The Paramour

The Black Parade started being written while My Chemical Romance was still on tour. When they did Warped ’05, they customised their tour bus by ripping out the back half and building a makeshift recording studio in it. They used Pro Tools, a drum kit hooked up to an Mbox, and guitars connected to Line 6 Pods to write several demos, including basic versions of the songs that would go on to become Disenchanted, I Don’t Love You and This Is How I Disappear. This studio kept Gerard away from the alcohol fuelled parties of Warped and gave them a head start in recording their 3^rd studio album.

Rob Cavallo

This record was produced by Rob Cavallo, who had previously worked on several Green Day albums, including the critically acclaimed American Idiot. Cavallo helped My Chemical Romance bring their theatrics and epic guitar solos to the forefront. He encouraged them to do whatever they wanted, and gave them the tools to do so (e.g. getting Liza Minelli to provide a cameo on Mama). Cavallo also had a huge selection of vintage guitars, enabling the band to find the right sound for the album. One of the guitars used for Disenchanted and Sleep was the same guitar used by Billie Joe Armstrong to record Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).

The Paramour - not a house of love

On March the 6^th, 2006, My Chemical Romance headed out to The Paramour, a haunted mansion in Silverlake, Los Angeles. The multi-million dollar manor/studio was built for the star of 1920’s silent film The Creature From The Black Lagoon. It reportedly looks like an Asian palace, with views of the city, a huge garden and an outdoor swimming pool. Unfortunately, the actor’s wife died in a car accident, and her body was buried on the property, leading many to believe that The Paramour is haunted. The ghost opens and closes doors and turns taps on. While for many bands, writing and recording in a haunted mansion would add a “cool” factor, for My Chemical Romance the experience nearly killed them.

Revenge Mikey

The band’s time spent in The Paramour was emotionally the darkest point in the band’s career. The atmosphere was very intense and edgy, and the band put a lot of pressure on themselves. While there, Mikey had a breakdown. He had been having problems with severe anxiety ever since the band’s last victory lap of America, which eventually developed into full-blown depression. Mikey started to withdraw from things, limiting his world to playing shows and staying on the bus between concerts. Some of the biggest shows of his career passed straight by him. Mikey became angry at himself, and started to doubt his musical ability and role in the band. He would stay silent and deflect attention away from himself, which sometimes came off as shyness or even arrogance.

By the time the band started work at The Paramour, Mikey was at an emotional low. He started to feel as though he only had two options – to leave the band or to kill himself. He tried drinking and taking pills, but this did not help. His condition was only worsened by the fact that The Paramour had no phone reception, no TV, and no heating. Also, Mikey had ended up sleeping in a creepy room with only one blue light. After suffering through a month of nervous breakdowns and hyperventilating attacks, Mikey left the mansion to stay with Stacey Fass, the band’s attorney. He started getting therapy, and was diagnosed as having a condition “very close to bipolar”. When he wasn’t seeing a therapist, he returned to The Paramour to help the rest of the band write. However, he did not stay the night again.

After Mikey left, the rest of My Chemical Romance became creatively paralysed. Gerard went through a “pre-mid-life crisis” in which he searched for meaning in what he was doing. He stopped showering and changing his clothes, and started having trouble sleeping. He started having waking dreams and night terrors not being able to breathe and things burning. He started keeping notes of these nightmares. One of things he wrote was “We are all just a black parade”, which helped the band shape the direction of the record. Gerard also described his nightmares into a portable tape recorder, and soundbites from these were later used on Sleep.

To help deal with all of these emotional issues, the band decided to designate one room in The Paramour to go and thrash out their feelings and be brutally honest with each other. This place became known as The Heavy Room. They drained their souls in this room, as they kept finding things they didn’t like about themselves. However, they knew that they had to push themselves to the edge to make a really great record, and ultimately the time spent talking over their feelings in this room strengthened the bonds between them. They realised that they had to put aside their personal problems to help each other, and so emerged closer than ever before.

However, My Chemical Romance was still in creative stasis. A breakthrough finally came when Gerard heard Ray playing songs off Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark At The Moon. “It upset the shit out of me. He wants to play our songs, but he’s playing Ozzy. He was playing the songs a lot faster. They sounded angrier and I knew it was coming solely out of frustration”. Gerard went over to him, and the pair started working on a song scrap entitled “The Saddest Music in the World”. Gerard poured all of his anxieties about Mikey and recording into it, and the song became Famous Last Words. The next day, when Mikey came in they played him the song, and he loved it. This revitalized everyone’s spirits, and the band decided to leave The Paramour a few weeks earlier than they had previously planned. They moved into the Oakwood apartments located close to the studio, and kept working.

Late 2005 Touring

Gerard at the Brixton Academy, London, 03/11/05

Once they had finished Vans Warped Tour 2005, My Chemical Romance went on (another!) short European tour from mid-September to early October. While in the UK they played at the Reading/Leeds Festival on the Radio 1/NME Stage and the Main Stage. After this tour, My Chemical Romance went on their first headlining tour of the US with Alkaline Trio and Reggie And The Full Effect. This tour started on September the 6^th and went until October the 21^st. They then played Voodoo Festival on the 29^th and 30^th of October, after which they went on (another!!) UK tour with Every Time I Die. After this, My Chemical Romance went on their Canadian Winter Tour with Thrice and Circa Survive until the middle of December. From the 14^th until the 18^th of December, MCR went to Australia in support of Green Day. They played a few festival dates in March and April 2006, then released their CD/DVD Life On The Murder Scene on March 21^st. You can watch the video diary on Youtube by clicking on the album cover below (but you should also buy it coz legality is cool!). You can download the CD part of LOTMS on iTunes.

