#Geoff rickly I love you so much

[vriska-serketboard]

A section about Thursday & Geoff Rickly from a book my dad gave me for Christmas ft. some of my annotations

also here’s the book:

[theglassespredicament]

TUMBLR RECOMMENDED ME YOUR POST ABOUT THE THURSDAY RAPE ME COVER i will literally love you forever and ever how the fuck did i not know about this and also can we hold hands and get married possibly

OH MY GOD no i felt crazy when i found it i'm shocked it hasen't been talked about before now, my hand is gladly yours for the taking

[livejournallegacy]

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (2005) 12. Ever Fallen in Love - Thursday "Every so often it's good to get back in touch with one of the reasons that you play music, and obviously we play music because we love music. And [Buzzcocks is] one of the bands that we really love."

[rememberthelaughtermp3]

wait what the fuck the pricing is so reasonable fuck yeahhhh

[frozenmagz]

GEOFF WORLD CAN ANYONE HEAR ME 🗣️

[tuckerrule]

FOB band member sexual speculation dash topic is so funny to me it's like the one time I think we should open the floodgates and let the rest of "bandom" in because those 4 sensitive sluts from Chicago with beloved wives are all lookin PRETTY good in comparison to, like, geoff rickly. or gerard way or that guy from circa survive, or whatever. like I'm pretty sure all the members of FOB regularly pleasure their wives or whatever weird shit people are talking about today and moreover I'm pretty sure they all do it SIGNIFICANTLY more than some of the more obnoxious personalities who have graced the stages of warped tour. i bet you go in to fuck gerard way and he's lit three votive candles and put on a david bowie record but like not one that's appropriate for sex at all and then he only wants to do it doggy style and if you say no he hides under the covers the whole time like a mouse. gerard way looks sooo much like a mouse i'm googling pictures of gerard way n because i cannot hold an image of his face in my mind it's slippery to me like a butter or oil. this post really got away from me! peace and love everyone

[mieux-de-se-taire]

Danger Days - Part 2

Save Yourself - one of my favorites from Danger Days, definitely my favorite Danger Days intro, that simple opening melody is just so perfect, and then the lyrics, god the lyrics, every single line fucks so hard, and they’re arguably some of the best Gerard ever wrote, this song is just everything distilled: the anger and resentment while still being catchy and fun, the raw cynicism paired with the will and determination to live and care for others, the martyr complex in full force with contemplations on legacy and immortality, the song is just screaming “I’ll die for you! I’ll die for you!”, as a fuck you to the media and those who commodified their suffering and the suffering of their fans, and as a promise to their fans, I’ll protect you, I’ll die for you, I’ll die for you, and isn’t that the message underlying all of Danger Days and Conventional Weapons, christ, and then how legacy is tied into it: “We’re never leaving this place alive / But if we sing these words we’ll never die”, “We can live forever if you’ve got the time”,  “This ain’t about all the friends you’ve made / but the graffiti they write on your grave”, when making and joining a band saved your life but then spiraled out of control and fame threatened to tear you apart again but the very thing that’s killing you is also your legacy and the reason you will never die because you will always be remembered and hated and loved, and what kills you keeps you alive, the poison is the cure, oh my god, I don’t know if any of this is coherent, I love this song so fucking much 

Scarecrow - on the surface one of the happier songs MCR ever wrote, but stupidly devastating when you really listen to the lyrics and learn about the context and deeper meaning, still such a bright, summery, comforting song, one of the most important Danger Days songs I would argue, especially the lyric “Love won’t stop this bomb” (3:07), which is one of the central themes on this record, and as a follow up to save yourself, the repetition of the idea that the end is inevitable and they’re going to die, but instead of anger, scarecrow is more about comfort, it feels like a love letter to their fans, the band still acting as martyrs but focusing more on the listener: “He burns my skin / Never mind about the shape I’m in / I’ll keep you safe tonight”, and knowing that love won’t change anything, but caring anyway, man, maybe Geoff Rickly is right

Summertime - a great transition from Scarecrow by keeping the cheerier sound but actually making it joyful through some truly tender and sweet lyrics, it’s so sappy, almost excessively so, but there’s something so pure and genuine about it, which I think is one of Gerard’s greatest strengths as a writer and a singer, to be able to write very simple lines that would otherwise sound cheesy and phony (think Famous Last Words “I am not afraid to keep on living / I am not afraid to walk this world alone”) but delivering them in way that feels so honest and resolute and making you believe everything they say, it’s also interesting how unabashedly positive it is considering the darkness and anger or bittersweet melancholy that seems to accompany joy everywhere else on this album, Summertime becomes a breath of fresh air

Destroya - completely unironically my favorite Danger Days song, actually the first I heard other than Na Na Na, it fucks so hard, I always have to sing along with the chorus, it’s just so infectious, and the drums, man, it’s one of the most aggressive and powerful sounding songs on the album, and there’s something hypnotically and subversively menacing about it, especially how it was performed live in 2022 with Gerard growling and screaming with demonic vocal distortion, it sounds like a kind of battle cry, which is part of why the extended moaning sections are such a bold and unique choice, but it works in a weird way, at least once you know to expect it (and it’s not live and Frank isn’t genuinely whimpered and groaning on stage sir this is an all ages show), it’s just so angry and weird and fucked up and incredible, and it has some of my all time favorite Danger Days lyrics like “If what you are / is just what you own / What have you become / when they take from you / almost everything?”, which is a brilliant line that ties into the themes of criticizing commodification and consumerism found on Conventional Weapons and Danger Days, also “You don’t believe in God / I don’t believe in luck / They don’t believe in us / But I believe we’re the enemy” is such a raw line, god it’s such a great song, fuck anyone who just reduces it to just the “horny” song 

