Gerard Way has revealed the reason he was kicked out of his first ever band while speaking on a panel at LA Comic-Con.
The My Chemical Romance frontman said he was kicked out of his school band for being “really bad at guitar.”
Way added: “I wanted to do original songs and they wanted to do cover songs… The reason I got kicked out was because I couldn’t play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.”
Way added that the experience led him to work harder on his writing and drawing skills – something which led him to publish his first comic aged 15.
At the same panel, Way also revealed that Nick Cave influenced the band in their early days. “We were trying to take bits of everything we loved, like driving and fast punk, but then it’ll have metal, and the lyrics will be like storyteller lyrics,” Way explained.
“I really liked Nick Cave and he was a storyteller, and there wasn’t a lot of storytelling happening in rock music at the time, it was very much about relationships and boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. It was about relationships, but no one was really doing this conceptual stuff, or telling stories.
“…Pop-punk was about the high school experience, boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. I wanted to build worlds with music, and that’s what we started to do together in bringing in gothic elements, or bringing in vampires, and building this thing.”
Rumours have recently surfaced that My Chemical Romance are considering reforming, but they have since been shot down by Way and guitarist Frank Iero, with the latter getting into a spat with Joe Jonas after he insisted he had heard the band in rehearsal.