The Summer Of Like

After finishing their tour with Green Day, My Chemical Romance went on the Vans Warped Tour in the summer of 2005. It was during this time that the friendship between My Chem and Fall Out Boy (and in particular Mikey Way and Pete Wentz) thrived. They had first met on the 2004 Vans Warped Tour, but it was during Warped ’05 that Mikey and Pete’s bromance started to garner attention. This period is known as the “Summer Of Like”, after the working title of the Fall Out Boy song Bang The Doldrums.

You need this band in your life.

See the t-shirt? Sweet Little Dudes.

Even before Warped ‘05, Pete made a lot of references to My Chem on the Fall Out Boy website’s Q&A section. In one answer he writes, “i think we're gonna have to set up a seperate q and a just for our my chem questions and requests. good thing they are good friends of ours...” Later, Pete mentioned in one answer that he and Mikey were in a gang called The Sweet Little Dudes (which was a phrase Mikey had made up sometime around Bullets, before the pair had ever met). In another answer, Pete stated that the pair were also in a gang called The Fraternal Order Of The Handsome Boy, in which Mikey is known as The Duke Of Handsome.

White denim

On April 16, 2005, Mikey was seen at a Fall Out Boy show in Orlando, Florida. He was wearing a white denim jacket. Pete was later seen wearing a similar/the same jacket during Warped ’05. MCR and FOB also both played Bamboozle (a New Jersey music festival) before Warped. Mikey was seen watching FOB play, and around this time Pete posted a blog post talking about the things that made him “hot and bothered”. On his list were “having a crush on a person I speak to near daily” and “White denim jackets”.

During Warped, Mikey and Pete spent a lot of time together. On June 28, he posted “Amazing new mexico sunset. I'm hanging on a bridge with my friend mikey way from my chem. Its all orange and pink above us. We went to another waterpark again. I love high fives again. Totally back in love. Saw the most amazing movie... I think its called spirited away. Watch it.” He also talked a lot about being in love in other posts from this time. Mikey posted a quick FAQ on his Myspace, where he said “Me and pete wentz aren't dating. We are both heterosexual males....sort of...maybe...umm...next!” Way to deny the rumours, Mikey.

Mikey and Patrick

Mikey was often seen hanging around side stage, watching FOB play their set. Pete would sometimes dedicate songs to him while he was watching. While on Warped, Mikey filled in for Pete on bass a few times so Pete could take his mic and go into the crowd. On March 5, 2006, Mikey played bass for a secret Fall Out Boy show (which was played under the name Saved Latin). There have been several other times when MCR and FOB have filled in for each other. On July 14 2005, Ray filled in for Joe Trohman for the Calgary stop of Warped when Joe flew home after his friend OD-ed. Ray learnt their set in about a night. On July 21 and August 15, Ray and Mikey joined Fall Out Boy onstage for a few songs. Patrick Stump also played drums for Thank You For The Venom once on Warped ’05, and Joe played guitar with MCR once. Also, Patrick lived with Bob when MCR was recording The Black Parade and FOB was recording Infinity On High.

On July 19, Pete made a post on his Fueled By Ramen blog that said, “wrote you a goodbye note (you just wrote me off) on your arm when you passed out. bestfriends, exfriends- better off as lovers not the other way around. racing through the city in the back of yellow checkered cars. the takeoffs are the worst but the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it. and im sorry the way my moods flicker on and off like old light on your porch, but i know you wouldn't have it any other way. sneaking in your window instead of out. the way you hold a cigarette cause you don't know what to do with your hands when we are sitting this close. the way the waists of pants feel better at the ankles. the way you always were my best excuse for calling in sick on everyone else. i miss you.” Several lines from this post were later used in Fall Out Boy’s song Bang The Doldrums, leading many fans to speculate whether the song was about Mikey.

As well as (maybe) sharing a white denim jacket, Mikey likes to wear clothes by Clandestine, Pete’s clothing company. There is a picture of Pete wearing Mikey’s famous white-rimmed glasses, and another picture where Pete is wearing a button with Mikey’s face on it. Speaking of buttons, Mikey started wearing a unicorn pin by Pretty Vacant during Warped, leading fans to associate him with unicorns forever after.

Sadly, despite being best friends all summer, Mikey and Pete seem to have mostly fallen out of contact with each other. Mikey was at Pete’s 30th birthday party, but other than that there hasn’t been much more news about the pair after March 2006.

The Ghost Of You

The last music video off Revenge is The Ghost Of You. It was filmed on the 22nd and 23rd of May, 2005 in Malibu, California. This video is again directed by Marc Webb, and looks like a real movie rather than a trailer. As the song is about the fear of losing someone, the band wanted to make a video that touched on this but was at the same time quite unexpected. They felt that as the song had the word “Ghost” in the title, they would be expected to make a creepy, haunted house type video. Instead, they decided to set their music video in a Saving Private Ryan-esque, World War 2 scenario.

The video has two main scenes. During the verses, the band is shown performing with period instruments for a group of about 30 soldiers dancing with their partners. They are also shown at the bar in their dress greens as if they are drunkenly singing along to the jukebox. During the choruses, the soldiers are shown storming a beach that is occupied by the Germans. These sections are more kinetic and fast, and have a handheld camera feel to them. During the breakdown, some shots of Mikey are shown to make the audience feel more connected and attached to him. In the last part of the video, Mikey gets shot and dies before the medic (played by Ray) can save him.

The Ghost Of You was a very expensive music video, costing $500,000 to make. Gerard was very worried about the cost, as he felt he might be gambling their careers away. However, he talked to the band about his concerns, and together they decided that “We didn’t get into it for the money, so let’s make a great video.”

