Mere hours before they take to the stage in Dublin’s O2, bassist Mikey Way and guitarist Frank Iero of New Jersey punk-pop icons My Chemical Romance chatted to State about the inspiration behind their fourth studio album, Danger Days: the True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys. Though the gig itself was far from sold out, there were reports of cues stretching around the corner the night before in anticipation…
State: What was your inspiration for the record?
Frank: Well after the last record, we toured two… two and a half years straight, and we decided to take an extended break, just living our lives again. And about eight months into that break…
Mikey: Yeah, that’s when the itch started.
Frank: …we got it together and did a song [a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’] for the Watchmen movie soundtrack and it felt good just to be making noise and playing together again. So we decided to get together again. About two or three months after that we convened out in LA, started picking up guitars and playing, and we wrote about 20 or 30 songs. We started to record them, kind of ran out of time, got the mix in the studio and we were kind of unhappy with how it was finally coming about. So we put it all on hold and went back into another studio, met up with Rob Cavallo who did our last record and wrote four brand new songs and liked them way better than the 20 or 30 that we had written before.
We just kept going, and slowly but surely this concept started coming about, like a setting kind of thing. Picture it: an apocalyptic event occurs and it’s 2019 – what would the band sound like? There would still be music, there would still be shows – if there were kids still alive – but what would that band be like? We started to pick up instruments that we weren’t really familiar with and never really experimented with before – didn’t really know how to play – and what you’re hearing is a band sort of excited and, I think, psyched to be creating.
Mikey: It was definitely a period of exploration and it was exciting for all of us. We were doing things that we never thought we could do. That was very exciting and very fulfilling.
You said you were playing new instruments, what did that involve?
Frank: At that point we had become a four-piece again. We needed a backbone. So we started to create loops and beats within the computer but also with synthesizers, Kaoss pads and drum machines…
Mikey: Theramin… farfisa… a lot of digital elements. There were a lot of digital instruments that we never thought to use or we never thought fit with My Chemical Romance. We kind of started branching out and any kind of concept we had in our head about what could be on a My Chemical Romance album we were just like, “let’s try absolutely everything!”
In terms of the concept, did you write songs to fit that or did the songs just roll out in that way?
Frank: They just started to come out in that format. I think, as we started to write, ‘Na Na Na’ was the first song we wrote second time around and then ‘Vampire Money’ and ‘Planetary (GO!)’ and ‘Sing.’ Once we started to get past ‘Sing’ it was like, “alright, this is what’s coming out. This is the world that we feel it fits into.” All it needed was “I feel like this” and we’d experiment that way or somebody would come up with a riff. I think when you start to go like, “this is the concept , this is what the record’s gonna be” and put it into a box, then you have to fill that box, then it ends up being forced and you never end up really happy with it. When it comes organically, that’s when the magic really happens.
Mikey: The songs kind of shape the universe, you know? It was like these little bangs that were creating little pocket universes that the album was living in.
You all inhabit different characters on the album, or at least that’s the presentation, was that a conscious thing?
Mikey: We kept any character elements strictly to the video. It’s not supposed to be anything more than that.
The concept itself, was it a case of one person coming in and saying, “I have this great idea” or did it just come out?
Frank: The inspiration came from a song we had written called ‘Bulletproof Heart.’ The lyrics from that song started to create… it was basically, if you had to taste-test the world from one song, I guess that was the song to do it from. That was actually written on the first attempt at the record, so we kind of took that song and blew it out of proportion.
Mikey: I think, like, ‘Bulletproof’ and ‘Na Na’ were kind of the points of the nexus of the world. Those were the two that created the vibe, the feeling, the colour, the attitude, the overall sonic arc.
You said you did 20 or so songs in the first tranche and didn’t like them. Did you keep much of that stuff?
Mikey: A couple. A couple we loved so much that we wanted to put them on the album. But the thing is they couldn’t exist as they existed on the previous attempt and we had to very much look at them as if we were writing them again. It was almost like we started from square one with a lot of these songs. We had to almost rewrite some of them.
