With their most recent album, My Chemical Romancemoved beyond their core goth-emo-punk fanbase and appealed for the first time to older music fans. Frontman Gerard Way tells Tony Clayton-Leaabout his addictions, his hopes of becoming an author, and the band's complex relationship with their teen followers
The band meet'n'greet is a curious phenomenon. The parade of teenage autograph hunters - mostly prize winners and the offspring of people working in the music business - talk urgently to each other as they await the band.
Some acts react differently to meet'n'greets; we recall that Korn and Puddle of Mudd were almost as giddy as the kids, swapping high fives and utterances of "dude!" as the shuffling, long-haired queue came to town. We remember Finland's Him being so friendly and sensual (in a menthol cigarettes, Bacardi-breath and tattoo-parlour kind of way) we had to prise female teenagers away from them.
My Chemical Romance did the grip'n'grin differently. There was a sense of not really wanting to do it, for a start, which is understandable. And then there was - unusual as it sounds, considering the band's success of recent times - an obvious self-consciousness, as if the long line of teen goths/punks/emos/etc, each one holding something to sign, just shouldn't be there.
Gerard Way, flamboyant frontman of MCR (or "My Chem", as he calls his own band), is aware that the perception of him changes during these moments. The young fans reckon he is stand-offish, when in reality he's experiencing a shyness that is, possibly, criminally vulgar. Simply put, Way doesn't like meeting strangers.
"I'm quite self-confident," he says, "but the healthy dose of arrogance I have is blended with extreme self-consciousness. So when we're at meet'n'greets or signings, I hardly say two words to people. I'm very closed off because, after a gig, I feel like I've spilled my guts and if I meet people after that it's almost like they know something about me but I know nothing about them. And that's weird, an unfair trade."
Way is in a trading phase at the moment, talking to The Ticketon the same weekend that MCR's Teenagers single is released. He looks fit, healthy, eager; he has been alcohol- and drug-free since 2004, when his addiction to cocaine left him suicidal. His only active addictions are to cigarettes and coffee.
"I'm addicted to work, but the positive thing there is that I'm really prolific, and I always have a song in my head. I store them in there for years, so that's awesome. The negative? I'm largely addicted to anything. Cigarettes? Can't quit 'em, especially in Europe - lots of down time and too much time on the tour bus."
Way's less visible but no less real addictions, he adds, are truth and honesty, each of which he finds exhilarating. "That's why that record was so personal."
The record in question is The Black Parade, MCR's crossover album (their third) of last year. Prior to its release MCR were riding the crest of a small wave. Their second album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, shifted more than two million copies, making them just another successful US rock act dishing up dollops of streamlined goth/emo/punk to the youthful masses - their demographic core consists of disaffected teens, hormonally charged misfits and, perhaps crucially, a fanbase more than 50 per cent female (a by-product of their fiercely anti-macho stance).
Come last October, however, something else kicked in: The Black Parade's mixture of ambitious concept, piano ballads, vaudeville and knuckle-cracking punk/pop brought an older audience to the party, while still holding their teen fanbase in thrall to Way's black humour and sombre scenarios. The Black Parade sold well over three million copies, making MCR one of the hottest US rock acts around.
Judging by the demeanour of the band backstage - no hissy fits, just guys dressed in black playing pool and shooting nothing other than the breeze - success rests easy on their heads.
Yet, still Way worries about the fanbase, as evinced by a line in Teenagers: they "scare the living shit out of me".
"That song was written at a time when we had come off tour from Sweet Revenge, and I was connecting with a new kind of fanbase. We got big from Sweet Revenge, and all of a sudden our fanbase had grown. The growth was due to teenagers, which is something I feel we hadn't had before.
"Anyway, because I was getting older I found I was quite disconnected, and wondering how I was going to be able to connect. I'm 30 years of age now, but Teenagerswas written also about Columbine and the violence in US schools. When you're in school you're put into tribes and you're pitted against each other, and I assumed that the majority of our fanbase was made up of the kind of kid that was different, possibly picked on at school. Yet we as a band didn't ever want them to turn to violence to solve any problem they might have."
The band take their fans and passions seriously, he says. "We've always respected them a lot, taken them seriously, and when we make music we don't dumb it down. We're assuming that they're as smart as us, if not smarter."
Does fan adulation ever get worrying? "We've never had a problem with that. The only time I've run into problems is that occasionally you bump into someone who feels some kind of ownership over the band. It's not a common one, though."
MCR exists, according to Way, because of 9/11. Working as a comic book illustrator paled into insignificance compared with what he watched on television. He has said that the band (which took its name from Irving Welsh's Ecstasy) was born out of post-traumatic stress disorder and plugged instantly into the zeitgeist notion of claiming one's destiny. The rise of My Chem, has been rapid and, he admits, surprising.
"When we started I knew we were something special, and I thought that if the world got it - what we did and wanted to do - then we'd be really big. If they didn't get it, I thought, then we'd still have a cult following and be able to make music. That's how special I thought we were. We'd either be a band that inspired a lot of bands, or we'd get big. We were never ready for any of it, however.
"During Sweet Revenge it was so difficult to come to grips with what was happening. It was like losing ownership of your songs - when they're out there, you lose them - and people misinterpreting your messages and meanings. Then you're on the cover of teen magazines and yet you're not doing interviews with them; they're just using old quotes and old photos. You have no control over how they portray you, or they're talking about your personal life with no input from you. What kind of girl you'd like to date - that kind of stuff is so bullshit, for lack of a better term.
"Unfortunately, when you become a part of that unwillingly, it can strip away some of the meaning. But you have to do your best."
The journey shows no signs of coming to a halt. For someone who doesn't like to draw attention to himself, perhaps Way has chosen the wrong career?
"It's the kind of thing that when you look back on it, you're very proud of what you've accomplished with your friends. It isn't easy, though, especially when you're trying to retain a sense of identity and privacy. There's a lot that's yanked out of you, that's for sure; it's very rigorous.
"You close yourself off, but you can prevent it, because at the end of the day it's your decision. You just go with your gut instinct, because your gut is smarter than your heart."
And yet the feedback from the fans - that's from the heart, too? "Well, yes, and that's the pay-off. It's really about meeting the kids that tell you they started a band, or that they're going to art school. The Black Parade's sole message - essentially a story about death - was to inspire, not to instruct or to lead, but to inspire."
And how, exactly, does MCR intend to follow it up? "The way to top it is to reverse some of the things that made the record so successful - make a more human record, expose more, become raw."
The Black Parade and Teenagers are out now
See/Hear
For a six-song video session, visit http://music.aol.co.uk/sessions/ and click on My Chemical Romance in the A-Z archive
My Way: Gerard's teenage years
"I was sitting at the back of the classroom trying to get people to not pay attention to me, looking for privacy and doing my own thing. Tests and everything came easy to do, so I didn't really do homework, just my own thing. I was an outsider, although someone that was not really picked on. It's almost like I wanted to make a band that wasn't there for me in high school.
"Even though there were a lot of bands that inspired me and I loved when I was at school - Green Day and so on - My Chem was always supposed to be different, tapping directly into that part of your brain that made you an outsider."
Way says he would eventually like to write books. He mentions people who have crossed over from lyric writing to something deemed (rightly or wrongly) more substantial: Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave.
"I like creating things. I'm a very OTT performer, but I'm not really the kind of person who is drawn to attention. I'm very much a guy that likes to hang back and that's why writing appeals to me."
