"CHEMICAL REACTION

It doesn't seem five minutes since MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE were getting pelted with whatever people could get their hands on at Download 2007. That was the last significant festival appearance for the Jersey boys, and this year notes their first headline appearance at Reading and Leeds. After an extended break, the band are back on the road again with a vengeance. Lead singer Gerard Way shared his thoughts about being back on the road.

"UK fans love music; they're willing to put themselves through quite a bit. But I've always felt that people in the UK love rock 'n' roll. They'll camp out, they'll get sick, they'll get rained on, they'll get mud everywhere, they don't care. Which is really cool."-- Gerard Way

"IT'S been awesome. I think everyone says that when they first get into it, and then six months into it they just don't feel that way, but it's going really well. The shows are great every night. It's awesome to be playing with your friends. We sound great, we feel great. I missed playing while we were on a break. I started to get really cagey. I hit a point where I really wanted to be on stage again. It took a long time to feel that way, after all the touring that we did. But after I while I really wanted to get back out there."

A lot of things have changed since My Chemical Romance's last major UK tour, notably many of the members are now both husbands and fathers. Has this made it harder to be on the road?

"You learn to adjust with it, but it's what I do so we all kinda know that. I think everybody in the band goes through that, but everybody back home is really supportive of us, because it's just what we do. And we have to keep doing it because, well, it's not a financial thing; it's just what's happening in our lives right now, our purpose."

Given their massive UK following, it goes without saying that the guys are extremely excited to be headlining Reading and Leeds this year:

"Aw man it feels crazy! It's a real insane thing. And I kinda felt the show that we had that one time which was very controversial, it was a very positive thing, but it made me feel that the only way the band were going to come back and do this is if we were headlining. So it was nice to get that offer, it felt really cool.

The controversial show Gerard is referring to is the fateful day at Download four years ago. How did the band cope with the negative crowd reaction?

"Well, it was interesting because it was maybe not as negative as it was perceived. Initially it started very negatively and then ended extremely positively. To me it was one of our greatest shows, because of that, and it felt great when we got off stage. But there was definitely some instigation involved, there was a point where I was asking people that liked the band to throw stuff.

The band are no strangers to the festival circuit, but what are their favourite festival experiences?

"In American, growing up, as a kid you don't have many options to go to festivals. So that's kind of a drag. I remember not having enough money to go to Lollapalooza, being too young to go to Monsters of Rock. So a lot of stuff kinda passed me by. There's not too many festivals, and you definitely don't camp out really. So I didn't really have any experiences growing up, so all my experiences of festivals are with the band. Even my first experience of Warped Tour was playing Warped Tour. But with the band I have a lot of great memories, I think the one day that we played T in the Park was really amazing; I just remember all these flags and it was really awesome. Big Day Out was another great one."

Having never attended a festival before MCR, how did Gerard react to the sometimes over-enthusiastic UK crowds?

"A little, yeah. To me, it's a testament to how much UK fans love music; they're willing to put themselves through quite a bit. But I've always felt that people in the UK love rock 'n' roll. They'll camp out, they'll get sick, they'll get rained on, they'll get mud everywhere, they don't care. Which is really cool."

Late last year, MCR returned to the music scene with their fourth studio album, "Danger Days'. It's certainly very different to their previous material, so how have people been reacting to it?

"Amazingly. I knew from that first show we played in London that it was a change, and I knew it was a change that people had wanted as much as us. They wanted to dance, they wanted to have a good time, they wanted this party to happen, and they were ready for it. And there were old fans and new fans; new fans who'd never seen us didn't want doom and gloom, they didn't want a combative thing. And there's no mission statements either, which is kinda liberating too. There are no speeches, there's nothing really in between songs, and it's just us playing really hard for an hour and forty minutes. The show in October last year in Manchester was one of my favourite because we'd really started to heat up. That night felt really special.

The lengthy gap between the release of 'The Black Parade' and 'Danger Days…' was extended due to the band scrapping an entire album, a bold move for the band. What's the story behind it?

