Pink is the new black

A MESSAGE FROM MIKEY WAY ABOUT THE NEW YORK SHOW.

We are pleased to announce a show at NYC's one and only, Madison Square Garden. I know that its not a special small club show like the others on the tour coming up through the US. MSG holds a special place in our hearts. About 12 years back, my big brother took me to see The Smashing Pumpkins at that very venue. I turned to him and said "this is what I want to be...this is what we have to do...one day we are going to be on that stage." He felt and thought the exact same thing. Lo and behold..here we are announcing the show of all of our dreams. We wanted to share this special night with all of our hometown area fans. This is a great goodbye to "the Black Parade" tour and the beginning of the next chapter in MCR. Not only that, but we get to share it with our best friends in the world, Taking Back Sunday and Drive By. We can only hope that one or a few of you will feel the same thing at the show and a decade later, be on that stage.

Love to all of you, see you there.

Mikey Way

********************************

www.mychemicalromance.com

According to a fan, Frankie couldn't play yesterday so Matt  replaced him again. Gerard only said that Frankie couldn't be there and that everybody is thinking about him.

I hope he gets better or whatever is happening. I am always sad to hear something like this:( Cheers Frankie, we love you.

I am on a fucking strike! I got totally stoned..shocked after watching this video!!!!Because of fans like this, I'll never meet my most fav. band ever. The only thing I've ever wanted was one fucking hug, signature and maybe a picture with them! Thank you f*ckers!

Note: There are still tons of  fans like me who are acting normal and don't want to get a piece of MCR members. It's so creepy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I0VKXcALmc

Tagged by georgiadeath:)

I know it has been a long time since we have written you guys. We have been very, very busy touring in places that we have never been to before. To all of our fans in Southeast Asia, THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. What an amazing time we had and you all made us feel so welcome the entire time. We will be back in your part of the world as soon as we can.

We are also just finishing up the process for our CD/DVD "THE BLACK PARADE IS DEAD!". As soon as we have a solid release date on it, we will let you all know. It was filmed over a few weeks in October and looks incredible.

We wanted to let our fans in the US know that we are going to give it one more pass before we go write a new record. We are really excited about the tour. Our good friends Billy Talent and Drive By are coming with us. We could not think of a better tour to go away from The Black Parade. Below are some dates and there will be more coming. We promise to keep you guys posted as we get them booked. We wanted to come to these places. We selected them. We really love the venues we are playing and wanted to get away from big shows for a while. When we started this thing, we could feel you guys right in front of us. It is time for that to happen again. See you soon.

Fri/3-28 Tempe, AZ On Sale Thu, 2/14 at 10:00 am MST
Sat/3-29 Tuscon, AZ
Sun/3-30 Las Vegas, NV
Thu/4-3 San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield On Sale Sun, 2/17 at 10:00 am PST
Sun/4-6 Irvine, CA --> BAMBOOZLE ON SALE NOW!
Tue/4-8 Portland, OR
Fri/4-11 Salt Lake City, UT
Sun/4-13 Denver, CO @ The Fillmore Auditorium Pre-Sale Fri, 2/15 at 10:00 am to Fri, 2/15 at 6:00 pm MST
Tue/4-15 Kansas City, KS
Thu/4-17 Chicago
Sat/4-19 Detroit
Thu/4-24 New Orleans, LA
Fri/4-25 Baton Rouge, LA
Sat/4-26 Houston, TX
Sun/4-27 Dallas, TX
Mon/4-28 Austin, TX
Fri/5-2 Memphis, TN

www.myspace.com/mychemicalromance

It’s a hot August evening and the amphitheater is packed. As I walk over to the side of the stage to meet My Chemical Romance’s tour manager, my mind is buzzing and my nerves are on edge. I meet MCR’s manager and he escorts me backstage to the bus. I walk up the steps and am greeted in the front lounge by Gerard Way. I shake his hand and murmur the usual pleasantries. He turns, grabs a brown paper bag from the seat next to him, and pulls out a small sword. My confusion must be obvious because he cracks a grin and says, “Isn’t this awesome?” “Uhm...yeah!” I reply, not knowing where this is going. “Our busdriver got it for me at a gas station or something...it’s pretty cool,” Way says, happily inspecting the sword once more before putting it back in the bag. Then, as if nothing had just happened, he politely asks me if he can eat his salad while we talk. My mind is still spinning as I nod my head, and I can’t help wondering...if this is just the introduction, what’s next? Welcome to the Black Parade, indeed.