The idea of the radio broadcast – was that central to how you wrote the songs? Were you writing “radio songs,” the sort of songs that could sound like they were coming out of your radio one after another?
Frank: I think the idea of having a narrator to bring you through the world… the idea is to have a pirate radio station emerging from this apocalyptic world. But definitely, I think, at least some of them are crafted pop songs. That’s what we do – take the formula for a pop song and kind of twist it and make something ugly beautiful.
Mikey: The DJ was kind of a nod to some of our favourite films – there’s a radio DJ who comes in and guides the viewer/listener in a few different things: The Warriors and Vantage Point and Reservoir Dogs did that really well. It’s kind of like a tiny bit of the inspiration for that was from that.
Was there a musical influence on the actual format, the concept? The one I was thinking of was Deltron 3030.
Mikey: I love that album! Actually, come to think of it, that’s very similar to where Del the Funky Homosapien jumps in and out like a radio DJ, and Damon Albarn’s on that. Yeah I never even thought of that… yeah, that’s a great album.
There’s more of a power pop vibe than on the last album, sort of a bit more carefree, less serious topics…
Mikey: We’re at a more positive point in our lives. We’re more happy people, have amazing, supportive family and friends around us and we just have no reason to be sad anymore. We’re just very much into having an amazing time. That kind of carries through in the songs.
So there’s no going back to the…
Mikey: Yeah, we’re not really sad anymore! But we do like sad things… that doesn’t mean we won’t ever write sad music. That not to say we’ll never write some sad songs, because we love that stuff.
Frank: It’s one of those things where I think, the last record, was about life and death. It’s like life: you can’t have the good times without the bad times, the happy without the sad. So when you’re writing a concept record about life and death, you have to have that. When you’re writing about a gang of laser-gun totin’ crazy kids in a post-apocalyptic world, there’s not that sad element. The next record, you know, could be about orphans.
Hopefully it won’t be so long between releases this time.
Mikey: Yeah, that’s the thing, if it were up to us we’d be in the studio right now recording. The flip side of it all is that it’s really gratifying to go out and play songs for people, which is why we’re out. They’re both amazing for their own reasons: touring is amazing and recording is amazing. They’re amazing for their own reasons. We wish we could do both. We wish we could clone ourselves, send a set of ourselves home to record and the other set of us to tour! That would be the ultimate goal – I’m sure we’ll work out some day.
No plans to go on another two-year tour…
Frank: Nah, I fucking hope not.
Mikey: Hahahahaha.
Frank: I think we’ll have to be more smart about it.
Mikey: Yeah we’ll be wiser when it comes to that. We won’t drive ourselves to the point of exhaustion and mental anguish. We’ll do everything smarter this time.
I haven’t really asked about musical influences. There are some hip-hop… well not necessarily hip-hop, but Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rage Against the Machine kind of vibes…
Mikey: Well we’re huge fans of bands like Rage Against the Machine, and we’re huge fans of hip-hop too, and we kind of never try to paint ourselves into a corner. You know, if it sounds great it should be on the album.
I heard a sort of Slash, Van Halen kind of hair rock…
Mikey: See, that’s the thing! What you just said, those past three things, it’s all over the place – it’s everywhere. There’s no, like, narrow view to this album, no “this is what it sounds like.” There’s elements of so many different bits and pieces of our influences and we were somehow able to cram it all into this one universe, which is what we set out to do.
Frank: Just get inspired by everything…
I was going to say that… the last album was, I don’t want to say conventional, but more what you’d expect from a big rock concept record, the big ‘70s rock sound. This time you seem to be all over the place.
Frank: I think when you’re younger – we were only a band for, like, six years? We were still a young band and you can wear your influences on your sleeve a little bit more. When you’ve been together a bit more, you begin to get inspired by each other and those influences get a little bit more varied and your own musical prowess comes to the forefront.
Last question: ‘Vampire Money’ is a rip on Twilight, right?
