Enter Ray Toro!

Ray and his brother.

Raymond Toro was born on the 15th of July 1977, in Kearny, New Jersey. He lived on a dead end street on the border of Kearny and Harrison in a dangerous neighborhood where drug-related crime was common and dead bodies would often be found in the local park. One of his childhood memories was watching a local drug addict called Bertine get taken away in an ambulance after OD’ing outside Ray’s house. He has a Puerto Rican and Portuguese background. When he was growing up, his father worked at the local post office in the international shipping department. His father also instilled a love of all things electronic into him and his two older brothers, taking them to computer shows and flea markets to pick up weird circuit boards and computer games. He grew up playing video games like Street Fighter 2 and first person shooters. His mother was very protective of Ray because of the dangerous neighborhood the family was living in, so he wasn’t really allowed out very much. He wasn’t very popular at school, describing himself as having been “pretty invisible”. When he was in junior high he once tried to impress a girl by sticking a piece of Runts candy up his nose, but it got stuck and he had to go to the nurse to get it pulled out. He went to the same high school as Gerard and Mikey Way, and was “loose friends” with the brothers, but only really became good friends with them after high school.

Ray when he was 9

Ray shared a tiny room with his two older brothers, and grew up listening to classic rock music with them. His oldest brother, Louis, loved music and had a guitar that he would practice on at all hours of the night. When Ray was in junior high he became interested in metal bands like Metallica, Pantera and Anthrax. He expressed this interest to his brother, and Louis lent him his many guitar magazines and taught Ray how to play. The next Christmas Louis bought Ray a guitar of his own. Since Ray didn’t have many friends, he would go straight home after school to practice guitar, later saying “Thank God I didn’t have any girlfriends or friends, ‘cos I would suck now!” His two biggest influences were Randy Rhoades (played with Ozzy Osbourne) and Brian May (Queen). While in high school he joined a band called The Rodneys, with which he played a few shows at the popular local venue The Pipeline.

After school he went to the William Patterson University to study film. He still loved playing music, and was in several bands, including a pop-punk band called Nancy Drew, which Gerard was also in. However, his main aspiration was to become a film editor. While at college he made several short films, including one about a guy obsessed with eating eggs (at the end an egg came back to life and killed the man). He fell out of contact with Mikey and Gerard, although they remained casual friends. In 2001 he wasn’t really doing anything with himself, just playing drums in a little band with a few friends. When Gerard found out about this he was “bummed out”, because Ray was the best guitarist he knew. When the band was starting, Gerard called him and said “No strings attached; you don’t have to say yes or no. Just come, check it out, and bring your guitar.” Together, Gerard, Ray and Matt wrote Our Lady Of Sorrows (originally Bring More Knives), Cubicles and Skylines and Turnstiles (originally just Turnstiles). They recorded demos of these songs in Otter’s attic, and released them on an EP called Dreams About Stabbing And/Or Being Stabbed (aka The Attic Demos). This disc was reputed to have also featured and early version of Vampires Will Never Hurt You called Stabbing, but this song appears to have been lost to the seas of time.

Before they could start playing live shows, though, the band needed a bassist and a name. Gerard played the demos to his little brother Mikey, who loved it so much he provided both.