"It just wasn't right. It's funny, because yesterday I was actually listening to the tracks for the first time in probably a year. I was like, "You know what? This is really pretty good." There are a lot of really great songs on it. It just wasn't right, it just felt like that wasn't what we wanted to put out after years and years of being away. Because it is directionless, I guess is a great way to explain it. It feels and sounds directionless when you're listening to it. And I was listening to the lyrics, and there's maybe about three or four songs where I can pretty much see what I'm singing about, but there are others where I don't know what the hell I was singing about. But I definitely think it's not a record we're ashamed of; we would love to put it out one day. I love listening to some of the songs. At the time, and dealing with what we were dealing with, we did a really good job. It just wasn't the record we wanted to put out."

Did the band feel incredible pressure to release something amazing after the success of 'The Black Parade'?

"Yeah. We put a lot of self-imposed pressure on ourselves, but there was no question. It's almost a task that you cannot achieve, and I wasn't thinking about that at the time. We made 'The Black Parade' and it wasn't an overnight success, it took a long time to build that record. But it was still held in the insane level of regard and we knew it wasn't going to be that. We can make a great record, but it's going to be a different great record. I was actually a bit hard on myself at the time, making both attempts at the album, because of that thing hanging over me."

Recently, My Chemical Romance have incurred the wrath of uber-Conservative US broadcaster Glenn Beck, who became aware of the band's song 'Sing' after it appeared on autotuned smile-fest 'Glee'. Beck accused the band's lyrics of being propaganda, and expressed his concerns for "the youth". Gerard has an extremely positive reaction to this:

"I loved it actually, it doesn't upset me at all, because at least somebody was paying attention to the fucking lyrics. And he should obviously be threatened by that because it's clearly an anti-corporate anthem directed at people just like him. So that makes me very happy in that I have no beef with the guy at all. It's good he did his job. I mean he didn't get the lyrics right but he did his job. He read something that was directed at him, and people like him, and his network and his corporation, and he got upset and threatened by it, and that was the point. So now it's interesting to see the lyrics actually do something to the world, that's amazing. It was really amazing, you couldn't ask for something cooler than that to happen. That was straight-up like something you would see in the '70s with the Sex Pistols and stuff. You don't really see stuff like that anymore, because nobody's going to be offended or threatened or shocked by lyrics that say stuff like "punch somebody in the face" or "hate your parents". That's not going to shock anybody because we've heard it for the last thirty years. But the lyrics in 'Sing' are the kind of thing that will offend and shock, and make people listen to them because it's being smarter about it. And that's the thing about 'Danger Days', it's very much the truth, it's very intelligent in its directness."

My Chemical Romance have seen big changes in the music industry in their career, and are notably a band who make solid albums. Does Gerard think the public still value the album as a format?

"I know our fans value albums, and there are people that value it. I don't know what that amounts to. I'm always going to keep doing it and to me a great album is like any kind of painting, it's all made up by different brush strokes, and there's an importance to that. But that's not to say that I'm not extremely excited about maybe doing things the way The Smiths used to, who would just put out a song because you wrote a song. Which is cool, because it's not about making money and you don't adapt because that's the only way people sell records but I think it's a great opportunity now that's opened to musicians. So there is a positive light to it."

Is Gerard scared by the idea that there is a generation of people growing up who will never know music in its physical form, such as CDs and vinyl?

"I used to be sad about that, but I guess I kinda can't be anymore. So that experience is going to have to take a new form. I dunno, maybe in a couple of years people will be able to digitally print out an album. They have these 3D printers now that will physically print something out, so when that stuff available in every home, who knows, maybe there will be a rebirth of vinyl because you can print it out, you don't have to go somewhere and buy it."

When Gerard isn't being the frontman of one of the world's most popular bands, he writes a comic book series called The Umbrella Academy, which could soon become a movie:

"I've literally just had a meeting about it, and it's constantly being worked on and tweaked, and we're talking to various directors and various screenwriters, it's something I'm constantly involved with. My ideal director changes all the time because I love lots of different directors. I love Terry Gilliam and there's a lot of great people, but there also might be somebody young, and it's their first film, who has a real passion for it, so I wouldn't want to not give them a shot either. I don't know when it will be released, it's such a tricky thing, I pay attention to it only in the fact that I am involved and they need help so I work on it, but I try not to think about when it's coming out. Until something is green-lit and you're sitting in the theatre waiting to see it, you never really know whether it's going to happen. So I put my energy into other stuff, like writing the other comic. And obviously making a comic is a lot cheaper than making a film."

'Danger Days' is out now on Warner Bros. My Chemical Romance play Reading and Leeds in August