But before we go further, let me backtrack. It’s one of the earliest dates of the Projekt Revolution tour 2007, and I have arrived late, underestimating my trek from Austin to San Antonio. As I take my seat in the amphitheater, Taking Back Sunday has just left the stage and kids are milling about, buying merch, talking, and texting inside jokes and greetings that will get posted on the big electronic screens.

Suddenly, a roar goes up from the crowd and I look up to see that My Chemical Romance’s banner has been unfurled. They aren’t the headliner, just the main support, but they will end up stealing the show every night of the tour. After the crew finishes readying the stage, the band walks out and everyone in the venue goes wild. It’s my first time seeing My Chemical Romance and they live up to the hype; their set is energetic, epic, and fun. They are constantly interacting with the crowd, and at one point Gerard orders every boy in the audience to take off their shirt and throw it on stage. A surprising number of guys do exactly that, as Gerard yells “Looking good, boys!” Later in the set they bring the mood down a little by playing their ballad, Cancer, but they do it with such poignancy and grace that there are more than a few misty eyes in the audience. Their show leaves me buzzed and wishing that they had played for much longer.

It’s fascinating to watch them now, full of confidence and swagger that is backed by a set of tight and intricate songs. One only has to compare Youtube videos or a handful of songs from their first and latest CDs to see just how much My Chemical Romance have grown. If I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge were the troubled adolescence and terrible teens, The Black Parade is surely the young adulthood; mature and contemplative, yet always up for a little fun.

As Way and I chat about the record, we discuss this new maturity and hopefulness in MCR’s music. “I think people see what they want to in stuff, you know?” says Way. “If they want to see negative stuff in there, they’re going to find it...there’s really nothing you can do. They could say that pretty much every song on the record is death obsessed or about the encouragement of violence, but then there’s choruses like ‘I’m not afraid to keep on living’ and things like that where really, people don’t have a lot to stand on after a while.”

“The record’s actually about questioning,” Way continues. “There are a lot of questions being asked on that record. And it’s more about living, and facing things, and getting through things, and hope, and saying ‘you know what? the world can be really ugly and here’s the ugly stuff, and the world can be really beautiful and here’s a lot of the beautiful stuff’.”

As we talk about the record, I inquire about something that’s been weighing on my mind—why was “I Don’t Love You” a Europe-only single? After all, it seemed like the sort of powerful song that would fare well on the US charts. “We don’t pick our singles, because we don’t write singles, we just write songs. And if you don’t want it on your record and you don’t want it to be a single, don’t put it on your record,” Way advised. “So we make sure that when we put a record out, we’re proud of every song, and we have a feeling what’s going to be 1,2,3 and 4 singles, and it’s kinda the label’s job, that’s kinda why we partnered with them, so they could make decisions like that. Because we don’t care, we’re proud of all of ‘em, so we let the label pick and for Europe they said ‘We want to do I don’t love you,’ and we said ‘Fine, we love it, it’s a great song,’ and then here they wanted to do Teenagers, and we were psyched about that, too.”

As 2006 began, it was high time for My Chemical Romance to come to terms with their past; they did that, and more, creating a whole new persona for themselves without severing too many ties, and becoming one of the world’s biggest contemporary rock bands. It’s hard to think of My Chemical Romance as anything but unstoppable, but The Black Parade is over a year old, and fans have already begun speculating what’s up next. However, Way says that there’s still more life in the album.

“I think when all is said and done for this album there’ll be like 6 singles, 6 videos. I am going to direct for the first time. I’m going to make the next one and probably the one after that, the ones that close out the record. Marc Webb, who we worked with on “Helena” and “Ghost Of You” and “I Don’t Love You” and “Teenagers”, he had always been encouraging me to direct and I think it may be time, you know?” says Way. He pauses and looks away for a moment, perhaps pondering his upcoming film debut...

But, as a My Chemical Romance fan myself, I couldn’t help but press on for any info on the next record. Would it be another concept album? Would My Chem reinvent themselves yet again?

“Well, you know, I think about all of that a lot myself,” Way admits. “And I think it’s hard for us to kinda not want to tell stories, or not have the record be cohesive. But I think maybe this time around with the record, we won’t stick to a concrete story line as much, ya know? I am more interested in human themes, life, and pushing more to that direction for maybe less fantasy, less vampires, less afterlife, and more realism, and I think it’s gonna really be stuff that people can connect more with and I think even musically I want it to be more human, too. I have been thinking about it but we’re kind of purposely not writing because we’re trying to be the best we can live. It’ll be a long time, I think, before the next My Chem record.”

