Gerard Way

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.

On tour production themes:
I’ve kind of worked out a theme that I’m finalizing right now for the set up. Everything has generally been black [in the past] so I think I’m going for something a little different. And, we’ll just see how it goes. We’re also focusing heavily on performance and it will be nice to get back to playing some more aggressive sets and an hour is a perfect amount of time to do that in.

On performing The Black Parade on the Projekt Revolution tour:
Being that we’re playing in front of a lot of Linkin Park fans and a lot of fans of other bands that are playing, we’d kind of like to mix it up and be able to show them a lot of different colors of the band. I’m sure people can guess the favorites. I mean, they know the favorites of the band and we always play those.

Top 10 Chester Bennington quotes, in no particular order:
1. “We kind of want to be a band that’s kind of ambiguous.”

2. “We want to put on cool light shows, if we can, and we want to blow shit up.”

3. “If at the end of the day all we did was plant a bunch of trees, that’s cool with me.”

4. “I hope that that’s what we go down as, you know, a good rock band.”

5. “It’s like super recycled.  It’s like even our inks are environmentally friendly.”

6. “I have quite a few theories on how companies can help their bands achieve greater success and stop just hemorrhaging money, but that’s not part of the question.  The reality is I have no idea.”

7. “There is going to be plenty of information out there and we’ll be giving out some crap, too, that people can take home with them.  It’ll be cool.”

8. “I think people get annoyed when they feel like it’s their responsibility to save the world, even though it kind of is our responsibility.”

9. “So, if you want to step out there and put your nuts on the line, go for it.  We’re all for it.”

10. Press conference moderator on Bennington: “Did we lose Chester again?”