domingo, 19 de junio de 2011
jueves, 25 de marzo de 2010
Gerard Way Meets Iggy Pop
With his wild onstage antics and upcoming "sleazy Detroit rock" album, My Chemical Romance's frontman is a true disciple of The Stooges. "I didn't want the girls to want to f--k me, I wanted the straight guys to want to f--k me," Way says. "I got that from Iggy."
SPIN: Gerard, when did you first hear Iggy's music?
IGGY POP: Oh my God! Somebody saw it!
WAY: Yeah! It had a huge impact on me. It was set in the future and starred [the music of] Iggy, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, Cheap Trick, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
POP: I remember my song was called "Pain & Suffering." [Sings] "Red wine turns to blood / A cow floats upside down in a river of mud!"
WAY: It scared me, but I was drawn to it. I rediscovered it in middle school, right when [Iggy's pop hit] "Candy" came out. I'd been a metalhead, but then I got into punk and the Ramones, and through that I got into Iggy.
POP: They were good to me that way, the Ramones. I just saw a picture of a night at CBGB's in 1975 when they held a party for me. We all had that same bowl haircut! Five of us with a bowl. Mine was platinum and theirs were dark.
SPIN: The Ramones were from Queens; Iggy, you're from Michigan, and Gerard, you're from Jersey -- three of the most disrespected places in America. Do you feel a connection because of that?
POP: Yeah, real knucklehead places. Allen Ginsberg is from New Jersey, from Paterson, and it's a pretty ugly town as he paints it.
WAY: I'm from Newark, which is pretty much Paterson. Paterson is a fucked-up place.
POP: I always liked Newark because it was so embattled. I like semi-torn-down places where I could get nestled in and get something done without anyone bothering me.
WAY: Definitely. We practiced in this factory there where there had been murders. It's in the deconstructed, destroyed cities where people will leave you alone so you can create yourself.
SPIN: Do you both carry your hometowns with you in the art you make?
POP: I certainly do. If I'm in Paris and the people get very French, I find my drawl thickening, like [adopts heavy Detroit accent] "You know what there, Froggy…"
WAY: I wouldn't have been able to move to L.A. if I felt I was going to lose my identity as a New Jerseyian. My accent has gotten thicker since I've lived here. L.A. people might hate me for saying this, but when [my wife] Lindsey and I moved, we thought, "Everyone here is so polite. If a bunch of people moved out from the East Coast, they could fucking run this place." Like the person I'm getting coffee from, he's definitely motherfucking me and is going to say something when I'm gone. Not like in New York, where they'll just motherfuck you to your face.
POP:"Heyyyy, man, great to see you! You're a beautiful cat!" But seriously, there's some highly capable assassins out there. So hats off to 'em.
SPIN: I wanted to talk to you both about influential concerts in your life. Iggy, you've spoken about seeing Jim Morrison and the Doors in 1967.
POP: It was the homecoming dance at the University of Michigan, and it was an intimate setting, sort of like the prom scene in Carrie. When the dude appeared, Morrison, he lurched onto the stage, and people probably thought he was drunk. But I knew that cat had had three or four hits of acid. His pupils were totally dilated, and he had on a sort of Hedy Lamarr–as-Delilah outfit, and when he opened his mouth, he sang only in falsetto baby talk. There was no applause. No approval. No comprehension. It was a visibly unsuccessful evening, and that's what I loved about it in retrospect. Afterwards, I was vibrating with this feeling that I have no excuse not to get our miserable, good-for-nothin' band out on the stage.
WAY: All of the performances that mattered to me were the shows I couldn't go to because they'd already happened and I was just a kid. In a lot of ways, my band has always been in response to stuff. Seeing bands like Thursday and At the Drive-In, they were plugged into what I like to call "Motor City motherfuckin' rock," channeling the Stooges, channeling the MC5. During this one performance, ATDI were wearing catsuits, crawling under the stage. It was sexy and challenged your sexuality. I guess all I added to that was eyeliner. I wanted to challenge gender, abuse the audience. I didn't want the girls to want to fuck me, I wanted the straight guys to want to fuck me. I think I got that from Iggy.