As we drift off the topic of My Chemical Romance’s music, I ask what Way is listening to right now. Gerard gets excited as he talks about his self-proclaimed “new favorite band,” Lost Alone. He also enjoys Muse (“they’re amazing”), Bob Dylan, Mew, and the Psychedelic Furs (“I just bought a best of”).

I also ask what cheesy cover band Gerard would want to be in, and to my surprise, he has his answer down pat. “I already know this. I would be in a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover band. And I would even shop, like an old thrift store shirt, like Sears button-ups from ‘82, and shag out my hair, and I would totally love to be in a Creedence cover band.”

After cringing at the mental image of Gerard Way in an ’82 Sears button-up with shagged out hair (sorry dude, I’m just not sure that’s your look...), we move onto literature.

“I really love to read, but I find that my brain moves too fast when I’m on the road to read,” Gerard explains. “So I bring out a lot of books with me, but I don’t read ‘em. My favorite book is Catcher In the Rye. I actually just read Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and if you don’t know, he’s Stephen King’s son. And somebody I did an interview with told me to check out the book, and I was really into it. It’s about rock’n’roll and it’s a horror novel, so it’s really cool. I always try to read Moby Dick and I always fail at it...”

So we’ve covered literature and music; now it’s time to talk internet. “I think ultimately, even the stuff that hurts the music industry or hurts bands...I mean people just being able to listen to your music in a new way is a really exciting thing, I think,” confesses Way. “And the real negative elements to the internet I find is misinformation and lots of it. And people who are just really bored and making up information and things like that. That’s kind of frustrating and you know, here’s the funny thing, it’s kind of biting people in the butt now. Because it used to just happen to people that were famous, or in bands, or whatever, and now it happens to normal people and it’s really kind of sick. Normal people’s lives are ruined by falsities and sensationalism and people hacking into their lives, stealing their identities, I mean it’s a drag, you know? So that’s kind of the only negative stuff I really feel about the internet. I think the music business has to adapt to what’s happened to the internet, not the other way around, and then I think that problem will get solved but, you know, it might be a while.”

- (TIM JONES/POP ZAP MEDIA FILES)

Way smiles as he daydreams of "Proud Mary" with the "Bad Moon Rising" behind him.

As many MCR fans know, music isn’t Way’s only gift: an art school graduate and ex-comic book store employee, Way is an artist in his own right. I wanted to know if Gerard sees himself continuing with his art as My Chem continues to expand. “Yeah, completely,” he says enthusiastically. “I think that’s the kind of thing I’m really going to need a break to do, and I really want to get involved in painting again full-time. I think that it could be really fulfilling, and I do a lot of design work for Umbrella Academy, and that’s exciting. But I just kind of want to get into painting.” Currently Way writes his own comic book series, The Umbrella Academy, and I wanted to know more about the idea behind it.

After a long pause, Gerard says: “It’s a hard comic to describe actually, just like I find that being in this band is very hard to describe to people. You kinda just say ‘You just have to listen to it,’ so I usually say to people ‘You just have to read it.’ It almost looks like some kind of new wave lo-fi superhero book. It’s a new kind of superhero book, in that’s it’s almost not a superhero book at all, it’s like a un-superhero book.”

“But,” Way quickly adds, “it’s not a deconstructing superhero book, like people are constantly trying to do things like that, and it’s not like a hipster superhero book. It’s really trying to get back to the chaos and these crazy ideas that happened panel to panel back in the days of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but doing it in a more modern or European sense of storytelling and art. So it’s really just a lot of my favorite stuff and I kind of get to do whatever I want with it, you know? I love it.”

It’s hard not to imagine Way as one of the super heroes from his comics; after all, he and his band seem somehow larger than life; grand, lifesaving, leaders of this new Black Parade generation. Bringing darkness and light together for one big rock-a-thon to remind everyone not to be afraid to keep on living, even if you’re not okay (you promise). But as I continue to talk with Way, I realize the inevitable truth; he’s just as human as Clark Kent. He laughs and talks and fumbles just like me, and as my nerves quickly disappear, I forget that I am talking to, well, Gerard Way.