Mikey: Sort of! It’s a rip on anyone repeatedly telling you to do what you don’t want to do. It just so happens that that can be the context that people pull out of it. It’s not necessarily a dig at Twilight, it’s just a dig at a nagging. It’s a dig at someone nagging at you.
I listened to it once – I had to go to the record label to hear the album – and it stuck out completely from the rest of the album and it sounded kinda bitchy, but in a good way.
Mikey: Exactly! We wanted to make one of those classic Chuck Berry rock n’ roll jams.
Frank: Little Richard.
Mikey: Little Richard, yeah. When we were writing the song, that’s very much what we were feeling at the time.
State: What was your inspiration for the record?
Frank: Well after the last record, we toured two… two and a half years straight, and we decided to take an extended break, just living our lives again. And about eight months into that break…
Mikey: Yeah, that’s when the itch started.
Frank: …we got it together and did a song [a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’] for the Watchmen movie soundtrack and it felt good just to be making noise and playing together again. So we decided to get together again. About two or three months after that we convened out in LA, started picking up guitars and playing, and we wrote about 20 or 30 songs. We started to record them, kind of ran out of time, got the mix in the studio and we were kind of unhappy with how it was finally coming about. So we put it all on hold and went back into another studio, met up with Rob Cavallo who did our last record and wrote four brand new songs and liked them way better than the 20 or 30 that we had written before.
We just kept going, and slowly but surely this concept started coming about, like a setting kind of thing. Picture it: an apocalyptic event occurs and it’s 2019 – what would the band sound like? There would still be music, there would still be shows – if there were kids still alive – but what would that band be like? We started to pick up instruments that we weren’t really familiar with and never really experimented with before – didn’t really know how to play – and what you’re hearing is a band sort of excited and, I think, psyched to be creating.
Mikey: It was definitely a period of exploration and it was exciting for all of us. We were doing things that we never thought we could do. That was very exciting and very fulfilling.
You said you were playing new instruments, what did that involve?
Frank: At that point we had become a four-piece again. We needed a backbone. So we started to create loops and beats within the computer but also with synthesizers, Kaoss pads and drum machines…
Mikey: Theramin… farfisa… a lot of digital elements. There were a lot of digital instruments that we never thought to use or we never thought fit with My Chemical Romance. We kind of started branching out and any kind of concept we had in our head about what could be on a My Chemical Romance album we were just like, “let’s try absolutely everything!”
In terms of the concept, did you write songs to fit that or did the songs just roll out in that way?
Frank: They just started to come out in that format. I think, as we started to write, ‘Na Na Na’ was the first song we wrote second time around and then ‘Vampire Money’ and ‘Planetary (GO!)’ and ‘Sing.’ Once we started to get past ‘Sing’ it was like, “alright, this is what’s coming out. This is the world that we feel it fits into.” All it needed was “I feel like this” and we’d experiment that way or somebody would come up with a riff. I think when you start to go like, “this is the concept , this is what the record’s gonna be” and put it into a box, then you have to fill that box, then it ends up being forced and you never end up really happy with it. When it comes organically, that’s when the magic really happens.
Mikey: The songs kind of shape the universe, you know? It was like these little bangs that were creating little pocket universes that the album was living in.
You all inhabit different characters on the album, or at least that’s the presentation, was that a conscious thing?
Mikey: We kept any character elements strictly to the video. It’s not supposed to be anything more than that.
The concept itself, was it a case of one person coming in and saying, “I have this great idea” or did it just come out?
Frank: The inspiration came from a song we had written called ‘Bulletproof Heart.’ The lyrics from that song started to create… it was basically, if you had to taste-test the world from one song, I guess that was the song to do it from. That was actually written on the first attempt at the record, so we kind of took that song and blew it out of proportion.
Mikey: I think, like, ‘Bulletproof’ and ‘Na Na’ were kind of the points of the nexus of the world. Those were the two that created the vibe, the feeling, the colour, the attitude, the overall sonic arc.
You said you did 20 or so songs in the first tranche and didn’t like them. Did you keep much of that stuff?
