Popular Underground Magazine: What was the first concert you ever went to?
Frank: The first concert I ever went to was Westin, The Fiends, My Favorite Citizen and Knuckle Sandwich. I was 12.
Ray: I think it was Gwar at Studio One.
Gerard: The first punk show?

PUM: Any show.
Gerard: My mom took me to see The Boss at the Meadowlands, but that really wasn’t a show. I saw Madball and Downset, IEK and Dog Eat Dog.

Just then MCR’s manager comes in and says he reading the review in the Chicago Tribune. “Oh no,” says Way, and the manager says, “You’re the only band they like in the whole package.”

PUM: If you weren’t in this band what would you be doing?
Frank: Fuck. I would probably either pumping gas or bagging groceries, which were the two jobs I had before this band. I would also be sucking money out of the government, going to school for no reason.
Ray: I would be trying to start some kind of film career and be failing at it, because everyone I know who’s tried to get in the film business, failed. It’s a shitty business to get into, worse than music. So I’d probably living at home.
Frank: You still live at home!
Ray: I still live at home. At least I’d have something to do.
Gerard: What would I be doing?
Frank: (Looks at Gerard) Drawing and Drinking!
Gerard: (Nods) Drawing and drinking.

PUM: Your album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is kind of like part concept and part biography for you guys, these are two factors that seem to intermingle with you guys, so what sort of real life experiences directly fuel the material on the album?
Gerard: Loss, yeah. Being in a band, there’s a lot of stuff, it’s really hard to talk about specifics, but your life changes so much and it’s never the same again and it’s never going to be the same again. There’s kind of a lot of things that you see on the road, good things and bad things that kind of make up who you become in that first two years as a touring band.

PUM: Outside of touring and loss, your album tends to be pretty dark, what sort of things do you draw from?
Gerard: I personally was raised on horror movies so a lot inherently comes from that, although not really directly inspired from that, maybe the metaphorical stuff of like supernatural elements come from being raised on horror movies. Read a lot of comic books too. There’s certain lyricists like Tom Waitts, Nick Cave and Morrissey that I’m really big on. I kind of just wanted to start telling stories again and I felt like not a lot of people were.

PUM: What are some of your musical influences. Like the stuff you grew up listening to.
Ray: The darkness too, it’s in the music because there are certain keys we like to write in, usually minor keys. That’s probably from the stuff we’re used to listening to growing up. A lot of my favorite stuff is all minor key stuff.
Frank: I grew up listening to a lot of blues and Dixieland shit. My dad and my grandfather were huge Louie Kringle fans. I got into hardcore and local punk rock. I also like DC hardcore.

PUM: Gerard, I read in an interview that you kind of go crazy when you’re home from tour. Why is that?
Gerard: I don’t know. I’ve always been. Before the band I was kind of a hermit for a few years and that kind of sucked and drove me nuts. When I finally got out and got to see the world, that distracted me enough. Tour for me is like; I love it and it’s a great distraction, but I’m basically learning now that it’s not just a distraction and straitening myself out for when I’m actually home. I think not having a purpose basically makes me freak out. I feel like when we’re home, that’s kind of what it is.

PUM: I also read that you have a fear of success.
Gerard: Yeah, I kind of used o. I used to pour a lot of energy and time into things and then sabotage them if they were doing well. I don’t know why. I think I just needed to prove things to myself and then once I proved them to myself I was okay with it. The way this band should work, like the way it used to be, after the first record I would have normally stopped because that would have been enough. I’m talking about after making the first record not even touring. So just me going on tour after that first record was a big step for me and kind of not really sabotaging anything. Now I’m over it.

PUM: What was your drive to go through with it, rather than just give up?
Gerard: I like doing so many different things. Everything is fun to me. I realize that you do whatever you want as long as you’re not lazy about it. I really still do focus everything I have in the band and now to me it’s really (it’s shitty to call it a job), but it’s a really great job. You have to treat it that way or else your life will never be normal.

PUM: Tonight you heard about your review in the newspaper and kids on a bus saying that they were fans of you. How does that make you feel?
Frank: I don’t think anything can prepare you for a busload of military school students sporting your T-shirts. I dunno it’s funny to go to a place that you never thought you were going to see and have kids sing a long. It’s ridiculous, it’s unlike anything you could ever imagine, but it’s kind of your dream. It’s always surprising and you never expect it.

