#MCR LA 1

[gerardpilled]

Okay a video I think about A LOT that I haven’t seen people talk about since it’s initial posting is this one from LA1 where Gerard exits the stage and is excitedly chased down by Lindsey

[pinchinschlimbah]

How am I supposed to explain to other people that this is actually a very good Gerard Way cosplay and not just me being unhinged

[centaur-dreaming]

NUMBER ONE?! NUMBER FUCKING O N E?! ON TUMBLR?! T U M B L R ? !

[mikeywayarchive]

frankieromustdie: he’s a consummate rams/kings/dodger fan (we let that slide), a bigtime hat enthusiast, mychem’s bass player extraordinaire, my personal photographer, all around sweet little dude who’s always down for a mall hang or a shit talk, and one of my oldest & most handsomest friends.

you know him / you love him…

my brudda from anutha, michael romance.

[Aug 1, 2024]

[best-fictional-band-poll]

The winner of this poll will go through to round 2!

[cyarskj1899]

NUMBER ONE?! NUMBER FUCKING O N E?! ON TUMBLR?! T U M B L R ? !

[angstics]

just thought about how my chem has never been this good

[ieropski]

I saw pics of Gerard just now and felt such intense regret abt not buying a GA ticket for my show 😭😭😭😭

[mikeywayarchive]

Interview transcript under the cut:

The darkness that drives Mikey Way

For the first time, MCR’s enigmatic bassist reveals the private agony that drove him to the brink of suicide

Words: Tom Bryant

Photo: Dave Willis

Mikey Way has been wandering around backstage in Las Vegas for a while now. It's a few hours before his band, My Chemical Romance, are due onstage to headline a free show at the House Of Blues. At first he's chatty, proud that MCR have risen from opening these kind of shows a few years ago to now being the main attraction. In part it's due to the astonishing success of "The Black Parade. More than that, it's due to the strange and alluring charisma of this band, a darkness operating beneath the surface. Thinking about this is when Mikey starts to sound nervous.

As he paces around, it's clear there's something he wants to get off his chest. He begins to talk about the making of 'The Black Parade,’ the record that's put him where he is now. He mentions the shadowy forces the band say drove them to the edge of disaster during the recording process, hinting that the band member most troubled during those tense months was him.

While his brother Gerard Way has been open about his battle with drink and drugs, Mikey's struggle has been less publicised. Yet he says, "I was pretty bad, I was two steps away from the Betty Ford Clinic. When Gerard stopped drinking [in 2004], it put me on my road to recovery - it's just that my road took a couple of years. Well, I stopped doing the drugs so much but it was more the drinking that I latched onto. I thought I didn't have a problem because it wasn't making me depressed.

But then, later on in life, I realised I had a real problem."

As he speaks it becomes clear just how difficult life has been for Mikey in the last year. Quietly, as he talks, he reveals how he became paralysed by depression to such an extent that he was close to leaving the band, leaving his friends and, more worryingly, how he even thought of suicide.

WHAT WERE YOU GOING THROUGH DURING THE RECORDING OF 'THE BLACK PARADE'?

"It was a mixture of being 25 and of taking a cocktail of anti-depressants and then drinking on them. I had stopped doing drugs but I was really depressed. There were a lot of traumatic events that had been through that I hadn't properly processed or accepted. Also I moved to Brooklyn just after we had got home from touring 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' [in late 2005] and it was the first time we'd had the chance to be home for any length of time. It was the first chance we'd had to be normal human beings for a while. That was a hard hit to me. It felt weird. I just couldn't get used to being home for two or three months. I just didn't get it."

WAS THAT CONFUSING?

"Yes, everything was supposed to be stable and great - but it wasn't. On top of that I had all these chemical dependencies and I had just turned 25, which depressed me. Life was getting to me."

WAS THERE A LOT OF PRESSURE ON THE BAND THEN TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL FOLLOW-UP TO THREE CHEERS FOR SWEET REVENGE'?

"Yes - there was the pressure too. People were saying. 'You guys are making your follow-up, you've got to beat the last one'. That was in my head the whole time. Then I started worrying about my own abilities too."

