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My Chemical Romance: we are not a suicide death cult
Guitarist Ray Toro explains how the New Jersey arena rockers crafted an antidote to their death-obsessed theatrics
After the sensational critical reaction to the death-obsessed decadence of their 2006 concept album The Black Parade, arena rockers My Chemical Romance attempted to tone down the angst on their fourth LP. But the New Jersey quartet found they lacked inspiration once they’d abandoned the drama, and they’ve emerged with a new, futuristic twist on their trademark theatrics with Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Before the band gives the new material its Canadian debut on Saturday night (Dec. 17) at the Sound Academy (11 Polson), guitarist Ray Toro talked to EYE WEEKLY about MCR’s reliance on visual cues, and what exactly it feels like to be labeled a suicide death cult.
Four years between albums is a lengthy wait for a rock band. What took so long for Danger Days to see the light of day?
I think the Black Parade tour went a little longer than it should have by about six months. We were beat, so we took a break for about a year, and started writing again February 2009. We had talked a lot about what the sound was going to be like, and in a way we created the sound of the record before we’d even picked up our instruments.
We were looking to do a more stripped-down version of the band—we had done that cover of [Bob Dylan's] “Desolation Row” for the Watchmen soundtrack, and that was a much rawer sound than you’re used to hearing from My Chem. It was a response to the epic-ness of The Black Parade. The touring cycle was so hard for us physically and mentally, we saw that record and that sound as the enemy.
When we got close to the end of mixing, we realized we didn’t have a full album. So we got together with [producer] Rob Cavallo to record one or two more songs at the start of 2010, and when we recorded the song “Na Na Na,” it really opened things up for us. A lot of the flashes of creativity that you hear on Black Parade weren’t evident on [the discarded material.] We wrote a few more, and after about four songs we realized we were knee-deep in a new record, and that was Danger Days.
Commercially, The Black Parade was a massive success for My Chemical Romance, but in recent interviews, you guys talk about it as if you regret the whole thing ever happened. How did a platinum-selling album evolve into “the enemy?”
It’s a record I feel really proud of, and I don’t like to talk shit on it at all. I think the regrets come from the amount of touring we did and how we set up that record, taking on the persona of this imaginary band, The Black Parade. That persona was very antagonistic, [both] to the audience and to the press. It was a negative vibe, and that was the state of mind we lived in for two years. If anything, that’s where the regret comes from.
At its core, The Black Parade was an album about dying. How much of the negativity can be attributed to the subject matter?
You always have to listen to an album front to back to really get a sense of it, because the second half is where the ‘deep cuts’ are. With any record, most people only listen to the first four or five tracks. That’s true for a lot reviewers and listeners. Their idea of your music is [based on] the first four of five tracks and how you look in the videos. While The Black Parade dealt with death and [dark] subject matter, at the end of the record is the song “Famous Last Words,” which to me is the light at the end of the tunnel. The song’s message is very celebratory: “Get out and live your life.” The record plays out the way it does because it’s a journey. And not a lot of people want to take that roller-coaster ride, they only have 15 minutes to spend on a record.
Were you shocked with reaction of the British music press to The Black Parade?
We were paying a lot of attention to the press—it’s really hard not to. And they skewed very negative. We were being labeled as some kind of death cult. It was [being said] we were leading some sort of suicide revolution. And all this bullshit really weighed on us. It took its toll on the band. They didn’t get it. A lot of them deal in tabloid-ism and sensationalism. Papers like The Daily Mail, they’re not listening to the record, they’re going online and reading what other people are saying, and then it’s filtered down until they come up with their story.
We toured throughout Australia and Mexico, and we felt like we had targets on us. We were always going out there to prove something. That was the energy surrounding the touring of that record. We regret that all that stuff happened. There’s no regret about the music.
You talk about scaling back from the grandiosity of a concept album, but with the various storylines and spoken-word interludes, it seems like Danger Days does have a narrative running through it.
If we were to say it doesn’t have a concept, we’d be lying, but I think it’s a high concept. With Black Parade, we were trying to tell a story. It was along the lines of Pink Floyd’s The Wall—there were characters and whatnot. The one piece of information you’re given is it’s a transmission from the year 2019 by this pirate radio broadcaster named Dr. Death Defying, and he’s spinning records for you. How we got to that was the need for creativity. In 2009, we were trying to write this proto-punk record, but that’s all it was. And after four or five songs of that, we were kind of like, “What else is there?”
We capture that proto-punk sound on songs like “Vampire Money,” which totally does everything we were trying to do on that record all in one song. The problem with the 2009 record was we didn’t know what the cover art was gonna be, we didn’t know what the videos were going to look like. And [singer] Gerard [Way] had a tough time writing his lyrics because he didn’t know what the hell to write about.
