NOISE: Doing It Their Way

My Chemical Romance continues to forge their own path

Allan Sculley

When Gerard Way formed My Chemical Romance, he knew what he didn't want to write songs about.


"Before the first record, I said to myself, 'Man, I'm so tired of hearing songs about peoples' ex-girlfriends. It's really nauseating," Way says. "And the whole me, me, me aspect of it was just like [overdone.]"


Just how differently Way wanted his writing to become is apparent on My Chemical Romance's second CD, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, which features 13 songs that form a dark and mysterious story involving a man who makes a deal with the devil to kill 1,000 evil men in exchange for the chance to return to earth and be with the woman he loves.


The story is not in a typical narrative structure. "It really doesn't follow a linear thing. It's more like you're getting little snippets of the story, which at the end should make up the whole part," Way says.


Each song adds color and detail to the basic story outlined in "It's Not A Fashion Statement," and the song that sums up the plot, "It's Not A Fashion Statement, It's A Deathwish," is the 11th track.


The genesis for the album's lyrics can be traced back to a song, "Demolition Lovers," from the New Jersey band's first CD that told a Bonnie and Clyde-like tale of two outlaw lovers facing a deadly conclusion. Three Cheers essentially sees the man from that song in the afterlife.


"I was like, 'I think I could run with this thing,'" he says. "I just felt like there needed to be this tragic, romantic, violent aspect going on in there. So I kind of married two subjects, love and revenge, and just added a slight supernatural element to that, and was able to come up with what I think is a good metaphor for how this band operates and how we live our lives and how we feel you should live your life."


One event that filtered into the lyrics was the death of Way's grandmother, who had been one of his biggest supporters in his pursuit of music.


"If you really listen to the record, it more ends up being about loss than anything," Way says. "It comes up very frequently on the record, to the point where people have asked me how the story ends. I'm kind of like what do you think? Do you think the guy gets what he wants?"


The band—Way on vocals, his brother, bassist Mikey Way, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero and drummer Matt Pelissier—had literally been together for only weeks in 2001 when they landed a contract with independent label Eyeball Records, and an immediate trip to the studio to record their first CD, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.


"We knew what we had was very kind of new, and very exciting and very inventive," he says. "It still needed to be banged into shape, we thought. The first record is a band discovering who it is. We were only three months in [as a band], so we were still trying to figure out who we were."


Three Cheers For Revenge, their first release under a new contract with major label Reprise Records, is a dynamic, distinctive and highly accessible work that defies easy description by skirting between the boundaries of metal, punk progressive rock and power pop.


The final version took considerable effort, as it underwent a near-complete makeover.


"We did a demo for this record. I'm pretty sure if you ask Craig [Aaronson], our A&R from Warner Bros., about the demo, he would probably say he was scared shitless of what the record was going to sound like," Way says. "There was this really long, big, weird, epic, dark stuff all over it. We didn't really know where we were going with the record."


Way convinced his bandmates to head from their New Jersey home to Hollywood for another round of writing and woodshedding before their recording sessions.


"These are a bunch of guys who lived with their moms, and until starting the band, had not seen the world at all. So I wanted to be kind of pretty much right in Hollywood, just to see all the scumminess," Way says. "It was cool."

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