Gerard Way: “Starting My Chemical Romance became my therapy”

The frontman also reveals how Nick Cave influenced their early days

Gerard Way has spoken out about how starting My Chemical Romance became “therapy for me” following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Speaking a recent Comic-Con event in Los Angeles, the singer spoke at length about the band and his career history.

“So 9/11 happens, and I pick up the guitar again and I write ‘Skylines And Turnstiles’, and then I called Otter [Matt Pellissier, drummer] and then I called Ray [Toro, guitarist], and we got Mikey [Way, bassist] in – and we just started building this momentum,” Way said.

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“It became my therapy from the PTSD that everyone had experienced from 9/11, and processing that.”

He 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.”

The band went on to release four albums together. Their final record, ‘Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys’, arrived in 2010 before the band split in 2013.

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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.

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