thank you emily for this 🙂↕️ transcribed it under the cut so its easier to see all that he said
[Michael Melham]: They could not have been more sincere and more appreciative in their own ways that, I kept thanking them for having me there in the afternoon, and they kept thanking me for being there, and it was like—we really gelled well, and they just couldn’t—I mean, I gave them custom street signs, you know, “My Chemical Romance Way”, I gave them four of them, they just—I mean, Frank was elated. Elated at this whole thing. I mean, he literally said to me when we were eating lunch together, and he says to me: ‘Can I tell you something?’ he goes, ‘I’m a little more excited about the key than I am about the performance tonight.’ I handed him the key backstage, he goes, ‘are you gonna be down here for a little bit more?’ I’m like, yeah I got, I think about another ten minutes with you guys. He goes, ‘I’m gonna run upstairs and show this to my mom.’ I mean, like, they were so sincere and such great guys.
[Melham]: I said to Gerard, uh, because we were all talking, there’s some great photos of us in a circle talking, and then as Gerard and I started getting into the storyline of it all, I noticed everybody had kinda faded away and it was just us two talking. And, you know, I said to him, are you sure? Are you sure “Welcome To The Black Parade” is the time to do this? He said, ‘yeah, that’s when I wanna do it.’ I said okay. He goes, ‘so, the song is gonna start, and then we’re gonna interrupt it.’ I’m like. You know your crowd better than I do. Is this a good idea? He goes, ‘this is what we’re gonna do.’ I said okay, but, I’m the one that has to walk out and interrupt it. And again, I had done my homework, I had seen—that whole song is a production, I mean, it’s not just two stagehands that wheel out the podium. That’s part of it. When those stagehands wheel out that podium three or four or five songs in, the crowd goes crazy. And then they die down. And he suspiciously walks around and he touches it a little bit, crowd goes crazy. And then he gets to the podium, and the first note of that piano, the crowd goes crazy. And then you’re gonna stop it? I have to walk out? Like—and uh, yeah. So he goes, yeah, so then we got back into, you know, who’s gonna carry it out and they’re gonna have—they thought maybe The Clerk was gonna carry it out or somebody they call The Twins, but I forget who else carried it out, you know, again, I’m a logistics guy. And I’m saying to him, so, okay, um; and I’ve spoken in large venues before and I understand acoustics and I understand how that all works, I’m like, so, when I’m gonna be up there you guys have earpieces in. And that’s like a monitor for you guys. And I said, you know, I’m only going for about a minute, and I kinda know what I’m gonna say and I kinda— I’m a public speaker, I know how to listen for a reaction from the crowd; I didn’t wanna step out of myself, if I said something and there was a delay and the crowd clapped and I started stepping out—I didn’t wanna do that. I said, so, you know, with the delay it’s gonna be difficult. And Gerard said, ‘yeah, yeah it’s gonna be difficult.’ Okay. So thank you. Feel great about that.
And then we’re talking about the—you know, he was very coy, and again something that was amazingly gracious about him, was that he went out of his way not knowing my understanding of the band or of this particular tour or the characters that they play. He went out of his way to make sure that I felt very comfortable, and that nothing shockingly was gonna happen that I was gonna feel was a slight or as act of disrespect, he went out of his way to say, ‘you know we’re gonna be in character. We’re not My Chemical Romance up there. We will be the Character and we’re staying in character.’ I said yeah, you know, I’ve seen the performance, I thought that, and he was kinda setting me up a little bit to—to—without telling me exactly what’s gonna happen, he goes, ‘there is gonna be an exchange.’ I said okay, I said, so I give you the large key, I said, are you taking it? He goes, he thought about it, he goes, ‘uh, I’m not sure what the Character’s gonna do with that moment. So, I’m just gonna need you to work with me.’ Okay. I will work with you. Uh, I can do that. And he goes, ‘there’s gonna be an exchange’, I said okay, he goes, ‘we’re probably gonna give you like, uh, a sickle from our land.’ I said okay. He goes, ‘and… probably an animal.’ I go, an animal? He goes, ‘an animal.’ I said, like an animal. He goes, ‘like an animal.’ I said okay. I go, am I gonna have to like, carry it out? Or drag it out? So he looks and he thinks about it, he looks to his right, he goes, ‘let’s cancel the animal.’ And the animal is out. Little did I know that they replaced it with a, with a fish.
