Thursday, July 12, 2007

MCR NEWS.

OMG LOOK.

GERARD Way will not be tied down. It's not that the My Chemical Romance frontman wouldn't like to be, it's just that he hasn't quite figured out how to do it.

Selling a few million copies of his band's latest album, The Black Parade? Easy done. Real life, that's the hard part.

"I constantly have to redefine what real life is for myself," says Way, half an hour after stepping off stage at a German gig where My Chemical Romance supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"I'm still homeless, and it's starting to get to a point where it's getting really old, and I really need to settle down somewhere.

"I mean, I'm a very unattached person, so I could kind of drift wherever I want, which is a great, liberating feeling. But sometimes when you're home off the road, if you don't have a home, you start to feel like you're still on tour."

Only a month ago, things appeared to be different.

Spotted wearing a ring on his left ring finger at a European festival, Way admitted he was engaged.

The lucky lady was reportedly Eliza Cuts, a stylist for the band.

So is Way now attached to a person, if not a place?

"No I'm actually not. So . . ." he pauses, the noise of the Chili Peppers taking to the German stage filling the silence. "Sometimes things don't work out," he eventually says.

While the pressures of life as a touring musician would be obvious contributors to the split, Way refuses to make excuses.

"I don't know how much of it is being in a touring band or how much of it is other things. You know, it's easy to always chalk it up to being in a touring band, but it's hard to say.

"It's just that things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work. You just roll with it."

If Way is rolling with it, his fans have been a little more, shall we say, hysterical about the engagement.

The message board meltdowns went something like this: "She is one lucky bitch!"

"He broke my heart and I thought that once I met him I would be the one."

"I just died a little bit inside."

"Way to break every little goth punk girl's heart, Way." And that's just the printable stuff.

"I got a little bit of wind of it," Way says of the frenzy that greeted news of his engagement.

"I think it was big news more so for the fact that people really couldn't figure out my sexual orientation for the last six years," he says, laughing.

"So I think that, if anything, it gave them a lot of answers.



"When we were on Taste of Chaos (tour), there were people I met in other bands that didn't even think I had relationships or anything, they thought I was some bizarre dude that just locks himself in a coffin every night."

He was considered by his Taste of Chaos screamo peers, Way surmises, as "some kind of bizarre, over-driven, asexual weirdo".

It's not hard to imagine Way – whose latest extracurricular activity has been creating a comic book series called The Umbrella Academy, due out in September – getting so caught up in his music and drawing to not notice the willing ladies knocking on the door of the tour bus.

But surely, given the obsessive nature of My Chem's devotees, and their ever-increasing numbers, Way eventually woke up and began to take advantage of the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll that had landed on his doorstep?

"No," he says. "The drugs – for sure. But the drugs were different – I had always had a problem with drinking, being in a band or not.

"I didn't take advantage of any of that stuff, like groupies, because I was in a committed relationship at the time (the band began) for a long time, and I had a lot of respect for who I was with.

"Aside from that, it never interested me. It was all about the show, the creation, the moment and the movement. So I didn't really care. Being very unattached right now, I still don't care about that stuff."

In contrast to Way's all-too brief engagement, the singer's little brother, My Chem's bassist Mikey, was married in March.

Since then, My Chem have been touring without Mikey, allowing him to settle into married life with his wife Alicia. (Way assures that his brother will be back on deck by the time the band reaches Australia in late November).

At 30, Way is three years older than Mikey, and admits that watching his younger brother get hitched provoked some strange feelings.

"It's an interesting perspective because, being the oldest, people assume you're getting married first, you're going to have kids first.

"So, it was definitely a sign that I was getting older, even before my birthday," he laughs.

Way hit the big 30 in April.

"I actually really looked forward to it, and I was very content. I got a sense of peace from turning 30," he says.

"I've met a couple of people who are obsessed with retaining their youth and Botox and everything. Each one of those age lines is an experience. Each one of those grey hairs is a good or a bad time you had to go through.

"I think it's gross that you would want to reverse the ageing process, when in fact ageing is what makes you more and more special."

The ageing process has certainly worked its magic on My Chemical Romance's music, as the great leap between their breakthrough, 2004's Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, and last year's staggering rock concept album, The Black Parade, showed.

And yet, the band's next musical movement is the last thing on Way's mind.

"This is probably the first time in the band's career where I'm not personally putting a big pressure on thinking about what's next," he says. "We have big dreams, but our big dreams were, being a cult band, having our own audience, playing a long time, and having something really small and special.

"So once we exceeded all that rather quickly, we really stopped thinking about what was next."

What is next is a tour of North America as the No.2 act on Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution package tour. Way is looking forward to being a support act again.

They did that just recently for Muse – helping the Brits reopen London's Wembley Stadium.

Way, who says he feels "naked" when performing in front of another band's audience, jokes that the Muse experience "was more terrifying than naked".

It reminded him of the time when My Chemical Romance were barely three months old, and received a last-minute call to open for emo supremos Jimmy Eat World in New Jersey.

"That was for 15,000, and we had just played a basement for like eight kids," he laughs. "So playing Wembley felt a lot like that show. We came out and it was 'Woah, this is a lot of other peoples' fans'."

My Chemical Romance play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on November 28, tickets on sale July 20.

YAY MIKEY'S COMING BACK!!!

xoxo
Bex

Posted by Rebecca @ 9:00 PM