My Chemical Romance… creative name huh? You can thank Mikey Way for that title! One day, while working in Borders Bookstore in New Jersey, he came across a book, “Ecstasy: Three Tales of a Chemical Romance” by Irvine Welsh. Mikey then in his head, concocted “My Chemical Romance” and kept it in his head for a while. Soon after this was in his brain, his brother was talking about starting a new band. It didn’t occur to him that maybe they could use this for a name but for now all they needed was members.

 
  Gerard Way is Mikey Way’s older brother. They grew up together in New Jersey. All of their lives they had grew up in this town of Belleville. Known too many people this wasn’t the best of areas so they spent a lot of time inside as kids, and had to fend for themselves for entertainment. Gerard had always been a child obsessed with the dark nature of people, and also had been creative. He went to art school in New York City and had been trying to sign a cartoon with cartoon network called “The Breakfast Monkey”. This was then denied by the cartoon company. After this denied access, he went to his next idea, and wanted to start a new band. He went to his brother Mikey in early 2000 and started to concoct the new idea. Gerard had always been the writer of the family and had already had some stuff written out and created. After talking to his brother, he started scoping out people for the band.  That is when Ray Torro came into play.

 

Ray Torro met Gerard in art school. They were never actual really close friends, but they knew each other well enough to know that Ray had played guitar. Gerard quickly jumped at the opportunity and asked Ray to help with the new idea of the band. Ray quickly accepted and offered any help he could give, and came to the conclusion that the most help he could give was to help find the other band members.

 
 

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge

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Frankie Iero, an exceptionally experienced band member, had been called by Ray one day out of the blue. They had been friends for a brief time but Ray knew of frank and his amazing talent with a guitar. As the “new guy” to Gerard and Mikey, they both immediately warmed up to him and they all became friends almost as soon as they met. All of his life, Frank had played the rhythm guitar. He started his first band when he was only eleven years old! He was recruited to the Way’s new band to fill in the sound when his own band, ‘Pencey Prep’, broke apart. In addition to that band he also played in bands such as ‘Hybrid’, ‘section 12’, and ‘I am a graveyard’. To say in the least he was experienced!

 
 

 

 

After Frank Bob filled into the group, he was a drummer, and never played in a real band before. Frankie hooked Bob up to get into the band and show Gerard his stuff. Now this gave them a complete setup: Gerard Way (vocalist), Ray Torro (guitar), Mikey Way (bass), Frank Iero (back up vocals and guitar), and Bob Bryar (drums). After gathering all of the guys up, they got Mikey to spill the name. When he did, they all loved it. Now they had a ‘band’, and a title… all they had to do was live up to it.

In 2002, they signed a record after only being a band, an official one, for about one year. This record was with Eyeball Records, and they released their first album. “I Brought You My Bullets You Brought Me Your Love” was a dud. No one knew who they were and no one really cared. All of the sudden, people were calling them ‘vampires’ and ‘Goths’ because of the one song called “Vampires Will Never Hurt You”.  On top of all of that, Gerard had a huge drinking problem for about 6 months at that point.  He had been on depressants and drinking at the same time and got lost in his own addiction. He later got involved in Crack Cocaine along with the death duo of the depressants and alcohol.