Biographic - Sunday January 15, 2006 Comic Strip Licensing and Permissions

Transcript

My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way As a teen growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way had two obsessions- music and comic books. So 2005 was a year of double triumph for the goth-punk quintet, not only did the band win the artist of the year award in the MTV Woodies, but they were also immortalized as a line of action figures! My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way was raised in Bellville, New Jersey, although he dabbled in music as a teen, his passion was drawing and he ended up studying at the school of visual arts in New York, graduating with a BFA in 1999, he subsequently worked at a company that sculpted action figures, and he tied his hand at pitching animation ideas to Cartoon Network but by the end of 2001, making music was back on the top of his agenda. Teaming up with friedn Ray Torso, he recruited drummer Matt Pelissier (later replaced) by Bob Bryar) and recorded a demo. They soon persuaded Frank Iero and Gerard's kid brother, Mikey, to join the lineup. Taking the name My Chemical Romance from an Irvine Welsh novel, they began to build a loyal following through their album "O Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love" on the small independent label Eyeball Records in 2002. The big breakthrough came with 2004, a major label release of "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" An album inspired by the death of Gerard and Mikey's grandma, the woman who had taught Gerard to sing and draw and had even bought the band their first van. Soon My Chemical Romance was an MTV fixture and one of the fastest rising bands in rock.

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