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Paramour Mansion - Blog Posts

fuckinr34dy

2 years ago

i don't believe i've ever seen the clip of ray apologizing to mikey for the perfectionism while writing thing, would you happen to know what interview it's from? <3

yeah sure! it was tom bryant, who'd known the band a long time, interviewing them in 2011 for a ten-year retrospective (rebloggable here). they talked about tough times in the band's history, especially how they all lost their minds in the paramour - gerard and ray in particular got deeply obsessive about the album. even then, based on every interview i've seen, that was the height of the interpersonal tension between the four of them over the whole ten years. and they all openly acknowledged it and apologised and moved on...literally the least messy emo band ever 😭

this is the relevant part but the whole interview's a good read:

What are your memories going into Parade?

Gerard: “The band had got really big and so there was a lot of pressure. A lot of people thought we’d be a flash in the pan. That was hard for us. There were all these expectations about what we’d do, so we did the opposite. We made a batshit crazy album.”

The strain of making it forced Mikey to leave and seek therapy.

Mikey: “I was 23, 24 and I was drinking at the time. I had reached an age where a lot of emotions and hormones affect you. I was at odds with myself. The band had engulfed all of us and I found it overwhelming. Recording Black Parade was the moment it all came to a head, I couldn’t stop it. I had to go away and fix myself. There were some screws loose upstairs that needed tightening.”

Gerard: “I don’t think you had screws loose, Mikey. You were processing everything that happened to us.”

Ray: “I’ve never had the chance to say this properly, so I’d like to say it now: I’m sorry Mikey. I know I contributed to what you went through. I think I lost my mind. The pressure made me think we had to be perfect all of the time. But I confused perfect playing with great playing. I’m sorry for creating that atmosphere.”

Mikey: “You don’t need to apologise Ray.”

It sounds as if the album was made under intense conditions.

Ray: “It was unhealthy. We went into it with the best intentions; in my case, those intentions expressed themselves in the wrong way. We set aside a room to have these super heavy talks and that atmosphere ran through the recording. It was a tough time. We all lost our heads.”

Gerard: “Ray was a perfectionist and I was a fucking lunatic. I was trying to oversee everything. I’d be changing things constantly: a song would start one way then, the next day, I’d force everyone to change it. We went fucking crazy. I got obsessed with death. For days, I played Passion Of The Christ with the sound off. I couldn’t get things grim enough. I ended a relationship – in fact I was so obsessed that my entire personal life got destroyed.”

Mikey: “We all became dark, morbid people. We were festering.”

Ray: “I learned so much about what not to do on that record. You can be intense in such a way that you inspire people, or you can do it in a way that you intimidate people. On Black Parade, I did it the wrong way.”

then tom bryant went into more detail on it in one of the tougher sections of not the life it seems to read:

I Don't Believe I've Ever Seen The Clip Of Ray Apologizing To Mikey For The Perfectionism While Writing

and then talks about the immediate aftermath, which led to flw, which saved the album:

bryant's biography is definitely a little sensationalised or biased at times but honestly not as much as it could easily have been imo, and i like that he pointed out how brave of ray it was to make that apology so plainly. that was definitely one of the things that really drew me to ray early on - you can beat yourself up or put yourself down in a self-deprecating way over your flaws and mistakes or you can acknowledge them and consciously decide not to repeat them. and the second one isn't an easy thing to do so it's something i respect so much about him :')