I Don't Listen to American Rock Band My Chemical Romance

by Sienna Axe

Hi, Gerard.

I’m someone who oscillates wildly between favorites, which drives some of my friends crazy. It’s not that I’m disloyal – it’s just that I have a real favorite of everything, and a current favorite of everything. So if I tell you that my favorite band is LCD Soundsystem, I’m not lying, per se! But the True Favorite Band is My Chemical Romance. It just gets a little boring to say that over and over, you know?

(For reference, here is a list of the True Favorites:

Movie: Opening Night

Book: The Unconsoled

Song: “Uptown Girl”

Album: Hawaii Part II

Band: My Chemical Romance

Britpop band: Blur (though Pulp is objectively better)

Artist: Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift album: Evermore (formerly Speak Now)

Cobra Starship song: “Pleasure Ryland”

Song from 69 Love Songs: "Come Back From San Francisco" 

Corleone brother: Tom Hagen

Current or former member of shit-awful American band Panic! At The Disco: Ryan Ross

Song by shit-awful American band Panic! At The Disco: “Behind the Sea - Live in Chicago”

Episode of Columbo: “Étude in Black”

TV Show: Gilmore Girls

Musical: Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

Character ever: Tom Wambsgans of Succession fame

 

What do these all have in common? I refuse to engage with them! I have loved so many things until they were wrung dry (see: the 35-plus times I’ve watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Uptown Girl has remained my favorite song since I was five years old. Do you know how I did it? Do you? I listened to it every day for a month every summer between the ages of five and nine, and since then, I’ve waited for it to come to me. That way, every time it comes on the radio or at a wedding, it feels like a little treat just for me! And, most importantly, I never get tired of it. Not every day can be Christmas!)

 

The True Favorite Band, My Chemical Romance, is an American rock band from the airport town of Belleville, New Jersey. It was initially the brainchild of Gerard Way, a former art student reeling from having witnessed 9/11, and Ray Toro, a former film student who turned out to be God’s gift to guitar; they were later joined by Mikey Way, Gerard’s younger brother, and Frank Iero, My Chem’s first and greatest fan. They are the best band in the world.

 

I don’t listen to them anymore.

 

I used to, religiously! And I’ve seen them twice, which is two more times than I ever dreamed I’d be able to. But sometimes, it’s too much. They occupy such a special place in my heart not shared by any of the other True Favorites. I got into them the day they broke up in 2013, and it still hasn’t even remotely hit me that they’re out there playing shows. Watching the “I’m Not Okay” music video feels like looking at something TOO real; like it’s something from outside Plato’s cave that somehow snuck its way in. Even picturing it too clearly makes me feel like I’ve just run a marathon. But that doesn’t mean I love them any less. In fact, I'd say love—of art, of melody, of community—is inherent to the band. To me, love is this:

 

(I TOOK THIS VIDEO!!! THAT WAS ME!!!!!)

Love is the feeling you get from being in the crowd at your favorite band’s first show in seven years. It’s not having listened to them in forever and having all the words come back to you like it’s been less than a day. It’s meeting people in line and discussing whether you wanted to find a spot on Frank’s side or Ray’s, without ever saying the words “stage right” or “stage left.” Love is in Frank and Ray themselves, who look happier playing guitar than anyone else in the world.

 

Love is Ray in early 2002, hearing Gerard sing in the studio for the first time. It's him realizing exactly how special this is going to be.

 

 

Love is Mikey Way, Gerard’s younger brother. The whole band's younger brother. It's him giving the band its name, its heart, its soul. Love is him going twelve years without ever smiling onstage, getting so deep into it that he almost left to save himself, and being able to come back to this:

 

(I took this one too. I left the pit during "I Don't Love You" because I got a little thirsty. Sue me!)

 

Love is the whole crowd knowing his name. Love is the shirt in my dresser drawer that says “Mikey Fuckin’ Way.” Love is the band not selling those shirts for anyone else.

 

Love, to me, lies in the fact that this band is at the top of their game. That when it got too fraught, too heavy with association, they stepped away. That now, for the first time, they’re able to play the songs they wrote at 20 and infuse them with joy, despite it all. Every show is filled with an infectious, celebratory energy. More than once, Gerard has stopped in the middle of a song to proclaim that the other three are “his best friends in the fucking world.” They can’t help but rejoice in being together again. The songs have never sounded better. Nothing has ever felt like this.

 

On Tuesday night, I watched an Instagram livestream of the first of five consecutive LA shows they’re playing this tour. It’s not something I do a ton, but it’s become a common activity in the circles I run in. I know people who have attended every show of this tour virtually. I thought I would just stay for a song or two. I was wrong.

 

 

 

Gerard Way is…kind of a genius. I feel like I’m allowed to say this. He has one of my favorite voices of all time, and his songwriting comes with such a theatrical sensibility behind it. Everything is fiction, and nothing is. He’s also an Eisner award-winning writer—I still remember being thirteen and sitting on the floor of the Forest Hills library, reading volume 2 of The Umbrella Academy. It was the first time I ever realized what comics could really do. If I loved him less, I might be able to talk about him more. He gave so much of himself to My Chem the first time around that he had to quit. And here he is, finally: in a cheerleader outfit, at the Forum (his favorite room in the world!), blasting a flamethrower everywhere. It’s everything the band stands for: expression, subversion, joy, joy, joy, joy.

 

I don’t know if they’ll stick around after the tour ends, and I don’t care. I don’t listen to American rock band My Chemical Romance anymore. I don’t need new music from them; the music they have given me has been in my blood for a decade now. If I never heard any of their songs again, I’d still remember every word. What I do know is that I’ve never seen any band—or anything—provoke the reaction they do, in me and in others. I’m so grateful to be able to see it happen in real time.