teagan
Always Born a Crime
Age: 102
Gender: Female
Posts: 6045 | December 25th, 2006 at 08:35am [Real Groove Magazine NZ] New Years Edition:
My Chemical Romance scream out of the cover, and inside we have singer Gerard Way’s ONLY New Zealand interview, a must-read for fans and detractors of the band alike.
My Chemical Romance have become one of the biggest bands in the world despite the combination of disdain and indifference they've elicited from the mainstream along the way. The Black Parade should change your mind.
In writing his own Book Of The dead, The Western Lands, William S. Burroughs adopted and adapted the acent Egyptian belief in the existance of the seven souls, all of which leave the body at the moment of death to guide the individual through the land of the dead. Each immortal soul, feed of the body which it has inhabited during it's lifetime, is independent of the others and of the individual it has occupied, possessing different qualities nad intentions. Of these, “Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.....”
Two decades after The Western Lands, the curtains re-open, and something resembling this sixth soul is revealed by My Chemical Romance as the titular entity of their latest album, The Black Parade. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the great gig in the sky.
No, it's not at all grave and dramatic like Beethoven's death-pounding-on-your-door Fifth Symphony. My Chemical Romance remain, for the most part, bright, exuberant and life-affirming. Their only connection to the 'dark side' that which is so clumsily painted by those who wish to portray them as the latest Trenchcoat Mafia pin-ups.
Though many who never bother to look beyond second-hand surface impressions will likely assume this album to be a rumination on death, the encompassing theme of The Black Parade is in fact, life; or at least glimpses into the many facets of a relatively-ordinary life preceding a death.
A concept album? Certainly, but presenting it like that infers it to be more impenetrable or mystifying than a rock record really is . While the ideas are there different people receive them in different ways; and as with previous My Chemical Romance records, it is open to varying degrees of interpretation. The band narrative sketches can be appreciated as stand-alone songs with vague thematic links, or as one delves deeper, as graphic, episodic frames of a larger story.
But wait a second – all of this will perhaps make more sense if we are reminded of events leading to The Black Parade.
My Chemical Romance was formed in New Jersey in 2001 by vocalist Gerard Way, who in the oft-told band history, was forced to re-assess his life and its direction after witnessing the planes crash into the World Trade centre's Twin Towers on September 11. Way, guitarist Ray Toro and original drummer Matt Pelissier were joined by Gerard's younger brother Michael on bass who suggested the Irvine Welsh-inspired name; and following a ragged demo recording, which was passed about other NJ bands in envious disbelief, later heroes Pencey Prep's frontman Frank Iero on second guitar. Less than three months, they had recorded their debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me My Your Love with Thursday's Geoff Rickly. The LP was released in 2002 on local Jersey indie, Eyeball Records.
In a general sense, Bullets recounts the story of two criminal star-crossed lovers on the loose, ending in a shoot-out with the law. Further between the lines lies hints of the lyricist's own life: prescription drugs, alcohol, failed relationships – the things that re-assessment is made of. These themes – and narrative characters – recurred in the album's sequel, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. By this time the band had signed with Reprise, which brought bigger budgets, a slicker metal/punk/rock synthesis, production by Motorhead producer Howard Benson, professional viseos, mainstream acceptance, relentless touring, new drummer Bob Bryar, alcoholic breakdown, and recovery. Phew. By 2005, My Chemical Romance were a platinum selling band on the inaugural Taste Of Chaos tour; then playing as guests of Green Day on their uber-successful American Idiot tour; and were alternately being hailed as heros and scorned as hollow success.
In 2006, following the vault-cleaning release of the Life On The Murder Scene documentary and live album, the band headed into the studio with Green Day producer Rob Cavallo to make their third album, which brings us back to the beginning – or, more accurately. The end.
“I didn't want The Black Parade to be a cliché of 'your life flashes before your eyes,' but I really tried to imagine what you could be thinking before you die,” explains MCR vocalist Gerard Way.
