Sometimes, not everything goes your way. For My Chemical Romance fans, that sentiment particularly rang true this year, after the legendary band’s reunion hit a standstill because of the coronavirus pandemic. Shows were cancelled, including an appearance down under, and we once again returned to a My Chemical Romance-less world. That’s why it’s great news that musical virtuoso Jack Antonoff has sat down with My Chem frontman Gerard Way with part two of his new interview series, giving fans some content to sink their teeth into while we wait for this god forsaken year to pass.
Unlike many of us, Antonoff has kept himself busy this year. The Bleachers frontman and fun. member recently appeared in Taylor Swift’s folklore: the long pond studio sessions on Disney Plus, after producing the groundbreaking album with Swift and co-producer Aaron Dessner. He just released a new single with Bleachers that features the king of Jersey, Bruce Springsteen. At the time, Antonoff asserted that it was “the honour of a lifetime” to be joined by Springsteen. “He is the artist who showed me that the sound of the place I am from has value and that there is a spirit here that needs to be taken all over the world.”
That spirit is the centre of the interview series, part one of which saw Antonoff speak with Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. Its overall focus is on the culture of the scene in New Jersey, which is where My Chemical Romance grew up and formed. Way explains being “anti-corporate” in a world where major labels were descending upon the scene in the city. “We felt like we were in something really special and we felt like we didn’t need a record label”, he adds. “You would play these shows with these bands, they’d blow in with a really nice van with brakes on the trailer…and it didn’t work. We would play the show and we would be the reason the kids came to the show.”
Listen to Jack Antonoff and Gerard Way’s sit-down below.
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