The true lives of my chemical romance: a biography
UK edition
US edition
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The definitive biography of My Chemical Romance
My Chemical Romance are the most significant band in alternative rock for the last decade, selling 5 million albums and selling out arenas worldwide until their split after twelve years together. Author Tom Bryant has been given unparalleled access to the band over the course of their extraordinary career and has a unique archive of interviews with Gerard Way and his brother Mikey, Ray Toro and Frank Iero, as well as their friends and those closest to them, allowing him to go behind the scenes and bring their stories to life. From their New Jersey beginnings to international superstardom, from the demons they have battled to the power of their lyrics and their extraordinary connection with their fans, this is the definitive biography of the most adored rock band this century, a story of self-belief and the pursuit of dreams. UK: http://amzn.to/1myGFjA US: http://amzn.to/1ig2Lo7 |
My Chemical Romance, a 10 year celebration, Kerrang! August 13, 2011
THE FOUR members of My Chemical Romance are sitting around a table in the open-air restaurant of a Lisbon hotel. Beyond is a view of the Bairro Alto, while the piercing blue of Portuguese sky is dotted with high clouds.
But the topic of conversation isn’t about how pleasant it is here; in fact it’s about how peculiar it seems that the songs they wrote as nobodies in a New Jersey basement in 2001 have, 10 years later, led them here. As singer Gerard Way, his brother and bassist Mikey and guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro weave their way through their past, they laugh a lot as they remember old times and old friends from the past ...
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But the topic of conversation isn’t about how pleasant it is here; in fact it’s about how peculiar it seems that the songs they wrote as nobodies in a New Jersey basement in 2001 have, 10 years later, led them here. As singer Gerard Way, his brother and bassist Mikey and guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro weave their way through their past, they laugh a lot as they remember old times and old friends from the past ...
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My Chemical Romance: the making of Danger Days, part two, Kerrang! October 13, 2010
OUT IN the California desert Gerard Way was not having a crisis, exactly, but he wasn’t happy either. He had gone there, alongside his wife Lindsey and daughter Bandit, to get a little space to think. His band, My Chemical Romance, were still in the mixing stages of what they thought would be their fourth record, the all important follow-up to The Black Parade.
What they had recorded was a direct, raw and pounding punk record, one that rejected the flamboyance, pageantry and detailed ceremony of old. Instead, they had simply wanted to rock – no metaphors, no concepts, and no meanings for sensationalist journalists to misconstrue: just rock ...
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What they had recorded was a direct, raw and pounding punk record, one that rejected the flamboyance, pageantry and detailed ceremony of old. Instead, they had simply wanted to rock – no metaphors, no concepts, and no meanings for sensationalist journalists to misconstrue: just rock ...
Click here to read the full story
My Chemical Romance: the making of Danger Days, part one, Kerrang! October 6, 2010
WHEN THE lights came down on My Chemical Romance’s May 9, 2008 show at Madison Square Garden it was very nearly the end of the band. The five of them walked offstage in a whirl of mixed emotions.
This was the show they had dreamed of playing. This was the venue that Gerard Way and his brother Mikey had wanted to headline since the day they had seen the Smashing Pumpkins play there in 1997. It was on that night all those years ago that they had decided to start a band; it would have been somehow fitting if, 13 years later, it had all come to an end in the same iconic hall ...
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This was the show they had dreamed of playing. This was the venue that Gerard Way and his brother Mikey had wanted to headline since the day they had seen the Smashing Pumpkins play there in 1997. It was on that night all those years ago that they had decided to start a band; it would have been somehow fitting if, 13 years later, it had all come to an end in the same iconic hall ...
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My Chemical Romance: a history, Kerrang! January 17, 2007
OCTOBER 2001, Ewing, New Jersey. Gerard Way and his kid brother Mikey are sitting in a beaten up van outside the town’s VFW Hall. They’re paralysed with fear. On one side of them is their good friend Frank Iero, whose band Pencey Prep are headlining the show tonight. On the other is another friend, John ‘Hambone’ McGuire – Pencey Prep’s bassist. Meanwhile the Ways’ guitarist Ray Toro and drummer Matt Pelissier wait nervously for them ...
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My Chemical Romance, the story of The Black Parade, Kerrang! October 21, 2006
THE STREET outside Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre is lined with kids in black. There’s a pulsing throb of excitement that occasionally runs along the queue. “Do you think they’re inside already?” “I think I saw someone at the window.” “Where? Tell me! Where?”
It’s an anticipation that’s been building since 2am when the first of these fans arrived and slumped on the sidewalk outside. “We’ve got to be the first in; we’ve got to be at the front”. Meanwhile the waiters and cooks from the nearby Chinatown restaurants pour out of their kitchens and basements, eyeing them with amusement. The kids ignore them ...
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It’s an anticipation that’s been building since 2am when the first of these fans arrived and slumped on the sidewalk outside. “We’ve got to be the first in; we’ve got to be at the front”. Meanwhile the waiters and cooks from the nearby Chinatown restaurants pour out of their kitchens and basements, eyeing them with amusement. The kids ignore them ...
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On the road with My Chemical Romance, Kerrang! November 2005
My Chemical Romance’s dressing room at the Manchester Apollo is a plush wood-lined affair, leather sofas in a square around a coffee table. Next door there’s a make-up room, a mirror lined with light-bulbs, the surfaces lined with the band’s rider.
It’s in here that My Chemical Romance are going through their pre-show routine. Ray Toro and Gerard Way are bouncing up and down, doing ‘jumping-jacks’. Meanwhile there’s banter, “dicking around,” according to Gerard, while they, “put on their war-paint”. A round of high-fives then they stride down the narrow and winding staircase that leads to the stage, the focus purely on what lies ahead ...
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It’s in here that My Chemical Romance are going through their pre-show routine. Ray Toro and Gerard Way are bouncing up and down, doing ‘jumping-jacks’. Meanwhile there’s banter, “dicking around,” according to Gerard, while they, “put on their war-paint”. A round of high-fives then they stride down the narrow and winding staircase that leads to the stage, the focus purely on what lies ahead ...
Click here to read the full story
My Chemical Romance interview: how Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge exploded, Kerrang! February 2005
MY CHEMICAL Romance have always been fighting. Fighting their backgrounds. Fighting themselves and fighting for survival.
They fought their way out of New Jersey, out of lives that seemed mapped out for them since birth – of nine-to-fives, of drinking and fucking and returning home miserable about it.
They fought at school, when they didn’t know what they fighting for, as they all sat alone in classrooms and lunch halls, the strange kids, the outsiders that no-one wanted to know, who no-one gave the time of day ...
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They fought their way out of New Jersey, out of lives that seemed mapped out for them since birth – of nine-to-fives, of drinking and fucking and returning home miserable about it.
They fought at school, when they didn’t know what they fighting for, as they all sat alone in classrooms and lunch halls, the strange kids, the outsiders that no-one wanted to know, who no-one gave the time of day ...
Click here to read the full story
My Chemical Romance: on the cusp of stardom with Three Cheers, Kerrang! September 2004
IT WAS in Kansas City that Gerard Way cracked. My Chemical Romance’s frontman woke up and wanted to end it all. He’d forgotten how many times he’d woken up depressed in the weeks leading up to that moment, he’d forgotten how many times he’d gone to sleep on a cocktail of alcohol and pills and he’d had enough ...
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