The Black Parade begins at The End – the death of a terminally-ill cancer patient in a hospital bed who has been “......counting down the days to go”. When death finally comes for The Patient, it does not appear as a hooded-and-cloaked skeletal reaper, it assumes the form of a fond memory from somewhere deep in The Patient's subconscious – a parade from his childhood. No funeral parade, nor stately procession; a fun kind of parade, animated by possibilities and hopes of the child's percepition of it. When this parade returns as death, those possibilities and hopes are presented as snapshots of a lifetime's worth of random images and feelings, remembered and re-experienced.
“The question was, would you be thinking about stupid stuff, those really weird moments that you didn't remember until then, like seeing a parade with your Dad or something? Did that moment even happen? I think a lot of stuff like that would go through you head – very unobvious, stupid things just popping into your mind.”
While there's no definitive facts made explicit, The Patient is presented as an everyman, imagined by Way with specific characteristicsas a starting point for the univeesalities.
“I started to envision The Patient as a characted being in his 30s. I'm just coming up to my 30s as we speak – I've got about four months left – and I tried to envision what would I be feeling if I had done nothing with myself at that point and come down with a terrible disease? What if it all got taken away from me? I think alot of it was the sense of really accomplishing something in my life, to a pont where I've seen a lot of suff and if I died tomorrow, I could be really happy – it was looking at the opposite of that.”
From the suggestions and clues pepped throughout The Black Parade, it is possible to make certain assumptions regarding the life of The Patient. He appears to have been a relatively ordinary character – something of a loner, though not in any especially creepy way; he just kept to himself. He never married or made any deep relationship commitment, and as his thoughts in the final stages of cancer are of wanting his aunt to take care of the funeral arrangements, he perhaps wasn't all that close with the memebrs of his immediate family, who's maybe grown up to start families of their own.
The sound of the album indicates his penchant for classic rocl: Queen, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Cheap Trick, Kiss; and at a guess, his favourite Iron Maiden was likely to have been Piece of Mind. Perhaps he wouldn't have liked My Chemical Romance very much, though he may have been aware of the band through flipping channels past MTV. His world view appears to have been informed by watching movies and TV; nothing too highbrow – even Heathers was a little leftfield for this guy.
He most likley preferred science – fiction and thrillers. Tell all this to Gerard, and naturally he is non-committal regarding the accuracy of this assessment.
“The thing about The patient is that everybody is roght about him and everybody's wrong about him, because everybody is supposed to put themselves into that character. That's why you're able to flesh him out so much”, says Gerard.
“Alot of the assumptions you make about that character, there's similarities in the way that I am, and the way that I might have become. I think he's definitely a character that lives in his head more than reality, and defnitely watches a lot of films.
This character has never actually fought in a war he's experienced other people's experiences of war through films and stories he was told, maybe by his father, or people he's met”.
His music taste?
“Just a normal guy. Probably not a My Chemical Romance fan; definitely a classic rock fan, which is funny, because really, this record is a classic rock record”.
Inarguably, but the song Mama, with it's signature shifts into waltz-timing and Weimar colouring suggests perhaps The Patient might have been familiar with the Cabaret soundtrack, or overheard a Dresden Dolls song at some stage.
“Yeah, there is definitely one part of the song....
when we were doing it somebody in the room was like, “that's kinda Dresden Dolls-ish', whereas I thought it was kinda like The Trial from Pink Floyd's The Wall.
“But the Dresden Dolls are an amazing band, so I'd say there's a bit if their fun cabaret thing further on there. They always pushed the cabaret thing further than us. We had it in us around the same time, we were just more – for the lack of a better term – 'punk' than them.”
But definitions and categories they only really matter to the media and internet forums; The notion that a group should assume responsibility for how they're perceived by the outside world is rather ridiculous. There is no one correct interpretation of anybody's work, or intentions; and to the band, any he-said she-said dialogue matters little – and even less in the case of this album.
After all, there is an exit clause and an alibi for any accusations of u-turns. Any stylistic sidestep in the musical delivery of The Black Parade reflects the tastes and personality of The Patient, and this 'My Chemical Romance is not even the same band.
