{"id":800406,"date":"2019-10-16T06:31:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T12:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocksound.tv\/news\/read\/gerard-way-on-starting-my-chemical-romance-it-became-my-therapy"},"modified":"2019-10-16T06:31:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T12:31:00","slug":"gerard-way-on-starting-my-chemical-romance-it-became-my-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/gerard-way-on-starting-my-chemical-romance-it-became-my-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerard Way On Starting My Chemical Romance: \u201cIt Became My Therapy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“I wanted to build worlds with music”<\/em> – Gerard Way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Over the weekend Gerard Way<\/strong> made an appearance as a speaker at the Los Angeles Comic Con, with his own main stage panel.<\/p>\n

While the panel<\/a> was hosted at a convention for comic books, Gerard actually spoke at length about his entire career history – mapping the course of his multiple creative pursuits from high school, through to now. Everything from being kicked out of his first band (because he couldn’t play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ on the guitar), to being ready to pitch a television show to Cartoon Network on the day of 9\/11, through to forming My Chemical Romance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Covering the very early years, even before My Chemical Romance, Gerard explains how he met MCR bandmate Ray Toro through a friend at art school, and remembers meeting him and thinking “this is the greatest guitar player ever<\/em>“. Wholesome. <\/p>\n

Speaking on the moment that he formed My Chem, Gerard shared “So 9\/11 happens, and I pick up the guitar again and I write \u2018Skylines And Turnstiles\u2019, and then I called Otter [Matt Pellissier, drummer] and then I called Ray, and we got Mikey [Way, bassist] in – and we just started building this momentum.”<\/em><\/p>\n

He continues, “It became my therapy from the PTSD that everyone had experienced from 9\/11, and processing that.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And despite getting kicked out of his first band for not being able to play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ on guitar, that never held him back in regards to songwriting, with Gerard sharing “Regardless of what skill I had at the guitar, I was always able to write songs. Even back in my old art school band I was writing songs.”<\/em><\/p>\n

He continued, speaking on his early collaborations with bandmate Ray Toro, “[He] really helped transpose those ideas that I would have into something that masde sense. He\u2019s just such a good guitar player – sometimes I would just be able to sing something to him and he could play it and make it a lot cooler. If I couldn\u2019t play it on the guitar, I would just sing it to him. And that\u2019s how we generated the sound of the band – we\u2019d just sit together and sometimes I\u2019d have a guitar, sometimes not, and then Ray would have his own ideas. He learned how to play by listening to metal records, so he would play along to Metallica<\/strong> records and stuff, and Pantera<\/strong> records, and that\u2019s how he figured it out. So he would help get this stuff out of me, and that formed the sound.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And as for the sound they were trying to capture in the early years of My Chem? “We were trying to take bits of everything we loved, like driving and fast punk, but then it\u2019ll have metal, and the lyrics will be like storyteller lyrics,” <\/em>Gerard shared. “I really liked Nick Cave<\/strong> and he was a storyteller, and there wasn\u2019t 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\u2026 Pop-punk was about the high school experience, boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. I wanted to build worlds with music, and that\u2019s what we started to do together in bringing in gothic elements, or bringing in vampires, and building this thing.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And the rest is (almost) history – and Gerard acknowledges that MCR always had a momentum, right from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

“There was always a momentum in My Chemical Romance – we\u2019d have our first practice and it\u2019d work. We\u2019d have our second practice and we\u2019d have a new song. Third practice we\u2019d have Mikey on bass. Every week there was a new thing that happened, and then eventually Frank [Iero] joined the band, and we never stopped. It was like \u2018oh, we have a show\u2019, \u2018oh we have another show\u2019, \u2018oh, we\u2019re opening up for Jimmy Eat World<\/strong>\u2019. It all happened really fast – there was a real momentum to it.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The whole 30 minute panel is worth a watch if you have the time – check it out below: