I’ve noticed a number of threads dedicated to My Chemical Romance so I figured it would be time to have a sit down with MCR lead singer Gerard Way about their new album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, being depressed and former Energizer spokesperson Jacko.

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Daniel Robert Epstein: The new album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, feels a little poppier than the previous one. Would you agree?

Gerard Way: Absolutely, there was a song on the first record called Headfirst for Halos. That was a breakthrough for the band because it allowed us to do whatever we wanted. We came to grips with the fact that we could play a song like that keep the lyrics excessively morbid and stay true to our nature. When we made this record we didn’t hold ourselves back at all and we were a band that could play that song so it was natural progression for an overall pop vibe. But we did try to make the lyrics darker than the first record.

DRE: Do you feel like you were successful in that respect?

GW: I felt like it was very successful. There are some very subversive things in there lyrically and a lot of stuff that comes in under the radar. We got slapped with a PA [Pop Adult] not for cursing, because there is only one curse on the record, but for lyrical content. That wasn’t the goal but it was to give it a little more sense of reality. Brutality mixed in with the beauty. There is a duality to the band. The pop needs to be dark.

DRE: Do you think it will disappoint fans who liked the previous album?

GW: It hasn’t yet. I think kids find Bullets to be very special to them so I think it’s going to be very hard for them to have this record seem like a better one. They had the previous one for a year and a half. All those people that bought that record made us who we are. The band and I think the new record is better. It’s a band that’s grown and evolved, when we made the first record we were only a band for three months. From touring we became the band we are now and that’s reflected onto the album.

DRE: Some people labeled the first album as a concept album.

GW: Well the thing is each song is a story onto itself. I’m a big fan of guys like Tom Waits and Nick Cave who are both storytellers. At the time when we put out that record I had a sense that there was a lack of story in lyrics, at least in modern punks, it was mainly stuff about heartbreak. The first album was more autobiographical with me trying to get a lot of crap out of me and Three Cheers is more biographic of being in a band. It feels like a concept record.

DRE: What made you not want to make this album not as personal for yourself?

GW: There was brief amount of time where I wanted to write fiction. I think you can get some great metaphor and touch some people personally through fiction. I’m happy that experiment was a success.

DRE: So you think this album is more depressing than the previous?

GW: I think it’s more uplifting and positive actually. We’re all a lot more mature and we look at life in a different way. You really learn a lot about yourself after touring for two years. You either sink or swim so you have to mature otherwise you’ll regress and not get along with everyone anymore. We look at the tragedies that happened in our lives differently now.

DRE: Do you guys still fuck with each other?

GW: If you mean, have a good time, then definitely. We play a lot of fucken videogames, watch a lot of movies and goof off. What we do take seriously is that time on stage. The rest of the time is basically trying to kill boredom. We drink and party but not too though sometimes it gets excessive like waking up with a hangover and throwing up.

DRE: How was the change from Eyeball to Reprise Records?

GW: It was very easy. No one ever tried to hold us back from what we wanted to do from day one. I don’t think there was any question about us taking that kind of opportunity. We were very open with that to our fans and everyone. There is stuff we feel very strongly about like the themes of punk rock. Things are more about marketing than it is about making people feel good. When you have a band like Thrice that raises all this money to put kids through college without telling anybody about it and then awarded it to kids, that’s cool.

DRE: Was anyone calling the band sellouts?

GW: Not to my face. It’s never been like that. We haven’t lost any fans in fact our fanbase has been growing. People really stick by us. We have some of the most special fans in the world. We’re the underdogs and we’ve always had to fight. Our fans are like underdogs too so they root for us. When we got signed even our punk rock kid fans were thrilled.

DRE: How was it working with Howard Benson as producer?

GW: It was awesome. He didn’t want to mess with who we were at all. Song structure was key with him though. Some of the best songs on the first record are almost six minutes long. When we played them live, there are definitely moments in those songs where we lost a little momentum, so you start to question things. Now we would be practicing in preproduction and he would ask about a certain part we were going into. We would say that this is this interesting interlude and he would say that interlude isn’t doing or saying anything important. He really taught us a great deal about song structure. He really was a coach. He didn’t want to mess up the mold at all.

DRE: I read that you got hooked on anti-depressants a few years ago.

GW: I think that’s been misconstrued but I definitely used them as crutch. Anti-depressants are pretty hard to get hooked on especially something like Welbutrin. I was using it to get me through some hard times. I needed to work on those things myself.

DRE: Welbutrin is what Jim Varney used.

GW: Jim Varney?

DRE: Jim Varney was Ernest. That was his anti-depressant.

GW: Oh, he died. That’s incidental.

DRE: You don’t seem like you know too much about Jim Varney.

GW: Well I’ve seen the Ernest films. I think that it’s a tragedy that just when he was about to not make Ernest films he died. That’s kind of a drag because he was in a couple of normal films not playing Ernest. I thought he would break out.

I have a question for you. Did Ernest start out doing a Sprite commercial?

DRE: He actually started doing local commercials.

GW: Yes but when America first discovered Ernest it was in a Sprite commercial. We were trying to figure this out recently. Ernest wasn’t really a character until after he started doing the movies. He started out like the Energizer bunny or like Jacko.

DRE: I love Jacko.

GW: He could have gone on to make Jacko Goes to Camp. I would have loved to have seen Jacko Goes to Jail.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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