To make the video look like it was set during the 1940’s, Gerard had to chop off all of his hair and get a period haircut. He hadn’t cut his hair since starting the band, apart from trimming and shaping it. When they had finished cutting his hair for the video, it was as short as it had been when they started the band. Bob had to shave off his beard for the video. He was reluctant to do this, as he had had a beard for so long, but when he saw that Gerard was going to cut off all of his hair he agreed to shave his beard. Ray, Mikey and Frank all had to use bobby pins to hold their hair in place, and Mikey had to wear glasses that looked like they were from the 1940’s.

The band almost drowned while they were making this music video. The video was to include a shot of the front of the boat opening to let the soldiers out onto the beach, but they had to shoot the shot in the middle of the ocean to get the angle right. The second time they did it the door scooped up some water which put too much weight on the front of the boat. Too much water seeped in, they couldn’t shut the front, and the boat almost capsized. When commenting on the situation, Frank said “When my balls got wet, that’s when I got scared.” Despite this event, the band had to get back in the boat to keep filming. At first they were extremely hesitant, but when Ray (who can’t swim) got back in, they realised that they had to keep going.

While they were preparing for this music video, My Chemical Romance was on tour with Green Day, who had just finished shooting their video for Wake Me Up When September Ends. When Gerard heard the Green Day video recreated the war in Iraq, he was worried about how My Chem’s new video would be compared to Green Day’s video. However, Billie Joe Armstrong (lead singer of Green Day) showed him their video, and supported My Chem’s decision to make an anti-war statement.

The Ghost Of You was released as a single on August 29, 2005, and the video was premiered on the 6th of September 2005. It was very well received.

Pretty Handsome Awkward

After filming Helena, My Chemical Romance appeared on Total Request Live (TRL) in New York. They decided to do it to say that bands like My Chem could do things like that and make them look cool. It was the first time they had gotten a police escort, which made them feel “Ghostbuster famous”. On the show, Frank jumped up on top of Bob’s drum kit and knocked over the bass drum. Bob had to improvise, and he ended up using his tom as a bass drum. After this, MCR toured Europe with Taking Back Sunday from the 18th of January to the 4th of February. They then went on a short tour of Japan from the 7th to the 9th of February.

In late winter 2005, My Chemical Romance went on the first ever Taste Of Chaos tour with The Used, Avenged Sevenfold, Thrice, Story of the Year, and Underoath. After Taste Of Chaos, My Chem went on another short UK tour with Mini Hand, then went on tour with Green Day from the 15th of April until the 15th of May. The two bands had a lot of fun together on this tour, and they went to movies and waterparks together. Green Day also played several pranks on MCR, such as emptying popcorn on them while they were playing and setting off loud bangs to scare Gerard.

During the Taste Of Chaos tour, the friendship between The Used and My Chemical Romance (and in particular Gerard and Bert) was at its highest. The Used are a rock band from Utah, and Bert McCracken is their extremely classy lead singer.

My Chem and The Used first met through Brian Schechter, MCR’s manager. He had just become really good friends with Gerard, and Bert was like his little brother, so he introduced the pair. They met for the first time in a pizzeria, and quickly became firm friends. The first show they played together was Skatefest in 2002. The Used then took My Chem on tour in February 2003, and they went to Europe together from early March to late April in 2003. The two bands were also together on Warped Tour 2004, during which they became notorious for drinking and partying together, becoming known as the Toxic Twins. Bert also became friendly with Gerard’s mom, and she gave Bert a framed picture of him and Gerard for his birthday.

The Used and MCR became big influences on each other. Bert said “I can’t say enough good things about those guys. They write honest music. They’re my favourite new band, by far. They just kill. Gerard Way has been such a huge support for me in so many strange ways.” In the liner notes for Revenge, Gerard thanks Bert for being his “cellmate”. The Used name-checked MCR in their song Take It Away in the line “And I've lost all doubt In a chemical romance”. In the I’m Not Okay music video, one of the text screens reads “If You’ve Ever Felt Used”, and it lingers on the screen slightly longer than the other lines of text. Bert also claims to have inspired You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison, saying “One night [Gerard and I] were making out for so long it almost wasn’t funny anymore – even though it was. That’s what he wrote the song about, whether he wants admit it or not. We were way wasted.” The Toxic Twins seemed inseparable, wearing each other’s merch, doing interviews together, and appearing in their respective video diaries.

My Chem and The Used also collaborated on a duet for charity. Bert picked Under Pressure (a collaboration between David Bowie and Queen) for the bands to cover, as he is a huge Bowie fan and MCR like both Bowie and Queen. Bert sang Bowie’s part, while Gerard did Freddie Mercury’s part. They recorded the song in Niagra Falls, NY for the MTV2 $2 Bill Show on March the 1st, and released it on April 12 2005. The proceeds from this song went towards relief for the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. It was re-released on The Used’s 2nd album, In Love And Death.

Unfortunately, this whirlwind friendship collapsed very suddenly. In November, Kerrang! published a very short article in which Bert revealed that the pair was no longer talking. He said that while the rest of The Used was still in contact with My Chem, he was no longer on speaking terms with them. In January 2006, Blunt magazine published an interview with MCR in which Gerard said that Bert making up the conflict. In response to this, Bert spoke to an interviewer about what had happened, saying, “What happened was – it was maybe like a year and a half ago I saw all their heads blow up and after their heads blew up their heads kinda went up their arses as well. And I just thought ‘Fuck that, I don’t need friends like that and I don’t even need acquaintances like that.’ As far as the whole thing goes now, I wish them the best with their touring and their record, but it’s over. It’s definitely not a publicity stunt.” MCR did not respond to this.

The Used’s 3rd album, Lies To The Liars, includes a song called Pretty Handsome Awkward is supposedly about Gerard. Quinn Allman (guitar) said, “It’s about someone with short blonde hair, but I’m not sure who it is.” When asked what this person would think about the song, Bert said “I think he will love it… [He’ll] wish he wrote it.”

A recent interview with The Used mentioned that the two bands were friends again and that the whole episode had been exaggerated. My Chemical Romance has not made any comment about the situation since the article in Blunt magazine.

Helena

On the 7th and 8th of January 2005, My Chemical Romance filmed the music video for Helena. It was filmed in the Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The band had enjoyed working with Marc Webb on I’m Not Okay, so they asked him to direct Helena as well. They also got Michael Rooney to choreograph the dancers. The video is described as being “celebratory but sombre” by Frank.

The video is based around the funeral of a girl who died tragically young. Gerard sings from the pulpit while the rest of the band perform in front of the altar. While he is singing, several performers dance to the music. When the song reaches the bridge, the girl in the coffin (played by Tracey Phillips) comes back to life to do one last dance down the aisle, symbolising her crossing over into the afterlife. When she finishes, she falls back into the casket, and the pallbearers (the band plus a fan called Cameron) carry the casket to the hearse as dancers with black and red umbrellas dance around them.

The band decided to use a younger woman to play Helena so as to make people take the video more seriously, and so people could connect with it on a broader level – “when somebody older dies, you kind of expect it, when somebody younger dies, it’s more tragic”. Gerard has stated that making the video felt a lot like he was reliving his grandmother’s funeral, and he had to leave the room when Tracey did her dance because it made him so emotional.

The crew hadn’t expected it to be raining on the days they were shooting, but Marc used the rain to help set the tone of the video. The sixth pallbearer and most of the mourners were played by fans who had received emails asking them to be in the video. Frank was too short to help carry to casket, and so had to walk underneath pretending to hold it. Gerard and Ray bore the brunt of the weight, as they were at the front.

The music video was released on the 23rd May, 2005. After they had finished shooting the video, the band kept the clothes they wore for it. They liked the way the matching suits made them look like a gang. It wasn’t a calculated movement, just a moment when they decided they liked the way they looked. From then on they played many live shows wearing “uniforms”. After a while they ended up not having any other clothes with them on tour, just their pajamas.

Helena was premiered on the MTV2 $2 Bill Show on March the 1st. It was nominated for five Moonmen at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. They didn’t win any, but they did a surprise performance at the end of the night. The video won other awards, including the Kerrang! award for Best Video in 2005. As well as this, on April 9, 2005, My Chemical Romance organised a parade in London with a hearse that was inspired by Helena. They played 2 shows on that day to keep up with demand, and had dancers on stage when they played Helena to recreate the music video.

Late 2004 Touring

After Matt left, Bob joined, and Gerard got clean and sober, My Chemical Romance’s shows got a lot better. Although the first few shows were a bit rough, their act gradually got tighter, and they were able to have fun onstage again. Gerard started to realise that he didn’t have to be drunk to be a crazy frontman, and so My Chemical Romance went from a band on the brink of imploding to a band ready to take on the world.

After the Face To Face tour, My Chem went on a short UK tour in mid-September. They then joined the Nintendo Fusion tour with Story of the Year, Lostprophets, Letter Kills, Amberlin, and Autopilot Off. The people running the tour gave the band a Gamecube with Mario Kart and Donkey Konga. After this tour finished in mid-November, My Chem played a whole bunch of radio shows until the end of the year. On November 13, 2004 they played a show sponsored by KROQ-FM in a Best Buy parking lot in Orange, California. Because of the venue’s proximity to residential areas and a hotel, the band wasn’t supposed to swear, but the guy who was supposed to tell them forgot. The police also threatened to pull the plug on the show because the crowd was too amped-up. They also got in trouble for trying to meet with fans outside of their allotted time slot. At the end of the day, My Chem were told they were banned from playing in Orange County ever again. On December 5, 2004, My Chemical Romance played a show as part of the 97x Next Big Thing concert series. Unfortunately, Gerard lost his voice on this day, so Adam Lazzara (Taking Back Sunday) sang in place of him.

My Chemical Romance also contributed a song to Kevin & Bean's Christmastime in the 909, a compilation of bands covering Christmas related songs. On one of the band’s first tours they weren’t able to get home in time for Christmas, which was a wake-up call as to what touring was really like. However, All I Want For Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey) came on the radio, which cheered everyone up. Gerard got so excited about it he started swinging the knife they kept for protection around. When they were asked to contribute a song for Kevin and Bean’s CD, they decided that instead of covering a classic or writing a new song they decided to see what they could do with this ridiculous song. The song was re-released on Gift Wrapped - 20 Songs That Keep On Giving! You can download it from iTunes by clicking on the album cover.

I'm Not Okay (I Promise)

The day after Gerard’s official sobriety day, on July 12 2004, My Chemical Romance started shooting the music video for I’m Not Okay (I Promise). There was already a music video for this song produced by Rafaela Monfradini and Greg Kaplan, but it was merely a montage of the band’s life on tour. Marc Webb (director of 500 Days Of Summer and The Amazing Spiderman) directed the second version. He decided to make it as if it were a teen movie trailer instead of a music video. They filmed in Alexander Hamilton High School and Loyola High School in Los Angeles. Alexander Hamilton has been used as a filming location for some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Donnie Darko was filmed at Loyola High.

The concept of the video was that the band was the outcasts in high school that everybody picked on, and one day they decide to get revenge and go after the jocks with croquet mallets. They did scenes were all the “characters” were recapped like many trailers do before the credits. Mikey hijacks the intercom with an old-school tape deck, Frank jumps out of a locker to scare a girl, Ray eats a crayon to impress a girl, and Gerard is tackled while playing croquet, amongst other things. Brian had to get dressed up as the school mascot and get tackled by the band as part of their revenge. There is also a scene in which people are dancing in the library, which is homage to The Fisher King, (Robin Williams and Amanda Plummer meet during a huge waltz in the middle of Grand Central Terminal).

