Kevin & Bean: My Chemical Romance Look On The Bright Side, Redefine Emo

My Chemical Romance stopped by the Kevin & Bean Show

The descriptive musical term, “emo,”  is used to denote the overly-wrought, dark-tinged punk-revival sound that became most popular in the 1990s. What many people tend to forget when they think of the “emo” scene is that “emo” is not short for “depressed, misanthropic, gothic teenager” but for “emotional.” Embracing the full scope of one’s emotions–no matter how torturous or bittersweet–can lead to profound and positive change.

Labeled for years as “emo,” My Chemical Romance is one of those bands that suffered from the stifling shackles of that label, yet forged ahead without letting the weight of their emotions bring them down–becoming what Kevin & Bean proclaimed as “one of the biggest bands in the world.” In a way, My Chemical Romance is the exact definition of what it is to be emo; not seething with a self-involved masturbatory morbidity, but responding passionately to life’s many beautiful and complex obstacles while making something positive out of it all. Even if My Chemical Romance are just “making it up as they go.”

Getting up early is hard in general; getting up on a Monday morning is even harder. Combine that with a rock star status and an insanely packed schedule: getting up early is even harder. With My Chemical Romance, you would never know that it was 8am on a Monday morning; Gerard Way (lead vocals), Ray Toro (lead guitar), Frank Iero(rhythm guitar) and Mikey Way (bass guitar) were all under the gun to perform. They did so with utter charm and frank affability. Perhaps due to the fact that their first album in four years, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, was officially being released today, there were no Monday morning blues for these boys. “ So I think we were trying to say 'Let's not do that. Let's not make something totally great. Let's just make something really good. And let's get it on the radio...yeah, yeah, let's make something average.
” My Chemical Romance

Kevin & Bean immediately got down and dirty, skimming over the fact that they’d been missing in (studio) action for the last couple of years and inquired about the rumor that My Chemical Romance totally scrapped the first draft of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. The band answered:

“That’s true! Yeah, that’s what happened. We did this entire album; it took a year to do. We start taking photos, we’re about to put this thing out and it just didn’t feel right. Everyone could kind of feel it. Then we met up with Rob [Cavallo]. And then we had a talk with him. [We] had just written “Na Na,” whipped it out, we all worked on it together, arranged it, went and did it…It was 11:59 basically. It was the last possible minute we could have done it…I didn’t feel like we took the band to the next level.”

“We didn’t reinvent the band. I think we were still scared about what we had created with ‘Black Parade’ and we didn’t want to go down the road again so we set up all these rules. We kind of defined the record we wanted to make before we made it. And then once we made it, we said ‘Oh I guess we did what we set out to do’…it was kind of like, you know, whenever we try to make something great and we make something great and daring and dangerous it stirs up the pot and it causes all kinds of stuff. So I think we were trying to say ‘Let’s not do that. Let’s not make something totally great. Let’s just make something really good. And let’s get it on the radio…yeah, yeah, let’s make something average.’”

“Danger days is kind of what it takes to–kind of–make the great thing. It’s the thing you’re too afraid of to make the great album. True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys refers to us, the fans, all the artists that we know that help shape this record. It’s about the artists. It’s for the artists…you were expecting, ‘Well, it’s about these guys from a magical land that cast spells.”

Contrary to stereotype, My Chemical Romance is a band that is constantly quipping and exchanging tongue-in-cheek jabs back and forth; there is no sign of tragic pessimism or contrived darkness. In fact, just as their banter was spontaneous and effusive, so was their decision to re-do their fourth album. They said:

“It was organic. We had written four new songs before we had decided to re-do everything and the four songs that we wrote were so much better than the thirty that we wrote last year…You know, that was kind of the thinking. Let’s kind of make it feel–hijacked. And let’s not over think it.”

“I think the vocals are the first take; the lyrics, there’s no editing. I think it’s pretty interesting. And then the rest of the record we just kind of grabbed onto ”Na Na” and let the momentum of “Na Na” carry us through the rest of the album. Before we knew it, we were re-doing the rest of the album.”

“ I think that's a lot of thinking going into making the album. Like, let's just put it out and run. Like, setting a bomb off.
” My Chemical Romance

One of the most exciting components of My Chemical Romance is their stage presence and their theatricality.
As a band, their look is very dramatic and the concepts of their albums have been complex. But Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, is both their most pop-centric, light-hearted album and their least contrived piece of work: “Well, it’s got kind of this high concept. There is really no story, so it’s basically like a transmission from 2019 via pirate radio station in opposition to a utopian city. And that’s the high concept…you know when you were talking about ‘we’re sitting here making it up as we go along?’ We are making it up…we’re just trying to create a world that you can live in inside. Hear the lines, color inside them.”

Their newly-minted dance track, “Planetary Go,” is their first adventure into dance-driven beats and is something they always wanted to do:

“‘Planetary Go’ is a song we’ve been trying to write for like six years. We’ve always wanted to write like a dance-y, beat kind of song, it emerges on some of the records but we never got the point that we succeeded in it…It’s a banger. You listen to it and you think, ‘I just want to see these kids dance!”

Another song destined to be a hit is “The Only Hope For Me Is You,” which was from their ditched first attempt at the album and has been dramatically changed. Just like the band themselves. My Chemical Romance has an endearing chemistry that is both an obvious product of their ten years together as a band and each individual members general likeability. They are not only rock stars but good guys and family men. The band members described their new outlook–and responsibilities:

“I think we are just gonna be smarter about it. More strategic. You know, we’re family men now…[Family has] made it a lot better. It’s just made the family larger and I think it’s made us all really close. They’re all uncles and we’re all uncles to Frank’s babies too. I mean, I love it. We’ve been together for ten years…When we tour, we’re gonna have a family bus…I think it’s a little too soon to do overseas stuff, but yeah, states it’s just going to be like a huge traveling nursery. It’s going to be amazing.  I’m actually pretty psyched about it.”

It is moments like this, where we see the real men behind the music, that we realize how deeply changed My Chemical Romance are as both people and rock stars, and how they’ve infused their music with these burgeoning, growth-fueled emotions. Even the normally cruel critics have taken to their new sound; New Music Express in Britain wrote that “this is the best rock record of the year, by such a margin, that you actually feel rather embarrassed for everyone else.”

The band responded to this praise with both humility and rationality: “That stuff’s really flattering. Especially this record, this record’s really been about–though–not paying attention to positive or negative press. Like, anything that kind of happens after today is basically of no interest to me. I think that’s a lot of thinking going into making the album.  Like,  let’s just put it out and run. Like, setting a bomb off.”

From what we’ve heard, this is a bomb we wouldn’t mind getting hit by.

My Chemical Romance Interview – Part 1

My Chemical Romance Interview – Part 2

My Chemical Romance – Part 3

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My Chemical Romance Record Release Show…