YOUR MUSICAL ABILITIES?

"Yes, that and everything else. Everything - life in general - everything was going round my head."

DO YOU THINK YOU'VE BEATEN IT NOW?

"I don't know if l have truly beaten it. I'm a fuckload better, though. I'm probably at 80 or 90 per cent now. Basically what happened was that I left the Paramour house [the studio in which MCR recorded 'The Black Parade']. I left after I had a mental breakdown. I went through some trauma. I left the house to stay with one of my best friends [the band's lawyer and close friend Stacy Fass]. Getting out of Paramour was the turning point for me. That house had just escalated everything in my head and made everything a million times worse."

WHY WAS IT SO BAD THERE?

"Here's the thing - being in that house was like being in another country. You couldn't get cellphone service and the internet was really bad too so it felt like all my lines of communication were down. I didn't have my driver's licence at the time so l was stranded on the property. It was miles from anywhere. We had these long, vigorous practice schedules where we would wake up at noon and play until midnight. If you mix all that with the fact that I was manic depressive then it was as though someone was pouring gasoline on all my problems and setting fire to them."

THAT'S A VERY HARD WAY TO MAKE AN ALBUM.

"Yeah. And I almost didn't get through it."

WERE YOU CLOSE TO SUICIDE?

"I was really close. I knew that I was going to leave the band or maybe just leave planet Earth altogether. I felt like it was either one or the other. I just thought, 'I can't deal with this."

WHO HELPED YOU THROUGH IT?

"Oh - everyone. My band, my brother, my parents, my fiancée, all my best friends. My friend Stacy saved my life. She got me out of the house, she put me up at her place and kicked me out of bed and made me go to my therapy appointments. She made me get active help."

WERE YOU SEEING A LOT OF THERAPISTS?

"I was seeing four different doctors a week. They were two steps away from putting me into a hospital. I think Gerard wanted to check me into somewhere."

IT WAS THAT SERIOUS?

"Yes, it was really bad but I knew that being checked into somewhere wouldn't help. I was stronger than that."

IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE FEELING BETTER NOW.

"I'm on medication and that helps. My brother and I have a history of depression, it's a genetic thing. People aren't all wired the same. Me and him were born like that. So I take medication. And everything is great for us now. I'm happier than I've been since I was 14. I'm on top of the world, I really am."

Mikey Way’s Private Hell 

Interview with Mikey Way from Kerrang! Issue no 1141, January 13 2007

[current-mcr-news]

beemer138: MCR • Day 1 • Las Vegas Festival Grounds • Las Vegas, NV • Oct 19, 2024

[Oct 20, 2024]

[gerardpilled]

night 1 in LA

[pinchinschlimbah]

Oh btw here’s a proper view of my cheer Gerard cosplay, dress made by me!

[tiredofpity]

I forgot about this, shit. Intro for demo lovers la night 1.

“They had run out of gas. Somewhere on the edge of New Mexico. There was no one left but them. Drive.”

Demolition Lovers intro from MCR LA 1 (10/11/22)

[jackett-slut]

34 days without mcr concert you feel like the world is ending and then you rewatch some concert videos from this tour and suddenly life feels livable again

[mikeywayarchive]

Instagram story by mikeyway

[Oct 1, 2024]

[earlycuntsets]

mcr shows on youtube pt. 1 (2002 - 2005)

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

-> pt. 4 (2011 - 2023)

02/16/2002 american legion garfield nj – sarah lewitinn

03/01/2002 loop lounge passaic nj – ATØMIC JĒY

06/14/2002 club krome south amboy nj – spaceyrayrun

06/29/2002 harmony grange hall no. 12 wilmington de us – spaceyraygun

07/05/2002 american legion – camp merritt post 21 cresskill nj usa – spaceyraygun

07/19/2002 loop lounge passaic park nj – spaceyraygun

08/03/2002 rexplex elizabeth nj – spaceyraygun

08/16/2002 maxwell’s hoboken nj – george koroneos

08/17/2002 alissas basement kinnelon nj – spaceyraygun

09/14/2002 electric factory philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

