This Broken City Sky

On the morning of 9/11 Gerard was on the ferry, on his way to work, when he saw the Towers go down. “I was in Hoboken, which is right across the Hudson River. There was 400 people and me, and I was at the railing. Right in front of us, it just went down. It was the biggest neutron bomb of mental anguish you’ve ever felt.” This catastrophic event made him wake-up and think about his life, whether he was happy and fulfilled. When he found that he was not, he began to regard commercial art as a load of crap. Gerard went home and wrote the band’s first song on his old blue guitar in his parent’s basement. It was called Skylines and Turnstiles, and was his reaction to 9/11.

Soon after, he ran into his old friend Matt “Otter” Pelissier at The Loop Lounge and recruited him to play the drums. They had a few practice sessions in Otter’s attic, but the pair quickly discovered that Gerard couldn’t sing and play guitar at the same time, so he called up his old friend Ray Toro…