Kids from Yesterday - probably of one the best songs on the album, especially how they performed it live in 2022 and 2023 with the extended outro (Ray Toro what the fuck is wrong with you this is devastating), it’s so bittersweet and nostalgic and just brimming with love, they always describe it as a song for themselves and you can really hear and see the joy and love among them when they perform it, while other songs feel like promises to the audience, Kids feels like a promise to each other, “I love you. I love you. I will always love you”, it’s so fucked up, “I’ll find you when the sun goes black”, unforgiveable, and it’s also interesting how they revisit legacy as a theme (”You only live forever in the lights you make” is one of my favorite lines in the entire album) and discuss many of the same struggles of fame as other songs, but do so in a far less angry way, it puts less focus on the band as a single entity to be exploited, revered, and hated and more focus on the individuals and how their legacy relates to them as people and their connections with one another, god, it’s just such a stunning song, wish I could listen to it more but I literally can’t handle it

Goodnite, Dr. Death - I really like the radio transmission at the beginning, but I usually skip this one because I don’t feel the need to listen to the American national anthem on the regular, especially not with the very painful (cool sounding, but painful) jumpscare at the end, that being said, it might be favorite of Dr. Death Defying’s interludes, because it’s much calmer and more muted, almost soothing, but disturbing at the same time with how casually death is warned against in an address to children, really adds to the world building, and “Even if you’re dusted, you may be gone, but out here in the desert, your shadow lives on without you” is such a cool line

Vampire Money - so fucking funny, I don’t even know what to say, the iconic roll call intro and countdown followed immediately by the deeply poetic line “We came to fuck”, the fact that it was changed to “We came to suck” in the clean version, the fact that Frank says “Oh I’m there baby” sounding like he’s talking about sex rather than playing music, which he has never once (at least to my knowledge) properly said live and even refuses to acknowledge, the way the whole song is making fun of how people latched onto and then commodified their vampire symbolism and aesthetic early on, and specifically being asked to write a song for the twilight movies, god, I love how they’re so aware of and continuously willing to poke fun at how they’ve been portrayed and perceived over the years, and I also love how malleable this song is live, changing lyrics in little ways every time they perform it, another great example of Danger Days songs being best live

[raytorosaurus]

funny how everyone says boy division is their fave when spotify play counts for light behind your eyes and world is ugly are higher. also boy division is overrated (i love it but i'll die on the hill that everyone is just blinded by it being an upbeat opening track) (tomorrow's money is far superior to boy division) (and number five is the best of the collection)

lol i can see why those two from number three have a lot of streams from more casual fans because they have like...'sing-alongable' lyrics and are that classic kind of palatable angst yk, but boy division is very solidly the fan favourite in more dedicated bandom circles. and yeah i kinda agree sjdkgl - tho i hesitate to call things overrated bc often ppl take it to mean "i don't like it just because it's popular" when in this case i really mean i do love boy division and think it's a great song but just genuinely don't understand why it's this much more popular than the rest of cw, you know? (poll here)

i do get that it's really fun and that they played it a lot this tour and we were all excited about that together so that makes it more fun - what i don't get is why they played it so much this tour (i.e. why it was so loudly a fan favourite above all the others before then). it just really surprises me that it was The most played song besides the every-show staples, with the single exception of mama. look in your heart is it truly anywhere near as good as mama </3 (stats from this awesome awesome spreadsheet by @onedaythisday)

i know that sometimes things are fun to love because they're loved - like it's much more fun to be really hyped up about them playing a "deep cut" fan favourite when everyone can lose their minds in excitement together, i totally get that. a similar thing happens with heaven help us imo. boy division and heaven help us - both really great songs that i love, but which have a reputation of being the stand-out "best" from their respective collections that i don't understand. tomorrow's money is by far my favourite on conventional weapons - of course personal taste accounts for a lot but i do genuinely believe that if any song on cw could be called underrated and truly hold up against their best stuff, it's tomorrow's money. it's lyrically and musically much more interesting than a lot of cw, the production is really fun, the breakdown and distorted screams scratch my brain soooooo good, and it really plays on mcr's strengths as a dual guitar band with a ray toro up their sleeve lol. i also think kiss the ring is a lot more interesting than boy division and sooo fun but they didn't play that one at ALL :( again, just my taste - i defs get boy division being people's fave, just struggle to understand why it's considered such a singular standout.

my actual unpopular cw opinion is that i think surrender the night is a bottom tier mcr song JSDKFLSDF sorry anon. bottom tier mcr already puts them at better than most other songs out there at least. i definitely appreciate it wayyyy much more now after seeing the live version where it actually feels like the guitars are doing something interesting (it might actually have been promoted to second-bottom-tier actually) but the studio version feels kinda flat to me. also imo gerard shot himself in the foot by saying it sounded something geoff rickly would write because if it was a thursday song it would sound better SDKLGJSDKLGJLDS. but that's just me tho i understand why people like it. number one (tomorrow's money and boy division) is probably my fave overall, tho number four (kiss the ring and make room) comes close. then five because burn bright slaps hard.