Mikey: A couple. A couple we loved so much that we wanted to put them on the album. But the thing is they couldn’t exist as they existed on the previous attempt and we had to very much look at them as if we were writing them again. It was almost like we started from square one with a lot of these songs. We had to almost rewrite some of them.
The idea of the radio broadcast – was that central to how you wrote the songs? Were you writing “radio songs,” the sort of songs that could sound like they were coming out of your radio one after another?
Frank: I think the idea of having a narrator to bring you through the world… the idea is to have a pirate radio station emerging from this apocalyptic world. But definitely, I think, at least some of them are crafted pop songs. That’s what we do – take the formula for a pop song and kind of twist it and make something ugly beautiful.
Mikey: The DJ was kind of a nod to some of our favourite films – there’s a radio DJ who comes in and guides the viewer/listener in a few different things: The Warriors and Vantage Point and Reservoir Dogs did that really well. It’s kind of like a tiny bit of the inspiration for that was from that.
Was there a musical influence on the actual format, the concept? The one I was thinking of was Deltron 3030.
Mikey: I love that album! Actually, come to think of it, that’s very similar to where Del the Funky Homosapien jumps in and out like a radio DJ, and Damon Albarn’s on that. Yeah I never even thought of that… yeah, that’s a great album.
There’s more of a power pop vibe than on the last album, sort of a bit more carefree, less serious topics…
Mikey: We’re at a more positive point in our lives. We’re more happy people, have amazing, supportive family and friends around us and we just have no reason to be sad anymore. We’re just very much into having an amazing time. That kind of carries through in the songs.
So there’s no going back to the…
Mikey: Yeah, we’re not really sad anymore! But we do like sad things… that doesn’t mean we won’t ever write sad music. That not to say we’ll never write some sad songs, because we love that stuff.
Frank: It’s one of those things where I think, the last record, was about life and death. It’s like life: you can’t have the good times without the bad times, the happy without the sad. So when you’re writing a concept record about life and death, you have to have that. When you’re writing about a gang of laser-gun totin’ crazy kids in a post-apocalyptic world, there’s not that sad element. The next record, you know, could be about orphans.
Hopefully it won’t be so long between releases this time.
Mikey: Yeah, that’s the thing, if it were up to us we’d be in the studio right now recording. The flip side of it all is that it’s really gratifying to go out and play songs for people, which is why we’re out. They’re both amazing for their own reasons: touring is amazing and recording is amazing. They’re amazing for their own reasons. We wish we could do both. We wish we could clone ourselves, send a set of ourselves home to record and the other set of us to tour! That would be the ultimate goal – I’m sure we’ll work out some day.
No plans to go on another two-year tour…
Frank: Nah, I fucking hope not.
Mikey: Hahahahaha.
Frank: I think we’ll have to be more smart about it.
Mikey: Yeah we’ll be wiser when it comes to that. We won’t drive ourselves to the point of exhaustion and mental anguish. We’ll do everything smarter this time.
I haven’t really asked about musical influences. There are some hip-hop… well not necessarily hip-hop, but Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rage Against the Machine kind of vibes…
Mikey: Well we’re huge fans of bands like Rage Against the Machine, and we’re huge fans of hip-hop too, and we kind of never try to paint ourselves into a corner. You know, if it sounds great it should be on the album.
I heard a sort of Slash, Van Halen kind of hair rock…
Mikey: See, that’s the thing! What you just said, those past three things, it’s all over the place – it’s everywhere. There’s no, like, narrow view to this album, no “this is what it sounds like.” There’s elements of so many different bits and pieces of our influences and we were somehow able to cram it all into this one universe, which is what we set out to do.
Frank: Just get inspired by everything…
I was going to say that… the last album was, I don’t want to say conventional, but more what you’d expect from a big rock concept record, the big ‘70s rock sound. This time you seem to be all over the place.