As it happens, the album liner ccredits spell it out -- “My Chemical Romance Appearing as The Black Parade”...
“Yes, even the band is interpreted in a fictonal way,” agrees Way “To me, that's one of the most fascinating things about The Black Parade. To have a band where you've created this sound and aesthic, and then to manipulate it so it's almost like somebody else's interpretation of the band.
To play with that is something daring, but really rewarding: I think that's one of the most charming aspects of the record.”
To some extent, everyone filters real life through their own perceptions, while anything somebody creates may be seen as something of a self-portrait. If The Patient lived much of his internal life with fairly mainstream popular culture, then Gerard's own fantasy-world mind-room might be far more specialised.
Here is a guy whose world view has been notieably shaped by horror movies and comic books so there is the question of when this will manifest itself beyond what imagination can be poured into a rock album.
In 2007, The Umbrella Academy will provide an answer. A comic mini-series written by Gerard Way and illustrated by Brazilian artist Gabriel Ba (the covers will be work of James Jean, whose artwork adorns The Black Parade's sleeve), the gist of it is this: seven dysfunctional former members of a disbanded superhero term must reunite following the deathof their adoptive father and a subsequent threat to the future of life on earth. Though the precise details of the book are still under wraps, a short preview which introduces two of the story's characters has been posted on the website if the comic's publisher, Dark Horse.
“It doesn't really even gice you a hint. It's this really short thing that maybe gives a little idea of the quirkiness and unpredictability of the series, but it doesn't give you the full scope of how weird the comic actually is”.
Described by editor Scott Allie as “an intelligent, post-punk approach to superheroes, a la Grant Morrison”, it is perhaps important to note that at this point that The Umbrella Academy is no vanity project by a preening, successful rock musican seeking to expand his cache in popular culture. Way – who has a degree in Fine Arts, and interned at DC comics prior to forming MCR – has often cited comics as his first love, and growing up in a “dingy, Gothic house” in New Jersey, he is remembered by his brother as usually to be found alone indoors, reading, drawing or writing comics. No mere rite-of-passage flirtation – even in the Life On The Murder Scene documentary, an adult Way is shown drawing in his darkened bedroom, still overflowing with comic art and memorabilia.
The writing has been on the wall that a comic is inveitable, with The Umbrella Academy itself gestating for some time.
“Not a super long time, I think three years maybe,” he says. “It really started on the Taste of Chaos tour, when I had all this free time, and I just felt like drawing again.I really missed it, so I just started thinking up this story about these people. I think a lot of the comic has to do with my experiences on the road. Whether I know it or not, there's going to be some similarities with the people in my life and how relationships work.”
However, he also says there is absolutely no connection between the band and the book, with neither requiring any understanding or knowledge of the other to make sense. This is not a My Chemical Romance comic. With Way somebody who confesses a near total immersion in the world of comics from an early age, the chances of his inner cirlce suspecting they are characters in his fiction is unlikely- the words created in three MCR albums should indicate Gerard Way's imagination is wider than any transparent real life allegory pertaining actualities.
It's not like his own mother and father feel vilified by the depiction of The Patient's parents in The Black Parade...
“My Parents LOVE the album. They love it so much, and they get in on such a different level than the other stuff. They liked Helena and the singles, all of Revenge, but the way they responded to this record when they heard it was the same response that a 12-year-old boy may have, or a 16-year-old girl, or a 25-year-old man. It was like wide-eyed surprise of 'Wow.' When we were making The Black Parade, we knew that nobody expected it. Nobody saw that thing coming.”
Indeed. In just five years, My Chemical Romance have gone from an idea spawned by the quarter-life crisis of a New Jersey outsider who felt he should contribute something to the world as “life is short”, to making an album which richly illustrates the other way things could have gone for him from that pivotal point. It's not everybody who accomplishes a fully-realised success from a crisis of self-belief.
“We made something really special that people all over are responding to in a giant way,” he says. “ And I think I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world. |
