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 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.” 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. 
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.”
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?”
As we talk a bit more about it, I mention the infamous kiss between him and guitarist 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.
