the bigger elephant in the room - the distinct possibility that MCR had netiher a valid direction, nor anything left to say to their fans.
There is one thing that Frank Iero loves more than the freedom of punk rock: family. When he pushes up the sleeves of his Marduk hoodie, his forearms display tattooed portraiture of his two grandmothers (rendered by acclaimed artist Kat Von D), strong matriarchal figures who passed away a couple of months from each other; an image of his grandfather graces his shoulder. The guitarist appreciated the break away from the road, but was concerned about having a permanent vacation from his brothers in rock.
"After two weeks at home, I wanted to play," Iero admits. "I honestly felt deep down that I was going to get a call from Gerard and we weren't going to do it anymore. About the third day, I wanted to call everybody and say, 'Uh, hey, I just want you to know this is really special and we shouldn't turn our backs on this.' He laughs like he's listening to a wounded guy trying to reconnect with a girl who dumped him. "We always said when it stops being fun, we'll quit. And it was starting to get un-fun." Iero would later sate his lust for decibels touring with Leathermouth, as well as being a member of Reggie And The Full Effect, the solo vehicle for MCR touring keyboardist James Dewees.
"We were all shell-shocked when we got home," says Mikey Way, whose dark memories of last year are undercut by the exuberance he's feeling about the work in the studio today. "We'd essentially been on tour for seven years; it felt like our entire adult life was spent in a bus going from venue to venue. It felt great that the tour was over, but it was sad. You get all reflective when an album cycle ends. There were two or three months when I didn't leave the house. We laid low like we were in the Witness Protection Program. The Black Parade was like a monster that had its way with us," he begins to laugh, "and then skipped town! What do you do after that?
"We didn't know what was going to happen to the band next, because we did not know where we wanted to go," Mikey reveals, nodding his head while recalling the uncertainty. "We hadn't talked about it; we never had that 'what do we do next' discussioni. We're off the road; we're not the Black Parade anymore -- we're My Chem again. And that's scary, because what is My Chem now, anyway? Who are we?"
The answer came in the form of an invite for MCR to participate in the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Alan Moore's respected comic, The Watchmen. Mikey credits the series as a huge influence on his brother, acting as a gateway to discovering both graphic and musical artists ("To us, that comic was as important to us as Thriller, Nevermind or Siamese Dream"). The band reconvened in NYC's Electric Lady Studios to record their Chemical-laden version of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row," an appropriate choice for the film's underlying vigilante-corruption theme.
Suddenly everything seemed crystal clear. Although MCR came up in the contemporary punk scene zeitgeist (pop-punk, emo, screamo, etc.) they will be the first to tell you they never consciously played to those seats. (Gerard: "Timing-wise, we were connected to all of that stuff. But we're not spiritually connected to any of that shit -- we're connected to stuff from our childhood.") Forget marching band uniforms, scene hair, and call-out research hooks for radio-programmer scum -- MCR were going to be a straight-up, unpretentious rock band.
Earlier this year, the band reconvened at Mates Inc., a rehearsal facility in Los Angeles to figure out their next direction. "Gerard had made a mix of songs he felt had the essence of what he wanted to capture," recalls Iero. "The Stooges, the MC5, 'Neat, Neat, Neat' by the Damned. And I was like, 'Wow, that's the kind of stuff I'm writing.'" It's made perfectly clear by MCR's career arc that Gerard Way isn't interested in doing the same thing twice. What he is interested in are the romantic notions of rock 'n' roll, embodied in attitude, passion, dedication and sincerity -- delivered with equal heaping portions of arrogance and sweat equity.
"Proto-punk comes up because we were trying to channel what we felt on Project [sic] Rev," he says. "'Would that be the last show we ever do?' I think that's the goal: to drive everything so far into the sun that the rubber off the tires is shredded, the eingine blows up and everyone -- our fans, our peers, ourselves -- should feel like we're not going to do another record. I want each record to feel like it's potentially the last. Because we don't know when it's not going to be."
MEANWHILE, RAY TORO -- THE MASTER SHREDDER to Iero's punk pummeler -- is at home in New Jersey with his wife Christa, keeping vigil over their beloved Yorkshire Terrier, Bauer. The dog was Christa's best friend while Toro was traversing the planet for the past two years; sadly, he's developed kidney failure. The guitarist finished laying down his parts in late summer, returning home so he could be with Christa and their loyal pet. He finds the situation ironic: During the whole course of making and touring behind The Black Parade, Toro dodged all of the personal travails that seemingly plagued his bandmates. Though his dog and Christa's well being are never far from his mind, he's significantly psyched about MCR's current evolution.