These scenes were intercut with shots of the band rehearsing in a garage. Because Bob had only just joined the band, he is not included in any of the scenes in high school, and is only seen when he is playing the drums in the garage. The video begins with a rating (“R for Revenge”) and fake production company animation of the Demolition Lovers. At the end of the video, credits are shown movie trailer-style. Bob is not included in these either, and Frank’s surname is misspelt as “Lero”.

The single was released on September 13, 2004. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on June 13 2005, and was named #1 on Fuse's 25 Greatest Videos Countdown. After the music video was aired on MTV and other such music channels, the band’s fan base expanded very quickly, bringing together alienated teens.

The Drummer Situation

As well as Gerard’s drinking problem, My Chemical Romance was also having problems with their drummer, Matt “Otter” Pelissier. They didn’t feel comfortable with him on stage as his drumming was inconsistent, and they didn’t like not being able to play song the same way every night. Ray had asked him to play with a click-track, but he refused because it “takes away the whole live feeling”. Also, they hadn’t been getting along with him for some time – some sources suggest they were having problems while they were recording. The band wasn’t having fun with him or performing the was they wanted to, so Ray and Brian went to his house right after they got back from Japan to break the news to him.

Otter commented on the situation by saying, “It’s like your whole world comes down, after I gave everything I ever did, everything I ever owned to make sure that band would survive, and that’s the thanks I get.” Immediately after being kicked out by Ray and Brian, Otter posted on the band’s message boards, writing “They told me I’m out of the band because they are uncomfortable with me onstage and they're afraid I’ll mess up. I’ve had a few whoppers on occasion – I’ll never deny I’m human, but we all make mistakes… Do I think I’ve been shafted? Yeah. What happened to the five brothers that loved each other more than anything else on Earth? I gave up everything for each one of them.”

Immediately after Ray and Brian broke the news to Otter, Frank called him to say something along the lines of “I wanted to be there, but I understand why Ray wanted to talk to you alone. I hope that we can be mature about this after everything blows over. I hope you keep playing music, but I’m sorry it had to go down this way. Call me if you ever want to.” A few days later, Otter rang Frank at 3 o'clock in the morning because he couldn’t get into the band’s trailer to get his stuff out. Frank said that he would arrange to get the stuff out. Later, Frank went to the band’s practice space, only to find that Matt and a friend had locked him out and left nasty notes everywhere, so Frank had to break in. He called Otter afterwards and told him to call back when he had grown up.

My Chemical Romance did not make a formal statement regarding the situation with Otter because they didn’t want to get into a pissing match with him. Matt Pelissier is now a mechanic.

Around this time, My Chemical Romance was preparing to start shooting a music video for I’m Not Okay (I Promise). They needed a drummer urgently, and so decided to call in Bob Bryar.

Bob was born on December 31, 1979, in Chicago. He started playing drums when he was 3, and was the kind of kid who liked to take apart radios and other machines and try and put them back together. He is a jazz-trained drummer, and was in marching band and concert band in school. When he was at school in Florida he worked at Disneyland for extra money. He played on the Little Mermaid theme show and the Aladdin stage show, but quit after he was yelled at about his sideburns.

He worked his way into the music industry by getting involved at music stores and record shops. He started doing some drum tech work, then moved on to doing sound for The Used and Thrice. He discovered My Chemical Romance after they went on tour with The Used, and did sound for them on their Europe tour for free because he loved them so much. Once, after My Chem had finished playing a show with Finch and The Used in February 2003, Bob walked backstage and casually mentioned to Brian “I wish I could do that”. He said “I had been trying to play drums for so long and I couldn’t find anyone to be in a band with that cared about playing music and touring and was willing to devote their whole life to it”.

The band didn’t even know he could play the drums before their friends told them, so they had to take a huge leap of faith asking Bob to drum for them. Luckily, he was a good fit, as he was committed, had a good personality, and was very skilled. When they asked him to join he was doing sound tech for The Used on Projekt Revolution, so they flew him in from Virginia to go to Orlando, Florida, where My Chem were preparing to film the music video for I’m Not Okay. They had one practice together before going in to film the video. A few days later MCR played their first show with Bob on the drums in Pennsylvania in support of Face To Face.

The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You

Before the record release, My Chemical Romance went on tour with bands like Story of the Year, Avenged Sevenfold, and Moments in Grace. After the record release they toured with Taking Back Sunday, then went on Vans Warped Tour. It was during this period that Gerard’s drinking, that had already been a problem, started to get out of control. This was partly due to the atmosphere of Warped, which was like a summer camp where everyone was old enough to get wasted. Gerard would try to be drunk by the time they got on stage, which was sometimes at midday. He would then drink until 4 in the morning, and use pills to get to sleep. Gerard would sometimes spend $150 a month on illegal pills, most of which were Xanax, and he would go through a bottle of vodka every day to day-and-a-half. Eventually he started dabbling in things like cocaine, until he was standing right on the edge of life and death. The rest of the band was doing similar things, but to a far lesser extent. They could see it was a problem, but they didn’t realise how bad it was. They felt it would be hypocritical to tell him to stop, as they (especially Mikey) had been as bad as Gerard at some points.

Another part of the problem was that Gerard was struggling with the band’s sudden rise to fame. He felt that to be the crazy performer he was onstage he had to drink and do drugs because that was the character people wanted him to play. However, he soon lost all separation between himself and that character. He started wearing the clothes he wore onstage all the time. While he did succeed in being the drunken crazy frontman, Gerard’s singing suffered as a result of his consistent drunkenness. Also, he was terrible at kickball, and he lost his pants on stage. Fun times. After a while it started to feel like the band was touring because they had to. Everyone was unhappy and overwhelmed.