POP: Maybe you should give John Mayer a call. [Laughs] I think whatever it is you're doing, if you're gonna get up and do it in front of the public, it's going to blow unless you give free rein to your emotional truths. Otherwise you're going to look like you're pandering.
WAY: I've always loved Lust for Life—the whole record for me is perfect. You're not pandering at all. I started to feel on the last [My Chemical Romance] record like I was pandering, and that the money had put me in stasis. It's like a trap: Stasis is death, and I started to make safe decisions. But then on [2007's Projekt Revolution] tour, our last one for [The Black Parade], a journalist told me we were like the fucking Stooges up there. That's what we're trying to get back to on this new record, what we had on that one tour.
POP: A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don't feel great about, and it'll make you feel so bad it'll destroy you and kill you. Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.
WAY: I never thought about that, being author and actor. We were going to these cities where there were hate crimes directed at the kids listening to us, the kids wearing all black. I retreated and stopped being on the crusade. I didn't want anyone to get hurt. The light at the end of the tunnel was a friend reminding me I didn't wear a Public Image Ltd. pin on my jacket in high school because I wanted to get spit on, I wore it because I wanted to wear it. Our kids are the same way: It's their fucking choice. I can't protect them. I need to give them what they want.
POP: If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that's such a rare gift. It's underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics. It's good to withdraw at certain times. A steady diet of it is rough on a person.
URL to video interview with Gerard Way:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1811456849?bctid=73670137001
miércoles, 20 de enero de 2010
The return of My Chemical Romance
The Grammy-nominated rockers claim the new album presents My Chemical Romance as “the purest, most distilled version of itself”. Guitarist Ray Toro says, “I can say, hands down, this is our best record yet. It’s all of the best characteristics of the band finally on one record.”
Written and recorded in LA, the group say the new album was influenced by a number of bands including the Sex Pistols, MC5 and The Stooges. “It was a good test to play around with where we might potentially go,” recalls Gerard Way.
Track titles on the new record include 'Death Before Disco', 'Save Yourself', and 'The Only Hope For Me Is You'.
Singer Gerard Way says MCR's new release will be a back-to-basics rock album, after the theatrical grandstanding of 'The Black Parade'. “It will definitely be stripped down,” he explains. “I think the band misses being a rock band.”
Elaborating on this new-found drive for simplicity, Way said: “It's not going to be hiding behind a veil of fiction or uniforms and make-up anymore.”
The band’s fourth album is a rejoinder to critics who portray the band as dark or downbeat. New track, ‘Save Yourself’, contains the line: “This ain’t a room full of suicides”. Way explains, “This record’s about the truth and living and survival.”
The new album has been produced by Brendan O’Brien, whose previous clientele include AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam.
The band’s fourth release is not a concept album, but is built around certain themes. “To make a truly great album that doesn't have the crutch of a narrative, that was so hard,” Gerard explains.
The frontman continues: ”Everything is more direct. If ‘Black Parade’ was about the sweeping gesture, this is about the bold statement.”
Way became a father during the recording of the new album. “Lindsey [Ann Way, née Ballato, bassist with the band Mindless Self-Indulgence] and I had the baby, and then two weeks after that I was in the studio,” he explains. “I would show up in a T-shirt covered in baby puke.”
One of the slower tracks on the album, ‘Light Behind Your Eyes’, was inspired by the birth of Way's daughter, Bandit Lee.
‘Bullet Poof Heart’ – originally named ‘Trans Am’ - is the likely first single from the new album. The track is a tribute to the band's hometown of New Jersey and features a character named Jenny, inspired in part by The Killers’ ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’.
Another key influence on the new album? Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi film, Blade Runner, which the band watched while making the record.