[friendship-switchblades]

for end-of-year asks: 14 + 20?

HEY STZERO!! :)

14. Favorite book you read this year? I'm SO glad someone asked me this one! Geoff Rickly's Someone Who Isn't Me was fantastic, and held the crown for most of the year. Having just gotten back into reading regularly, I was mostly plowing through fun sci-fi novellas and mid nonfiction (perhaps, all nonfiction is simply mid at best). SWIM was the first that stood out as a work that had goals beyond entertainment - and succeeded. Prose, structure, the unflinching honesty of "I think this is a good basis for a novel but fuck it, let's punch it up." Geoff has always deserved more than just being "the guy who gave MCR their first break" and I'm so happy for him!

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas is dead-heat-tied for favorite of the year. Calling it a "psychological thriller" evokes superhuman serial killers and action setpieces, but I truly have no other way of describing it. A moment in time (NYC post-9/11; teenhood of the early 00s) captured in the obsessive, codependent romantic-friendship of queer teen weirdos. I couldn't put it down. Watching Nell and Fay's all-consuming relationship jump the rails and witnessing their shared plural perspective split into their separate, singular narrative chapters felt like being flayed open.

(If only they were a few years younger, and had been teens when The Black Parade came out. That would have fixed nothing but I like to think those fanfic-writing theater kids would've loved the album.)

20. What’s something you learned this year? HM this is a good one. I answered the above right away, but needed to reflect on this since receiving the ask.

I think I'm a person prone to inertia, I don't naturally assume the role of initiating. And this year I spent a lot of time stepping out of that predilection. It's not like I was ever happy not doing anything, just that I couldn't conceive of the steps and the consistency in pursuing them.

This year I confronted that a lot, both personally and professionally. I got multiple tattoos (so much emailing), I planned TWO birthday parties for myself (regular winter bday and then forced everyone to go to the beach for my half birthday), I booked a short trip by myself! Not to mention all of the time I got to spend with friends just because I stopped being such a passenger princess. This was all shit I've always wanted to do that's never happened as much before!

I also had to do all this shit professionally, too, but that's way less fun and heartwarming lol. But hey I art directed an entire [redacted] and posters I designed were plastered all over NYC, which fuckin ruled.

[autumnrevisited]

Interview with Geoff Rickly about No Devotion and No Oblivion by Gen Handley for issue 64 of New Noise, Sep. 2022.

full text under cut

“It’s like a blessing and a curse,” explains Geoff Rickly, smiling on the Zoom window a bit sadly. “When you really love an album, you can’t wait for people to hear it… but (you’re) also set up to have your heart broken because they won’t love it as much as you do.”

“Right now, to me, it’s my favorite record in the world,” he continues. “But soon it’ll come out, and for some people, it’ll just be a blip, and (they’ll) think it’s not for me, and that’s how it is.”

The record in discussion at the moment is the second, unexpected album from No Devotion, a band that emerged from the ashes of horrible tragedy and released my favorite album of 2015. And not to stomp on Rickly’s genuine humility, but No Oblivion is much more than a blip for some, an album that many people did not think would ever get made, Rickly included. The fire reignited when guitarist Stu Richardson sent Rickly a demo for their rousing, intense first single, “Starlings.”

“I was obsessed with it,” he recalls. “I didn’t’ think I was going to do anything with it, but whenever it rained, and I’d take a cab—when people were still taking cabs in New York—I’d put it on in the back of the cab and think, ‘This is the kind of music I wish I was making right now.’”

They ruminated various plans for the song, but ultimately decided that it should be a No Devotion song after the magic they felt when they played it with guitarist Lee Gaze.

“We thought, maybe we’re not done with No Devotion yet,” Rickly says, shrugging with a big smile.

The haunting result is a refined collection of eight harmonious songs that returns to the art of the album where every single song is there, in that spot, and in that order, for a very good reason that was discussed at length.

But most importantly, it’s the first album, in nearly 30 years as an artist, that Rickly has been sober and made a piece of work with vulnerability and cobalt beauty aching from every line sang by the shadowy artist whose voice has never sounded stronger, more gripping. This is from an artist who already captivates listeners and audiences around the world, an insatiable creator whose beautiful words and melodies and screams have gotten many of a sufferer through dark times—myself included.

And while they wrote much more than eight tracks for their second record, No Devotion kept returning the original songs which were created during an intense two-week flurry of creativity when the trio reunited. (There’s also a record’s worth of 10 songs that he “loves” but kept off of No Oblivion and is still deciding what their fate will be.)

“We thought it was a really short record, but every song we added would throw off the balance… making it too long and too dark, or if we brightened it up with a big pop song like from the first record (Permanence), it didn’t fit and kind of ruined the mood.”

Rickly is mostly known for his visionary work in Thursday who is still playing shows, but not ready to create new music.