[Melham]: Crowd just goes crazy and it goes perfect, I get off, I grab the key, I walk over, as I was walking out, and when Gerard announced me, as I went up the manager grabs me, he goes; Franks gonna’s take it. Frank’s gonna take it. So, okay. I’m done, I grab the key, I walk over to Frank, I didn’t know they were gonna be bowing on their knees. I give it to Frank, and, uh, part of me was saying—the one, I went into this with one rule. I said once I hand the key, ‘cause Gerard said ‘work with me up there’. I said, this is not my show. I dont wanna be the—if I feel the exchange is gonna happen, I’m just gonna fade—fade right offstage. I dont wanna be the guy that they send a hook for. So for a while if you watched that, I hand it to Frank, I take two steps back, and I’m looking around, assessing what’s going on, and I’m not seeing Gerard do much. And, uh, eventually Gerard gets up, he starts walking toward the mic, and, again, I don’t know if there’s gonna be an exchange or not. So I start to back up, and he grabs the mic and he goes, ‘we have an honour from our land,’ you know, he grabs the wheat and he hands it, he goes, ‘may your house never go hungry’ or something like that, he hands me the wheat, and I hold it up in the air, the crowd goes crazy, and then the butler stands there with this giant fish. And I’m going, what the fuck is that? And Gerard says, ‘we have another thing! It was caught from the moat outside—‘ I wasn’t following it, but he takes—plops it on me, and it’s been widely reported in some outlets that this was a prop fish. Was not. This was a—
[Mike Brunn]: This was a real fish.
[Melham]: off, dead, stinky fish. He—eyes looking at me;
[Brunn]: And from where I was sitting in the low 100s, this thing looked big.
[Melham]: It was. It was 30 inches—um, you know, and—and—and that was the, I think that was the humorous part because, one, nobody, none of the fifty-five thousand people knew it was a live fish. Though it was a joke between us, because it didn’t mean anything to anybody else that was there. I will say, you know, interestingly, and looking at the photo that’s now out there of the fish, they actually wrapped it in newspaper, but it had cherry blossoms branches in it, and, you know, Belleville’s the Cherry Blossom Capital of America, it’s literally our slogan, and I thought that was an amazing touch. But, you know, one thing—there were two things that Gerard said backstage, one, he wanted to make sure that i was clear that they were gonna remain in character, and he said so genuinely sincere to me, um, when we were talking about that, he said, ‘none of this is a joke on you.’ He goes, ‘the characters may do something funny up there, or it may turn funny’, uh, but he made it so—it was so sincere when he said it to me, he goes, ‘none of this is poking fun at you.’ And I never took it that way, which was great. Uh, and I was—and he even said, toward the end of the show in the last couple songs they were in the centre there, out of nowhere, he did a call-out to me again and said, ‘hey, Mayor Melham’s a great sport, he had no idea we were giving him a fish, uh, but he was a great sport about it.’ And the place cheered about it, of course. Which is very—my concern was, I was, if you recall, I was in all black, I was in black pants, a black sports coat, and I said, you guys interrupt the song and I come up there but—they might think I’m a stagehand. Or, you know, they might think I’m part of the team. And I said, is somebody going to introduce me? And, uh, the manager said, ‘well, let’s talk to Gerard about that.’ And Gerard said that he would introduce me, and he thought for a second, and he goes, ‘but honestly, I don’t know what, in that moment, what the Character’s gonna say. But I’ll introduce you.’ Because, you know, I knew that I was gonna be a minute. And, and also, keep in mind, most people believe that Gerard and Mikey are from Belleville. And while they are, it’s actually Frank that was actually born and raised there. Mikey and Gerard were raised here, um, but…
[Brunn]: And Ray lived, like, a mile or two away, right?
[Melham]: Yeah, he’s in Kearny, right across the river, and he—he was great, too. He kinda stayed a little bit in the background, and when I was chatting with him when I gave him his key, he goes, ‘you know, I feel this really isn’t for me,’ I say, listen. You’re an honorary Bellevillite today, I just decreed that, you have it. But I am gonna take that sharpie over there and put a little asterisk next to your plaque. You’re not really from Belleville. I told him, you know, I said, listen, most people think that’s just Gerard and Mikey’s. So, and I told him—and Frank ate this up, by the way, when I told him— I said, Frank, you know, like historically people think that My Chemical Romance grew up on Liberty Street. Liberty Street is a nice suburban residential street by our high school. Uh, but I’ve come to find out that Mikey and Gerard were actually from the Silver Lake section, which is way across town. And so I said, just so you know, Frank, everybody that thinks that My Chemical Romance are from Belleville, they think of your house as the “My Chemical Romance House”. And he was grinning.
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