Frank: I think when you’re younger – we were only a band for, like, six years? We were still a young band and you can wear your influences on your sleeve a little bit more. When you’ve been together a bit more, you begin to get inspired by each other and those influences get a little bit more varied and your own musical prowess comes to the forefront.
Last question: ‘Vampire Money’ is a rip on Twilight, right?
Mikey: Sort of! It’s a rip on anyone repeatedly telling you to do what you don’t want to do. It just so happens that that can be the context that people pull out of it. It’s not necessarily a dig at Twilight, it’s just a dig at a nagging. It’s a dig at someone nagging at you.
I listened to it once – I had to go to the record label to hear the album – and it stuck out completely from the rest of the album and it sounded kinda bitchy, but in a good way.
Mikey: Exactly! We wanted to make one of those classic Chuck Berry rock n’ roll jams.
Frank: Little Richard.
Mikey: Little Richard, yeah. When we were writing the song, that’s very much what we were feeling at the time.
Traduccion: TUMBRL
No tenemos motivos para estar tristes
A unas horas de tomar el escenario en Dublin, el bajista Mikey Way y el guitarrista Frank Iero, de la banda de New Jersey, My Chemical Romance, conversaron con State sobre la inspiración detrás del cuarto disco de la banda, Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys.
Aunque el concierto está lejos de haberse agotado, hubo reportes en el lugar de haber filas extendidas hasta doblar la esquina desde la noche anterior.
¿Cuál fue su inspiración para el disco?Frank: Después del último disco, estuvimos de gira dos…dos años y medio sin parar, y decidimos tomarnos un largo tiempo libre, viviendo nuestras vidas otra vez. Y luego de ocho meses…
Mikey: Si, ahí fue que la picazón comenzó.
Frank: …nos juntamos e hicimos el cover para Desolation Row, para el soundtrack de la película Watchmen y se sintió bien hacer ruido y tocar juntos de nuevo. Así que decidimos juntarnos otra vez. Luego de dos o tres meses después, decidimos ir a Los Angeles, comenzamos a elegir guitarras y tocamos, y escribimos 20 o 30 canciones. Comenzamos a grabarlas, de una forma en que no teníamos tiempo, mezclamos en el estudio y estábamos infelices con el resultado final. Así que juntamos todo de nuevo y volvimos a otro estudio, nos juntamos con Rob Cavallo, quien produjo nuestro último disco y escribimos cuatro nuevas canciones y nos gustó mucho mas que las 20 o 30 que habíamos escrito antes.Simplemente avanzamos, y lentamente, pero seguros del concepto que había comenzado a aparecer, como una escena o algo por el estilo. Sólo imaginando: un evento apocalíptico ocurre y estamos en el año 2019 -¿cómo sonaría la banda? Aún estaría la música, aún habría shows- si aún hubiera chicos vivos –pero ¿cómo sería la banda? Comenzamos a escoger instrumentos que no fueran realmente familiares y nunca experimentamos antes- que no sabíamos cómo tocar…y lo que estás escuchando es una banda excitada y, yo creo, algo loca por crear.
Mikey: Definitivamente fue un periodo de exploración y fue excitante para todos nosotros. Estábamos haciendo cosas que nunca pensamos que podríamos hacer. Eso fue muy emocionante y satisfactorio.
Dicen que tocaron nuevos instrumentos, ¿qué implicó eso?Frank: En ese momento nos habíamos convertido en cuatro piezas otra vez. Necesitamos una estructura. Así que empezamos a crear bucles y sonidos en el computador pero también con sintetizadores, plantillas Kaoss y baterías eléctricas.
Mikey: El Theremin…el teclado Farfisa…varios elementos digitales. Muchos instrumentos digitales que nunca pensamos usar o que nunca pensamos que encajaría con MCR. Comenzamos ramificando y cada concepto que viniera a nuestras cabezas o pensáramos que pudiera estar en un disco de My Chemical Romance y decíamos “Probemos absolutamente todo!”.
