Upon retiring from the stadiums and the adoring masses, some rock stars plough their energy into trout farms, others make cheese and hang out with Tories, and others, like Gerard Way, reach for the comic books. Thirteen years ago, Way was one of the most recognisable figures in rock, a Reading festival demigod with a shock of bleach-blond hair and a trail of tabloid outrage following him wherever he went. The band he fronted, My Chemical Romance, were blamed for turning kids to the dark side with their pain-and-death obsessed lyricism. The Black Parade, released in 2006, was a concept album about the afterlife – with a baffling guest appearance from Liza Minnelli – and sold over 4m copies. It was goth rebranded for the 21st century, and its name was emo. It was called a “sinister cult” by the Daily Mail, and Sarah Sands – now editor of Radio 4’s Today programme – branded it “a celebration of self harm”, even though it took its leads more from Queen and Cheap Trick than it did Aleister Crowley and Charles Manson.
Way in 2019 is a very different man to the one who donned a black military jacket and cast himself as “the saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned”. Now aged 41, he has packed away the army fatigues and hair dye (“It’d been a long time since I’d even seen my natural hair colour and I wanted to see what was going on”), and is about to launch the live-action Netflix version of Umbrella Academy, the comics series he co-created with illustrator Gabriel Bá, on which he acts as co-executive producer. The visceral superhero series’ showrunner is Fargo’s Steve Blackman; it stars Ellen Page, Mary J Blige and a rather excellent talking CGI monkey, and tells the story of an eccentric millionaire, the strange children he adopts, and, naturally, the end of the world. Way started writing the books in 2007 when My Chemical Romance were trucking around the likes of Wembley Arena and, as such, it is partially inspired by his experiences on the road. “It’s a little autobiographical, in terms of being about a dysfunctional family,” he explains. “Which is a lot like being in a band.”
When I call the unerringly pleasant Way, he is in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, in the ornate home that used to belong to surrealist artists Mark Ryden and Marion Peck. Friends of Way, they left him, his wife and nine-year-old daughter a custom-painted mural and a family of semi-tame squirrels to feed daily. Looking after the local wildlife and drinking six cups of coffee a day is now about as rock and roll as Way gets, but he couldn’t be happier. “I like being super-creative all the time, and, unfortunately, when you’re in a really big band you’re actually doing a lot of boring stuff, like being on the road and missing your family. A lot of it is business,” he explains. “Now I get to stay home with them, and make my comics and sit in my office, and I don’t have to leave the house, or those people.” His office is Peck’s old paint-flecked studio.
Way’s joyful embracing of this hermit-like existence makes total sense when you consider that he was always something of an accidental rock star. A childhood fascination with comics lead to him writing and publishing his own when he was just 16. He went on to study fine art at New York’s School of Visual Arts and interned at Cartoon Network. Comics were set to be his life, but after witnessing 9/11 and experiencing difficulties with his mental health and addiction, he began writing songs. “It was a release for me – kind of like art therapy,” he says. “And then it took off and became this uncontrollable thing.”
My Chemical Romance became one of the biggest bands of the 2000s, but their time on top was relatively short. The end was in sight during the sessions for 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, an album that was totally scrapped before being entirely rewritten. “When things start to succeed and go really well,” says Way, “that’s when a lot of people start to have an opinion and that’s when you run into struggle.” And after the success of The Black Parade, it turned out that “everybody had a fucking 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?’”
Way announced the band’s split in 2013, to the running eyeliner of emos worldwide. “It wasn’t fun to make stuff any more. I think breaking up the band broke us out of that machine.”
At the time, one of the reasons Way gave for the split was that the world had changed, that the fact that Barack Obama was in power meant they weren’t needed any more. I put it to Way that, considering the current political climate in the US and a 2018 which Way recently called “a year of black magic”, surely they are needed now more than ever? “That’s stuff I thought about when the world started to get super fucked-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.”
I am evidently not the only one inquiring about the possibility of a comeback for a band that meant so much to so many. “We definitely get offers regularly to reunite – it’s a constant thing,” he says. “It’s flattering, it’s really nice of people ...” But no chance? “I miss playing with the guys, but I don’t think so …”
If it is music you’re after, though, Way is certainly brewing something up. Last year there were three new songs to follow his 2014 solo album Hesitant Alien, but something as official as a second full-length record seems unlikely. “I’m just gonna put songs out and see what happens. That’s where I’m at,” he says. The record industry bullshit that so contributed to the end of My Chemical Romance is to blame for his reluctance to work in such a traditional format ever again. “When I made the solo thing I was still caught in that machine. It took way longer than it should have; we should have just recorded it in a month and it should have just been out.” Despite his protestations that MCR will never re-form, what he says next may give the stans a nugget of hope. “I think if we ever did MCR again, we wouldn’t be in that machine any more,” he says. “It would literally just be like: ‘Here’s a new piece of music, we’re putting this out and that’s it, this is not up for debate.’”
The smattering of solo songs aside, Way’s next big project is his debut novel, something he has been thinking about since his days at art school. When it comes to ideas, he is brimming with them. “You know they say about your first album, that you have your whole life up until that point to write it? I feel like your first book is that way too,” he says.
Although he is more likely to be found tucked away in his office than headlining festivals, it seems like we definitely haven’t heard the last of Gerard Way.
The Umbrella Academy launches on Netflix from Friday 15 February