“The reason I think No Devotion kept going is because Stu and Lee and I have this really intense ability to know what each other’s thinking and push in the same direction for a song—it makes writing a real pleasure,” he says. “With Thursday, we all see it going in different directions and writing a song is like a street fight. Every single time.”

He laughs.

“So the fact that Thursday is working at all right now and playing shows and having fun and loving each other and getting along, is such a newer development,” he admits. “I wish I was joking. We all love each other, which is the crazy thing.”

What’s behind the album title and the second track, “No Oblivion” come from?

Well, we had this song first and I think a lot about this band in visual terms—for every song, there’s different projections, and I think there’s going to be a video for every song on this record… My partner’s a director, so we work on a lot of stuff together. I was thinking about how much I would love to have a song that’s just a list… a list of “nos” and see how that played out.

So that was how the song came about, and we kept on playing with versions of the album cover that were just the words for the No Oblivion song, and the graphic designer mentioned why “No Oblivion” works so well typographically is because it’s the same number of letters as No Devotion, the band name, so all there were all sorts of possibilities that opened up; we thought maybe we shouldn’t keep it as the cover art and make it the name of the record. Then we thought about what the title No Oblivion implies, and it seemed to really fit.

What does it imply for you?

A double-negative is sort of like a gesture towards the positive…so a rejection of nihilism or a rejection of death and drug use. The years before I started working on this record were pretty dark for me, and this is first music I’ve made sober. I’m almost five years in, so this a really raw experience for me.

Congratulations on five years—That’s big.

Thanks, it’s coming up in November.

Is it a lot different writing music sober? Is it harder?

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how it’s harder to let go, but I found it to be quite the opposite for me—That for me it’s harder to reign it in. I’m feeling a lot more clearly, and I have to be careful about sculpting them into something that’s art and not just an outpouring of feeling.

We do want our art to have artifice because that’s where you lose yourself in it. There’s this idea that’s become popular in culture: for the performer to use masks so that they can lose themselves and become who they really are. I think there’s a certain element of that in lyrics and songwriting… if you can use a device or structure or something that makes it not just your incredibly specific life experience, then not only can the listener find themselves more clearly in the emotional experience—because it’s more oblique and they can find an entry point—but as a singer and as an artist, you can find yourself more clearly in it.

When we try to say exactly how we feel, I think it’s very easy to misrepresent ourselves. Whereas if we try to make it a little more oblique, then it finds us through a more subconscious route… I think, quite often, it is much more honest than being honest.

With this honesty and your sobriety, how therapeutic was making this record for you?

The most therapeutic thing for me since I got sober is being of service to people… so sponsoring other guys, setting up chairs. A lot of the most mundane tasks can become quite therapeutic when they’re done in service of something greater than yourself. So, I really found that to be my therapy. With (the album), I found it to be more therapeutic in the sense that in the past, I’ve always been quite self-conscious of my own ability… I’m known as a singer who’s tone deaf or can’t sing—it’s a criticism that I’ve heard for a lot of my life.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I also recognize that there’s something that I communicate that seems to resonate with people and that’s why I’ve been able to do this for 25 years. There have been so many better singers than I am, technically, who don’t have careers and will never have careers. twenty-five years in popular music is like a unicorn. (laughs) It’s all about youth. I think it used to really eat me that I couldn’t put my finger on what it was I did, whether I was just incredibly lucky or if I actually had any talent or not. This record was a real turning point for me where I realized that I can sing; I do have talent; I do know what I’m doing… I now trust myself that I have the kind of taste that I want to hear.

I don’t expect everyone to see the world how I see it, and I don’t like stuff other people like. I’m kind of a hater. (laughs) I’m a real, old-school hater, and I don’t like that about myself but whatever—I just try not to be too much. (laughs)

This record sounds like a new beginning in a way.

Yeah, it’s basically a new band and starting from scratch. When we started Permanence, it was less of a new band because all of the artists involved had such a following, and that’s changed. It’s a different time, a different world; people aren’t waiting to see what Geoff from Thursday does next because Thursday’s still going. It’s just a whole different dynamic.

I’m just really appreciating everything I’ve been given… just being able to have a life as an artist at all. I’ve had 30-plus years of a career as musician. How many people in this capitalist world get to even have one job, regardless of it being rewarding? So I feel ok about whatever comes next.

So then are you feeling more content these days?

I don’t spend much time being content because there’s always something else I want to try, but I do feel that I’ve gotten so much more than I ever could have dreamed of.

[strawberryblondebutch]

hey! I saw that you updated "the slumps..." ronance fic and started to re read it yesterday so I could fully appreciate the new update! I was wondering if you have a playlist of all the songs you mention/name a chapter after? I'm not really immersed in punk culture but the concept always intrigued me and I'd love to hear all the songs robin and eddie keep talking about in the story, so it would be really cool to have them all in a playlist!

What's UP!

