#(may 2005)

As My Chemical Romance passed through Edmonton as the sole opener for the Green Day North American tour, Frank Iero was nice enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions. He was really cool and gave some intelligent answers and made for a great interview. My friend Jacey helped with some questions and pops in a few times during the interview. Thanks a lot to Frank for doing the interview and to Laura for setting it up. Enjoy!

Please Note: All pictures were taken, without permission, from the band’s site.

Bobby: Starting with the simple questions, you guys have been touring with Green Day for quite a while now. How has that been going?

Frank: Oh man, it’s been amazing. I can’t believe tomorrows our last day. It’s one of those things that you get the phone call, and since you were thirteen you wanted to tour with Green Day, at least play a show or see them or something; and when they ask you to tour with them, it kind of blows your mind. You don’t think that they are asking the right band. But this tour has been amazing. We’ve go to hang out with our heroes who treat us like peers. And we get to watch Green Day every night, so that’s pretty cool.

Bobby: Has there been any really memorable moments from it so far?

Frank: Ah man, there’s so many. I mean, the shows are just insane. The shows are unlike any shows we’ve ever played. The kids are great. In fact, it shows that we’ve been playing really well because it takes a while to get used to an arena, you know? But there’s also other memorable stuff that we’ve done outside of the show on the tour. Just hanging out. Like we all went to go see Star Wars together, the other day we went to a Water Park in town. You know what I’m talking about? That was ridiculous.

Bobby/Jacey: Yeah. The one in the mall?

Frank: Yeah, that one. They take us on dates and stuff, it’s really cool.

Bobby: How did you end up getting the opening spot? Like did they just call you, or what?

Frank: Basically, that’s how it happened. The way things work is that a tour will be planned for a headlining band. And then support bands will submit for the tour and say “Hey, we’d love to go out with you”, you know, “consider us.” So I guess we submitted for it, and they picked us. It was ridiculous too because there’s only two bands and that’s really unheard of these days. Usually it’s like a three band bill, four band bill. And for us just to be us and Green Day… It’s not like they picked us because they needed us to sell tickets or something, like they didn’t need us at all. They just liked our band, and that was really flattering.

Bobby: You guys also recently ended the Taste of Chaos tour with The Used. How was that?

Frank: That was fun. That tour was really different because it was a lot of bands that we had toured with back in the day. Bands like Underoath, Senses Fail, and A Static Lullaby we tour with… I guess two years ago and we were doing hundred person rooms, three hundred person rooms. And The Used we toured with a bunch. So it was like all our friends getting together. And when all our friends got together, we could play arenas; and that was really weird. We’d all kind of look at each other and say “Is this real?” But I guess that’s the beauty of it.

Bobby: On the tour, for your encore you guys and The Used did a cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” and now you are selling it on iTunes. Why did you decide to do that song?

Frank: Well, it was one of those things that Bert brought up and said “I really want to cover this song; I think it would be awesome if both our bands did it.” And we were like “O yeah, that’s rad!” We love Queen. We love David Bowie. But a lot of things in the industry happen where it’s like “Let’s do this!” and then it never happens. So I guess fortunately, and unfortunately… Unfortunately the tragedy happened and fortunately the song came into fruition because we wanted to do something for the disaster. So I think that kind of sparked it. We recorded our parts in L.A. right before we did the “Helena” video; and the Used did, I think, some of it in L.A. and I think Bert recorded his vocals in England. So it was weird, we were never in the same room or anything like that when we did the song. So the first time we ever did it live was a test. We did it once or twice, and they were gonna film a DVD for the tour and were like “O, it would be great if you guys both did it because you’re both here, it would be really cool.” And we’re like “Alright, we’ll try it.” We were excited to play anyway and then it was just one of those things where it was just fun to do every night, so we just did it.

Bobby: Did they film a DVD for the tour?

Frank: I believe so.

Bobby: Do you know when it will come out?

Frank: Nope, I have no clue.

Bobby: With the release of “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge”, you guys have skyrocketed up the popularity chain, especially here in Canada. You guys went from playing for 100 kids at Warped Tour to selling out arenas at the Taste Of Chaos and opening for Green Day. Why do you think that is?

Frank: It’s one of those things where you start out, you form a band and you write some songs in your basement and you put out a demo or a record on an indie label and you just tour because you love to do what you do. Then you run into kids on the road and they say that they enjoy your art and say that you’ve changed their life in a certain way and that’s the best compliment you can get. It makes you feel like you’re really doing something, like you’re actually changing the world. We haven’t stopped working since those days, so to take a step back be like “O wow, we’ve come this far” – that really doesn’t happen. All I know is that more kids are coming out. I have two plaques in my room, I don’t know, but I don’t see them – I’m never home. Why did that happen? I’d like to think that people heard it and knew that we were a real band and that we had something to say and enjoyed that and took that to heart. I hope that’s the reason. We’ve worked really hard. Maybe that’s it. Maybe God likes us, I don’t know.

