Source: Absolute Radio  (Part One)
Date: November 9, 2010 (Based on the video’s upload date).
Transcribed By: EKillick, @DeathlyDisco

[READ PART TWO]

[Notes: Lucio is the interviewer and will be represented by ‘AR’ in the script. The following takes place in a studio.]

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Absolute Radio: Gerard and Mikey from My Chemical Romance, welcome along to Absolute Radio! How are you doing?

Gerard Way: Good. How’re you?

AR: [Pointing to Gerard] Uh, I’m liking the new hair.

G: Oh thanks yeah, it’s kinda messed up right now ‘cause I got my hat on. Well, it’s cold out which is why I’ve got my hat on.

Mikey Way: Yeah, it’s really cold outside.

AR: I know, you kinda timed it wrong. It’s well, you know, it’s winter. What do you expect? You’re doing your promo the wrong way you should be doing promo-

M: Yeah, we usually put our album out when it’s cold. When we put our albums out,  it’s always that—you know—it’s that transition between the fall and the winter.

AR: You’re doing it wrong! You need to be releasing stuff in spring-

G: That never happens. We always talk about it, too, ‘cause usually on the record there’ll be one or two really great summer jams, you know.  And it never comes out in the-

M: [Nods in agreement].

G: [Directed at Mikey] Have we ever had an album come out in the summer? When did Revenge come out? Like May? That was the only time ever-

M: Yeah, yeah, there was only one time when it happened, every other time it’s been in the Fall.

G: Yeah.

AR: I’ve gotta say, it’s very dangerous you guys being here, I was gonna try and find a copy of the Daily Mail for you but we-

G: Oh no!

M: [Laughs]

AR: Didn’t have any in the building!

G: Well I don’t have to use the bathroom, so-

[Everyone laughs]

AR: I mean like, we’re rocking, it’s the most dangerous band in the world! Forcing kids to commit suicide. [everyone stops laughing but the joking DJ] Is that gonna keep on going with the new album? [Obviously in jest].

G: [Seriously] That was a really horrible thing.

M: They just you know, it’s like [gestures with his hands out wide] it’s this game that they have and they use human beings as pawns to sell their paper.

G: They paint targets on kids.

M: [Points thumb towards Gerard] Unfortunate.

G: And a lot of kids get beat up. A lot of kids got hurt. I mean I dunno, I got shoved for liking The Ramones when I was a teenager so I guess it’s to be expected but you know. They’re just in the business of selling papers and uh, that’s how they do it.

AR: And, did you take that personally?

G: Uh no, I took it harder for the fans. I didn’t take it personally at all, in fact I’m just empathetic. I’ve always been very highly, overly, empathetic and I think that’s one of the reasons why I am the way I am live in the band, it’s the way they are live because we’re all very empathetic people and I think I just felt bad for the kids with the target on them.

AR: There was a lot of um, rubbish written about you know, you guys in The Sun and The Daily Mail in particular and I’m just- that’s gotta hurt in some way?

G: It kinda can’t, I mean it doesn’t. Like I said, it was really about the kids for me. It was about getting somewhere and seeing the damage it was doing to them. Less about me, we have pretty thick skins, I mean, we have to in order to just be unique and different like we are and kind of, special and burning really really hot and bright. Like you’re gonna attract this polarization. That’s fine, that’s actually good. If we were this perfectly normal, acceptable, elevator music rock band that everybody liked, that would be so boring and we wouldn’t be doing anything. We wouldn’t be changing anything so that didn’t hurt us. I think we expect it. I don’t know what I expect this time. I know this time I’m gonna pay attention less to the reaction to something. This time it’s more about the creation of something than the reaction so that’s what Danger Days represents to me. [Mikey nods]

AR: You played at the, I’m gonna get the name of it wrong because I don’t follow American football, but you played at the Super… Bowl. No, it wasn’t the Super Bowl… The Wembley Bowl thing.

G: What do they call it? International Games Day or something?

M: Yeah, like once a year they one of the season games takes place in the UK and they did it for about 4 years in a row now. But that was so much fun. Growing up, football was a big thing in New Jersey. So yeah it was really exciting-

G: It was cool. It was cooler because it’s a song about hard drugs and blowing up the world. [Lucio laughs] They were doing it literally with like marching bands and cheerleaders and pyrotechnics and an American football game’s about to pop off. And it was awesome! It was like so subversive. It was great and I got to write a message to my wife on my neck and they did a big zoom on it, it was a cool time.

M: Yeah it was really surreal.

AR: So you’re the most dangerous band in the world! [Gerard and Mikey laugh] [Everyone talking at once] I should have a screen, well I’ve kinda got a screen here protecting me.

G: Who was that band they used to say- it was Guns ‘N’ Roses, right? I believe that though.

AR: Yeah but you know, now it’s you. Who else was dangerous? Bob Dylan was dangerous!

[Everyone repeating “Bob Dylan,” talking at once]

M: He plugged in and it was dangerous.