I used to have a playlist but I went through "spring cleaning" (when my mania decides I need to reorganize everything) and deleted it. That being said, bands of the era I cannot recommend enough:

Thursday - This is the big one. Thursday is hockeyverse!Robin's canon favorite band, and Geoff Rickly is responsible for so many other Jersey emo bands

Say Anything - They don't come up much in the story but they are my favorite of the era. ... Is A Real Boy is probably the number one influence on my band

Finch - If you like screamy bands, holy shit. I just saw them on tour with Bayside (who I also recommend) and they RIPPED

Thrice - Most of these bands have reedy countertenor vocalists, and Dustin is the exception. His voice used to be silky smooth and now it's all gravelly. Both are very pleasing

Scary Kids Scaring Kids - My sleeper pick. You can look up '00s punk and emo playlists as the day is long and get the same obvious results not included here, but SKSK's debut album is stupid good

Silverstein - Shane will blow your eardrums off. One of my top live bands for sure

Saosin - Anthony is an actual buddy of mine and he'd be so mad if I didn't include one of his projects

[chorusfm]

Geoff Rickly Talks With Vulture

Geoff Rickly of Thursday talked with Vulture about their musical return: In 2019, we started writing and it was really contentious. We were tossing demos back and forth, and nothing was happening. We let them sit for a while. With the last one, everyone was like, “This one has an amazing chorus. How can you not like that?” And I was like, “I just feel like it’s too much the same thing over and over again.” Stu Richardson, who plays bass for us on tour and is an amazing producer, was like, “That’s an easy fix.” Stu slowed down the beginning, took out the drums, and added some keyboards and then I sang a totally different thing over it, and it was like, “Oh! Suddenly I love this song!” The funny thing is, I don’t know what will come next from us, but now that the Band-Aid is off, it feels a lot easier to write together. Since we got back together eight years ago, this is the biggest the band’s been. Every night we’re going out and the audience makeup is tilting toward younger fans instead of people that have been with us the whole time. --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/linked/geoff-rickly-talks-with-vulture/

[geoffrard]

please tell me more about this geoff/gerard proof 👀

anon how much time do u have

thought about being jokingly tinhatting with my response to this but i dont actually think they full fucked or whatever. so instead i'm just gonna dump several thousand words of an earnest attempt to outline why geoff and gerard deserve the same treatment received by other legendary canonical friendships like bert & gerard, mikey & pete, etc etc

also i caught the riot fest covid so idk how comprensible i will be. and idk how much sense some of this will make if you don't already have, like, rudimentary knowledge about geoff rickly's start in the hardcore scene in new brunswick, nj, so obligatory plug of the thursday primer that me and nic @raytorosaurus put out a while ago.

but tl;dr, geoff rickly and gerard way were drawn to each other literally from the beginning. since then, neither have left the other's orbit. they are legit cosmically connected narrative foils who could have been each other's closest confidant but never have been more than incredibly meaningful people to the other due to instance after instance of wrong place, wrong time.

i'll do my best to sum up some of the most poignant moments in their over twenty-year-long friendship, but nic and i are drafting several other posts that more diligently delineate the connections between thursday and mcr in their overlapping, mirrored careers and similarities/divergences in their goals/approaches as musicians.

so anyway despite what you might have assumed from the story that goes around where geoff heard gerard and mikey (badly) playing vampires at the eyeball house and wasn't impressed, i believe that at that point they'd already been friends for a while.

this is how gerard recalls the moment he met geoff:

Way: I remember it super vividly. Do you remember? I was walking out of the record shop that Alex [Saavedra, Eyeball Records] worked at on Kearny Avenue and you were standing against a wall wearing a black t-shirt. You were rail skinny and you looked like you were dying and you were so pale with this jet black hair. Rickly: My vegan lifestyle was not agreeing with me. Way: It looked like the sun was killing him. [long pause] And I thought he was super cool. (from their interview with vice in 2015)

long pause and i thought he was super cool.....like....

this is what geoff looked like back then btw. im guessing it was around 2000/early 2001 that they met since thats the outer limits of geoff's black hair goth days

(source)

gerard designed shirts for bands in the scene, including this one for thursday, probably done around 2001 when the dove became the main symbol associated with thursday. at this point mikey was a regular at the eyeball house but gerard was still hiding away in his house, but would always talk about his brother.

Geoff: "I knew Mikey from parties at the eyeball house. I liked Mikey a lot, and he was like, 'you're gonna love my brother Gee (he called him Gee all the time), Gerard, he's the best comic book artist, he's always at home, just working on comic books.' So I was like yeah, I wanna meet this kid, you know, I wanna make comic books with him, you know, that sounds awesome!" (source)

after that geoff kept asking mikey when his brother would come down to the eyeball house, because he'd loved comics since he was a kid, but he was too shy to verbalize that, and his love of comics wasn't something he'd ever actually shared with anyone other than his grandmother, who had just passed away, but he heard that this quiet guy who'd sometimes hang out with the scene's resident kid brother was this amazing comic book artist, and geoff decided that gerard was a person he wanted to know.

