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Gerard Way |
Inpreparation for the Projekt Revolution tour — at the Tweeter Center, August 24 — thePhoenix.com talked with co-headliners Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and Taking Back Sunday via teleconference. Below is what Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance, had to say about the upcoming rock/hip-hop tour, pyrotechnics, and anti-ambition. (And Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, rambled on mainly, about himself. Highlights at the bottom.)On choosing to join Linkin Park and Taking Back Sunday as co-headliners on the Projekt Revolution tour:
Well, I think maybe the only thing that is atypical about the choice is the fact that we usually try to pick tours that are extremely different for us — and I think that’s very atypical of our band to do.
It was an amazing opportunity and a real honor to be asked to join the tour with Linkin Park… and then as far as joining it with Taking Back Sunday, that’s a no brainer because those guys are some of our best friends.
On the return of a sense of ambition to music:
Basically, from a younger band’s perspective, coming up — or even before we started MCR — there weren’t a lot of [ambitious] bands. There were a few bands that had ambition. I think Linkin Park is one of them. I think there are a few other bands, too, that had a lot of ambition. Green Day, obviously, is one of them.
But coming up and starting a band, there weren’t a lot of bands [like that]. It was almost like there was this anti-ambition put out there. And it was almost the point to be the least ambitious as possible. And that was extremely frustrating for us even back then. So, I think that is kind of why, at least from our perspective, our growth spurts have been so dramatic with each record because we couldn’t wait to get to a record like this. And I think we pretty much cant wait to get to the next in that regard.
We felt like we had to make up for a lot of lost time of [not] making ambitious records. I think it’s an exciting time in music for that reason. I think a lot of people are now really wanting to make ambitious records.
On tour production:
I think we’re going to be performing in a setting or in a space. So, it’s not going to be overdone… it’s not going to be anything like we had on The Black Parade tour. But, at the same time, I think we’ve become very addicted to pyro. I think we’re bringing out a lot of pyro — right now it’s just fun for us to do. And having just done The Black Parade as a full band with pyro and effects and everything, I think it’s nice to kind of maybe to now do it as My Chem with pyro because we really never used pyro as My Chemical Romance so it should be interesting.
