ITW Coup De Main

Une interview sans coupure de 32 pages !

Une partie tous les jours jusqu'au 22 novembre

Part 1 :

Citation :

MCR - Bowie, Battery City, And Comic Books
A transcript from an almost two hour long interview with MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE landed in my inbox today, on coincidentally, the beginning of exactly one month remaining in the lead-up to the release of the band's forthcoming album - 'DANGER DAYS: THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS'. As someone whose imagination has been completely captivated by the striking imagery and vivid narrative showcased in the lead single 'Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)''s music video, I couldn't bear to cut any of the thirty-seven pages up, lest any of the finer details (that are always important to a fan) to be learned, be lost.

So read on, for Part I of our thirty-two part countdown to the worldwide release of 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys', with a new section of the supplied interview to be posted every day as we count down to November 22nd! - and Coup De Main's advance album listening party on the 11th!!

GERARD WAY: I think [that] Ziggy Stardust has been a giant influence, like even to me since art school. And then, we all love David Bowie and there's some Bowie, a lot of Bowie on ['The] Black Parade' as well. I guess Black Parade is kind of when the glam kind of started. And it's very much alive and well in this one, but oddly enough, this record started to feel a bit like 'Diamond Dogs' in a weird way, 'cause that was kind of his last hurrah with glam. And towards the completion of the album, I started to see a lot of parallels in 'Danger Days' and 'Diamond Dogs'. He talks about a city in there called Hunger City. We talk about a city called Battery City. There's, it's obviously a lot of lyrics, very kind of futuristic. Like he says, you know, he talks about an oxygen tank and getting out of it. There's stuff like that in the record, just talking about like laser beams and things like that. So it felt like, you know, he made this. And I don't think 'Diamond Dogs' is a concept album, and I don't think 'Danger Days' is a concept album either. I think it has, they both have a high concept, and you really get a lot of the story in just one track and then the rest is just kind of, just all different world views.

FRANK IERO: I mean, I think the concept was fully realized probably towards the end of the record, like the story and the world came to fruition as the record was coming to fruition, which made it feel very organic. And we weren't trying to like, shove things into little spots, like: oh, this song's great, but it doesn't fit because the story is this. It was like... our world story is now this because of the song.

RAY TORO: Yeah, that's definitely right. I think the big thing for this record was it was more thematic than story-based, you know? And I think it worked out better to our advantage. Yeah, like he said, you kind of, when you're trying to tell a story, you definitely sometimes get yourself stuck a little bit because you're like: oh, we need this style of song or this... you know, this part to complete the story. And it's really just having more based on themes and like he was saying, like the language being used, like that's where the concept is coming from.

GERARD: Well, it started out as a comic, me and my friend Shaun Simon, who's a friend, actually was in Frank's first band and he was - he helped us out in the beginning. Like, we all got in the band together basically, and he was the friend that we brought with us. And we, when you're young and it's your first time out seeing America for the first time and you're [a] young, kind of starving rock band and starving artist and you're doing that, you start to formulate opinions on the world and the country you live in and just really make observations. So years later, he and I had an idea for a comic and I had an idea for a comic and we just kind of joined those things up. And, but in making it an album, it, I love that 'Danger Days' is the main title and 'The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys' being its secondary title, because much like 'The Black Parade', I felt like The Fabulous Killjoys are us, they're the fans, they're the artists that we know. It's Shaun, it's Becky, it's Gabriel and Fabio, you know? It's like all these people and it's... It's like all our artist friends, Grant and Kristan. And it felt like a much better and more accurate way to describe the band as people, as artists, their friends and the fans. So, it's connected to Black Parade in a weird way like that. And they're a gang from 2019.

Part 2:

Citation :

GERARD: If there's any rebellion in the record, it's a rebellion against ourselves and kind of against - definitely against being assimilated into modern rock culture and cutting your hair and looking respectable and getting into your thirties and like - all right, we're gonna be this kind of rock band, because that's what people are grooming us to be. It's a rebellion against that very thing, and so there's no rebellion against the corporation, though. I see the Killjoys as really just survivalists. I also like to think that Better Living Industries isn't necessarily the bad guys and neither are the Killjoys. It's like they both do really messed up things, you know? I think maybe in the second or third video, we're gonna be shooting cops. It's pretty colourful in that way. There's no black or white. Yeah, so I don't feel like they're really fighting against any, but, I guess we could talk about some of the characters. Grant Morrison plays a character called Korse. And he's basically the chief exterminator. And he goes out in the desert and cleans it up 'cause there's this city called Battery City where everything is really nice and clean. And they send people like Korse into the desert to exterminate, basically, the insects and the filth. And he has this unit of soldiers with him called Draculoids, which are basically a higher unit than police even and, literally, we're making this up as we go on.

FRANK: Yeah, I think, like it's more fighting against an idea, right? Than any one entity...

GERARD: Absolutely. It's wholly fighting against the idea of the corporate cleanup. And what better way, like, who's actually kind of more suited to do or say that than a band that's actually within a corporate system? And we're not bagging on it, but there's other kinds of corporate cleanup we don't like, like that assimilation into modern rock. It's definitely a battle against an idea like he's saying. Rather, there's no evil tyrants, there's nobody throwing Molotov cocktails.