For far more on the new My Chemical Romance album, pick up the new issue of NME
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Since finishing promotional duties for their last album 'The Black Parade', My Chemical Romance have kept themselves busy. For example, they covered Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ for the soundtrack of the 2009 blockbuster
The band are being strongly tipped to headline a major UK festival this summer. Could it be Reading and Leeds?
Another MCR fact: Gerard Way's wedding in 2007 was a low-key affair. He and his girlfriend tied the knot following the final date of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour backstage, with a member of a live music agency - who was working on the tour - performing the ceremony.
Gerard Way and fellow artists Shaun Simon and Becky Cloonan are currently in the process of developing and creating a new comic-book series titled The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, which Way announced at Comic Con 2009.
jueves, 24 de diciembre de 2009
My Chemical Romance explain how Blade Runner, Judas Priest and a car inspired new album
My Chemical Romance explain how Blade Runner, Judas Priest and a car inspired new album
Group have channelled 1980s for their next record
Frontman Gerard Way said the follow-up to their 2006 concept album 'The Black Parade' has been influenced by muscle cars, the film Blade Runner and Judas Priest.
"The fact there's a song now tentatively titled 'Trans-Am' is a bold thing for this band to do as opposed to our previous material," Gerard Way told SpinnerMusic.co.uk. "There's something in that phrase that's obviously more than the car. But to bring something like old '70s muscle car culture into the music, that's kind of a different move."
Earlier in the year Way used Twitter to purchase a Trans Am car explaining that it was research for the album.
As previously reported, My Chemical Romance had revealed that the record was being influenced by MC5 and The Stooges, but Way explained how the 1980s have also influenced the album.
Talking about one of their new songs, 'Death Before Disco', Way admitted that the music of Judas Priest had shaped the album.
"That song actually reminded me in an odd way of all the best stuff of '80s what is called cock rock, but not all of it was," Way explained. "Judas Priest is considered metal, but it's great rock'n'roll. It's having nothing to do with that era of metal, the hair rock, but then having everything to do with like the birth of power-anthem metal. After 'Trans Am' that started to really bleed into the record."
As well as music and wheels, the frontman added that the 1982 film Blade Runner had played a part in the recording sessions.
"I watched a lot of Blade Runner and I watched a lot of the Making Of Blade Runner, [director] Ridley Scott was really inspiring too, just kind of his unwillingness to put the camera down and really capture something special," he said. "People were upset by that, but he was very strong in his vision and I think the band was very strong in its vision this time. That's why the record took - instead of a month and a half to do - four months to track because our barometer for great was very high."
Their fourth LP, which was recorded in Los Angeles with Bruce Springsteen producer Brendan O'Brien, is due in spring 2010.
sábado, 5 de diciembre de 2009
Entrevista Exclusiva con My Chemical Romance (revista AP)
PARA SU CUARTO ÁLBUM, los MCR podrían haber hecho un disco para mostrar cuán "punk" son ellos, o un disco aburrido, seguro que el disco pondría celoso a Nickelback. En cambio, la banda decidió patear los traseros de todos – incluyendo los suyos.
¡VIVA EL ABANDONO!
Hace ya una década atrás, My Chemical Romance pasó sus vidas en los sótanos siendo unos pobres niños golpeados, muchachos de cartel reacios a esa generación deformada y a las personas que reavivan los métodos viejos del rock clásico, salvando a jóvenes privados del derecho al voto en todo el mundo. Como aún están terminando su cuarto álbum, están haciendo algo aún más atrevido: Convirtiéndose en una banda de rock.
