Michael James Way was born on the 10th of September 1980 in Belleville, New Jersey. He is Gerard’s little brother, and the pair grew up very close. They would professional wrestle each other WWF style, have epic light saber battles (Gerard accidentally knocked out one of Mikey’s teeth once) and share music. He was very shy as a child, and lived in his head a lot. His teachers thought there must be something wrong with him because he wouldn’t talk to any of the other kids, but he was just “playing mind games with them”. When he was 9 he had to get glasses to correct his nearsightedness. Both Gerard and Mikey started drinking in middle school because there was nothing else to do and it was the only way to deal with boredom. His best memory of high school was the moment he left and didn’t have to go back again, as he didn’t connect to anyone there.
Mikey knew he wanted to be in a band from a very young age. He saw his first show at The Pipeline, the local music venue. He was in a few bands as a kid, including some with Gerard. In his teenage years he was really into The Smashing Pumpkins, and would buy tickets to all of their east coast shows. To fund this, he bootlegged rare Disney movies and sold them on eBay, until a private investigator caught him. His most memorable concert is seeing The Smashing Pumpkins at Madison Square Garden with Gerard, which was another step on the road to becoming a rock star. “Me and [Gerard] were both like ‘This is the band we want to be. We want to save lives’”.
After high school he interned for Eyeball Records, a small New Jersey-based label. He would carry equipment, put up fliers, and any other odd jobs that needed doing. He went to college, but only because he though college was “a place you went to find people to be in a band with”. He was a fixture on the Jersey scene, a hard-partying extrovert that knew everyone worth knowing. He met Ray through a mutual friend Gerard had met in art school – Ray’s first impression of him was that he was a weird skinny kid who wore his glasses on the end of his nose. Mikey was also friends with Geoff Rickly, the lead singer of legendary New Jersey band Thursday. Mikey introduced Geoff to Gerard, who at the time was known as “this weird artist kid who was Mikey’s older brother.” Gerard and Geoff quickly became friends, and Gerard did a few t-shirt designs for Thursday.
When Mikey heard the Attic Demos, he loved them so much he decided to join as the bass player even though he didn’t really know how to play bass properly. He learned MCR's set in a month. He also named the band. Gerard and him once worked at Barnes and Noble. Mikey was friends with the manager, and had to pull strings with him to get Gerard the job, because he was the kind of guy that couldn’t get a job anywhere normal. Mikey and the manager used to talk about British culture, especially music and books. One day the manager left out a stack of Irvine Welsh books (author of Trainspotting), and Mikey saw that one of the books was described as “Three Tales Of Chemical Romance”. He thought it would make a cool band name if there was a “My” in front of it to add a personal dimension to it. When people found out about the name they were heaps jealous.
That's so interesting!
ReplyDelete