True Romance
THE PUBLIC FACE OF EMO, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE WERE FIRMLY IN THE FIRING LINE WHEN A 13-YEAR-OLD FAN TOOK HER OWN LIFE IN BRITAIN. THEIR RESPONSE? TO DITCH THE HIGH-SCHOOL GOTH-ISMS AND COME BACK BIGGER, BRIGHTER AND MORE GLORIOUSLY CARTOONISH THAN EVER.
Peter Murphy, 22 Feb 2011
You might regard New Jersey's My Chemical Romance as the purveyors of high-concept designer emo epics, or you might more favourably (and accurately) consider them a garish melange of comic strip and future-shock melodrama channeled through high volume rock 'n' roll. For all the complex hair, goth overtones and soft focus ultraviolence, MCR recall Bob Ezrin's productions for Alice and KISS, or rock opera epics like Tommy, burnished with Queen-ly grandeur. The band's fourth album Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, the follow up to their multi- million selling 2006 magnum opus The Black Parade, feels like a visual event as much as a musical one (the videos for the singles 'Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)' and 'Sing' take the form of sci-fi shorts informed by Mad Max and manga). Singer Gerard Way, for his part, doesn't differentiate between audio and visual: he sees his band's albums as cityscapes cinemascoped in sound. He is also, it's worth mentioning, one of the few rock musicians in proud possession of an Eisner award, for his 2008 graphic novel The Umbrella Academy.
"That gave me a lot of skills this time with Danger Days," Way admits. "I enjoy sitting in a hotel room and writing all night. I generally have stuff to do during the day, but when I don't I'll sit backstage and do the same exact thing. Something the band does musically is create worlds, and I think we do that every time we make a record. Obviously the music is the most important, but the visual is almost tied for importance. Even if it's not a concept record with a strict storyline or characters, every single album should have a world that the music lives in. I think we always have to do something ambitious. This time, apart from the music, there was almost twenty times more art created than for Black Parade. It took a year to do all of it and get it ready."
Would he ever consider extending the album's visual concepts into an art exhibition or a film or musical?
"I think I would enjoy a setting in which people could see the car up close, and the costumes, and all the graphic design and sketches that ended up inspiring all that stuff. Once it's warranted I think it would be really cool. I can't really see it as a musical, but some kind of visual thing, like a TV show. I've always been a fan of series like the original of The Prisoner, I saw it as a kid, they did a Sci-fi Channel marathon of it when they first launched the network, so I would really see it as something like that. I actually feel like rock music and comic books and horror movies have a strong connection. One of the interesting things I paid attention to on this record – ‘cos there’s a bit of a psychedelic element on certain tracks like ‘S.C.A.R.E.C.R.O.W’ – is that the psychedelic rock movement actually had a lot to do with comics, if you look at the old fliers, Dr Strange and things like that."
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