Source: NME Video: Gerard Way Interview (Part 2)
Date: November 15^th 2007
Transcribed by: Lin
Translations: Italian [via Contaminated Days]

[PART ONE]
—-

[My Chemical Romance song “Cancer” is playing in the background”]

Gerard: Hey I’m Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance and this is NME.com

The most emotional—? Um…you know it actually happens more often than people probably think. I have some…It can happen literally five, six times on a tour. I had a lot of moments on ProjeKt Revolution in the States with Linkin Park, which was to me the best tour, for a lot of reasons…a couple of them being, like, really discovering yourself and your band again and remembering what it is that made you special in the first place. Um…Feeling like you have something to prove…umm…meeting the woman that I was going to marry.

Like, all these factors made every single show—all that stuff when through my head every day, on stage, and I had some very intense moments. I had some moments…just breaking lights and throwing things, making bold claims.

I really missed making bold claims [chuckles] ….Uh…”Who’s better than us?” [Laughs]…Like, I’d be standing in front of a spark shower yelling, you know, “Who’s better than us?”…Because right at that moment, that’s what I felt, like “Whose better than us right now?” Um…Making all kinds of teenage boys take their shirts off and swing it over their heads like animals …I had a really crazy time.

I think at one point [Scrunches forehead] I said—.I was backstage and a loader …I was stretching and warming up, and some local loader said, “Hey look! It’s David Cassidy!”… [Laughs]…And uh…It kinda bummed me out. And then I was on stage and explaining to the crowd that a loader had said “Hey look, its David Cassidy” and my answer to the crowd was basically, you know ….  “The biggest difference between me and David Cassidy is, I suck way more dick than David Cassidy”

So, the shows went something like that every day. They were fun

I went to Japan not thinking I was coming back. This was our first trip there; this was right before I got clean. And uh…as the story has kind of gone, I got on that plane and I packed real light. I was so addicted to self-destruction, I think more than the drugs. There is something very romantic about it. And, um…I didn’t pack anything, I packed show clothes and they smelled awful, they smelled like I had lived on the streets. And uhh…I really thought I was going to die. I thought I wasn’t coming back.

Honestly, just good old fashion depression, you know? But heightened by alcohol dependency and narcotic abuse. I mean, everybody gets depressed; it’s totally normal. Um…at the time I didn’t realize that though, I thought I was really sick and I was self medicating {inaudible}…my medicine is not working. And I really thought—…I really did think I was going to die.

I think it’s something everybody goes through, and it’s not to belittle the fact that some people have it worse than others and some people can’t get out of bed….I think that that exists and that’s its very serious. But I notice a lot of people think that they can solve their problems with anti-depressants an that I’ve noticed being a bigger issue. Like, it really strips people of who they are. Like, all your quirks, all your problems, and even your depressions and your failure, that’s what makes you, you….And um…there’s a lot of drugs out there that’ll take that away from you.

I won’t even—… I won’t take anything. I barely take Nyquil when I’m sick. I remember everything, I remember every single moment of the last three and a half years. Everything.

[Smiles] That’s real interesting…uh…fifteen year old me? [Smiles faintly] I don’t know…I’d like to think that a fifteen year old me would think of—… I was a pretty angry fifteen year old, so…um…probably disappointed by the fact that I have softened up quite a bit and grown up. I hung on to that for quite some time into my early 20s, being kind of angry about nothing. Um…so I think the fifteen year old me would be disappointed in that aspect, but I think he would be very happy in the other aspects of knowing that everything was gonna be okay. Um…that I will go on to make something out of myself.

I think that that was my biggest fear at fifteen, is that I was going to be some sort of like, failure, or stuck being invisible, and not making an impact, and you know, especially like…umm… you know, meeting somebody you love more than anything in the world. Wanting to get married…I think fifteen year old me would have never thought that possible, so I think he’d be happy to know that it all works out in the end.