SITUADO EN EL CORAZÓN DE HOLLYWOOD
Sunset Sound es una prisión auténtica del rock & roll. El estudio ha promovido algunos de los discos más importantes y apasionantes en la historia del sonido registrado; desde discos como 'Exile on main street to the doors' de los Rolling Stones a 'Woman to Led Zeppelin II'. Aún a pesar de su historia y de la tecnología-del-Estado-del arte, la cosa simple es (al menos para el primer visitante) un dolor real en el trasero. La serie de vestíbulos de madera artesonados conduce a estudios contiguos y áreas comunes con múltiples salidas, así que si no prestas mucha atención podrías terminar en la suite incorrecta, en un cuarto de almacenamiento, debajo de un aro de baloncesto o en el aparcamiento. Debes aguardar en una de las puertas al final de estos vestíbulos para ir a un estudio de sonido en Daisy of Love, o, al menos, un Baja Fresh tripulado por tipos rockeros de décadas anteriores (Alguien que le diga a uno de esos tontos de Night Ranger que el puesto de salsa caliente necesita rellenarse).
En un aviso teórico, el plan de Sunset es la metáfora perfecta para describir la trayectoria artística de My Chemical Romance. Piénsenlo: Cuando alguien esperó que la banda entrara en una dirección concreta, ellos rebotaron hacia algo más. MCR – vocalista Gerard Way, guitarristas Frank Iero y Ray Toro y baterista Bob Bryar – fueron las víctimas sin nombre empujándolo hacia el exterior en sus conciertos en sótanos y clubs húmedos para estrellas, que luego se unieron a un sello discográfico principal por dos años, eclipsando a muchos de sus colegas y mentores. Después de la victoriosa Generación Warped, ellos cortaron sus ambiciones tontas cambiándolas por un concepto alto, un espectáculo de rock clásico de The Black Parade, reinventándose de nuevo como el Sargento Pepper del equipo de Adderall, mientras picaban la atención de ambos críticos y una legión de los fanáticos más viejos de la música estaban dispuestos a quitar sus garras artríticas de los recuerdos musicales de su juventud para comprender que sí, tal vez allí había alguna de las bandas nuevas para chequear.
En 2009, My Chemical Romance escribió y grabó cerca del valor de los dos álbumes de material con el productor Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine) en el timón. Pero a diferencia de un escritor cargado por un sentido minúsculo de dirección – o una banda menor de músicos dispuestos a ceder el control y la visión para asegurar su presunta economía – MCR saben exactamente a dónde quieren ir. No nos sorprende que, hoy en día, los climas hostiles de los artistas de la cultura de las descargas y el valor disminuido de la música hayan hecho que la banda sea aún más apasionada hacia su arte.
"Pienso que nuestra público es nuestro público", dice Gerard Way, sentándose al final de un sofá de cuero negro en una de las serie de habitaciones de mezcla de Sunset. "No he notado una carencia de devoción a nuestra banda. Lo que realmente he notado es que hay un nivel de entusiasmo por My Chemical Romance que nunca esperé. Desde encuentros básicos que tuve – como por ejemplo, reunirme con personas a tomar café o incluso encuentros casuales con personas en las conferencias de cómics – hay una anticipación loca por el nuevo álbum de My Chemical Romance. Siento como si no estuviéramos haciendo música, como si algo faltara. No sé cuánto pesa sobre nosotros la cultura actual".
Él hace una pausa para encender un cigarrillo. "Pienso subconscientemente que...", comienza a hablar exhalando un poco de humo, "somos tan hostiles como antes".
EL HUMOR EN EL ESTUDIO es en partes iguales entusiásticas y productivas. Como la banda escucha a algunas mezclas ásperas que O'Brien hizo para ellos unos días antes, el maquinista ovacionado, Rich Costey, está en una de las otras suites preparando las versiones finales. Los miembros de la banda (menos el guitarrista Ray Toro: ya les hablaré un poco sobre esto) comparten risas con algunos ayudantes del estudio y pasan cerca para verificar los menús, preparándose para una larga tarde.
jueves, 3 de diciembre de 2009
My Chemical Romance Slam Fame-Hungry Musicians on New Album
After going the concept route -- or at least making a linear work on 'The Black Parade' -- My Chemical Romance are going in another direction on their forthcoming album, due early next year. Spinner visited the group in their L.A. studio to get an early preview and we were left suitably blown away by the nine very disparate songs we got to hear. The tracks ranged from the atmospheric 'Light Before Your Eyes,' a song frontman Gerard Way describes as Pink Floyd-ish, to the '80s-flavored 'Trans Am' and the punk/dance party tune, 'Death Before Disco,' which starts off with a Judas Priest 'Living After Midnight' vibe and turns into a lyrical salute to the Stooges, Velvet Underground and MC5.