So now that I’m so at ease with him, I feel ok asking what is obviously the most important question of the night; will Way’s dark locks ever go back to blonde?

Way laughs and thinks for a minute before he answers. “Not likely,” he says. “I think that was a specific time and it actually went on a little longer than I would have liked, and we were so overexposed at that moment too. I think it made me hideously recognizable and a little too squeaky clean. So I was very excited to get back to my black hair. I doubt I’ll be blonde ever again.”

As our chat comes to a close, I ask one last question: What’s up with all the homoeroticism in My Chem’s live show when, most nights, mixed in with the scene kids, they’re playing to a bunch of dudebros? After cracking up, Gerard answers honestly and passionately. “That’s the idea; that it’s an audience full of dudes. And if we can make them understand us, I think it will make them more open-minded people. And I think the most fulfilling thing about this tour has been that single thing. Like we love playing for our kids, but to play for a guy with no shirt on and a backwards baseball hat who would probably beat the crap outta me...but maybe not, cause that’s generalizing and I don’t want to generalize, but if you make that person say ‘You know what? I don’t know if this dude is gay or straight, and I actually don’t care because these guys are just going for it, and I could accept this guy, and I could accept all these guys on stage’, then that’s a great thing. And that’s actually why we’ve done a lot of the homoerotic stuff that we’ve done on stage throughout the years, cause it started in the basements, it started cause of a similar type of people coming to those shows. And it’s all about changing that perception, you know, and pushing the envelope in that regard. Yeah, there’re a lot of radical ideas out there and up on that stage and I think that’s why it’s really fulfilling, you know?”

- (TIM JONES/POP ZAP MEDIA FILES)

Bidding farewell to the hordes of dudebros begging to get it on the love.

As we talk a bit more about it, I mention the infamous kiss between him and bassist Frank Iero.

“You know, it’s not a real common thing, we’ve been doing that kind of thing...not much...I seriously think it’s happened 5 times, in our entire...”

“But now it’s been Youtubed,” I cut in.

“Yeah,” says Way sheepishly, “Now they’ve made it a big deal. It’s not the kind of thing that was done for publicity. It’s done for the same reason that you would put on a slightly sexy or homoerotic show, like you’re trying to push that type of notion. And actually the main idea behind it is that if it makes people angry who just can’t accept that kind of thing, then that’s great. That’s actually what you want to do. But sometimes, honestly, what it is, is that you get caught up in a moment, and you’re thinking to yourself ‘What is the one thing right now that’ll just really aggravate every homophobe in the audience?’ and you just get caught in this moment, you just do it. Sometimes there’s not even that much thought behind it, it’s just like ‘I’m just gonna put my hand down this guy’s shirt’ and it’s more for me, it gets me really amped.”

After saying my thank-yous and goodbyes to Gerard and the crew, I wander back into the amphitheater and watch part of Linkin Park’s set. I try to focus on the music, but my mind keeps wandering back to the conversation I just had with Way. Part of what makes him such an attractive public figure is that he’s honest and open, yet still keeps a sort of air of mystery and darkness around himself. Will we ever really know what’s going on in Gerard Way’s head? Doubtful. But for now, I am more than content with the little peek I have been allowed. As I walk out of the theater that night, I wonder what is next for My Chemical Romance. I have no idea, but I do know that wherever they go, I’m definitely along for the ride.

credit: www.pop-zap.com

Gerard Way's road to success

By Ron Brownlow
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Jan 31, 2008, Page 14

Neither critical success nor the adoration of thousands of teenage girls has gone to the head of My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way, or so it seemed when he entered the Far Eastern Hotel's Platinum Suite without personal assistants on Saturday evening, preceded by only his younger brother and the band's bass player, Mikey. My Chemical Romance - which played in front of 3,500 mostly college-age fans at National Taiwan University Athletic Stadium on Sunday - is nearing the end of a year-long tour to support The Black Parade, the platinum-selling, unabashedly over-the-top concept album about a dying cancer patient obsessed with redemption and revenge.

Sitting with his legs crossed, wearing dark Ray Bans that obscure his eyes, Way starts the interview by measuring the success of that album, which has been compared with Pink Floyd's epic The Wall. "To us Black Parade was the best record of that year," 2006. "That's how we felt about it when we were making it; we still feel that way about it. But something like The Wall is hugely ambitious. I don't know what it takes to make a record like that. I think you gotta take a sledgehammer to your life in a lot of ways and I don't think anyone in this band is prepared to do that."