PUM: I read in an interview with Alternative Press that your mission’s statement was kind of “to help people.” How would you try and do that?
Gerard: Music is very therapeutic, the live show especially, so it’s kind of like you have to come see us live to get us. What I like about the newest record is you don’t necessarily have to see the live show anymore. You used to have to see both. Now I think we’re connecting with and reaching people solely on our [record], which is awesome. I think that’s any band’s goal. I think we learned how to do that very well on this record. The music itself is about loss, suicide, depression, so many things like that and people are really connecting to that. And it is about what you say live when the mood strikes us. You do it for so long you kind of like to change up what you say every night.

PUM: Other than success, what are some of your biggest fears?
Frank:The fear of not being there. We are so distant from loved ones and never see home and that’s like a constant fear. Stuff like your relationships to your grandparents, stuff like that, feeling like you’ve abandoned the people you loved the most to service the people you don’t even know. Most of them are very supportive, and at times it gets like, “where are you, where were you.” And spiders. There’s no point in having them.
Ray: Flying. I hate flying. I’m getting used to it, but only because I know I have to.
Gerard: I’m afraid of flying too.

PUM: Give me one or two examples of things you absolutely hate about the music business.
Gerard: There’s not a lot I hate because there’s not a lot I pay attention to.
Ray: Politics get involved, which sucks. There’s a lot of; "I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine," but it’s all a fucking game sometimes.
Frank: It’s a game you have to play to actually change things and it sucks that you can’t say right off the bat, “this is how I feel about this, this and this.” Sometimes you have to play along with some things. It doesn’t change your stance on things. Everybody has a hand in everything. A lot of false people. We’ve been lucky enough to tour with some great bands, but there’s also a lot of false bands.
Ray: Loading sucks.
Frank: Yeah, loading sucks.
Gerard: I think boredom.

PUM: I think that would surprise a lot of people, that you might actually get bored on tour, I mean outside of the driving, but…
Gerard: Having a bus is like huge against being bored. You kind of have your own space, which is neat. You can always go in there. You have fucking video games and movies and shit, that’s really all you need. You’re basically out in the middle of nowhere for the next few months and you’re not going to see anything, you’re prolly going to see a parking lot. The show is so exciting and so awesome. As soon as that happens it makes up for everything. The nights are usually pretty easy because you play, you feel good, you get to play video games and watch a movie, go to bed, then you’re in a parking lot again.
Frank: Yeah, you wake up and you’re like, “fuck.”
Ray: What happens [after waking up] is you’ll look like left and then right and try to discern what’s in a few blocks walking distance and then you [look] for like Burger Kings, Taco Bells, or Bookstores. If anything is farther than a five block radius, you’ll never know it’s there.

PUM: You keep talking about video games, so what are some of your favorite video games to play?
Frank: Donkey Konga.
Ray: I think everybody got tired of it though.
Frank: I haven’t played it since we got it…
Ray: Cause everything’s burned back there.
Frank: Well, because fucking Bob hurt his hands. Don’t let your drummer play Donkey Konga, for hours and hours.
Gerard: I’ve been playing the Sims 2.
Frank: Oh yeah, Burnout 3. Fucking amazing. It helps that our song’s in it, but I play it non-stop, it’s so fucking rad.
Gerard: That got us interested in it.

PUM: You guys have been on tour a lot. What would you say that some of your favorite bands to tour with. Or maybe a band you learned a lot from.
Gerard: I learned, I think a great deal from Avenged Sevenfold as young as they are, because they were so professional. They’re one of the most professional bands that we’ve been out with. They just have a way of doing things where they know what they want, they know exactly what they want and they execute it every night the same exact way.
Ray: They would all warm up… I mean, we would do warms ups too, but it didn’t become a regular thing until we saw them.

PUM: If someone walked up to you an gave you $50 bucks in cash, how would you spend it?
Gerard: I would probably buy a bunch of comic books or a video game.
Frank: I owe Bob $20. Definitely a movie. I’d probably go to Wal-Mart and buy some toothpaste. I could probably stretch that for a while. NO, FUCK THAT! I’d give $20 to Bob, because I owe him $20 and then I’d buy a motherfucking jacket!