My Chemical Romance - Feature - 2013
- James Gill
- Mar 10, 2024
- 6 min read

Gerard Way
Gerard Way is not only a musical icon, but a subcultural leader. The New Jersey-born self-professed comic nerd gave not just music, but ideology to a generation of 00s goth-punk-emo kids who ached for affirmation.
Way and My Chemical Romance rose meteorically from the underground in 2005 when their Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge album catapulted them up the charts and into larger and larger venues on both sides of the Atlantic. But it wasn’t just the apocalyptic pop punk anthemia that appealed to the nations’ teenagers, it was the band’s frontman.
Born in 1977, Way was an overweight weirdo who gravitated, as many of us did, towards the pursuits of misfits: underground music and graphic novels. The latter occupied his ambition and it was only after the nearby events of 9/11 that he decided to start a band.
Having shifted the weight to become a striking 20-something waif Way’s onstage persona was honest – which resonated youth who wanted veracity not just pantomime. Way spoke directly to a disenfranchised generation in an internet age, ever obsessed with materialism and looks, once saying on stage:
“Hey, girls, you're beautiful. Don't look at those stupid magazines with sticklike models. Eat healthy and exercise. You are gorgeous, whether you're a size 4 or 14. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, as long as you're a good person, as long as you respect others.”
He extended these sentiments to girls bearing their chests at shows: “The first rule some of you can’t help. The first rule is don’t be an asshole. The second rule is don’t flash your boobs. We’re not into that.”
As news of this and other stage rants proliferated, he gained no friends from the more red-blooded end of the rock and metal spectrum.
He also offered positivity in dark times, invariably making anti-suicide speeches from stage:
“Suicide is a serious thing. And if you know anyone who is suicidal, you need to get them help. No one should be in pain.”
It struck chords like no nu-metal rap chat or hardcore claptrap ever had.
But with their notoriety and ‘faggy emo’ image they picked up no small amount of haters – the archetypal cred thieves: taking underground music and packaging it for the teen market.
But Way had other problems. His drug and alcohol addiction had already reached an unworkable level and he’d decided to get clean. With the odd recreational drink not suiting him, he decided to abstain completely. He was clean, sure, but he’d still ‘been there, man’, ‘he understood’ the meaning of ‘lowest ebb’.
Already hated in the hardcore and metal underground, Way and the band he co-founded were not yet household names. Many artists find they lose their muse when they get clean, but MCR would suffer no such fate, their impressive crossover status was about change. When they released The Black Parade in 2006, My Chemical Romance became an arena band and, turning their back on any semblance of their hardcore roots, they embraced a whole new audience as well as a Green-Day-Meets-Pink-Floyd sound.
With the album came a new look, all part of Way’s driving creativity and fed by his fertile imagination.
Copying someone so individual is hard, because the plagiarism is so clear, but the power of Way’s image and personality was too strong and dozens of copycats were spawned (Aiden, I Am Ghost). Meanwhile their peers ditched any parallels (Atreyu had also ‘chased the vampire’).
The backlash was brutal but Way was there for his fans.
“You're going to come across a lot of shitty band, and a lot of shitty people. And if anyone of those people call you names because of what you look like or they don't accept you for who you are, I want you to look right at that motherfucker, stick up your middle finger, and scream FUCK YOU!”
Never turning his back on his most vulnerable fans, he continued to represent the underdog and give them the courage and tools to stick to their guns.
Four years after their magnum opus, Way reinvented the band again, this time as the Fabulous Killjoys – Tank Girl meets Gorillaz – with the album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.
Now in his 30s, the once nerdy teen and troubled 20-something had it all: a beautiful wife (in Lyn-Z of Mindless Self Indulgence) and a child with a stupid name (Bandit Lee Way).
It is always hard to say how big a band could get without that particular frontman – HIM, Judas Priest, Limp Bizkit.
But one thing is clear, there is something about Gerard Way that – love him or hate him – came to mean to a generation what the likes of David Bowie and Marilyn Manson meant to their fans, the type of role model the mainstream would simply never give them.
Ray Toro
Guitarist Ray Toro is one of the founding members of My Chemical Romance, and while My Chemical Romance’s imagery is out of Gerard Way’s head, much of the band’s sound is straight out of Toro’s axe.
Until My Chemical Romance formed, the young guitarist (of Puerto Rican/Portuguese heritage) was in a band called The Rodneys and it was their singer, Shawn Dillon who introduced him to Gerard Way.
It wouldn’t be unfair to say of the band’s first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (2002), that while seminal in many respects Way’s rough vocal performance would stop it from being as accessible from all subsequent forays. What is clear from that first release however, is that the band had a clear talent in Toro.
From Hispanic music that he doubtless grew up being exposed to a full spectrum of rock and metal styles, Toro injected a breadth of sounds into MCR’s signature post-hardcore punk rock sound. That first album includes everything from melancholic picked Spanish guitar and Thin Lizzy-esque twin harmonies (with second guitarist Frank Iero) to galloping Maiden-esque runs and open chord three-chord punk.
As a character, Ray always felt less enigmatic, eerie – and possibly – interesting than some of his bandmates. As such he seemed to avoid the directed emo mudslinging that other members seemed to suffer. In 2005 Metal Hammer interviewed Ray and, then new drummer, Bob Bryar and found him as grounded as he was when encountered latterly – the fame not creating a monster. It comes as no surprise that as a child he was noted to be shy.
He admitted to Rock Sound that: “being in a band wasn't really a dream of mine. I always wanted to write music. I enjoy recording more and the process of writing, I never thought that being in a touring band was a possibility.”
His description of Gerard’s pre-gig routine at early shows, reveals the objectivity of someone who remained down-to-earth:
"Before a gig, everybody goes through their rituals. Some of us choose to practise our parts, do vocal warm-ups, and perform stretches. Gerard, on the other hand, perfects what he calls the ‘I am the unholy living dead’ look."
That said, he still slotted neatly into the band’s ‘misfit’ MO:
“I wasn’t popular at school,” he told Total Guitar in 2006. “Thank god I didn’t have a girlfriend or I would suck at guitar now!”
Further in keeping with nerd protocol, Ray enjoys his gaming, not least PRGs.
“I’m a huge gamer, “ he told Total Guitar. “I guess my favourites are role-playing games and first person shooters – any PC shooter like Doom or Quake… this past year has been so busy that I haven’t been getting time for my true love, which is videogames!”
Appropriate for a man in Romance, he clearly has a big heart, being the driving force behind My Chemical Romance's #SINGItForJapan project, which was dedicated to supporting those affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Toro cites Brian May and Randy Rhoads as amongst his biggest influences.
As a guitarist, his talents can best be heard on The Black Parade where his developing musical tastes are showcased over the album’s 13 tracks. While less of the thrashing gallop and insisting metallic soloing is in evidence Toro aped Queen’s Brian May, Green Day’s Bile Joe Armstrong and even Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour to great effect. As well as his work at the fretboard, his songwriting was becoming more developed as well.
Maybe it was the distraction of video games that meant the guitarist felt less drawn than other MCR members to pursue extra-curricular musical projects.
It was only in 2013 that his first solo material appeared, and while the guitar is far from the star, the song, Isn’t That Something, again displays his musicality: a pop indie jam akin to Klaxons. His Twitter announced that “I played everything. Sang everything. Recorded everything. Mixed everything. Myself."
While we may have heard the last from My Chemical Romance, it looks like we certainly haven’t heard the last from Ray Toro.
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