So like they were literally talking about writing a comic book together: geoff would write and gerard would draw. but they never were able to spend that much time together. thursday found massive and unanticipated success in late 2001 when understanding in a car crash started playing on mtv nonstop and gerard was still a hermit for the most part but had started to piece together the band that would become my chemical romance.

so then blah blah blah the story where gerard and mikey introduced the idea of their band to geoff we've all heard it. i linked it above but you can read the excerpt from dan ozzi's sellout here if you aren't familiar with the details already.

and that story ends with geoff listening to their demo and realizing that this little band actually had something. but i firmly believe that geoff loved the scene and was so compelled by gerard's art and wanted to collaborate creatively with him that he would have been willing to do it regardless of if he came around to their music or not.

geoff said this in a podcast in 2018:

"Gerard is sort of like... when he's not sort of hiding out in his house somewhere, he's actually so charming and personable. There's a reason why I was so drawn to him, and that he's, like, a superstar."

obviously we'll never know, because geoff was so compelled by the music that he played their demo to death in the tour van and then took the only two weeks that thursday had off in one of the busiest years of their career while in the midst of a super contentious legal affair with their record label to produce bullets.

okay now that i am looking at what i have written so far i look like an insane person and that is okay but i think that i will save the rest for another longer post about the fated careers of mcr and thursday. but i feel that i have done my job by just giving you this taste. more to come but their friendship literally so expansive and detailed (in ways that I don't usually see articulated here) that a single tumblr post is never going to do it justice. as i said, stay tuned, we're working on something more.

tl;dr (another one) gerard and geoff are perennially obsessed with each other & have been since literally the first time that they laid eyes on each other and it comes out the second that either of them have to be even a little reflective on the other's career thanks for reading my manifesto bye.

[raytorosaurus]

ok. do u know what songs thursday are playing when they open for mcr. ive been listening to their music but i would like to be able to sing along to their songs

YES SHOW THEM SOME LOVE geoff's had a couple major injuries/illnesses recently which means he can't jump around on stage quite as much as he's famous for but they're gerard's favourite live band ever for a reason, they're just amazing. so basically you should listen to every single one of their songs. but also me and @geoffrard just threw together this playlist of the songs they're most likely to play, though i assume their set will be slightly shorter than this one.

you can be absolutely sure they'll play understanding in a car crash, war all the time, and jet black new year (seeing as they're playing it on their current tour and that's the song gerard featured on back in the day).

if you like what you hear, carp and i also made this intro to thursday playlist that we feel encapsulates their various sounds pretty well while still being a reasonable length

also if you want a rundown of the history of the band (which is crazy and also like. almost poetically linked to my chemical romance but with like the opposite luck in terms of labels and commercial success lol) we wrote an old-school primer here. oh also we have an upload blog here @thursdayarchive. also geoff rickly is the sweetest man in the entire universe btw <3

[burningchandelier]

I have created propaganda. I apologize in advance.

So glad to see that the fandom does generally seem to agree that Ray Toro has the best dick game. I have a strong feeling that they are right.

Sorry, but you know Gabe is out there slanging for God. That man can FUCK.

I have a strong suspicion that Bert does the weird stuff, but it fucking works. Like. That man knows what to do and has a bunch of surprises up his sleeves (perhaps literally). He has dicked down a lot of bad bitches.

Mikey is well known for being THE slut of the scene and that has to be for a reason. You're not screwing soccer moms when you're a baby twink without learning a thing or two.

You know Anthony "(my dick's) not that bug but I know how to fuck" Green KNOWS how to fuck. That man. That man. He can move.

Patrick? Patrick definitely has the vibe of a guy who gives it his all. He has been overlooked a lot and has the life-long curse of being a cute dude with lots of flashier, sexier friends. When you live like that, you learn to bring a lot to the table. Yeah-- Patrick makes sure his partner is getting everything out of that interaction.

Gerard is a serial monogamist who learns what their partner likes. They probably took a while to get confident, but oh damn, they know what to do now.

Pete... now, Pete is a wildcard. Pete could be life-changing in bed, or Pete could be kind of selfish and underwhelming. I think it all comes down to how he feels on a given night and what's going on in his life.

Frank has been with the same woman since forever and they have multiple kids. Has he fucked? Yeah. Has he fucked a lot? Not as much as he would like people to think. Does he fuck well? Well… obviously well enough for his wife.

Aaaaand that leaves Geoff. Geoff has fucked around, sure. Yeah. He is also generally terrified of the ordeal of being known and sex is one of the forms of intimacy that scares him the most. Is he bad at it? No. Does he worry that someday, someone will look into his eyes, mid coitus, and see him for who he truly is, thereby exposing all his worst fears to the light of day? Yes.

It was so hard to vote this way and to come to this opinion because there is no one I love more on this list than Geoff Rickly and I hope he is getting down with his partner in the BEST way and often, but this is how it boiled down.

[tyforthevnm]

My Chemical Romance Interview - August 12, 2003

Source: x

My Chemical Romance

The Interviewed: Frank Iero, Matt Pelissier, Ray Toro, Gerard Way, Mikey Way

The Interviewer: Jessica Zietz, with occasional input from Michelle Cavallo

The Date: August 12, 2003

Jessica: Okay, I'm gonna pass this around so you guys can introduce yourself.

Frank: Hi, my name is Frank.

Jessica: And you play?

Frank: Oh, I play guitar and I scream.

Mikey: I'm Mikey and I play bass.

Ray: Hi, I'm Ray and I play guitar.

[Gerard, who's on the phone, waves.]

Matt: I'm Matt and I play drums.

[Gerard approaches]

Mikey: And Gerard sings!

Frank: Hello, what do you do?

[Laughter]

Gerard: I sing.

Jessica: Okay, your album was produced by Geoff Rickly, correct?  How did that come about?