On July 20, 2004, Gerard went out to see The Killers in Kansas while My Chemical Romance were on tour with Senses Fail and The Bled. To celebrate, he got hold of an 8-ball of cocaine (3.5 grams) and did so much of it that he was throwing up in the street. When he woke up the next day he felt more suicidal than he ever had in his life. He called Brian who talked him down, then went for a walk with the Warped tour manager until he fell asleep when the drugs were finally out of his system.

Four days later, on July 24, My Chemical Romance played a show in Louisville Kentucky. Gerard was wasted (as usual) and he was given a wireless mic to sing with. He hadn’t ever done a concert with a wireless microphone before, and he treated the show like a joke, just running around all over the place and barely singing. He ended up under the stage with Daryl Palumbo (Head Automatica) and Geoff Rickly (Thursday). This experience taught Gerard to take every show seriously.

After the trainwreck that was Warped ’04, My Chemical Romance regrouped in New Jersey before heading out the Japan for Summersonic. During this break, Gerard drank, sweated, and loaded up on pills and alcohol. Japan was one of the places he had always wanted to go, but now that he was in this situation he wasn’t sure whether he would come back home. He packed the bare minimum of clothes for the trip because he honestly thought he wouldn’t make it. Gerard popped a bar of Xanax for the plane trip and woke up hours later in Japan. Before the shows in Osaka and Tokyo he drank shitloads of sake and ended up playing two of the band’s biggest shows completely wasted. He wanted to make them as memorable as possible, but did so in the worst possible way. As soon as MCR got off stage, Gerard went and sat on a couch in a corner and threw up for 45 minutes into a garbage can. As the rest of the band stood around him trying to figure out what to do, Gerard thought, “This has to be the end… I have to stop drinking. I don’t know how, but this has to be the end”.

When My Chemical Romance got off the plane back in America, Gerard was really upset because he knew what was going to happen to Otter, but at the same time he didn’t even know whether he’d be alive the next day. He went straight to his therapist and checked into Alcoholics Anonymous. He decided against going to rehab and instead went cold turkey by himself. Gerard’s official sobriety day is August 11.

...For Sweet Revenge

Click the album cover to download Revenge from iTunes.

 Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is "A story of a man, a woman, and the corpses of 1000 evil men". The title for Revenge was thought of right after My Chemical Romance had finished recording Bullets, although they almost called it Thank You For The Venom. Gerard wanted the title to sound like a movie that was unfinished or never made. It is an aggressive album, with songs about “fictitious gunfights, cowboys, electric chairs and getting fucked in jail”. The original concept was a continuation of the story of the Demolition Lovers. The couple get in a gunfight and the man dies. He thinks the woman is dead as well, but when he gets to hell the devil tells him that she’s still alive. The devil tells him that he can get her back if he kills 1000 evil men, so he goes back out into the world with a revolver and a list of people to kill. While writing the album, Gerard wasn’t sure how the story would end, but about a year and a half later he figured out the ending. The guy would have killed 999 evil men then realised that the last guy he had to kill was himself. This concept was a metaphor was a metaphor for what you’re willing to go through either for someone else or to prove yourself.

However, when Elena died in November they realised that real life had a lot more to do with what they wanted to talk about. Behind the elaborate concept, the record became about two little boys that lose their grandma – “All the fucking anger, the beef with God, the angst, the aggression and the fucking venom – every emotion that you go through when you’re grieving – is on… Revenge”.

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is also influenced by Gerard’s obsession with getting revenge on those who have wronged him and his friends, which was started by his discovery of Black Flag when he was a teenager. Making the record was about proving people wrong, and becoming vindicated drove the band throughout the recording process. Revenge is also heavily influenced by Preacher (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon).

Helena

Helena was written in memory of Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother. Her name was Elena, but her friends called her Helen, so Gerard decided to combine the two names to make the song title. Gerard had said that the main influences behind Helena were Aces High by Iron Maiden and tracks by The Ventures. Gerard said of Helena, “I knew it was going to be heavy. I was almost afraid of the song.”

Give ‘Em Hell, Kid

In their live shows, Gerard has often prefaced this song by saying it is about “getting knocked up” or “making babies, having babies...and selling them on the black market!" indicating that the song is about teenage pregnancy.

To The End

To The End seems to be about a marriage falling apart and all the broken promises associated with this, as shown by “Say goodbye To the vows you take”.

You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison

Prison has been said to capture the band’s unique appeal perfectly, as it is “passionate, visceral… [and] weirdly theatrical. It is a cabaret-style song about getting fucked in jail. It first started being written while the band was on tour with Midtown and Senses Fail in 2003. They were sitting on a porch in the rain when Ray started playing the opening chords. Gerard said it immediately made him think of jail. The lyrics in the final version are pretty much the same as the lyrics he free-styled in their first session. The song is also a metaphor for being on tour, because it feels like jail when you have so many guys and their equipment crammed into the one van, and “even the guys in prison… buddy up and stick through it together”. Bert McCracken (The Used) provided backup vocals for this song, and in the liner notes Gerard thanks Bert for being his “cellmate”.

I’m Not Okay (I Promise)

I’m Not Okay is a cry for help set to pop music. It was the last song written for this album, and the most direct song they had written up to that point. It was the first song Gerard had ever written about all the shitty, sleazy stuff that happens while you are in high school, and about the desperation of looking for someone to love you but being alone. The song was originally called I Promise This Is The Last Time.

The Ghost Of You

This song deals with the fear of losing a loved one. The title is an allusion to Watchmen (Alan Moore), in which an ad reads “Oh, how the ghost of you clings". Originally, the band had set the song to end after the third chorus, but Howard Benson pushed the band to repeat the chorus one last time. At first the band hated the idea, but after hearing what it sounded like they decided it worked better than it had originally. Rinat Arinos provided guest vocals for this song.