Way tells Spinner the as-yet-untitled album is a definite answer to 'The Black Parade.' "Every single record we make is a response to the last," he says. "But sometimes it's not only a response to the last record -- it's a response to the opinion of that record or a response to the world at the time of that record."
What he sees and documents on the new album is a lot of rockers who are in music for the wrong reason. "There's a definite undercurrent of fame versus working class, people having stuff handed to them with zero talent versus working class kids that start a band," he says. "Rock 'n' roll is not red carpets and MySpace friends -- rock 'n' roll is dangerous and rock 'n' roll should piss people off. Right now, there's not a lot of that happening. What it is is a lot of people trying to be famous. That seems to be the goal."
In Way's opinion, that desire to be famous is messing up the sanctity of rock ''n roll. "It's bled into rock. It came from other places, but it's bled into rock 'n' roll and kind of tainted it a bit," Way says. "This record is really a response to that as well."
MCR certainly have the resources and notoriety to bask in that fame as well, so how do they resist that temptation? "Instead of us panicking and trying to see where we can grab the money or grab the opportunity, we just wrote music instead," Way says. "We tried to write a great record; that was our response to things. I think that writing a great record will sell records these days, as opposed to doing every other f---ing thing that people seem to be doing to sell a record."
My Chemical Romance talk Stooges and MC5-influenced new album
Singer Gerard Way said the follow-up to their 2006 concept album 'The Black Parade' has been influenced by The Stooges and MC5.
"We wanted to harness everything that's great about this band into shorter songs, almost protopunk, like The Stooges or the MC5," he told Rolling Stone.
The singer also revealed a new track 'Trans Am', which is likely to feature on the new record, containing the lyrics: "These pigs are after me, after you".
He admitted the band nearly split after touring their last album in May 2008, saying: "I thought the band was going to break up," although he did not elaborate on the comment.
Their fourth LP, which is being recorded in Los Angeles with Bruce Springsteen producer Brendan O'Brien, is due in spring 2010.
My Chemical Romance give up the emo woe
Yup, emo is dead. Long live My Chemical Romance.
"I didn't want to set kids who like to wear black back 20 years, that wasn't the point. Because it's taken us so long to be able to wear black every day."
Gerard Way lets out a laugh. The singer is standing outside Sunset Sound Studios in LA, where his band is in the final stages of mixing the new, as-yet-untitled album with producer Brendan O'Brien.
"But I guess if you're gonna dress like you listen to The Cure all the time, you're gonna get s... for it."
Way wasn't happy with reports that black-clad kids were getting beat up when the band played at Big Day Out in 2007. And he describes hate crimes aimed at emo kids with asymmetrical fringes that swept across Mexico in early 2008 as "a human rights issue".
"It literally didn't make any sense to me," Way says. "It all boils down to macho versus emotional at the end of the day. It comes down to gutteral, violent tendencies versus talking about your problems."
But mostly, Way wasn't happy when he thought ahead to what his daughter, Bandit Lee, born in May this year, might think when she picked up My Chemical Romance's previous album, The Black Parade, and gave it a spin as a teen. Would she see her dad and his bandmates as moaning victims?
"I didn't feel that we were," Way clarifies.
"I always felt there was a great deal of black humour with anything we were doing. But I did feel it was misperceived and misinterpreted, and in really strange ways. That's the thing though, when you put a song out there, it's no longer yours, it's somebody else's, and it's theirs to interpret however they want.
"But I knew the power the band had was whatever we put out next, so we could dictate what we were saying, we could dictate how it's perceived to a point."
My Chem 4.0, he swears, will be "very explicitly saying that we're all not victims".