Gerard: Basically, he offered to do it for us when he heard a demo that we did.  He really liked it.  I had known him for a couple years, since they first signed to Eyeball.  That's kinda how we hooked up.  I designed a t-shirt for them and we just kinda became friends.  He heard the demo and liked it and he's like, "Can I produce it?" and we were psyched.

Jessica: Cool.  I think he should run for president.

Gerard: [laughing] You think so?

Jessica: I do.  Is he gonna be involved in your next record?

Gerard: Um...probably not, only cause every record, people usually...I'm sure he'll be around, hopefully.  I'm sure he'll be on the road which kinda sucks, but hopefully if he's around we can have him come by as much as possible just to give us input and everything.

Jessica: Your music definitely has a dark tone to it.  Do you try to get on tours with bands that have a different sound so you can expose yourself to all different crowds and scenes?

Gerard: I think generally we end up on tours with different bands because we don't really fit in one place.  I think that's how that happens a lot.  We like to play in front of as many different types of crowds as possible.  We're usually the darkest band, you know what I mean?

Frank: We only tour with bands that we like.

Gerard: Yeah, yeah.

Jessica: That's sort of what I was going to ask next.  Have you done tours with bands whose music you don't like just to kinda get out there and play for a different group of people?

Frank: No, definitely not.  You want to play with bands and experience a tour with a band that you can respect.  If there's a shitty band out there that we really don't like or respect, we're not gonna take a tour with them.

Gerard: Usually, it should be any band's choice.  It's always up to a band if they wanna go out with somebody.  It should not be a problem for any band.

Jessica: Okay, I know that being on tour, all kinds of crazy shit has to happen.  Give us a really crazy/exciting/funny story.

Ray: We don't really have any crazy stories. We don't really do anything.

Jessica: Damn.  I wanted vicarious excitement!

Mikey: Um...we ran out of gas once...and...

Ray: We're really, really boring.

Jessica: Give it a couple years.

Frank: Oh, one time we got held hostage!

Mikey: That was sweet, though.

Jessica: I imagine that'd be a lot of fun.

Mikey: We had a lot of fun.

Jessica: I read that you guys shot a video about a month ago.  What song was it for?

Frank: It was a week ago.

Jessica: Oh.  I'm just making stuff up.

Gerard: We shot a video for "Honey."

Jessica: Which one is that?  See I know your music, but I don't know song titles.

All: First song on the record.

Jessica: Ohhh, okay.  I just never know song titles, but I know track numbers.

Frank: I do that too.  I put a CD on and I don't pay attention to the song names.

Jessica: Yeah.  If you say "Three" or "Seven," I'll know.  Okay.  Being on the road must give you a lot of time to check out new bands or movies or books, ya know, when you're between cities.  Is there anything you can recommend to us, whether it's CDs or movies or books, anything you've fallen in love with?

Frank: Yeah.

Mikey: Absolutely.

Frank: I'm in the middle of The Shining.  And I'm trying to think of new CDs I've heard.  See I'll just listen to Bouncing Souls over and over again.

Ray: Um, I'm reading Perks of Being A Wallflower.

Jessica: That's such a good book.

Ray: It's really Catcher in the Rye-ish.  Very good.  And music...

[All begin talking about The Muse's album.]

Gerard: We've got like half of their new record and that's all I've been listening to.  It's amazing.

Mikey: Yeah, it's the best thing ever.

Jessica: [To Matt] Anything for you?

Matt: No.

[Laughter]

Matt: I don't read.

Ray: Oh, no no no!  That book you've been reading!

Frank: Tell them about the book!

Jessica: Tell us about the book.

Matt: It's a strange deaths book.  It's kinda like the Darwin Awards.  It's just a book of embarrassing deaths.

Jessica: In the car, we were just talking about making a comic book of ways we'd like to kill each other.

[Laughter]

Mikey: So what'd you come up with?

Jessica: She wants to push me off a cliff and have me die on impact.  I wanted her to drive off a bridge and drown.

Michelle: You wanted to strangle me with barbed wire.

Frank: Oooh.

Mikey: You guys are good friends!

Jessica: We love each other!

Michelle: For what, fourteen years?

Mikey: Oh, I know something exciting that happened on the road.  I tried to quit coffee and I had headaches every day.

Frank: That happened today.

Gerard: Yeah, that happened today.  You almost bought coffee.

Jessica: Caffeine withdrawl.

Frank: Did you get the headaches?

Mikey: Yeah, I have a headache, really bad.  I was in a gas station and there was a pot of coffee and I looked at it for about a minute and then my brother [motions at Gerard] got a coffee and he taunted me.

Jessica: You guys are brothers?

Gerard: Yes.

Jessica: You look alike.

Mikey: Really?

Michelle: To a blind person.

Ray: You're the first person who's said that.

Jessica: Well if you changed the hair color.

Matt: We thought he was Travis from Piebald's brother.

Jessica: From the back, I thought you were Tyler. [From Midtown.]

Mikey: Oh, really?

Jessica: And then you turned around and it wasn't Tyler.

Mikey:  Oh, that's okay, cause he's a sweet little dude.

Ray: Were you disappointed that it wasn't Tyler?

[Laughter]

Frank: Oh, you got mugged.

