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alphacentaurirunaway · 2 years

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From my personal archive: Italian interview for Rock Sound (2005 I suppose?)

Rough and quick translation (doing my best folks but I'm not like a translator so - hopefully it will all make sense!)

It's been less than a year since we met My Chemical Romance, but so many things happened in the meanwhile. [...] For the whole interview, Gerard talks openly about their problems with alcohol, their relationship with his brother Mikey and his own ambitions. [Quick intro of the band and Gerard's experience with 9/11]

You became a world-famous phenomenon, since the last time we saw you. How do you cope with this?

G: I'd say very well. We've always lived in our own bubble, kinda. You must do it if you want your band to sound different from the rest. We always tried to avoid being influenced by what's around us, and we apply this to our personal lives as well. We don't read what they say about us online and what's published about us, because most of the time it's completely wrong.

F: I bought a few magazines talking about us, just to give them to my mother. Our parents enjoyed seeing us on TV and stuff, it shows them we made it, but we don't have a truthful perception of what's happening to us. We're always on tour and even though we know people are interested in us, as we spend most days talking to the press, we don't really know where we are. Our world is made of tour bus, backstage, and stage and this hasn't really changed.

However, Gerard, last year you coped with your alcohol and drugs addiction, but when we met at Warped you didn't look that bad...

G: I didn't want anyone to notice so I pretended. I stopped drinking after a festival in Japan when everything seemed to be tumbling down. We had just one awful gig because of alcohol, I forgot a line or two. But my crisis was more about depression. I wanted to kill myself. I think my insecurities led me to think I had to drink in order to be on stage, so I started drinking and taking drugs daily, taking tranquilizers too, a very dangerous cocktail. But now I know I don't need that. I feel like I've grown. Not drinking helps me do my best, so I don't do that anymore. I think I could drink again without any consequence, but I wouldn't be as good on stage. I became a pro now.

Frank, do you drink?

F: Yeah, but it's not a problem. We can party and we know nothing's gonna happen, we know Gerard's strong and he's not gonna have spasms if I drink a beer in front of him.

G: I have no problems with that, also because you can't avoid seeing other bands or your fans drinking in front of you.

You could act like assholes, now that you’re famous. I suppose it's hard not to...

G: Well, let's say we surround ourselves with people we trust and not bootlickers. We got our backs covered. Our manager's always ready to tell us to fuck off if we behave like assholes. And that's what we need. We don't want people to always agree with us. We never abused our power. Sometimes though, we get problematic people in the backstage, groupies that won't respect themselves... You must understand that's our home, and if we don't like how you behave, you're out. But you gotta be careful...

F: Not to sound like an asshole. We'd probably laugh to death is one of us behaved like a rockstar.

Young people look up to you, because you're normal people who made it big. You're like superheroes that always stay human.

F: If we made it, anyone can. It's the proof you can achieve what you want if you put your heart into it and work hard.

G: The best example of this is the Thursday. People really see them as one of them, just - they are on stage. Maybe we're a bit more distant... We're very normal people in our everyday lives, but on stage we become something else. That's where we become superheroes, but our strength is still being normal people. Like Peter Parker and the Spider-man, people identify with him because he's so human, things never go right for him.

He's like an emo superhero.

G: Yeah, way too emo. Half of the movie Spider-man 2 is about his shitty life and not about Spider-man, that's why I like it. We don't spend our time backstage with vodka, girls, and sunglasses (laughs). It would suck. I met people like that, but we're different.

Theatricality and aesthetic are important for the band. In London you even had a parade with a hearse in the streets before your gig at Astoria. Will we get to see more of this?

G: The parade to me is something Bowie would have done in the Ziggy Stardust era. We wanted the gig to be more than a show, we wanted to be very creative even from the street. We love doing stuff like this, but we can't afford it for every tour date (laughs). For now we focus on lights, songs, costumes... but if we will get the chance to do something like that again, we'll do it, of course.

I think this kind of stuff shows you how successful you are. It's not like anyone can organize a parade in one week...

G: Yes, but like, if we wanted a magician we would have to pay for his room and lodge (laughs)

F: For him and his rabbits! (laughs)

G: It's complicated. Once, when we were touring with Story of the year, we met an elder homeless who told us he was a good singer. We asked him what he liked to sing and he said blues, so we gave him four minutes of our stage time, we were just the opening act, so he could open the show. We played with him, and it was great. Doing spontaneous things is the best. It would be cool to have unique people like him opening each concert.