Way, his bassist brother Mikey, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero and drummer Bob Bryar began pre-production on the new album in February.
"We started from absolutely zero, we didn't bring any road songs into the room," Way says.
Time is a luxury the band have never afforded themselves before, and Way says the all-the-time-we-need edict will carry over to artwork and everything else that must be done for the album.
Songs so far (though the titles may change) include Still Alive, Trans Am, Death Before Disco, The Only Hope For Me Is You, Black Dragon Fighting Society, Kiss The Ring, Boy Division and the marvellously named Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back.
Way says every track is a "first-listen song"; something that will grab you from the get-go.
"That was why it took so long, because if something wasn't making you feel that feeling, then it went away and it had to be replaced with something that did make you feel special," he says.
Australia will be first to hear the new songs when My Chemical Romance tour in February for the Soundwave festival, though the album won't be released until March.
Another thing you won't find on the new album is the conceptual pomp and the striking costumery that helped send The Black Parade to platinum status in Australia, Britain and the US.
"Let's swap the word theatrical for cinematic this time," he says. "If Black Parade was a big rock show that was full of theatricality, then this is more of a movie moment. I don't think this band will ever lose any kind of aesthetic or art to it - that always has to be there. It just means that we're not doing what we've always done; it doesn't mean there won't be anything exciting attached to this record."
Though musically shorter and sharper, Way is cautious of using the term "stripped back".
"If anything is stripped back, it's bells and whistles and marching bands and things like that. Songs are now under four minutes or maybe even shorter. That, to me, is stripping it back, trimming the fat, trimming any kind of indulgence out of the music."
miércoles, 2 de diciembre de 2009
Gerard Way Talks New Comic "Fabulous Killjoys," Next My Chemical Romance Album
Of course, Way has also become an award-winning comics writer himself in the last few years. At the overflowing panel that's now an annual Comic-Con tradition, he announced two new comic books he's working on: the third Umbrella Academy miniseries, subtitled Hotel Oblivion and drawn by the Brazilian artist Gabriel Bá, and a new series called The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, drawn by Becky Cloonan (Demo). Way talked to Rolling Stone about the new comics, as well as the MCR record that's in progress right now.
What's the story with The Fabulous Killjoys?
It's written by myself and my co-creator Shaun Simon. He was the keyboard player in Frank [Iero]'s first band, he's our good friend, he was our merch guy. I think a lot of ideas we came up with back then in the band are what ended up in Killjoys.
Like what?
Like the notion of driving by a children's playground off to the side of the desert and realizing that it's a cemetery because it's where childhood dies — stuff that we'd say to each other, driving around. But it's from the perspective of a gang, because that's basically what a young band is. You stop being a gang at a certain point, but you always chase that feeling. You want to get that feeling back.
How has it been working with Becky Cloonan?
She's awesome. When I first talked to her about it, she sent me a sketch of Rachel, one of the characters, and I knew right away she had to be the artist for the book. The great thing about her is that she comes from that world. She went to SVA, and she got her start doing show fliers for CBGBs — she saw the bands and went to the shows. She's very punk rock in that way, and her art has that energy that a punk show has.
You've talked about your master plan for The Umbrella Academy; where does Hotel Oblivion fit into the big picture?
It's pulling further away from what people think a superhero comic, or even a comic, can be. It's going to trigger a major event that needs to happen in the comic. I'm very excited for it.
What's happening with the next My Chemical Romance album?
I'd say we're right in the middle of it. Brendan [O'Brien] is the kind of producer who really likes a lot of things going on at once, so we're tracking and he's going right across the hall and mixing. It's a process that always keeps everyone involved the whole time. The songs are all wildly different, but the one I'm really excited about is called "Death Before Disco." It's a completely different sound for the band — it's like an anti-party song that you can party to. I can't wait for people to hear it. It brings back, lyrically, some of that wonderful fiction from the first album. I think we wrote our "Born to Run," and I'm so amped about that. To me, it's the greatest song we've ever written — it's my favorite MCR song.