Ron Brownlow: On this tour until really recently you would come out and say you were the Black Parade, at least for the first hour. And then you stopped last month.

Gerard Way: We were filming a show in Mexico, and maybe 10 minutes before we went on we just decided that it was going to be the last one. We felt like we'd done all we could as the Black Parade and we really wanted to go back to simply being My Chemical Romance. And that's just really being a great rock band.

RB: So part of it was you were on the road for so long you were just sick of doing it?

GW: Actually a small part of it was that. It caged us. But a bigger part was, I think, everything attached with being the Black Parade was something we wanted to kind of move on from.

(Way identified so much with the character in the album, known only as the Patient, that until recently he assumed the persona on stage. He cropped his black hair short and dyed it silvery blond to, he says, "appear white and deathlike." Members of My Chemical Romance wore matching black uniforms, and the band played part of each concert under the pseudonym The Black Parade.)

RB: So can we still talk about the Patient?

GW: Yeah! Of course.

RB: How is the Patient right now?

GW: (Laughing.) I always like to feel that that particular character was created so everyone could identify with the character. Most likely everyone is eventually going to become a patient, and that's going to be the last time you are a patient. You kind of lose your sense of identity; and if you don't have any family around you, you even have less of an identity. But I like to think that, at the end of that record, the character gets a second chance, which you rarely get, you know? I'd like to think whether or not the character dies, he does in fact choose to live.

RB: I was reading a New York Times story that said the Patient is the American Everyman recast as a sick, violence-scarred wreck.

GW: I'd say that's pretty close. It's definitely an Everyman. I don't think largely American, though. We had sought out to make a universal record, and just the fact that we're here today proves that we did. It's interesting. We don't really think of ourselves as a New Jersey band. And we also don't think of ourselves as an American band in a lot of ways. We felt more a band of the world or somewhere like the UK. We felt more like a British rock band than anything.

(Born on April 9, 1977, Gerard Way grew up in blue-collar Belleville, New Jersey, roughly 15km from Manhattan. When he was a teenager, he was held up at gunpoint. According to an article in Rolling Stone magazine, Way said a .357 Magnum was pointed to his head, and he was "put on the floor, execution-style." He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and was working in the comic book industry there when, on Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center. Twice when we're talking about Sept. 11, his voice tails off.)

RB: Did you see the planes crash into the World Trade Center?

GW: I was taking the commuter train in. I didn't see any of the planes hit. I did see the buildings go down, from I'd say fairly close. It was like being in a science fiction film or some kind of disaster film - it was exactly that kind of feeling. You didn't believe it. You felt like you were in Independence Day. It made no sense. Your brain couldn't process it. And for me it was a little different. I'm very empathetic and I'm kind of a conduit emotionally, so I pick up a lot of stuff in that way. There was about three- or four-hundred people around me - and I was right at the edge. All these people behind me, they all had friends and family in those buildings. I didn't. So when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off. It was like just this emotion and it made you nauseous. One of the first thoughts that went through my head when they went down was, "What does this mean?"

RB: How did that lead to the creation of the band?

GW: One of the other things I thought about when the first building went down was, "Everything's kind of pointless that you're doing right now." I was involved in commercial art in New York, trying to pitch a show to the Cartoon Network that was extremely frustrating because I was dealing with a company that had optioned the cartoon show that didn't quite get it. I think they were more interested in turning it into toys and pillowcases and shit like that, and it was really disheartening. That was my first ever taste of creating something and seeing it take off a little bit - and it didn't feel good. At that moment I was like, "This doesn't mean anything. This is all garbage. This is all bullshit. I need to do something that actually means something, or my life's gonna mean nothing. Just like this cartoon means nothing."

RB: Do you think you've found meaning through this?

GW: I think we created something special together. I think it means something. It meant something when it started, it said what it kind of had to say, and so that's an interesting position to be in because I don't necessarily think that the next album we make, I don't necessarily think that it needs to mean something. I think we're kind of finished in that regard. So it's gonna be interesting to see what we do next because, quote unquote "the mission" or "the goal," I feel very complete about that.

(Way and My Chemical Romance are polarizing figures. In a Kerrang! magazine poll, the band was voted both best and worst band of 2006. Appearing with the band at that year's Reading Festival in England, Way, known for his onstage histrionics, was pelted with a bottle of urine and other objects thrown from the audience. That same year, Welcome to the Black Parade reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, as it did in the US. The album has gone platinum in both countries.)