You and Mikey look very different but you seem to get along well. Is it therapeutic to share all of this with him?

G: Totally. The main difference is I'm an extrovert and he's very shy. Talking about looks, one would wonder if one of us is the offspring of the plumber (Iaughs). Maybe I'm more nervous, but the truth is we're very much alike. Maybe people don't know it's thanks to Mikey if the band exists. He put us together. When we travel, he makes me feel at home because we always shared everything, even our bedroom, for 20 years. We always did everything together. I wouldn't be able to do all of this seriously if I knew he was at home with a shitty job.

Is it true he had no idea how to play the bass before joining the band?

G: He never played it before but he studied all the parts and learned the rest on tour. He doesn't want to impress anyone, he just wants to play in My chemical romance. This is his job. He doesn't want to be Rush's Geddy Lee, but he does his job on our rhythmic section perfectly.

Talking about arrangement, execution, and production, do you want to step it up like you did from your first to your second album?

G: I don't think this band has transitioning albums, even if we could end up having a few songs of that kind. We always try to step our game up. In four or five years we'll be a completely different band, I suppose. Somehow our goal is exactly that.

Your aesthetic evolved too. At the beginning of this era, you looked very psycho-killer, now you're much more elegant, almost in a uniform.

F: It's been a natural evolution.

G: At the beginning, we didn't want to be a jeans and t-shirt kinda band, even if we wore a few. I started wearing black and, later on, wearing eyeliner. Suddenly, it became cool to dress like this and to play punk rock, especially on the East coast, so we stopped. But when we recorded this album, so theatrical, I felt like putting on a ton of make-up. Slowly, the rest of the band did too. It's funny cause we look classy but we wear very cheap suits that often tear up. The truth is, the more we feel like a band, the more we look like one. At Warped I was the only one in a suit, but only because I was the only one enough drunk to not care about how hot it was.

Do you feel amazed to know there are people from the other side of the world dressing up like you?

G: Yes. We first noticed in Japan. We saw many people dressed like us. Now it's happening in the USA as well. They cut your hair like you, know your eyeliner brand, wear a tie...

In the tour "Taste of chaos", you played with The Used, Killswitch Engage, Underoath and Senses Fail. How did it go?

G: I think it worked for us and Killswitch Engage, to be so different. In some clubs, we exceeded the audience limit. It was amazing.

F: It's been great because it felt like playing with your friends in a stadium. One of our tours was with Underoath, in bars with 20 people max, and we loved that. Then we played with Static Lullaby in front of 300 people and with The Used they became 1k. They looked a lot already. So, touring for 2 years in front of 10k people has been mental.

Do you see yourself touring in stadiums? Would you like to play in such big venues?

F: We like connecting with the audience and in stadiums, you can't see after the 3rd row. It's different than clubs. Some of us would like to play in big venues, and some of us would rather play in smaller ones.

G: Somehow, being the opening act of bigger bands is like traveling back to the beginning, for us. We like doing both. Mikey always wanted to fill stadiums and Frank always wanted to be in a punk band. That's what makes us who we are.

Going back to The Used, you recorded Under Pressure by Queen together, and you made it available on iTunes for the victims of the Tsunami in Asia last December. This has been undoubtedly a good cause but was it a result of sexual tension between Bert McCracken and Gerard Way?

G: Noooooooo

F: Actually, yes, you can tell when you see them together (laughs)

G: No, no, well... maybe in our subconscious we wanted to emulate Bowie and Freddie. It's sad to see bands don't collaborate anymore. In the 70s many big bands did that, so now that our band can do it for a good cause, we do it. We recorded it before the "Taste of chaos tour" so it was perfect, as we could play it as an encore after the Used's act.

LITTLE COMICS THINGIE ON PAGE 2

Daredevil: Usually a blind person's seen as frail. But Daredevil overcomes this. He represents going beyond being human.

The Punisher: I see myself in his quest for revenge. If someone did something to my family or myself, I'd do the same.

Spider-man: Is a normal guy with problems, one of which is saving the world.

Preacher: A preacher from Texas, friend with an Irish vampire and with a big heart. Many of my lyrics are inspired by this comic.

Doom Patrol: They're weirdos. Like the X Men, but uglier, and no one ever acknowledges their merits.

#my chemical romance #mcr #interview #2005 #three cheers for sweet revenge #three cheers for sweet revenge era #the last question is - LOL #gerard way #frank iero

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