The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You

The Jetset Life is about drug use and suicide, as shown by the lyrics "Lost in the prescription, she's got something else in mind." A "Jetset Lifestyle" is a hedonistic pursuit involving lots of travel and is often characterized by drug use, which cold refer to the fact that the band is always on the road and they have no time to spend with their family. This song is very rarely played live.

Interlude

This song contains several religious allusions and sounds like a prayer for help and protection.

Thank You For The Venom

Thank You For The Venom was a song title first thought of by Gerard right at the beginning of the band’s career. He had it handwritten on the t-shirt he wore at their first show, and the phrase is written in French in the album sleeve of Bullets. It is a sarcastic statement, like saying, “thanks for ruining my life. The line “I wouldn’t front the scene if you paid me” is direct commentary on how the music scene was being exploited, and how the band weren’t a part of it and didn’t want to be the poster child for it.

Hang ‘Em High

This song is about “cowboys, and cowgirls, and guns up!” The beginning of the song before the vocals kick in has a very Western feel to it, and lyrics like “Wait until it fades to black, Ride into the sunset” also call to mind a stereotypical Western movie. Lyrics like “Don’t stop if I fall, And don’t look back” seem to suggest two partners (the Demolition Lovers) fighting in a gun battle and one telling the other to keep fighting even if he dies. Keith Morris (the Circle Jerks, Black Flag) supplied guest vocals for this song. He contacted the band and told them what a huge fan he was, so they invited him up to sing on this track. Frank told him how they wanted him to sing, then sat around talking with him for ages afterward.

It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Fucking Deathwish

This song was one of the first songs written for the album, and was played live several times in 2003 before they started recording. It is commonly censored to just It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Deathwish.

Cemetery Drive

A common interpretation of this song is that it is about adultery. It also touches on suicide, as seen in “They found you on the bathroom floor”. Also, in the background of the second verse Gerard can be heard singing, “Don’t do it” repeatedly, which then changes to ''Are you there at all? Do you care at all? Are you there at all?'' when it gets to the bridge.

I Never Told You What I Do For A Living

This song seems to tie in with the album’s original concept very heavily. Lyrics like “Another knife in my hands, A stain that never comes off the sheets” seem to refer to the man and all of the people he has killed. The last two lines (“They gave us two shots to the back of the head And we're all dead now”) indicate the Demolition Lovers suffered a tragic end.

Click the image to download the song

B-Sides

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge has three b-sides. The first is Sister To Sleep. The title is a reference to The Sandman (Neil Gaiman), in which the sister of Sleep is Death. Right after the band had started writing the song they were offered a place on the soundtrack of Freddy Vs. Jason, a crossover film between the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises. They finished the song and made it about Freddy Krueger because he attacks people in their dreams. Unfortunately, they ultimately did not make the soundtrack, so the song became about someone in an institute for insomnia who is trying not to fall asleep because they know that if they do they will die.

Click to download LOTMS b-sides

The second b-side is Bury Me In Black. A demo of this was released on the Australian and UK versions of the I’m Not Okay (I Promise) single. The lyrics talk about alcohol consumption a lot (“we'll drown ourselves in misery tonight” and “These eyes have had too much to drink again tonight”), and contain a lot of anger (“I wanna see what your insides look like, I bet you're not fucking pretty on the inside”).

The last b-side is Desert Song, which was released in 2006 on Life On The Murder Scene. It was written around the time the band was recording Revenge, but they never had time to finish it until later. This song does not feature any drums, just guitars and vocals.

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge cost $200,000, a relatively small amount compared to many other major label productions. It was released on June 8, 2004, and sold more than 11,000 copies in the first week, which was more than what Bullets had sold in almost 2 years.

Three Cheers...

As soon as the band had finished recording Bullets, Gerard decided that the title of their second record would be Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. Because they had recently signed to a major label, the recording process was very different, as they actually had money, good equipment, and a lot of time. Revenge was written and recorded over a four-month period from October 2003 – January 2004. The record was mostly written in New Jersey during the second half of 2003. While they were writing Frank and Mikey lived together.

In November 2003, Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother Elena died. The band had almost finished writing, but this tragic event changed the whole direction of the record. Mikey and Gerard had just come off tour and hadn’t had a chance to visit her yet. They hadn’t even known she was sick – they thought she was just having some routine surgery. After that, the only thing that made them feel good was getting back into music. The album, which had previously been a concept album, started to relate to real life a lot more. After Elena’s death, Gerard started taking Xanax. It was around this time that taking drugs and alcohol started to become a problem that flourished when they went to LA.

They had a preproduction period before going to record at Bay 7 Studios, Valley Village / Sparky Dark Studio, Calabasas, California. They went to there instead of recording in Jersey again because they wanted California to ruin them, to feel like outcasts. In LA they were surrounded by people trying to pick up the pieces of their musical careers, and they really wanted to be in that element. When they weren’t in the studio, everyone except Ray would go partying. Frank would take pills on Friday night and wake up on Monday with no memory of the weekend. They would all vanish for days when they weren’t working on the album. Gerard took cocaine once and couldn’t sing the next day. He felt really guilty about it, so he talked to Ray about it, and never did anything like it again while they were recording. Apart from this instance, Ray didn’t have any idea that kind of thing was happening.

Howard Benson

Howard Benson produced Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.  He had previously produced four Motörhead records and is well known for his track pants. He was like a coach to the band, and used a lot of basketball references to get his points across. He taught them the golden rules of song structure, putting an end to their tendency to have long songs without a real chorus. Benson made them write parts that fit with the song instead of just writing randomly. He gave them a bit of self-doubt, which made them a better band.