En términos de concepto, escribieron las canciones para que encajaran o las hicieron aparecer en el camino?Frank: Comenzaron a aparecer en ese formato. Creo, que mientras comenzamos a escribir, ‘Na Na Na’ fue la primera que escribimos por segunda vez y luego fue ‘Vampire Money’ y ‘Planetary (GO!)’ y ‘Sing’. Una vez que ya pasó ‘Sing’, dijimos “Bueno, esto es lo que está apareciendo. Este es el mundo en que sentimos que pertenecen”. Todo lo que se necesitó fue un “Me siento de esta forma” y experimentamos o alguien llegaba con un nuevo riff. Creo que cuando comienzas a decir “Este es el concepto, de esto tratará el disco” y pones eso en una caja, luego debes llenar esa caja, luego termina siendo forzado y nunca terminas realmente feliz con ello. Cuando llega orgánicamente, ahí es cuando ocurre la magia.
Mikey: Las canciones moldearon el universo, sabes? Fue como si estos pequeños golpes estaban creando pequeños universos de bolsillo en donde el álbum estaba viviendo.
Todos ustedes son diferentes personajes en el álbum, o al menos esa es la presentación, ¿eso fue algo consciente?Mikey: Mantuvimos cada elemento de los personajes para el video. No se supone que vaya más allá.
El concepto, fue algo de una persona diciendo “Tengo esta gran idea” o simplemente apareció?Frank: La inspiración vino con una canción que ya teníamos, llamada ‘Bulletproof Heart’. Las letras de esa canción comenzaron a crear…fue básicamente, como si tuvieras que probar el sabor del mundo en una canción, creo que esa fue la canción en donde viene todo. De hecho fue escrita en el primer intento de grabación, así que tomamos esa canción y la explotamos fuera de proporción.
Mikey: Creo que, con ‘Bulletproof’ y ‘Na Na’ unimos los puntos de la conexión del mundo. Esas fueron las dos que crearon la vibra, el sentimiento, el color, la actitud, el arco sonoro en general.
Dicen que hicieron 20 o más canciones en el primer intento y no les gustó. ¿Tienen guardado todo eso?Mikey: Un par. Un par que amamos tanto que queríamos dejar en el disco. Pero la cosa es que no podrían existir de la forma que existieron en el primer intento y debíamos cuidarlas como si las fuésemos a escribir de nuevo. Fue casi como comenzar desde un primer paso hasta el puñado de estas otras canciones. Tuvimos que re escribir algunas.
La idea de la transmisión de radio en el disco, ¿eso fue un propósito al escribir las canciones? Estaban escribiendo “canciones radiales”, el tipo de canciones que sonarían como si aparecieran en la radio una tras otra?Frank: Creo que la idea de tener un narrador te envuelve en el mundo…la idea es tener una estación de radio pirata, apareciendo desde este mundo apocalíptico. Pero definitivamente, creo, al menos algunas de ellas, son moldes de canciones pop. Eso es lo que hicimos –tomar la formula para una canción pop y girarlas, transformar algo feo en algo hermoso.
Mikey: El DJ fue una especie de conexión a algunas de nuestras películas favoritas –está el DJ de radio que viene y guía a los espectadores y auditores a unas cosas distintas: The Warriors y Vantage Point y Reservoir Dogs hicieron eso muy bien. Fue como un pequeño sonido de inspiración para lo que se venía.
Hubo una influencia musical en el formato actual, el concepto? En el que estaba pensando era Deltron 3030.Mikey: Amo ese álbum! De hecho, si lo pienso bien, es muy similar a lo que hace Del the Funky Homosapien, saltando como un DJ de radio, y Damon Albarn está en ello. Si, nunca había pensado en eso…si, ese es un gran álbum.
Hay una vibra poderosa de pop en el último disco, con menos preocupaciones, temas menos serios…Mikey: Nos encontramos en un punto más positivo en nuestras vidas. Somos gente más feliz, tenemos familias y amigos asombrosos y son un gran apoyo a nuestro rededor, no tenemos razón para estar tristes. Estamos concentrados en pasarla muy bien. Eso se puede sentir en las canciones.