RB: Getting bottled. What did that feel like?

GW: It was exhilarating and extremely challenging. There's nothing like that to humble you more and let you know that there's still something to fight for.

RB: You felt exhilarated?

GW: Yeah! I think when all is said and done people will look at that very specific show and say that was the most important show of this band's career, because they got up there facing a tremendous amount of opposition and won an entire crowd over and did it with the camera on them and everybody facing them. I think that's why it's important because it really sums up the band in one 40-minute set. It was not easy. It was a volley at first and then just it stopped and there was cheering and there was excitement and there was positivity. A current through the audience. It's amazing to watch footage BBC captured.

RB: You've said the band started as your therapy, and then it became the band's therapy, and then we became other people's therapy.

GW: It was kind of a therapy for me at first because of 9/11, and then the band because, in some way, we, in our own lives, had been the people that did not fit in or weren't built like other people - just not prone to violence. Not survivors in that regard. Survivors in a different way. And so then when we'd go to these shows we started meeting these kids just like us. And so that was almost like a group therapy session. That was really exciting. We're just all working it out. Since we're very non-violent people in our everyday lives and our fans are very much the same. They're very much like shy, quiet loners. You have to have some place you need to kind of get that out. Our shows were the place to do it. One of the things that's a common misconception about the punk rock scene is that what's cool about it is you could go and fit in because it's punk rock. But in actuality you can't. I don't think enough people say this about it. It was the same as being in high school with jocks. I would go to punk clubs and get shoved by skinheads because I wasn't like them, which was just like getting shoved by jocks wearing a Ramones shirt.

RB: You've talked about failure. You said, "I have failed a great deal in my life with everything I've tried to do. I was a failed artist. I was a failed animator-this-that-and they other thing … I was always very close but I was always not quite there."

GW: Maybe it's not so much failure so much as it is not following through and giving up. I think I was more of a person that gave up, rather than a failure. I didn't have what it took at the time, because I was very prone to get discouraged very quickly and stop doing what I was doing. With this band I was never one to give up.

(Although My Chemical Romance cites as influences everything from Queen, Thursday and Iron Maiden and to Morrissey, Black Flag and the Smashing Pumpkins, it is often referred to as an emo band, a label the band vigorously protests. Originally used as shorthand for the "emotional hardcore" subgenre of punk that originated with Washington, DC, it now refers to a vaguely defined genre of punky, goth-leaning indie-rock whose adolescent followers are stereotypically shy, angst-ridden and prone to depression and self-injury. Way has called emo "a pile of shit," but My Chemical Romance's dramatic style connects with a very teenage intensity of emotion. In interviews, Way and other band members have openly discussed their mental-health issues, and their penchant for tight jeans and eyeliner makes them look very much the part.)

RB: You really hate being called an "emo" band. Why do you despise that term so much?

GW: I don't like any term that to me seems lazy or an easy term for something that's not easy to describe. I also think it's frustrating. We were so the opposite of the emo band that we couldn't get booked playing shows, because there was this budding emo scene, and we literally were touring with Christian-metal bands, or other bands that were very off-kilter as well. We were almost created in opposition to that. We were like the answer to what was happening.

We didn't fit in with this dungareed, moppy-haired, whining-about-girl type of nonsense. I just wish people would realize that what happens with My Chemical Romance is completely exclusive from any other kind of genre of music. What we have is extremely special. And we've worked very hard to get it there. So it's an insulting term in the fact that we're lumped in with bands that didn't create that. They didn't put in the work and they didn't slug it out to create something that was unique for us and our fans. It's just for us and the fans, it's not for anybody else. If the fan base is huge, that's awesome. If it's small, same thing.

The whole phenomena of the band has nothing to do with what people are calling emo. It's not at all like that. It wasn't founded on the same things. The blood that went into it was different. [Emo] didn't have the spit, it doesn't have the grit of it. It's not unique. It's just pop-punk all over again. Now it's pop-punk with eyeliner. All of it's boring and really redundant. That's why it's frustrating, because it was difficult for us starting out because we were nothing like that.

RB: What do you see on the horizon after this tour?

GW: I see our first kind of lengthy break. We're gonna commit to trying to have at least six months off before we even talk about making something else. And then at that point, hopefully, we will have done enough living to make something.

This interview has been condensed and edited.