FRANK: You have to be artistically true to yourself. Just, I think the biggest testament to that for us was we wrote a record and felt like: all right, this is par, you know? This is great, and people were saying that it's really good, but when we looked at back it, it wasn't something that we were 100 percent happy with. And if you're not, then you shouldn't put that out. And so, it's constantly striving for greatness. Always, not second-guessing yourself to the point where you fell, but, being your own worst critic about things... and really pushing yourself. I mean, it's weird. We'll write songs and sometimes they're great songs, but if it's not, we're not, reminding ourselves - we don't feel comfortable, I think.

RAY: Right. It's got to speak to you, yeah. That's it.

GERARD: That's the word.

RAY: I think from the first recordings we had done, there were, even the record he [Frank] was talking about that we kind of, that we scrapped. There were like three or four songs that spoke to us, out of those. And when it came time to re-approach those, we - you kinda had to - we miss them. And that's the reason why we brought them back. But then when we brought them back, we did have to kind of do some work and kind of re-invent them a little bit for us to make them fresh. And, you know, it's always the thing. We'll write - we love to write songs and we love to write music and then - but, you don't always knock them out of the park, you know? And I think the ones that do end up on the record are the ones that really stand out and mean something special for all of us.

GERARD: Yeah, I think one day we will release that stuff. I think it'd be important because it happened, you know? At the same time, I feel like, I don't really think about them as two records anymore. I think about the record being 'Danger Days', and what it took to get to 'Danger Days' was just making a lot of songs and a lot of recordings which is actually something that even kind of happened on Parade. Like, we went in with, we did pre-production, but then when we got in, I think our ability to change the script immediately and/or write new material and scrap old material was what made that record great. And I kind of feel it was a longer process, but it was a similar process.

FRANK: Definitely worth it.

GERARD: But, sometimes as a writer, you'll hit that thing where you write, like, I don't know, an amazing short story or a haiku or an article where you're like you've nailed it immediately and that happens too - just, we all know as artists, that doesn't happen that often. It's like a rare case. 'Na Na Na' is a great example of a song that was, I don't think anything changed really at all from like when we first played it. We added a part and that's it. So sometimes you get the magic, but you can't chase that. You got to kind of work on stuff and sometimes it may feel like 3:00 A.M. and you're grinding, but, you got to do that to get there too.

Part 3:

Citation :

'Blade Runner', 'Repo Man', & 'Transformer'...

MIKEY WAY: Movies affect - just as us artists - as much as music would, which is really cool and interesting, I think.

FRANK IERO: Yeah. We kind of like to have movies going while we'll tracking. For some reason, that visual stimulation sometimes will make you play differently.

GERARD WAY: 'Blade Runner' was really huge. 'Blade Runner' was huge during Parade as well. 'Blade Runner' was always on, but this time [while] I watched them, I felt like I was - I felt we were on a bit of an artistic crisis at a certain point. We had done this recording, we [had] just gotten back from Japan and I had about, we had a week to ourselves maybe, to kind of contemplate what we're in the midst of in what we're doing. And I watched the 'Blade Runner' documentary, and that's actually called 'Dangerous Days', because that was the original title of 'Blade Runner'. And there's, just from watching that, I gained so much insight about art and what it took to not back down. And there's this thing where he's, in the very opening when the credits are happening, there's a shadow of Ridley Scott and he says: you see this in my hands, this is my camera, this is my weapon. He goes: I'm not gonna stop until I get what I want. And I was like: oh, God, you got to really dig deep like this guy, like he, we're gonna have to really do what he just said. Had a huge impact on me just that documentary. 'Cause obviously, I've seen the film so much and there's a little bit of influence in there. There's a lot of Tokyo in there. There's a lot of Katsuhiro Otomo. And there's a lot of the director of 'Visitor Q'.

RAY TORO: Takashi Miike.

GERARD: There's a lot of him in this, you know? So, it's really crazy plan of like Andy Warhol, pop art, Japanese comics and filmmakers, and then really amazing science fiction filmmakers like Ridley Scott. Yeah, it's got to be the 'Night Of The Comet', 'cause I think 'Night Of The Comet' was a bit like - it was [similar] style - it feels like they're gonna look like they are making it up a little and just finding cool stuff and has a new-wave punk element to it, much like 'Repo Man', which was also... you look at the generic dog food cans and the vending machines in the middle of the desert, and that's what real 'Repo Man' [is]. We made all the stuff, we spent a long time making all the stuff. And then once we had done it, it was actually much larger than Black Parade. Like, I would say almost 20 times more art was created for this than Black Parade.

FRANK: It's actually 22 percent.

GERARD: Twenty-two percent more, and it was like everything down to the stickers on the car were made-up companies, but even the fonts on the stickers were - and the colours of the logos and everything was like that. And so, now that we have it, it doesn't feel like a prison like Black Parade did. Like, that was very uncomfortable and it was kind of that was the idea, very... military. This seems like something that I want to live in for the next two years and keep playing with.

FRANK: That's one of the greatest things here is that when you can live in this world, it can change and, well, it's like we were talking - [Lou] Reed how, [with the album] 'Transformer'. And then all of a sudden, you'd go see him on that tour, but it was different already. Like, he was already on to the next sheet. And this, I think this concept is the world [that] really allows us to [reach a higher] place and go find that within this world.

GERARD: Totally. Yeah. I want to keep doing it. Like, to me, we should still be doing this all the way up to the end of the cycle. I think it's gonna take a minute to get to the bigger shows to do that.