12/02/2002 fireside bowl chicago il – brad nolan video on plentyoflegs

12/18/2002 trocadero theater philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

12/23/2002 factory 324 roanoake va – panterathrashfan13

1/11/2003 fireside bowl chicago il – brad nolan videography

02/20/2003 mississippi nights st louis mo – brad nolan videography

02/21/2003 beaumont club kansas city mo – brad nolan videography

02/28/2003 boonton elks lodge boonton nj – user: random stuff

03/23/2003 club krome south amboy nj – douglas carl

05/14/2003 north star bar philadelphia pa – deadhoarse

05/23/2003 imusicast oakland ca – skyline studios – oakland

06/08/2003 bloomfield avenue cafe montclair nj – spaceyraygun

06/26/2003 the knitting factory nyc ny – luxlillian

07/26/2003 the chameleon club lancaster pa – spaceyraygun

08/18/2003 9:30 club washington dc – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

08/19/2003 trocadero theater philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

10/23/2003 downtime nyc ny – spaceyraygun

10/31/2003 south amboy nj halloween show – user: MCR stuff and things

11/14/2003 university of connecticut-stamford stamford ct – user: random stuff

12/14/2003 irving plaza nyc ny – spaceyraygun

05/17/2004 des moines iowa house of bricks – 515 archive

06/02/2004 manchester university manchester uk – TEMIHATOP-HvH

06/08/2004 vintage vinyl fords nj – spaceyraygun

06/09/2004 newbury comics shrewsbury ma us – punkstermann

06/10/2004 north star bar philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

08/08/2004 summer sonic festival tokyo japan – dusted out on route guano

11/08/2004 hard rock live orlando fl – ryanninja

11/13/2004 unknown venue orange ca – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

12/12/2004 universal amphitheatre universal city ca – andrea amador

01/17/2005 trl nyc ny – patty8239

02/03/2005 la boule noire paris – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/04/2005 arrow hall mississauga ontario ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/05/2005 john labatt centre london ontario ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/29/2005 arco arena sacramento ca – moranestes

05/21/2005 kroq weenie roast irvine ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

05/27/2005 wxdx summer kick off chevrolet amphitheater pittsburgh pa – neeeeonafterglow

06/06/2005 le trabendo paris france – the academy is my beautiful romance

06/10/2005 download festival donington park castle donington uk (interview) – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

06/25/2005 warped tour reliant park houston tx – ibanez27

06/27/2005 hard rock live orlando fl – ATØMIC JĒY

07/02/2005 32/20 warped tour pier san francisco ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

07/12/2005 warped tour thunderbird stadium vancouver ca – kristi haubrick

07/30/2005 warped tour molson park barrie ontanio ca – loveorsympathy

07/31/2005 warped tour silverdome pontiac mi – nightrain5565

08/01/2005 warped tour post gazette pavilion burgettstown pa – price family homestead

08/05/2005 warped tour vinoy park st. petersburg fl – rogo117

08/10/2005 warped tour nissan pavilion bristol va – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/11/2005 warped tour ford pavilion montage mountain scranton pa – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/12/2005 warped tour tweeter center camden nj – katemcilwaine

08/13/2005 warped tour randall’s island park randalls island nyc ny – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/14/2005 raceway park englishtown nj – readydeady

08/23/2005 the underworld london england – leila vardar

08/31/2005 melkweg the max amsterdam netherlands – user: random stuff

09/01/2005 abart zurich switzerland – mychemrock1

09/03/2005 idroscalo segrate italy – nacho en tour

09/15/2005 promowest pavilion columbus west ohio – andreaflowers

09/17/2005 eastern michigan university convocation center ypsilanti mi – amanda

09/27.2005 mesa amphitheatre mesa arizona – mark zeta

10/02/2005 event center arena san jose ca – jason is lost in japan

10/08/2005 gwinnett center duluth ga – living with ghosts

10/10/2005 revolution live ft lauderdale fl – natnizzle

10/14/2005 tweeter center camden nj – decoemergency

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

-> pt. 4 (2011 - 2023)