Former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has revealed he was hoping to live a normal life after he split the band last year.
He had no plans to forge a solo career until he began coming up with ideas for his album Hesitant Alien, headed up with lead track Action Cat.
Way last year admitted he felt MCR had reached a natural conclusion with 2006 album The Black Parade – but now he tells NME: “I’m still proud of the shows we played, especially of the music we played after Black Parade; but I definitely didn’t have anything planned.”
He says of his upcoming release: “All of a sudden I started to plan out what a solo career would be like. I thought of artists I loved like Nick Cave, Morrissey, Brian Eno, Bowie, Iggy, PJ Harvey, Björk. I thought about all those artists and I was like, ‘That’s what I want my arc to be.’ I would be so lucky to have a quarter of what any of them had, in terms of their story.”
Hesitant Alien represents a change of direction in more ways than one. “It’s not a concept record, it’s not high concept at all, and that’s new for me,” he says. “It’s got its own look and its own feeling. I imagine reinvention is something that’s such a part of me that I don’t think that will ever stop.”
His current mantra is: “Maybe plan it less.”
Way will play his first post-MCR shows at the Reading festival on August 22 and the Leeds festival the following day.
