Bullet with Butterfly Wings, the Smashing Pumpkins
Way also said that there were elements from My Chemical Romance’s concept album “The Black Parade” in his original pitch for The Umbrella Academy, but he took those out when he decided to use them in his music.
From Wikipedia:
A Japanese army officer is traveling down a deserted road at dusk, on his way back home from fighting in the war. He comes to a large concrete pedestrian tunnel that seems to go on forever into the darkness. Suddenly, an angry, almost demonic-looking anti-tank dog (strapped with explosives) runs out of the tunnel and snarls deeply at him. He proceeds with his walk, afraid, into the tunnel. He comes out the other side, but then witnesses something horrific — the yūrei of one of the soldiers (Private Noguchi) whom he had charge over in the war comes out of the tunnel behind him, his face a light blue, signifying that he is dead.
The soldier seems not to believe he’s dead, but the officer convinces him and the soldier returns into the darkness of the tunnel. Just when he thinks he’s seen the worst, the officer sees his entire third platoon marching out of the tunnel. They too are dead, with light blue faces. He tries to convince them that they’re dead, and he expresses his deep-seated guilt about letting them all die in the war. They stand mute, in reply to his words. He then orders them to about face, and then march back into the tunnel. Lastly, we see a second appearance of the hellish dog, from the beginning of this dream.
This is one of three “nightmares” featured in the film.
Akira Kurosawa’s long time friend Ishiro Honda may have helped to direct, or have directed this piece entirely. The two always spoke of filming a story of a dead soldier returning from war.
My Chemical Romance have spoken out about teenage gun crime in this week’s issue of NME, calling it “a really big problem”.
This week’s cover stars, who released new album ’The Black Parade’ on Monday (October 23), were discussing the album track ’Teenagers’ which tackles the issue head on.
Singer Gerard Way said: “That song almost didn’t fit on the record but it’s a topic that’s so important to our culture. It’s about a really big problem in America where kids are killing kids.The only think I learnt in high school is that people are very violent and territorial.”
Way talked about the relevance of The Smiths to the situation.
He said: “I heard ’The Headmaster Ritual’ by The Smiths and I think that song is as important to the social situation in America right now as it was to school in Britain in the ‘80s.”
“As soon as I explained the concept and the aesthetic, Ellen Wakayama knew right away whom to use. She had recently received an amazing portfolio by a guy named Chris Anthony. He apparently never did commercial work, but these fantastic pieces that hung in galleries. He was looking to try something new and the second I saw this portrait he had done of Zooey Deschanel, I knew he was the right guy. His images are haunting; that had that turn-of-the-century feeling I wanted, yet they were striking and powerful. They looked like someone climbed in a time machine with a camera and got to shoot the year 1910 in color.” – Gerard Way, Black Parade Special Edition
‘Mama’ was a very special song to us, so we had some of our parents come out and track some vocals on the ending, we could have them on the track forever. This made the record even more special to us but it still wasn’t finished. During the last month, during final vocals, I had started to re-track some of the vocal parts in ‘Mama’ I was unhappy with. We came to this section where it gets very quiet before the big finale to the song and I stopped for a second and said to Rob and Doug:
‘I think it should be a woman here…what do you think?’
This had come up before and I had done some female voices on the record I was pretty happy with…but right here it felt like I couldn’t act it. It needed real sorrow, real tenderness.
They said ‘Who do you think?’
Now I should mention that I had been warming up in the vocal booth by doing an impression of Judy Garland as I would picture her to be on Broadway, very bawdy and expressive and I would yell with vibrato in my voice: ‘Hellooooooooo!’
I would do this to warm up and occasionally break the tension when we had a long night. Doug was a big fan of it. I was a big fan of ‘Cabaret’ so naturally I said:
‘Liza Minnelli.’
‘Liza with a Z?’ They asked.
Now to further illustrate how ‘crazy’ became infectious, I should point out that Rob Cavallo did not choose to comment on this with words but instead he picked up the phone near the board and made a phone call. I heard him talk to someone briefly and then hang up. He then said ‘I love Liza Minnelli.’
Fast forward to two weeks later, we are in the same tracking room at Capitol Records where we had just done a string and horn session with the amazing David Campbell. And we have Liza Minnelli live in New York City in another studio. It was amazing that Rob pulled this off and he said that she was very happy to do it. The guys were very excited. As soon as we started talking to her I got pins and needles. I’m a huge Liza Minnelli fan, because growing up she was our grandma’s favorite performer. I was exposed to theatre and musicals from a very early age…I was exposed to showmanship. To me, Liza Minnelli was the only voice that could have portrayed Mother War. Someone very strong, someone that had loved and lost, someone that had been through so much in her life and survived. There was no one that could beat her and she was so amazingly sweet, funny, charming…and she had a flawless voice. She kept doing takes on her own just to make sure she got it right, even though her worst takes are better than others’ best takes. We can’t wait to meet her in person.
– Gerard Way, Black Parade Special Edition