"This is the first time I've been away from the band while they're working on something," he says on the phone from his rural New Jersey home. "But it's kinda working out cool. I don't hear the songs, mixing-wise, the way the guys are. I get a sound file, get in the car, and crank it. I want people to race down the highway and hear the music, with the pedal to the metal. Success is doing 85 mph to your record. We don't care if we sell a couple million -- we just want to strike a chord in kids' hearts."
Toro says the atmosphere around the band's space was exuberant and inspiring, and the music decidedly raw. During rehearsals, the quintet would do things like yell out a band name (anybody from the Police to Van Halen) and start vamping on something in an effort to sound like them. Gerard had taken to playing guitar, which yielded a series of short, sharp energy blasts in the 90-second range. By the end of the writing phase, the band had 10 to 13 fast 'n' loose songs to present to producer O'Brien [see sidebar]. They recorded with the intention of actually releasing a new album at this year's end. Further stoking their enthusiasm, they accepted an offer to play Summer Sonic, the respected Japanese rock festival, taking place in Osaka and Tokyo a few weeks after they tracked with O'Brien. Some special secret warm-up shows at L.A.'s Roxy Theatre were set up to gie some of the new songs a public test drive. My Chemical Romance had reinvented themselves yet again, ready to rocket into the sun with all the subtlety of a shrieking jet turbine.
Not quite. The visit to Japan gave the band a cold, stark epiphany. In their crusade to recharge their psychic batteries, they forgot how to be themselves.
"We were traveling the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka, listening to the tracks we had recorded," Toro remembers. "G felt that what we had wasn't strong enough for a record. That, coupled with doing these shows, playing our older material and seeing the kids get way into it [changed everything]. If we had continued in that vein of writing, we would've ignored our strengths. We felt that we had maxed that out and we were left wondering, 'What else can we do?'
"I feel like we have gotten back to the best of what we do," Toro finishes, confidently. "We got back to the roots of the band -- but better."
DURING HIS JAPAN VISIT, Gerard Way stopped into a store to buy a notebook. For a guy whose mind was constantly generating ideas for everything from storylines to songs, this is no big deal; when you're on the road, inspiration can strike at any time. But on the first page of the empty notebook, the singer left a message for himself: Start Again.
"I filled that entire notebook with vocal fixes, song fixes, new lyrics..." he lists, seemingly chronicling another creative jumpstart he was feeling. "That's why we recorded 21 songs. Not because the stuff we had done wasn't good and shouldn't be on the record; I just felt there was another part missing. I hit the inspiration where I was like, 'Yeah, I could write another 40 songs.'"
The band returned to Henson Recording in Hollywood with O'Brien for another 10 songs, imbuing their knack for solid, anthemic melodies alongside the furious rock abandon they were running up upon. The proto-punk vibes the band were working were positioning them as the spiritual ofspring of late-'60s Detroit (the Stooges, MC5), and assorted historical British music cultures (late-'60s mod a la the Who, bubblegum glam a la the Sweet); the newer songs were definitely a reactionary, one-fingered salute to the sonic excesses of the previous Parade route. It was then that Gerard polished up that deep, dark mirror in his psyche and realized what he was railing against.
"In a way, this record is a response to The Black Parade," he begins, readjusting his feet on the couch. "Early on, I played Rich Costey some of the stuff. He asked me, 'What are you doing here? What kind of record is this?' I said it was a protest record. And he said, 'Well, what are you protesting?' And I didn't have an answer.
"Over time, I realized tha tthe thing I was protesting was us," he says. "By protesting us, I could protest the scene that we were attached to. I wanted to get away from anything considered 'scene.' There's so much crap going on: Where's the sentiment? All of this ADD music: What's the song about? Punch me in the face -- be direct with me. But I'm not hearing anything vague, either -- just collections of buzzwords. Nobody is talking to me. I think about our fans and what the lyrics might mean to them. What am I going to say for them?"
MCR have always had a deep connection to their fans, whether it was sneaking them into sold-out shows via fire exits or holding exhausting, post-show meet-and-greets. Each member of the band can regale you with multiple stories of fans explicitly telling them how they had their lives "saved" by My Chemical Romance. Gerard Way understands this better than anyone, but it took an outside influence to navigate him through his cognitive dissonance. Namely, his baby girl Bandit, who entered the world in late May.
"The biggest thing I want to get across with this record is [to tell listeners] don't let the world define who you are," Way says with great convinction. "If anything were to happen to me, I would want Bandit to hear this record and think of her dad as something more than what people made him or his band to be. I don't want her to think that her father was a victim, nor do I want her to think she was one, too. That goes for our fans, as well.
