My Chemical Romance: The Danger Days interview

Previewing their new era, My Chemical Romance starred on Alternative Press’ Most Anticipated Albums of 2010 issue in October 2009 before appearing on the cover of issue 272 in March 2011. Opening up about their fourth studio album — otherwise known as their futuristic outlaw manifesto — Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the band were interviewed by Jason Pettigrew and photographed by Roberto Chamorro and Dan Boczarski. To celebrate the release of their new deluxe edition, we’ve unearthed the full-band interview from our archives. Grab your copy of the Danger Days deluxe from the AP Shop.

Did someone put Eric Draven on the guest list? If it’s December and you’re in Chicago, you’re freezing your ass off. Unless you’re in My Chemical Romance. Then you’re just nestling in the warm dressing room of the House Of Blues, waiting for soundcheck, chain smoking, ingesting copious amounts of coffee, and obsessing over The Crow. While the members of MCR — frontman Gerard Way, guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro, bassist Mikey Way, and auxiliary members James Dewees (keyboards) and Mike Pedicone (drums) — will testify to the awesomeness of both the original comic and its 1994 movie counterpart starring the late Brandon Lee, they’re excitedly riffing on the decidedly inferior, shark-jumping sequels.

“I’m going to get on Twitter and say if anybody can bring us a copy of Crow 4: Wicked Prayer, they can see the show and get some stuff,” says Toro, hammering out the request on his iPhone. 

Read more: What does emo really mean? The story of the genre in 11 songs

This obsession triggers comic-convention-styled riffing on possible future installments for the franchise. Mikey starts pondering his own versions for the series. “You could do Afghanistan Crow, where his tears turn black when they hit the sand.” The comment is met with a wave of giggling in the dressing room and a further brainstorming free-for-all of sequels, which keep getting more ridiculous and nerd-tastic. This sparks Mikey to act as de facto casting director. “Chris Klein could play him!”

At that point, band manager Lauren Valencia turns around her laptop screen to reveal a clip of American Pie star Klein auditioning for a role in the film version of the 2008 ABBA-themed musical, Mamma Mia! The band members look at it with both trainwreck fascination and cringe-inducing pain. By the middle of the clip, Dewees announces, “That’s it! I’m going back to the hotel to use their Wi-Fi to download the whole series!”

“You think we’ve just started doing this,” Gerard says about the band’s relentless geekiness surrounding the once-awesome goth-comic story. “But we’ve been doing this since we got back from Europe weeks ago.” He runs one hand through his shock-red hair and takes a drag off a cigarette with the other. “We can’t help it: Sometimes our brains just take these collective shits.” He exhales and emits a high-pitched “Ka-KAW!” and the rest of the band roar with approval.

At this point, Jacob Raggio, MCR’s longtime production/stage manager, comes into the dressing room. The usually beaming Raggio is a good ol’ Southern boy sporting glasses, a beard coveted by Gainesville, Florida, scenesters, and a T-shirt emblazoned with one of MCR’s more resonant slogans, The Aftermath Is Secondary. Right now, he seems genuinely bummed out. “I’m really sorry, guys,” he begins, his drawl sounding positively defeated. “Part of the PA system is broken. We’ve got the house tech guys looking at it, but it looks like we’re going to have to make some adjustments.” He then apologizes for the huge backdrop behind the stage — a huge skull that looks like a nü-metal rendering of Mexican Day Of The Dead iconography — that the local radio station insists stays up, leaving no room for the band’s American flag spider logo. The band members roll their eyes, not at Raggio but at the inanity of these kinds of events. Iero and Gerard reassure him that the situations are out of his control and not his fault.

“You guys good?” Raggio asks sincerely. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“Naw, we’re OK,” Gerard says, exhaling smoke, rubbing the back of his neck and looking visibly frustrated. “We still can’t find The Crow, though.”

The history of rock ’n’ roll is brimming with stories of ego, excess, and ridiculous demands — and this writer is just thinking of bands who’ve formed in the last eight years. Compare that to My Chemical Romance, who have completed nearly 10 years of service, coming up through Warped Tour Nation, touring the world a few times, and selling a few million records worldwide in a culture of downloading. And all they want is a bottomless coffeemaker, a carton of smokes, and DVDs of lesser installments of once-great movie franchises. Oh, and the hearts of listeners. Not only are their requests manageable; they appear to be downright obtainable. But first, they had to weather the manic arc of last year during the troubled making of their latest, the futuristic outlaw manifesto Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Because how can you get what you want when you don’t know what it is you’re craving in the first place?