Bobby: Do you guys think that that humongous leap in popularity could ever turn into a bad thing?

Frank: I think that anytime a large number of people hear your music and enjoy your music, that’s a good thing. I’m not stupid; I know that a lot of those people could be fair-weather fans. There’s definitely a lot more “Gerard, you’re so cute” rather then “play this song”. That’s a shame. Hopefully the kids who bought the record now and bought it because they think Gerard’s really cute will listen to the record and learn about the band and grow into it and realize why they really like it. If they don’t, that’s fine. If they’re not there tomorrow, we’ll still be doing this and we’ll still be doing this for the people that do get it.

Bobby: How did you get in contact with Reprise Records to release the album?

Frank: Well, here’s the thing. Do you remember Thursday? When they were huge – well, they are on hiatus right now, but like when they got signed, there was a signing frenzy, you know what I mean? Labels were just salivating to sign any band form New Jersey. Kids that had black hair. Kids that wrote about New Brunswick or anything. Anyone from New Jersey was getting signed and you could see that a lot because anybody that was in a band from New Jersey got signed. We were a band for maybe, maybe, two months; and major labels were calling the practice studio that we were practicing in, and that was really weird. We were just like “This is kind of bull shit. You don’t want to sign us; you just want to sign the next Thursday. We’re not going to do this.” We signed to Eyeball, put out an indie record and toured for a while because that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to make something on our own and it’s a lot better when you work for something. And then we felt it was time to make a jump, or take the next step. Eyeball couldn’t reach the amount of people that we really wanted to reach. We toured a lot without the record being really anywhere. And we were like “you know what; we’re not going to sign to another label unless we find something that really gets us and it feels like a family.” And one day we were contacted by Reprise. Reprise, Warner, same thing. And we signed for the company. Everybody that works with our band gets us. They wanted us to be My Chemical Romance, they didn’t want us to be The Used, they didn’t want us to be Thursday or whatever. And that was amazing for us. There was no stipulations, its was just go out, be a band and write songs that you love to write. So we were like “alright!” and we did. I really don’t think they thought they were going to get a really good record, and I think we wrote a really good record so we’ve never regretted that decision.

Bobby: What’s it like switching from a small independent like Eyeball to a major like Warner Music?

Frank: You feel like people are behind you, you know what I mean? It’s weird; I always thought that it would feel less like you have people behind you because it’s such a big company with so many bands. But a lot of people have our backs. A lot of people are pushing for this band to do well and for us to reach our goals. We really just have a lot of help and that’s a great thing and there’s people at the label that really believe in you and their job is to, basically, make sure you get what you want. If we wanted to, let’s say, do another David Bowie cover, they would make that happen; and that’s awesome you know. That’s really the only difference, and your record is everywhere.

Bobby: Yeah, because it’s hard to find your first one. All my friends are looking for it and can’t find it.

Frank: For that, we just say go on the internet and find it.

Bobby: I gotta ask this because I love your videos, like we were watching them at my house last night. “Helena” and “I’m Not Okay”, where did you come up with all the concepts of the video?

Frank: Because we’re just nerds. That’s how it is. We sit in our van or our bus, bus now, and just talk about stupid stuff. Read comic books and watch movies. And then the label’s like “We want to do a video” and we’re like “Okay, this is what we want to do.” Then we found a director, his name is Mark Webb. He did both our videos and he’s directing our new video that we are doing in… actually three days. And he’s like “alright, I think we should do this” and we wanted to do this, so we just kind of mixed it all together. Same thing with “Helena,” although “Helena” was a little bit easier only because I left it up to Gerard. It was about his grandmother, him and Mikey. It was their homage to her. It was creepy, because I was at the actual funeral and it resembled the funeral almost to a T. It was really weird. And some of that you wanted, and some of that just happened. But with the dancing and everything like that, well we always try to have an uplifting theme. I think our music is very ironic in that we’ll have a dark theme with heavy music and a darker theme with an uplifting message.

Bobby: You just said you’re shooting a video in three days, for what song?

Frank: “The Ghost Of You.”

Bobby: Do you have any ideas as to what the concept is going to be?

Frank: Yes. But I can’t tell you. Sorry. It’s going to be huge. I promise you this, it’s going to be more like a movie then any other video we’ve done and it’s going to be enormous. Yeah, we’ve thought this out a lot. It could really, really suck, but we hope it doesn’t.

Bobby: Now I’m looking forward to seeing this video. How do you guys pick what songs you want to be singles?

