Inside Gerard Way’s Crusade to Change American Music
Was making Hesitant Alien a liberating experience?
It was. But it was also a difficult experience. We recorded in a lot of different places: Some of it was done in Rob [Cavallo’s] studio, Lightning Sound, some of it was done in the old My Chem studio, but most of the record was done at the Sonic Ranch in Texas. We went there for a month, and that was the hardest I’ve worked on a record since Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Just trying to get everything done, on a budget, and doing it the way we wanted.
What do you mean by that?
I mean just about everything [laughs]. When I was 15, I bought my first pedal, this Russian Big Muff when Sovtek was making them, and I would constantly bring it to MCR recording sessions and it never found a place. Fuzz was kind of not happening at that point. So I started with that, and I got a Fender Blender, and Wattson fuzz pedals, I got clones and reproductions, and I built up this arsenal of fuzz. So I was wanted to use all of them on this record, and all Fender guitars. Telecasters and Jazzmasters were, to me, the whole record. It’s what I had, most likely because that’s what Graham Coxon and Supergrass played.
And then there are songs like “Drugstore Perfume,” which is my American “Common People,” or “Bureau,” which was influenced by stuff like Bowie’s Station to Station. There’s saxophone on the record, on “No Shows” and “Get the Gang Together,” because I kind of wanted to bring it back. “How’s It Going to Be” we did with Wendy Carlos in mind, and “Zero Zero” kind of started as this Blur “Song 2” thing, kind of fuzzed out, but we always heard Joy Division in it, so it ended up in going in that direction.
It doesn’t sound like you were influenced by many of your contemporaries.
Yeah, that’s kind of why it’s called Hesitant Alien. Being in a really big machine band like My Chem, I was constantly rallying the outsiders, fighting to get noticed, and then I started to realize “You know what? You don’t fit in, and that’s actually how you fit in. You actually are part of that machine.” My whole trip through music, I always felt hesitant, and I always felt like an alien. I remember being on TRL, and we’re wearing the full get-ups and the makeup, we looked like vampires, and I felt like a space alien. I felt like I’d come to earth for the first time, and I was on this crazy TV show that made no sense to me. And the audience was so young, and I didn’t know what was happening, and our songs were getting played next to pop stuff and how do I relate to that? So, I’ve always felt like an alien. That’s cool.
To that end, what are your hopes for the new album?
All I want is a great first showing, and then I want to follow it up right away. I’ve started to write again, I can cut a song tomorrow. And I think there’s a similar spirit going on with what [guitarist] Frank [Iero]’s starting to do now that we’re not in My Chem anymore. He’s just going and cutting songs at Third Man, and I know he’s always wanted to do that, so to see him do that makes me really happy. So, for me, the goal now is to always be making. I don’t want to be in a situation where it’s this heavily scrutinized piece of art that takes three years to come out, because of the market testing and the focus grouping. I’m not interested in any of that. The goal is to start a new machine, just get it going, play a lot of shows, meet a lot of interesting people, pull the mask off a little.
Inside Gerard Way’s Crusade to Change American Music, Page 2 of 2