Mikey: Yeah, I get mugged every tour.

Frank: That's kind of exciting.

Jessica: That's a fun story.  That's something to tell the grandkids.

Mikey: Yeah, totally.  In Rhode Island, some dudes decided to punch me in the throat and take my cell phone.  There were like ten of them.

Jessica: Are you serious? Those crazy Rhode Islanders.

Frank: And at gunpoint.

Mikey: Oh yeah, I keep forgetting the gun part.  The guy pulled a gun on me.  And he goes, "Give me your money."  And my first reaction was to lie about it like a moron and say I didn't have any money.  So the kid punches me and he goes, "Give me your cell phone."  And then our manager, with his powers of a deduction-

Ray: He's like a street fighter!

Mikey: He goes into the alley with his cell phone, so then they come back and try to mug him.  He pulls out a fucking switchblade and a baseball bat and a machine gun and a bazooka.  And he got my cell phone back.

Jessica: So he doubles as a bodyguard.

Mikey: He does, actually.

Jessica: That's pretty cool.  Aright, so you guys have been a band for what, a year and a half now?

Matt: A year and eight months.

Gerard: Yeah.

[Some crazy old man comes outside and starts bitching.]

Crazy old man: Can you take your meeting somewhere else?  There are people working in these offices.

All: Okay...

[The group relocates elsewhere and notices that 'people working in these offices' is really two men putting up a sign in an otherwise empty plaza.]

Jessica: It's a sign...

Frank: Wow...

Michelle: Nice.

Frank: What an asshole!

Gerard: Fuck, it's hot.

Jessica: Yeah, it really is.  Okay, so you've been a band for about a year and eight months.  You've come pretty far in the short time that you've been a band.  Can you give us a brief synopsis of the past two years, like how it all got started?

Mikey: Basically, we went to this evil magician and we told him to make us rock & roll superstars.  So he took a pint of each of our blood and put it in a cauldron.

Ray: Obviously he fucked up, cause look at us.

Mikey: We're not rock & roll superstars, but we're sweet little dudes.

Frank: It's been really good.  We're really lucky.

Jessica: What was the first song you wrote as a band?

Gerard: "Skylines and Turnstiles."

Jessica: I like that song.  My favorite song on the album is number six; I'm sorry, you know I'm really bad with the titles.

Matt: "Headfirst for Halos."

Jessica: That's the one.  Just cause that's my favorite song, I'm curious as to what the songwriting process was like for it.

Gerard: It started as a joke.  It was really funny.

Ray: We were stoned and we were jamming.

Matt: And we thought it was obnoxious and funny.  We were just like, "Oh my god, this is so stupid."   And Gerard's like, "No!  This is great!"

Gerard: Yeah; it was brilliant.  So I put really dark lyrics to it and it worked.

Jessica: That's what I like about it.  Cause the music is all upbeat and it sounds like it would be a happy song and then the lyrics are all dark and contrast with it.

Ray: We want to do that for the next album.

Frank: Yeah, we'll do that.

Jessica: So how do you think your music has progressed since writing your first song?  Has it changed?

Gerard: Oh yeah.  The heavy songs we used to write are a lot heavier.

Ray: Frank's been using his high E string too!

Frank: Yeah!  I never knew what that was for until like last month.

Gerard: The heavy songs we used to do are now a little more metal.  And then the different types of songs we do, like "Headfirst" or something like that, we're just starting to get into that now.  That stuff's really exciting because it sounds like us, but we're trying new things.  We're experimenting a little bit and taking risks, basically.  So that's what the new stuff's like.

Jessica: So when was the last time you guys wrote a new song?

Ray and Gerard: Last week.

Frank: This is our first day on tour since like two months ago, so we've been writing a ton of shit.

Jessica: Is anybody in the band doing side projects, any other music or clothing?

Mikey: A clothing line?!

Jessica: I don't know, it seems as if all these bands are starting clothing lines all of a sudden.

Gerard: Nah, we don't do any shit like that.  I'm running a "Dungeons and Dragons" game, though.  That's my side project.

Jessica: So when are you guys gonna record again?

Gerard: Hopefully January.  Hopefully the record will be out in like May.

Jessica: And my last question...you guys are one of my favorite bands.  If you were interviewing your favorite band, what would you want to know?

["Um"s and "Hmm"s all around.]

Mikey: I can't think of a specific band, that's the thing.

Frank: She said your favorite band. So what's your favorite band?

Mikey: Morrissey.  Hmm, what do I want to know from that guy?

Gerard: [To Frank] I think I know what yours would be.

Frank: Oh, go, go, answer for me!

Gerard: [Laughing] Why are you such a prick; why'd you like go get a sandwich when you could have talked to me?

Mikey: That's so sad.

Ray: I'd probably ask Randy Rhoads how it felt dying in a plane crash.

Mikey: He wouldn't answer because he's dead.  I'd probably ask Morrissey how it feels to be a sweet little dude.

Frank: He might show you too.

[Laughter]

Frank: I don't know.  I don't really know.  That's a good one though.  We've never been asked that.

Thanks to Brian Bumbery, Molly, Eddie, and of course, My Chemical Romance.  For more on this fantastic band, visit http://www.mychemicalromance.com