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"We never waved around a banner saying, "Hey, we're punk."" |
INTERVIEW WITH GERARD WAY OF MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
As he is walking around a Best Buy looking for anime, Gerard Way speaks as eloquently on his cell phone as he does to a sold-out crowd. The difference is his obvious more subdues tone, but the same convictions he shares with the audience, he shares with this writer. It was their day off, and Way took his shopping time out to speak with FPE about the Taste of Chaos tour, the challenges they put on the music masses and the upcoming Green Day tour.
FPE: You get accused with being an emo band by all those in the press, like me. But you are really as far from emo as just about any other bands in this Taste of Chaos bands.
GW: "I would agree with that. It's actually funny, I gave an interview with a dude today and he said "Did it bother us that we were called EMO"? My answer was we actually get that question more than we are called EMO. That's pretty much the way it goes. There really is no way to classify it because when we started the band we said to ourselves, "We're not here to cash in on a commercial movement like a buzzword, we're not here to do that." It (Emo) was what was going on in New Jersey, in like, full force. We didn't want to have anything to do with it. We went to great lengths to separate ourselves from it. But also, it was more so that we can write the kind of songs that would keep us from being bored. We're all kind of individuals that tend to get bored if we were playing the same thing all the time. That's the kind of shape and sound we have; the desire to never not want to play your songs."
FPE: Just saw you live a few nights ago, and the greatest thing about your show is nothing seems planned. The whole show seems to flow out of the moment, not the plans you talked about on the bus before you go on stage.
GW: "That's the biggest challenge as far as My Chemical Romance like getting larger and step it up is the fact that we've never planned things out. We never do. There's a couple of things that I have going. Like, mainly, I'm going to educate people and I'm going to challenge people's beliefs. I'm also there to make them angry if they think I'm there to entertain them, that's what the band's there for to. Occasionally you'll get something really good. Occasionally it will be a quiet
show. I think there was one night on the tour I was pretty much like you know what I'm just enjoying myself right now and was like, "We are having a good time. So, if we're kind of quiet don't mind us playing." That night in particular, later on in the show, you know what there's nothing for me to say today (that day), so there's nothing planned out. It makes it a challenge everyday."
FPE: You also scream, "Do you want to f%*k my band?" every night. Where does that come from?
GW: "That I say every night. I actually stopped saying it because I realized I was getting involved in repetition and the reason that I said that was more for me to get myself excited about the song that we're about to play, called "Romance." It really gets me ... it's a very pissed off song. The one off the first record. The first track. It's a very pissed off track and I try to get myself worked up. My whole reasoning to asking the audience, "Who wants to fuck me" is actually more of a negative thing. More of like, "Is that all your interested in, is fucking me?" I pretty much make it a point every night. I ask that to say, "Well, I definitely wouldn't fuck any of you." I guess it's like saying your really going to look past the attraction you have with all these dudes and listen to what the hell we're saying in the song instead of just thinking we're hot. But in the same respects, the show gets kind of raunchy. I used to do that to piss the homophobes off, but now it's become sexy. It started as something to challenge a meathead's sexuality and see if they were going to try to fight me or throw shit at me and maybe change the way they think and have them walk away from that show going, "You know what, I really like this band. There's probably nothing wrong with being gay." But then that became sexy though. Humping my monitor became sexy. There's a lot of changes and a lot of adjustments that we need to make constantly in a live show."
 FPE: Since you are on Taste of Chaos, Warped and now getting ready to head out with Green Day, have you had to mix with your live show to appeal to the masses?
GW: "We fixed a great deal about it but I think the best way to make sense is to say, we think about our beliefs and the phrases and what we do on stage, they come from that. So it's not planned out. We'll make decisions, we'll see shitty things on the road, and then something...I think anything we say on stage is a direct result of what we seen happen. Like shitty things we've seen happen on the road or bad behavior we've seen from other bands. What we talk about is pretty much our beliefs. We're always on the same page about them. If you can pretty much get all of us together and something happens and ask what do you guys feel about it and 5 out of 5 will say that's bullshit."
FPE: Is it a bad thing to become popular in your opinion? Green Day got a lot of shit for it. Do you see the same happening to your band?
GW: "It's not a bad thing. It's a constant double-edged sword we constantly dance with. We ask ourselves questions a lot. That's how we decide. That's actually what I was talking about. We'll sit around and say to ourselves, "What's our objective?" "What's our mission?" Our objective is to reach a lot of people and change the world and change lives. To destroy the bullshit music scene, then we have to reach a lot of people. So once that decision was made there was nothing that would come up that was like, "Is this wrong for us to do?" "Should we be on TRL?" Absolutely, we should go on TRL. And its bizarre that we're even there. Bless the popularity. The only negative element I've noticed with the popularity are: (A) people thinking they understand your band and want to have great philosophical drunken debates with you, they think they understand you more than anybody else. (B) people think you're HOT and they want to fuck you and they have no idea what your talking about and (C) a lack of privacy. Those are the only negative elements."
 FPE: And it seems to me that musicians start bands, make records and tour to have as many people hear their music as possible. And in the punk vein, to maybe have more people get the message the band is conveying.
GW: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing with us is that we're punk at heart but we were never punk. We never waved around a banner saying, "Hey, we're punk." Punk, unfortunately these days, is a really hollow thing. If something can be sold as fashion and that's all it's become, unfortunately. What punk really is to us is something you have inside you. The way you operate and look in your heart. That's how we ended up winning over so many people. That was a very inherently at the heart of our last tour. But the question is when your selling 15,000 tickets in a day is that punk anymore? The question is probably not. But we managed to show a degree of that by how we operate everyday and what we have to say everyday and I think it's (punk) just a real money maker. Punk, is all it is. If anything, it's your principals and society that can make you punk and that's about it."
FPE: How honest do you think this band is?
GW: "I think that the main thing you have to do is to keep all levels of communication open in the band, keep each other grounded. But also look out for each other. I think that's the same thing that we do with the fans in a way. We say things to piss them off to keep them grounded. They like to get a little aggravated sometimes by what we say, but then they'll go home and think about it. I think that's how you keep it honest. Keep it honest by being your own person and letting people call you on your shit. The only people that can call me on my shit is the band, ya know? And that's the only guys that I allow to call me on my shit or ever ground me. But, we keep it normal. We just let go. It wasn't a big deal to us, you know? It was but it wasn't, it was cool, it was like a second thought to us."
FPE: Like Green Day, you signed with Reprise and caught, maybe not on the level, but still caught some flack from your diehards about selling out. Why did you sign with a major?
GW: "We wanted to be able to travel and play music but in time we got very frustrated by the fact that we had something to say and not a lot of people could hear it. It never bummed us out, we just became frustrated. We'd be like maybe we need better distribution. That was the only reason we signed a major was for better distribution and they do that. We did this for eight years on our own and built it up to where it needs to be. Playing inside clubs and selling them out. Eventually,
we got fan base, but we needed distribution."
by Jason Perlman
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