When AP visited My Chemical Romance in October 2009 for the Most Anticipated Albums of 2010 cover feature, emotions were high and spirited in their universe. Respected producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Mastodon, Bruce Springsteen) and mixing engineer Rich Costey were enlisted to help the band shape their fourth studio album, the follow-up to the much-loved (and in some circles, maligned) The Black Parade. Titled Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back (Iero reveals Conventional Weapons Were No Match For Them came in a close second), the record was a decidedly schizophrenic affair. Moments of proto-punk abandon (“Death Before Disco”) and one-two-fuck-you thrashing (“Black Dragon Fighting Society”) were buttressed against everything from fume-rock jams that could’ve ended up beside Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age on MP3 playlists to dialed-down melodic numbers reminiscent of alternative-rock legacy acts like the Church and Simple Minds.

Taken as a whole, Save Yourself sounded like a flagship band on their umpteenth album, where obsessing with craft took precedence over forming and promulgating an attitude — the very element that made MCR’s previous work such intriguing listens. The band were all over the place musically, but the songs lacked a certain psychic cohesion. It was clear they didn’t want to be the classic-rock revivalists they were on The Black Parade, nor the graphic-novel, amps-to-11 dramatists from Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. MCR have never envisioned their music through the prism of a competitive, gladiatorial spirit. But they were beating the hell out of themselves about it. 

“I remembered being in the studio with such a sour face for some of those sessions,” says Toro in the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel coffee shop in Detroit, the day after the Chicago gig. The shop’s steamer is broken, so he’s loading up his coffee with copious amounts of milk and sugar while explaining the lifespan of the band’s lost album. “There were songs that needed more than what we were allowing them to have. Your heart is telling you have fun, be creative, and experiment, but your brain is saying, ‘We can’t do that because we told ourselves we can’t do that.’ The mindset we were in was, ‘We can’t not make this work.’”

“I think we were totally scared by what we came out of,” opines Iero later in a separate interview, nursing a Diet Coke in one of the Westin’s many restaurants. “Being on tour for two years straight, being misinterpreted and misunderstood. We came off of doing ‘Desolation Row’ [for the soundtrack to Watchmen] and thought that maybe the key was to go in fast and hard and make a stripped-down rock record. So what I think you’re hearing [on Save Yourself] is a band making a record they think they want to make, but they’re not sure why. And, at the core of it, being scared of reaching the next level or scared of having nothing to say and nothing underneath it.”

When the band finally began mixing with Costey, that part of the recording process was even more laborious, Toro reports, with songs sounding “too thin” or “like soup.” But while they were mixing, the band were still actively demoing and writing new material. In true MCR style, the first fruit from these sessions included Danger Days’ first single, “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na),” and a still-unreleased song titled “First Chance.” Team My Chem decided they would record more songs at the home studio of longtime friend and producer Rob Cavallo. “The space we recorded in was this big,” Toro says, leaving the table and stepping off the tiny space in front of the shop’s condiment selection. “You would hit somebody if you stuck your arm out. [Working in that tiny studio] is the reason why the record sounds like it does, and we’re happy with it. Nobody had an ego about anything: Gerard and Mikey played some guitars. Frank and I played some bass. We all experimented with synthesizers. At that point, we looked at each other and thought, ‘We’re rerecording the record, aren’t we?’”

The personal and musical bonds that Toro the shredmaster and Iero the punk wunderkind share are key to MCR’s continued resonance. But that relationship also made fans wonder where the hell the low-frequency oscillators were coming from. The fearless Toro even added pedals to his onstage rig to make his guitar sound more synthetic.

“The addition of synthesizers and loops? I fuckin’ loved it,” he says. “Danger Days gave everybody space to express themselves. That is what being a musician is all about: expanding your creativity, expanding your technique, and learning new things.” When informed of the possibility of guys transcribing his solos feeling like they’ve been stabbed in the chest upon reading that quote, he laughs. “Putting out a record as a reaction to something is a dangerous thing — especially if you’re reacting to yourself. It felt like a total rehaul for My Chem. And I never saw that before.”

