Some days were harder than others…sometimes we would just smoke a ton of cigarettes and just stare at each other. Sometimes we would hit on something and magic would happen.
One of these moments was a song called ‘Mama’. I remember we played an arena in Chicago and this line ‘Mama, we all go to hell’ just hit me, along with a melody. Ray and I worked out a small guitar part to go along with a melody and we tried it right away at sound check. I think we all knew as soon as we played it that it was some kind of new direction for us, one that was more theatrical than anything we had done…to us it was even more ‘cabaret’ than ‘You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison.’
It was pure. It was raw. It was unashamed.
So we dug up her bones and started to work on her.
Gerard Way, The Black Parade Special Edition booklet
I was completely unable to adjust to living a normal life and the neighbourhood was rife with teenagers, which put me on edge. I had started to feel old. I started to feel like I couldn’t connect with anyone. Riding the subway into the city, I would often find myself nervous and paranoid, especially when school let out. It was pretty comical. One day while riding the train, the subway car filled with tons of school kids, I started to have a straight up panic attack. To deal with this I hid under my notebook and just started to write lyrics…
Gerard Way, The Black Parade Special Edition
We walked around like zombies, not creating, not showering, not living. Some never left their rooms. I left my pyjama pants on for a week once, constantly fighting back the urge to just walk into the swimming pool and stand at the bottom until I couldn’t breathe. I would yell ‘I’m just gonna walk into that fucking swimming pool on day!’ We were all losing it. We had decided that we didn’t want to videotape any of the writing process and at this point we were glad we didn’t tape anything.
Gerard Way, The Black Parade Special Edition