Así que no hay vuelta a…Mikey: Si, ya no estamos tristes! Pero si nos gustan las cosas tristes…eso no quiere decir que nunca más escribiremos música triste, por que amamos esas cosas.
Frank: Es una de esas cosas en donde piensas que el último disco fue sobre la vida y la muerte. Es como la vida: no puedes tener buenos momentos sin los malos momentos, ni lo feliz sin lo triste. Así que cuando estás escribiendo un disco concepto sobre la vida y la muerte, debes tener eso. Cuando estás escribiendo sobre una pandilla con pistolas laser, con chicos en un mundo post-apocalíptico, no está el elemento triste. El próximo disco, sabes, puede ser sobre huérfanos.
Esperemos que no tarde tanto en lanzarse esta vez.Mikey: Si, esa es la cosa, si fuera por nosotros, ya estaríamos grabando en el estudio de nuevo. La otra cara de la moneda es que salir a tocar las canciones a la gente está siendo muy gratificante, y por eso lo hacemos. Ambas cosas son emocionantes por sus propias razones: salir de gira es asombroso y grabar es asombroso. Desearíamos poder hacer ambas cosas. Desearíamos clonarnos, enviar un grupo de nosotros mismos a casa a grabar y el otro grupo a la gira! Eso sería el último objetivo. Estoy seguro que lo lograremos algún día.
No hay planes de ir de gira por dos años otra vez…Frank: Nah, espero que no.
Mikey: Jajajajajaja.
Frank: Creo que debemos ser más inteligentes sobre eso.
Mikey: Seremos más sabios al respecto. No manejaremos hasta el punto del agotamiento ni la angustia mental. Haremos todo de manera más inteligente esta vez.
No les he preguntado por sus influencias musicales. Hay algunas sonidos hip-hop…bueno, no necesariamente hip-hop, pero algo como la vibra de Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against The Machine…Mikey: Bueno, nosotros somos grandes admiradores de Rage Against The Machine, y somos grandes fans del hip-hop también, y nunca antes tratamos de pintarnos en una esquina. Sabes, si suena bien debiera estar en el disco.
Escuché algunos atisbos a Slash, Van Halen, ese tipo de rock…Mikey: Verás, esa es la cosa! Lo que dijiste, eso pasa porque está en todos lados, está en todo. No hay miradas estrechas en este disco, no hay “Esto es a lo que suena”. Hay elementos de diferentes sonidos y piezas de nuestras influencias y fuimos capaces de meter todo en un solo universo, lo cual resultó en lo que propusimos hacer.
Frank: Ser inspirados por todo…
Iba a decir eso…el último disco fue…no quiero decir convencional, pero más de lo que esperas encontrar en un disco concepto de rock, el sonido rock de los años 70. Esta vez parecen estar en todas partes.Frank: Creo que cuando eres más joven –éramos una banda por seis años? Aún somos una banda joven y puedes usar tus influencias un poco más. Cuando has estado juntos un poco más, comienzas a sentirte inspirado por los demás de la banda, y esas influencias toman más variedad y tu propio proceso musical llega a primer plano.
Última pregunta: ¿‘Vampire Money’ es algo sobre Twilight?Mikey: Algo así! Es sobre todo lo que te repiten incesantemente que hagas y que no quieres hacer. Lo que pasa es que eso puede ser el contexto en el que la gente lo tome. No es necesariamente sobre Twilight, es sobre escarbar algo molesto. Es sobre escarbar en alguien que te molesta a ti.
La escuché una vez –debo ir al sello disquero a escuchar el álbum- y se quedó completamente pegada en mi cabeza al contrario del disco completo y me sonó algo ‘enojada’, pero en el buen sentido.Mikey: Exactamente! Queríamos hacer una de esas clásicas tonadas rock & roll al estilo Chuck Berry.Frank: Little Richard.Mikey: Little Richard, sí. Cuando estábamos escribiendo la canción, es lo que estábamos sintiendo en ese momento.
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