"The whole 'My Chemical Romance saves lives' thing is a misrepresentation," he continues. "We are grateful and touched that you got something out of our music. But, ultimately it was you who worked through your reality. That's my message to the world: Get in the clear, we'll take care of this."
ONE OF THE INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES from Warner Bros. Records told MCR about a trip he had taken to the label's Japanese headquarters. During a meeting in front of the assembled executives, the company's director said, "Emo is dead. Only survivor: My Chemical Romance." That might be some commentary about that Japanese style of management being way more prescient than the American model in everything from airlines to auto manufacturing. But there's no denying that after My Chemical Romance's fourth studio album drops in the spring of 2010, everyone on both sides of the as-yet-to-be-titled release -- from the band to their fans -- are going to revel in the party.
"Once the record is finally out, I hope to be talking less about it and more about the shows," says Gerard, enthusiastically. "It's no longer about what I can say onstage. It's about getting fired up. We've been a band long enough that we can fire up the engines -- that's what I want. The shows should blow you back like you're trapped in a wind tunnel. This band will always sacrifice something -- mental or physical health -- and it will always be that way. Ten years from now, it will still be that way."
He gets up from the couch and pauses like he's been hit with an afterthought. "We'll probably get tired a lot faster, though!"
SIDEBAR
ROCK-IT LAUNCH
IN OCTOBER, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE INVITED AP INTO THE STUDIO TO HEAR SOME OF THE 21 TRACKS THEY RECORDED FOR THEIR FOURTH STUDIO ALBUM, TENTATIVELY SET FOR RELEASE THIS COMING SPRING. GERARD WAY TOLD US THE STORIES BEHIND SOME OF THE NEW SONGS.
"DEATH BEFORE DISCO"
Described as an "anti-party party song" (and one of the first tracks the band wrote prior to their Japan trip), this rave-up was directly inspired by the original Detroit punks, the Stooges and the MC5. The band actually got to play it for MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer when they met him during one of this Jail Guitar Doors charity initiatives.
"THE LIGHT BEHIND YOUR EYES"
An atmospheric track that wouldn't sound out of place on a playlist between the Church and Talk Talk. According to Gerard, the band were going for a late-period Pink Floyd vibe, ca. The Division Bell. "We really went for something cinematic with it. Sort of like the sunset before the gunfight."
"HAIL TO THE KING"
My Chemical Zeppelin, anyone? This song -- formerly tagged "L.A. Heavy" -- sounds like Queens of the Stone Age manning a fleet of 1986 Monte Carlos and taking over a small town with an army of fist-pumping kids in leather vests and ratty jeans. "It's all about playing a rock show with a who-gives-shit-what-the-song-means type of thing."
"STILL ALIVE"
A chapter of My Chem mythology committed to song, this Britpop-sounding rocker is centered on the legendary story of the band getting a bottle of urine thrown at them at the Reading Festival in the U.K. -- from the thrower's point of view.
"TRANS AM"
This song -- seemingly influenced by the Midwest crime drama Badlands and the modern sci-fi classic Blade Runner -- sounds like the kind of thing coming out at top volume of a rusted-out primer-coated, um, Trans Am. "Violence and automobiles are such a huge part of the American mythology."
"SAVE YOURSELF, I'LL HOLD THEM BACK"
"I kept referencing 'Living After Midnight' by Judas Priest. The verses were Judas Priest, the choruses were Bon Jovi with a little bit of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge thrown in. I wanted it to be kind of a leather-metal song. That song is about the importance of a believer over a victim."
"THE ONLY HOPE FOR ME IS YOU"
A cousin to "Famous Last Words" (the most optimistic cut from The Black Parade), this song encapsulates the band's knack for both the anthemic and the melodic. "'Famous Last Words' was very direct in the choruses. This one is even more direct. For me, it's looking at the beginning of my life -- which is, for me, 9/11. It's about a lot of things, like bringing a child into the world and being worried that there's going to be something lousy [your child] is going to have to live through."
"BLACK DRAGON FIGHTING SOCIETY"
The most head-swiveling, 1-2-fuck you, live-in-the-studio moment in the entire MCR catalog, this song is 98 seconds of over-caffeinated, overmodulated, downstroked frenzy, replete with toy ray guns and a guitar battle royal between Frank Iero, Ray Toro, and Gerard. "It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite songs, 'Heart Attack Man' from the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication. There's about two hours of production on it, yet it still sounds like My Chemical Romance."
Thank you, ciel_vert!