“We’ve been trying to write a song like ‘Planetary’ for years,” Iero reveals about Danger Days’ unapologetic dance-pop anthem. “Just a four-on-the-floor beat, sequencer thing. It never came through, though, because we were scared or because it wasn’t the right time. More so than the others, that song is such a victory for the band.” He mentions that MCR tried to do the same thing on The Black Parade with “The Sharpest Lives,” but were too self-conscious to pull it off. But “victory” is a multilayered term, as Danger Days marks a liberating musical feeling within the band. The band scrapped a million-dollar album because they weren’t happy with it; it’s doubtful message-board warriors wishing it were 2003 again will have any effect on them. 

“I am so over that cred shit,” says Iero, shaking his head. “There was a time when we were like, ‘Watch what you do, watch what you say. We’re a rock band: We can experiment, but we gotta be careful.’ Why? The people who come see our band and the kids who got beat up in high school for wearing our shirts weren’t scared of who the fuck they were. So we can’t be, either. Ten years later, we’ve shown the world that we’re not going to make the same record twice. If they want that, keep listening to the old ones or listen to the 10 new bands who are ripping [those records] off right now.”

Would 16-year-old Frank rock out to Danger Days?

He pauses for a moment and busts out laughing. “I think he’d dig ‘Vampire Money!’”

MCR were patently rejuvenated by the new music they were creating in Cavallo’s home studio, bringing the rock while being deeply immersed in synthesizers, sequencers and drum samples. The mention of that last bit of technology is crucial, because it was during this process that the decision was made that drummer Bob Bryar would no longer be in the group.

“It was scary for me,” Mikey admits. As MCR’s rhythm section, the younger Way and Bryar had played it fast and tight since the summer of 2004, when the latter took over the throne from original drummer Matt “Otter” Pelissier. Any chemistry they established was now history. “Thinking back on the Black Parade tour, I knew every hit he was going to make. We were locked in super tight. When [his dismissal] happened, it was a sad thing.” He looks through the coffee shop’s ice-covered window for a brief moment. “He was a close friend.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen. Would I jell with the next guy? I never really jelled with Otter. It was certainly a problem for me.” (Bryar has songwriting credits on five of Danger Days’ 15 tracks, pieces reworked from the scrapped O’Brien-produced album. No one in the band would comment on the specific reasons for his dismissal. AP contacted Bryar for his side of the story, but he politely declined, as well.)

When Cavallo was made aware of Bryar’s dismissal, the producer, according to Mikey, “was all like, ‘I’ve got the guy!’” The guy in question was John Miceli, the longtime drummer for Meat Loaf. Cavallo produced the classic-rock icon’s latest album, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, and immediately recommended Miceli to propel Danger Days. “John flew in and was sweet, cool, and accommodating,” says Mikey. “No attitude: Our music wasn’t something he listened to, but he was as excited as we were making the record. He was totally in the trenches with us.” 

The last thing the band wanted to do was disrupt Meat Loaf’s touring plans by poaching Miceli. Not surprisingly, when word got out of their drumming vacancy, the band started getting calls, possibly from some of the drummers in your favorite groups. (Out of respect to the would-be slammers, the Ways wouldn’t reveal any names.) The person high on their list, however, was Mike Pedicone. The former drummer of progressive-metalcore act the Bled, Pedicone has a musical résumé that also includes appearances with Helmet, touring and recording with Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, and playing guitar in Mariachi El Bronx. Pedicone had become a friend of the band back when MCR and the Bled toured together in 2003. Mikey had called him up in early July, asking if he wanted to play. The bassist told Pedicone he was in Hawaii, and they’d talk when he returned to the mainland. Ironically, the drummer was in the state at the same time, five miles from where Mikey was staying.

“They said they were going to try out some dudes, but they wanted to play with me first,” Pedicone says over cappuccinos at the Westin’s Boulevard Room. “We rehearsed six times before they offered me the gig. They knew where I came from, so there was no need for any stupid initiation or hazing crap. The first night we played in London felt like it was just us playing in a garage. Forget that there were 5,000 people jumping around — it had a really small feel to it. I can legitimately say that I haven’t felt as close with every member of a band as I do with these guys. From the band to the crew to the management, it’s such a solid team.”