Once we were given what Cavallo likes to call keystones, once we put ourselves in the mindset of what this band would sound like in 2019, then the doors started to open for us. Not every band works like that, but we need all that. We need the visual, the look, the artwork. We need that to inspire our music.
Carefully curated visuals have always been a staple at your live shows too. What will the live show experience be like for the Danger Days tour?
We haven’t played shows in two and a half years, so this is our chance to re-acclimate with the crowd, and with playing live. The set is very stripped-down. We have an American flag with the spider logo, our gear is painted like it would exist in the Killjoys’ world. We have a few props onstage, it’s very light. This tour is going to be more about lighting and smaller stage props. As opposed to The Black Parade, which had a giant stage setup, this epic landscape kind of like The Wall.
Gerard Way stirred up a lot of controversy when he told the Sunday Times that Danger Days was going to be My Chemical Romance’s “last big adventure.” Was he trying to say this will be the band’s final album?
No! Once again, the press takes something and twists it. What he actually said was along the lines of, “I want people to feel like this is the last big adventure.” This is not going to be our last record, it’s not our last adventure, but if you were to believe tomorrow was your last day, you’d probably do a lot of stuff you’d never done before. That’s what he was trying to say: “Let’s look at this as if it’s our last big chance.”
The songwriting on Danger Days is much more varied than on past albums, and the biggest departure is probably “Summertime.” What inspired you guys to craft what sounds like an '80s new-wave ballad?
“Summertime” was slowly built up as the record was taking shape. The sound does harken back to this ‘80s vibe, and I think that happened when Gerard was writing the lyrics. It was a cool departure for him. The lyrics are about what it was like for him as a teenager, but he’s also writing about the summer he met his wife on [Linkin Park’s] Projekt Revolution tour.
Has opening up the band’s sound allowed you to explore a wider range of guitar styles?
Black Parade was a little more restrictive in terms of what I could do, but every song on this record is very different, and that was a great challenge. I felt there were a lot more opportunities to do a lot of different styles guitar playing-wise. One of my favourite guitar players is David Gilmour, I love what he does. My favourite solo of his is on the song “Mother.” The whole song is acoustic, and once it gets to that solo, you literally feel your body being lifted into the air. That’s what I want to do with my stuff—increase the scope of the songs, I want to lift the listener’s spirit.
Source
After the sensational critical reaction to the death-obsessed decadence of their 2006 concept album The Black Parade, arena rockers My Chemical Romance attempted to tone down the angst on their fourth LP. But the New Jersey quartet found they lacked inspiration once they’d abandoned the drama, and they’ve emerged with a new, futuristic twist on their trademark theatrics with Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Before the band gives the new material its Canadian debut on Saturday night (Dec. 17) at the Sound Academy (11 Polson), guitarist Ray Toro talked to EYE WEEKLY about MCR’s reliance on visual cues, and what exactly it feels like to be labeled a suicide death cult.
Four years between albums is a lengthy wait for a rock band. What took so long for Danger Days to see the light of day?
I think the Black Parade tour went a little longer than it should have by about six months. We were beat, so we took a break for about a year, and started writing again February 2009. We had talked a lot about what the sound was going to be like, and in a way we created the sound of the record before we’d even picked up our instruments.
We were looking to do a more stripped-down version of the band—we had done that cover of [Bob Dylan's] “Desolation Row” for the Watchmen soundtrack, and that was a much rawer sound than you’re used to hearing from My Chem. It was a response to the epic-ness of The Black Parade. The touring cycle was so hard for us physically and mentally, we saw that record and that sound as the enemy.
When we got close to the end of mixing, we realized we didn’t have a full album. So we got together with [producer] Rob Cavallo to record one or two more songs at the start of 2010, and when we recorded the song “Na Na Na,” it really opened things up for us. A lot of the flashes of creativity that you hear on Black Parade weren’t evident on [the discarded material.] We wrote a few more, and after about four songs we realized we were knee-deep in a new record, and that was Danger Days.
Commercially, The Black Parade was a massive success for My Chemical Romance, but in recent interviews, you guys talk about it as if you regret the whole thing ever happened. How did a platinum-selling album evolve into “the enemy?”
It’s a record I feel really proud of, and I don’t like to talk shit on it at all. I think the regrets come from the amount of touring we did and how we set up that record, taking on the persona of this imaginary band, The Black Parade. That persona was very antagonistic, [both] to the audience and to the press. It was a negative vibe, and that was the state of mind we lived in for two years. If anything, that’s where the regret comes from.
