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Gerard Way opens up about My Chemical Romance breakup: 'It wasn't fun any more'

'When things start to succeed and go really well, that’s when a lot of people start to have an opinion and that’s when you run into struggle'

Clarisse Loughrey
Saturday 09 February 2019 16:42 GMT
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Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance
Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance (Getty Images)

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has opened up about the band’s split.

The band parted ways in 2013, but Way told The Guardian that cracks first started to appear during the recording of 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, which was at one point scrapped and entirely rewritten.

“When things start to succeed and go really well, that’s when a lot of people start to have an opinion and that’s when you run into struggle,” the musician said. “Everybody had a f***ing opinion about what MCR should be. So it made it difficult to figure out what direction to take next. You get caught up in this trap of ‘Is it ever gonna be good enough?’”

He added: “It wasn’t fun to make stuff any more. I think breaking up the band broke us out of that machine.”

Rumours of a reunion have persisted since 2016, when their album The Black Parade celebrated its 10th anniversary. However, Way said that he believed that the fact Barack Obama was the US president meant the band wasn’t needed any more.

With Donald Trump now in power, Way admitted he had reconsidered whether the band should make a comeback. “That’s stuff I thought about when the world started to get super f***ed-up again,” he reveals. “It definitely came into my head, but I’d changed so much as a person. I didn’t know how I’d fit into it any more, I didn’t know how the band would fit into it any more. But you’re right, the world is definitely in need of something positive.”

But, although the musician said he misses playing with the band, he added that a reunion is still unlikely.

Way is currently promoting the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, an adaptation of the comic book series he created, illustrated by Gabriel Bá.

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