Frank: Well, it’s one of those things where when we wrote the record we had ideas for what songs we wanted to hear on the radio, but we didn’t really decide any. It was kind of like “we like all our songs, you’re the label, and you decide which ones to put out.” And they were like “okay, put this one out. Put this one out. Put this one out.” If, after this one, they do another, I hope it’s “Prison.”

Bobby: On the “I’m Not Okay” video, Gerard says “I don’t wanna make it, I just wanna…” and then it cuts to the music. Can you finish that sentence for us? “I don’t wanna make it, I just wanna…”

Frank: See, the original line was… well, it summed up the entire cheesiness of the teen movie type thing. It was “I just wanna rock!” And it was just too much. We wrote a million other things, “I just wanna be myself”… ah, what were the other ones… there were so many. But we just left it open because I think you get a lot more out of it if you just leave it open and put whatever you want to put in there. In that scene, Gerard is like every kid. He’s me, he’s you, he’s everyone. It’s like, you know what, a lot of people are told they aren’t going to make it, but just do what you do best and live your life. Live it for yourself, and really just fuck everybody else.

Bobby: A lot of punk “elitists” are starting to complain about the whole “emo” trend. Guys wearing makeup, and wearing girls pants. Mark Adkins from Guttermouth went on a huge rant about it all on their site and even went to the limit of calling Gerard a “fat pink raccoon.” What’s your opinion on all of that?

Frank: I think, he’s a racist, he’s a sexist, he’s homophobic, he’s a hateful person, and it’s just wrong. We could all sit here and call people names and hate people for the way they dress or the music they like or just the things that they think are cool. But that doesn’t make us any better. It’s an awful thing where you have such a soap box, like you have a lot of fans that are into your band, and you use that to spew hate. I guess that’s his opinion.

Bobby: You guys are also heavily involved in the Shirts For A Cure project and have a total of four t-shirts on there now. Why are you guys so involved in that?

Frank: Because it’s a good cause. Definitely, maybe this sounds dumb or naive, but when I started playing music and when I started growing up, all I ever wanted to do was to change the world in some way. Make a foot print. I think the worst thing you could possibly do is to live your life and have the world be the same way it was before you were here as it is after. I think that we’re here for a reason and if we don’t do something to make the world a better place, then we just wasted everyone’s time. And if we can do something as small as put t-shirts on website and raise money for a cure, then we’re going to do that.

Bobby: Okay, if you guys could pick one person or band, dead or alive, to tour with, who would you pick to tour with and why?

Frank: Oh man… Definitely the original Misfits line up because they are just amazing. The Clash would be amazing. The bands that I grew listening to, like Black Flag. Man, if I could tour with Black Flag with Keith Morris singing, like the original line up, that would be amazing. Yeah, bands like that.

Bobby: Okay, now onto to more unusual questions that I like to ask at all interviews. First off all, if you guys were stranded on a desert island, with no food and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive?

Frank: Wow. O man. It definitely wouldn’t be Mikey, because he’s got nothing. I don’t know. I wouldn’t eat Gerard or Bob because they are just great company, and I wouldn’t eat Toro because he’d probably be the one to figure out a way off the island. So I’d probably have to eat my own leg.

Bobby: If you were the member of the opposite sex for a day, or a week, or whoever long you wanted, what would you do and why?

Frank: Man, what would I do…? I’d probably get lower car insurance. I don’t know, what would I do… that’s a good question, I’ve never really thought about it.

Bobby: Yeah, not many people do.

Frank: Yeah, I don’t know. Nothing is ringing a bell. Sorry. I’d probably just sit home and eat chocolate cake, that’s all I would do.

Bobby: Okay, here’s a question from my friend Tyson, he’s wanted me to ask this at an interview for so long now. Rosie O’Donnell or Whoopi Goldberg. Who would you do?

Frank: Wow… Christ… Man, there’s no like secret C choice?

Jacey: No happy medium.

Frank: Man. Could I at least give Whoopi Goldberg eyebrows?

Bobby: Yeah.

Frank: Okay, Whoopi Goldberg with eyebrows.

Bobby: Could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk or something that do on the road.

Frank: Umm, okay, let’s see. I’m trying to think of things that won’t embarrass anybody. One thing, just one?

Bobby: Well, how ever many you want to tell us.

Frank: I’ll give you one about everybody. Ray’s never around. Ray will constantly be on his phone, playing a video game or playing guitar in the back lounge with earphones on. Like you will not see him, you do not see him at all. That kid is dedicated to technology completely. Bob is addicted to “24” – the television show. Mikey will be broke at the age of thirty, but have every DVD, comic book, and video game known to man. Gerard, this is probably widely known, but I will assure you, Gerard is as close to genius as you could possibly get.

Bobby: Okay, I guess that’s about it. Do you have any final thoughts you want to add?

Frank: Whatever you do, don’t ever be full of shit.

Bobby: Alright, thanks a lot for doing the interview.