At its core, The Black Parade was an album about dying. How much of the negativity can be attributed to the subject matter?
You always have to listen to an album front to back to really get a sense of it, because the second half is where the ‘deep cuts’ are. With any record, most people only listen to the first four or five tracks. That’s true for a lot reviewers and listeners. Their idea of your music is [based on] the first four of five tracks and how you look in the videos. While The Black Parade dealt with death and [dark] subject matter, at the end of the record is the song “Famous Last Words,” which to me is the light at the end of the tunnel. The song’s message is very celebratory: “Get out and live your life.” The record plays out the way it does because it’s a journey. And not a lot of people want to take that roller-coaster ride, they only have 15 minutes to spend on a record.
Were you shocked with reaction of the British music press to The Black Parade?
We were paying a lot of attention to the press—it’s really hard not to. And they skewed very negative. We were being labeled as some kind of death cult. It was [being said] we were leading some sort of suicide revolution. And all this bullshit really weighed on us. It took its toll on the band. They didn’t get it. A lot of them deal in tabloid-ism and sensationalism. Papers like The Daily Mail, they’re not listening to the record, they’re going online and reading what other people are saying, and then it’s filtered down until they come up with their story.
We toured throughout Australia and Mexico, and we felt like we had targets on us. We were always going out there to prove something. That was the energy surrounding the touring of that record. We regret that all that stuff happened. There’s no regret about the music.
You talk about scaling back from the grandiosity of a concept album, but with the various storylines and spoken-word interludes, it seems like Danger Days does have a narrative running through it.
If we were to say it doesn’t have a concept, we’d be lying, but I think it’s a high concept. With Black Parade, we were trying to tell a story. It was along the lines of Pink Floyd’s The Wall—there were characters and whatnot. The one piece of information you’re given is it’s a transmission from the year 2019 by this pirate radio broadcaster named Dr. Death Defying, and he’s spinning records for you. How we got to that was the need for creativity. In 2009, we were trying to write this proto-punk record, but that’s all it was. And after four or five songs of that, we were kind of like, “What else is there?”
We capture that proto-punk sound on songs like “Vampire Money,” which totally does everything we were trying to do on that record all in one song. The problem with the 2009 record was we didn’t know what the cover art was gonna be, we didn’t know what the videos were going to look like. And [singer] Gerard [Way] had a tough time writing his lyrics because he didn’t know what the hell to write about.
Once we were given what Cavallo likes to call keystones, once we put ourselves in the mindset of what this band would sound like in 2019, then the doors started to open for us. Not every band works like that, but we need all that. We need the visual, the look, the artwork. We need that to inspire our music.
Carefully curated visuals have always been a staple at your live shows too. What will the live show experience be like for the Danger Days tour?
We haven’t played shows in two and a half years, so this is our chance to re-acclimate with the crowd, and with playing live. The set is very stripped-down. We have an American flag with the spider logo, our gear is painted like it would exist in the Killjoys’ world. We have a few props onstage, it’s very light. This tour is going to be more about lighting and smaller stage props. As opposed to The Black Parade, which had a giant stage setup, this epic landscape kind of like The Wall.
Gerard Way stirred up a lot of controversy when he told the Sunday Times that Danger Days was going to be My Chemical Romance’s “last big adventure.” Was he trying to say this will be the band’s final album?
No! Once again, the press takes something and twists it. What he actually said was along the lines of, “I want people to feel like this is the last big adventure.” This is not going to be our last record, it’s not our last adventure, but if you were to believe tomorrow was your last day, you’d probably do a lot of stuff you’d never done before. That’s what he was trying to say: “Let’s look at this as if it’s our last big chance.”
The songwriting on Danger Days is much more varied than on past albums, and the biggest departure is probably “Summertime.” What inspired you guys to craft what sounds like an '80s new-wave ballad?
“Summertime” was slowly built up as the record was taking shape. The sound does harken back to this ‘80s vibe, and I think that happened when Gerard was writing the lyrics. It was a cool departure for him. The lyrics are about what it was like for him as a teenager, but he’s also writing about the summer he met his wife on [Linkin Park’s] Projekt Revolution tour.
Has opening up the band’s sound allowed you to explore a wider range of guitar styles?
Black Parade was a little more restrictive in terms of what I could do, but every song on this record is very different, and that was a great challenge. I felt there were a lot more opportunities to do a lot of different styles guitar playing-wise. One of my favourite guitar players is David Gilmour, I love what he does. My favourite solo of his is on the song “Mother.” The whole song is acoustic, and once it gets to that solo, you literally feel your body being lifted into the air. That’s what I want to do with my stuff—increase the scope of the songs, I want to lift the listener’s spirit.
Source