“That’s the whole thing,” says touring keyboardist Dewees, who has known the band since their early days touring with Reggie and the Full Effect. “These guys enjoy everything that they do, from watching TV to shopping. You don’t see any frowns at all.” Dewees once turned down an invite to be a full-time member of New Found Glory (“I love everybody in that band, but they didn’t need me. I didn’t feel confident I could offer anything to make them better”) and understands how band chemistry works. “I have total creative freedom [in MCR]. Even though I am not a member of the band, I feel just as important onstage. The guys make sure of that. They have chemistry. By all means, don’t mess it up!”

Later that night, Team MCR — band, management and crew — retire to a private room at Michael Symon’s Roast eatery, where they enjoy a great meal, plenty of laughs, and a night of Secret Santa gift exchanging. The participants take turns running around the huge dining table, giving each other packages as the whole table cheers loudly when a present is opened. This scenario certainly isn’t indicative of the feel-good sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that’s been mythologized for decades. It does feel a hell of a lot better, though.

Gerard sits at the rear of the 24Grille restaurant, looking unkempt in his charcoal sweater and black jeans. He may look like he rolled out of bed, but his exuberance and enthusiasm are nothing short of electric. Whether he’s talking about the new record (“It’s punk sci-fi Repo Man with laser guns”), the band’s post-glam/prepunk alter egos the Mad Gear And Missile Kid, or waxing enthusiastically about this round of radio-sponsored shows, he seems positively ebullient about his band’s next 10 years.

“This record is about self-actualization; it’s not about the savior of the broken and the beaten,” he says, mocking the Patient character that ran through The Black Parade. “That individual is not important anymore. The next individual is really fearless, really fun, and does not give a shit. You have to go with your gut and make pure art, constantly. You have to encourage those around you and the audience to do the same thing. We’re not proving anything.”

Your critics would respond that MCR have simply reached a level where they aren’t hungry anymore. 

“You can be hungry without having anything to prove,” he counters. “Have I gotten more spiritual? Absolutely. Have I gotten weirder, reading books on modern shamanism and chaos magic? Yes. I think about what things mean instead of being impulsive about them. My glass is half-full,” he begins to laugh, “but there’s five different things in it!”

But does that cup run over a little too much? Musically speaking, it’s agreed that My Chemical Romance have moved far away from the post-emo landscape they helped create. But just like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor no longer lives in Cleveland, Gerard now makes his home in Los Angeles with his wife-cum-soulmate Lindsey and their adorable daughter, far away from his New Jersey roots. His mentors and idols are as close as his iPhone. There’s a sports car in his garage. Nice life if you can get it. What could he possibly say to rally a nation of punks?

“That’s why I’m not waving the flag and leading the charge on Washington,” he says. “The trappings of my life don’t contradict what I’m saying. I’m not waving a flag. There’s that line in T. Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’ where Marc Bolan sings, ‘I got a Rolls Royce, ’cause it’s good for my voice.’” He begins to laugh. “Those are my heroes. But I will tell you that my car is used — by a few years! [Laughs.] 

“Those guys that want to throw the Molotov cocktail?” he continues, embracing the debate with a psychic bear-hug. “I’m not speaking to them. I’m speaking to the new generation of fans who don’t want to throw it. These guys who want to have the Mohawk — which, to me, is the new business casual — and buy the shirts at the mall that say they’re angry at something? They have to prove by how they look that they are mad-fucking-cool and have cred? Go ahead, hold that torch. I’m not singing for you. The world moves so fast. We don’t have time for imaginary rebellion; that’s their older brothers’ music. Kids want to dance. Danger Days is definitely more Burning Man than Mad Max.”

Nineteenth-century Eastern European anarchist Emma Goldman is credited with having said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” But it can’t be denied that Danger Days is loaded with nihilist sentiment. Gerard says the spider logo currently representing MCR is all about “subversion, infiltration and neurotoxin.” “Na Na Na” suggests we should “party with a gas can,” before ending with the request to “Pull the pin/Let the world explode.” Every time this writer hears that one line in “Destroya” (“They laugh/We don’t think it’s funny”), it feels like a reaction to a talking head on Fox News.