G: That’s the thing, yeah that’s the thing. It’s more in the spirit. I feel like we’re not a sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll band. It’s more in the spirit of Dylan in terms of like, that dude polarized, just by plugging in and doing what he wanted to. In that way the band is really dangerous. It will always do that kinda thing. Maybe us turning on a Korg, a Moog or a what is it, an ARP Odyssey we used on the record, all these ’80s synthesizers. Maybe, you know, I don’t know, people bum out on us as a rock band doing that and writing songs that actually have a dance beat to them. But that’s what you have to do to change and invigorate something. To pump life back into it [gestures using a defibrillator], you have to kind of destroy it.

I always said, that’s what I feel like Johnny Rotten was doing with the Sex Pistols I think. It took me 30 years, well I guess not 30, I listened to them when I was 15. So it took me 15, 16 years to understand why he loathed rock so much and to this day, why he hates rock. ‘Cause to me, …The Bollocks is a rock album. But what it does is like, rock at the time to him was stagnant and boring and he was like “I have to destroy this”. That’s why he was always saying ‘destroy’. [Mikey nods] I get it now, I totally get it.

M: No, totally yeah.

AR: So do you think- I’ve read in the interview that Kerrang! published with you guys last month that you wanted to destroy the old My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade album. Is that right or did they spin that to get a story?

G: No, no, no. The first attempt at the album was exactly that. The first attempt at the album was doing that. It was trying to destroy that by placing all these rules and stuff on it but really what it was doing was taking away everything that’s great from the band. It was taking away the ambition, the visuals, the vision, all that stuff. It was taking it away and what we were left with was a rock band like just a normal, safe kind of rock band. What Danger Days really then did was destroy that band that tried to take away all the special things and it did, it annihilated it. So I think that this record is very much in the spirit of all of our records in that it is different and it takes chances.

M: Yeah it’s like as a band we’re just so into-

[Gerard points over towards Mikey’s desk. Mikey looks confused, checking the microphone at first before realizing he’s pointing at his mug]

M: Oh you want some? I thought you were- Yeah we’re just so into evolving as artists and musicians and you know, to top what we’ve done before and you know, I really love the analogy of a phoenix rising from the ashes but as clichéd as it sounds, that’s what we love to do each and every time we put out an album. All of our favorite artists have done it through their careers.

G: Yeah, you get kind of reborn…

M: Yeah! It’s good.

G: Really early on when I was thinking about the visuals I was like, um you know I like picturing these guys in these Black Parade uniforms and then like peeling it all off, peeling the skin off and underneath is all this color and vibrancy. Just the image of that in my head was one of the things that inspired me even though we would never obviously show that image.

AR: How big was Black Parade? I mean it was massive but how many did you sell?

G: I don’t even know the numbers, I’d say like three million worldwide but that was the plaque I have in my garage so I actually- it’s been a long time since then. I know now it’s gone whatever here in the UK platinum.

M: Oh yeah, double. Double platinum.

G: Double platinum here.

AR: But it was massive. It was huge and you were playing like Madison Square Gardens.

M: Yeah. That’s the thing, it’s almost like sound scans don’t even count anymore because of the download culture. It’s like, you know they have an equation for ‘if you sold this much in this year, that’s how much you would have sold back then’. So it’s like the true testament is like the kids that were coming to our shows. That’s how we, that’s your sound scan, know what I’m saying?

AR: And that’s kind of what musicians make money from as well. Do you get what I mean? If you can sell out arenas, it doesn’t matter really what you download or whatever because you’re still gonna keep going, if you can do that. And you can, you know, sell a million singles but if that’s all you’re gonna do, on one song, then that would be it, that would be bye-bye if you can’t back it up with everything else. Um and you had quite a bit of a break. When did Black Parade come out, was it 2006/7?

G: 6… 7?

M: It was the end of 2006.

G: Oh it was, okay.

M: But 2007 but then we toured on for two and a half years, just kept going.

G: So we weren’t in the public eye for that long. A lot of people were like “Oh where’ve you been for four years?” but it’s like no, we were actually way up in your face for two and a half of those and then we needed a break which wasn’t even that long. We needed to make an album, scrap it, remake an album and we’ve been pretty busy.

M: Yeah we needed to just, we needed to forget about The Black Parade, go home, decompress, have a life again, become human beings, experience some stuff and then write about how you’re feeling basically.

AR: Gerard, you’re a dad now.

G: I am a dad!

AR: And when did that happen?

G: When did it happen? May 27^th 2009. It’s easy to get confused with 2010 because the years have been such a blur.

M: Yeah.

AR: Mikey, are you a dad?

M: Oh no, I’m not, I’m not.

AR: So that’s the kind of thing you were doing in the off time? [Laughs]

G: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah that’s what I was doing.

AR: And has that influenced, being a dad, has that influenced any stuff on Danger Days?

G: Um, it was a- yeah a great deal. In the fact that I grew up but then accepted that I’d grown up but on my terms. I mean that’s like, Danger Days is the response to that. If the record we didn’t release was this slow, crawling, assimilation into a boring 30’s something rock culture then Danger Days was the response to that and by that token at the end of making Danger Days I said to myself “wait a minute, no you have grown up but you’ve done it the way you wanted to” and I was happy about it. I was like “Oh, I’m a grown up now. Now I’m the adult, now we’re the adults. I have a child, but I’m gonna try be the best dad I can by living as hard creatively and artistically as I can so that way she says to herself “Oh my dad, you know, artistically he always did what he wanted.”

[CONTINUE TO PART TWO]