Benson made Gerard’s vocals the main focus of the band. He hadn’t been impressed with their demos, but could see that Gerard had the potential to become a star singer. Benson encouraged Gerard to access his emotions while singing and to take on different identities for each song. Most of the vocals were sung in an attic away from everyone else. This was hard for Gerard at first, as he was used to performing to people. However, the isolation allowed him to really focus on what he was singing. Halfway through tracking he finally figured out how to be a studio singer. This breakthrough led him to scrap all the vocals that had been recorded and do them again. Benson encouraged him to get really weird in the studio, so Gerard would go crazy while singing, hitting things and taking off his clothes when it got too hot. To inspire him, Gerard had A Clockwork Orange and porn running while he was singing.

Near the end of recording, Gerard ran off to “find himself in the hills of Hollywood”, leaving behind an enigmatic note that said something about him being the next Jim Morrison and life being a bag of shit. Frank posted a voice message on the band’s website appealing to anyone that had seen him to contact them. Fans were very concerned, and a few suggested he had committed suicide. After a few days, Gerard showed up again. He had had 2 more songs and the album artwork to finish, and so had decided to get a room and some liquor and just focus on the work. The concern shown by fans made him feel very loved, but at the same time guilty for being so irresponsible and scaring people.

You can download the Revenge era voice messages here. This collection also includes messages from after the band had finished recording and were on tour.

Here are some videos of songs while the band was in pre-production/recording:

To The End

Deathwish

Prison

The Ghost Of You

I'm Not Okay

A random cover (sounds like AC/DC?)

Eating Twizzlers

We Could Take To The Highway

After making Bullets, My Chemical Romance went on tour a lot, as they wanted to primarily be a touring band. Gerard and Mikey’s grandmother bought their first van, which they drove until it broke down and caught fire. They didn’t have very much money, and so had to survive on very little food. They lived on top of each other in their crappy van, didn’t shower, and were constantly sick. Various tour injuries from this era include Ray getting hit in the face with Frank’s guitar, Frank breaking his wrist, and Gerard slipping a couple of disks in his back. Their first tour was with Northstar, and was 2 weeks long. On their second tour, Frank got his scorpion tattoo. He deliberately got it high up on his so that no collar would cover it so that he couldn’t get a real job. He and Mikey also dropped out of college to go on tour. Frank’s parents freaked out when they found out, as they wanted him to have something to fall back on if MCR didn’t work out.

With their growing success, the band needed a manager. Brian Schecter was originally the tour manager for bands like The Used, but after hearing My Chemical Romance he knew that they were the band he would get off the road for. He saw them live at Maxwell’s in New Jersey, 4 days after hearing their demo. When he met them they already had 2 booking agents after them. He courted them for a while before becoming their manager on February 17, 2003.

In the beginning MCR would open for whoever would take them. Despite their later labelling as ‘emo’, they didn’t fit into the genre enough and would have to open for hardcore Christian bands. However, as they gained popularity MCR began to open for bands like Thursday, Murder By Death, Taking Back Sunday, From Autumn To Ashes, Underoath, and Reggie And The Full Effect. Because they were so poor, MCR would ask for food and clothes from the bands they were opening for. Most of the money they earned came from merch sales, because distribution for their record was so bad. They took Shaun Simon from Pencey Prep with them on tour to sell merch, but he was dyslexic and didn’t do a very good job. These early tours were described as being like “eating raw life”.

In March 2003 they went on tour in Europe with The Used, playing in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. They didn’t have enough money to pay for it themselves, so Brian paid for it with his savings. In Madrid there were signs all around saying “Go home Yankee trash” in protest of the war in Iraq. While in Amsterdam, Ray lost his wallet. My Chemical Romance finally played their first headlining show on March 22, 2003, at Stingray’s in Old Bridge, NJ. They also played a couple of Christmas shows with Mindless Self Indulgence in December 2003.

My Chemical Romance got their first “big break” when they were asked to fill in for Coheed And Cambria at a Jimmy Eat World show on August 31, 2002. The band rented a van and drove up to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a venue that filled about 10000-12000 people. They played the show like they would play a small show. The show was their introduction to major league stuff like input lists and monitors and people who load bands’ gear onto the stage.

Gerard was also featured in SPIN magazine in 2003. SPIN was doing a fashion feature about up-and-coming singers in the New York City area. They had a friend working at SPIN who suggested the band, so the magazine flew Gerard out to the West Coast to do the photoshoot by himself, while the rest of the band had to drive out in the van. It was his first shoot alone, so he didn’t really know what to expect, but Terry Richardson, the photographer, made him feel really comfortable. They called him speed stick (a brand of deodorant) because he hadn’t showered in a while and smelt bad. Gerard couldn’t fake singing, so Richardson got him to karaoke Blag Flag, and while he was singing sprayed him with water until he was soaking wet.

Even before all of these big things were happening for MCR, major labels were interested in signing them. The band had gotten calls from major labels when they still in the practice studio, before they had ever played a show. They once played a basement show in Philadelphia for five people, one of whom was a homeless bootlegger. One of the other people at the show was a representative of a major label. Despite this interest, My Chemical Romance were hesitant because they didn’t want to be exploited or manipulated. They waited 9 months before deciding who was right for them and signing to Reprise/Warner Brothers on August 31, 2003. Their A+R guy was Craig Aaronson. In mid-2003 they started writing new material for their 2nd album.

In early July 2003, MCR did a very informative radio interview with WSOU, in which they talk about playing live, Freddy Krueger, and voodoo. You can download it here.

Here are two live shows from this era:

The Knitting Factory show from June 26, 2003

The Orangevale, CA show from October 8, 2003