“That’s the only kind of vernacular we have these days,” he says. “Bombs, guns, knives, broken glass. Nihilism isn’t really nihilism anymore. Video games have made sure that violence isn’t violence anymore — until it happens to you. Those lines you’ve cited are a direct result of our language. I’ve always spoken in extremes. It’s like putting on the news and hearing, ‘Twenty dead.’ The violence on the record is like video-game violence. It’s pixilated, low-res violence.

“I don’t want to sell the kids rebellion,” he says, dropping his fork on the salad plate. “The corporation in the videos, Better Living Inc., isn’t necessarily evil — it’s not the Killjoys’ way of life. The Killjoys are trying to blow up the world. And that’s what I’m trying to convey to kids: We’re not telling you to blow up the world. Good guys vs. bad guys; it’s not clear. You’ll see in the future that the Killjoys are not good people. I stopped becoming interested in rebellion a long time ago. I feel that this generation has no interest in it, either.”

Gerard admits that adopting a spiritual awareness is part of his plan. What he means 

by “his plan” is exactly that, and not the course of his band. Remember: This was the guy who, five years ago, would’ve sabotaged everything and everyone in his life to service his art. Now, as a successful rock star with a wife and child, he’s sickened at the very thought of that happening. But he hasn’t necessarily chosen to grow up on his terms. It turns out they’re the only ones out there. 

“Without speaking from arrogance,” he begins, “I have no role models. I watched the Dylan documentary [Don’t Look Back]. I watched [the Kurt Cobain documentary] About A Son. I can’t look at anybody and say, ‘Oh, so that’s what they were going through.’ It doesn’t fuckin’ exist. We are the first of our kind, and I embrace that.

“This is what it comes down to,” he says, reconciling both his creative ventures and his family life. “You need just the right amount of ‘Fuck the world’ and the right amount of belief in something.” He drains another cup of coffee. “And you need the right amount of love.”

The following night, My Chemical Romance throw down in front of the sold-out crowd at the Fillmore Detroit theater. The crowd is composed of teenage girls; dudes stricken with male pattern baldness who found someone to cover their shift at Costco; stripper chicks with their pierced-and-inked boyfriends who bought Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water; drunk, group-hugging fratboys and a cross-section of Warped Tour Nation scenesters and Pitchfork-bookmarking hipsters. They know all the lyrics and are looking for something more than just a good time. Like the previous gig in Chicago (where wild-eyed feral punkers peacefully commingled against the stage barricade with crying girls and a 50-something man resembling a retired Marine drill sergeant), these fans are looking for something real. They’ve plowed through the blog fodder, the YouTube “sensations,” the MySpace “phenomenons” and didn’t find it. Maybe tonight, they found some psychic manna, catharsis, or simply some straight-up rock fury in MCR that didn’t insult their intelligence. 

The haters probably stood at the theater bar, which is totally acceptable — it leaves more room at the front. Those detractors should seethe at MCR’s success because it rationalizes their desire to keep things “real” (read: boring). Mediocre bands will have to strive harder to reach a creative bar and develop a sense of community that will last longer than a three-inch stack of discs at the used store or a folder’s worth of deleted sound files. The members of My Chemical Romance can revel in both the adulation and the hatred, because their output is touching both hearts and nerves, equally. Oh, and earlier that afternoon at a meet-and-greet, a fan (celebrating her birthday, no less), presented the band with the Crow DVDs they were obsessing over a few days ago. The group posed for a photo with the fan, making the Crow logo with their hands and Gerard yelling, “Ka-KAW!” as the camera flash went off.

This is the part in the story where one of the band members offers a summary of everything from their reasons for existing to their hopes and dreams for the future. But it’s ironic that the one person who can sum up the My Chemical Romance experience (better than any music journalist with a penchant for subhead titles) is the new guy.

“These guys have been together for 10 years, and they are still legitimately best friends,” says Pedicone. “The first night I went out with them, the four of them went up the street to get a pack of cigs or something. I looked up, and they’re in a group hug going up the street, still psyched to be doing what they’re doing, together. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”