Kurt Cobain's Daughter To Duet With My Chemical Romance
By Yuda
According to Nme.com, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter Frances Bean will be appearing on a track alongside My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way.
Cobain, who has been often hounded by press, will make her singing debut on the song "My Space" with Way, Andrew WK andWeird Al Yankovic. The track is being used for debut album ofEvelyn Evelyn, the new group formed by Dresden Dollsfrontwoman Amanda Palmer and Seattle musician Jason Webley.
Along with those artists, several others will make an appearance on the song. Some of which include Tegan And Sara, ex-Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay and various members of Mindless Self Indulgence. The debut record is set to be released on March 30.
Cobain has had her fair share of time in the music industry. In 2008, the only child ofKurt worked as an intern for Rolling Stone and for her 16th birthday, she held an event at the House Of Blues in Hollywood, California, that cost her mother over $326,000.
My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way on New Album
By Yuda
After My Chemical Romance's grueling two-year tour in support of their hit third album, The Black Parade, the quintet put the band on hiatus and retreated to their personal lives to recover. Frontman Gerard Way married and had his first child, daughter Bandit Lee.
It was the chance to cover Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" for the 2009 blockbuster/graphic novel adaptation of Watchmen that pried Way and his bandmates out of their houses, and found them beginning to formulate their next move. "It was a good test to play around with where we might potentially go," Way tells SPIN.com. "We started with the Sex Pistols and then decided to go back further, before punk. What was before punk that was punk? So there's the MC5 and the Stooges, and that Detroit sound."
And those are just a few of the touchstone bands whose influences surface on MCR's as-yet-untitled fourth album, due in the Spring. Hints of Judas Priest, Def Leppard, and the Hives permeate seven new songs previewed for SPIN.com: "Death Before Disco," "Save Yourself," "Trans Am," "Only Hope," "Light Behind Your Eyes," "Black Dragon Fighting Society," and "L.A. Heavy."
And while Gerard is still writing songs to stir the jilted, with his typically snide worldview intact, these tunes reveal a band having a damn good time.
We caught up with Way to talk about the album, its roots in the band's home state of New Jersey -- and even a certain MTV reality show that's filmed there.
How did you manage to make this record while being
a brand new dad?
The record was more challenging than the baby, and the baby
was really challenging.
I was pretty worn out. [My wife] Lindsey and I had the baby, and
then two weeks after that I was in the studio. I didn't shave for
weeks, looked horrible, and ended up getting all these dreadlocks
in my hair. I was never showering. I would show up in a t-shirt
covered in baby puke -- you can pretty much picture the glamorous
nature of that. And so we
would work every day, and as soon as we were done I would rush
right home and help Lindsey with the baby.
It's nice to be able to run home and see the kid
before it gets too late
everyday.
Yeah, absolutely. It made the recording process take a little bit
longer, but it made the process more enjoyable. I don't think
there was a single night where I was in the studio past like 10
or 11 -- I genuinely wanted to get home. We also realized that we
don't have to work until 5 A.M. to make a great record. We just
needed to stretch it out over the course of four months instead
of two.
We've heard seven songs from the album, and we've
been told there was there was a New Jersey-ish vibe to your
writing process -- even though you were writing and recording in
L.A.
It's funny. I played a song for my friend [and legendary comic
book author] Grant Morrison, and he immediately said, "Oh, this
sounds like California." But aesthetically or fictionally, the
album has these feelings of being like a 15-year-old kid at the
Jersey Shore, trying to win a Motley Crue mirror or an Iron
Maiden hat, from that era when heavy metal was yet to become hair
rock.
It's also about the Boss -- he was my first show -- but the Boss before the really big hits. That notion that if you're from Jersey, you want to get the hell out of it. I love Jersey, but that was my goal. And to me, the music of Springsteen was always about that. It's just about of getting up and blowing out of town.
The last album was so overtly conceptual, but this
one appears to have more of a sonic thread than a narrative
one.
The album has many themes. That a band and an audience can be
immortal through rock'n'roll, even if just for one night. The
power of believing in something. Being a survivor, running away
in a positive way, leaving home in order to come back. Having a
number of themes actually made it harder to piece the record
together. Black
Parade was very simple -- we have
an intro, we have a midpoint, and we have an outro. We'd been
making concept albums since our first one, so to do this, to make
a truly great album that doesn't have the crutch of a narrative,
that was so hard. And everything is more direct.
If Black
Parade was about the sweeping
gesture, this is about the bold statement.
Let's talk about some of those new songs. "Death
Before Disco" has a Hives-y take on
proto-punk.
We actually got to play that song for Wayne Kramer [of the MC5]
in our pre-production, which was awesome. He wanted to come by
and visit us, and we said, "Hey, can we play you this song? I
lyric-check you guys in it. You know your band is a huge
inspiration for our sound on this record." That song is truly
about the power of working class rock'n'roll versus the power of
fame. It's working class rock versus Chanel fucking handbags and
red carpets and all that bullshit.
All of the bands you're mentioning as influences
here are working
class rock'n'roll bands. After last record and huge tours and
everything, it sounds like that's an ethos you guys are really
craving.
Absolutely. That was where we started, and that's where we
meandered for quite a while. It was funny, when we were a lower
working class kid rock band, like we were trying
to pretend to
be a larger than life rock band. We were playing basements and I
was talking about our jumbo jet, just because it was funny, and
we obviously didn't have one -- we couldn't even wash our
clothes! Now, I think it's kind of reversed. Now we are
constantly jet-setting and it doesn't really suit us, so we're
working hard to remember what it was like when we were a working
class band.
"Trans Am" is another one that's very much in that
vein, just quick and dirty. And like any good Jersey song,
there's a girl named Jenny in it.
Of course! I think my Jenny is referring to the missing Jenny in
the Killers song. I think, somehow, it was inspired by that --
there's definitely some connection.
Speaking of Jersey, have you
watched Jersey
Shore?
Oh my god, yeah. I don't know if they leak this so people will
watch, but I heard that people on the show were getting death
threats, that people who produce the show were getting death
threats, so I was like, "Alright, I gotta see this." And I was
actually kind of disappointed, because it's really no different
from any other show they have on the network. They could have
shot this in Scottsdale, Arizona, and found the same type of
people. It's definitely not an accurate representation of New
Jersey. But it's definitely an accurate representation of a
specific kind of people in New Jersey. I
definitely did go
to school with guys and girls like that.
Are you excited for Bandit's first Christmas? Is is
going to be a big deal?
It is a really big deal. It's very exciting -- even though no
matter what we get her she's not really going to realize what it
is. We got her some fun outfits.
Like a reindeer or something of that
nature?
Of course, yeah, absolutely! We still want to get a really lousy
Sears picture of her so we're gonna try to do that next
week.
Where she's looking off in the wrong
direction?
Yeah, with a really shitty paper backdrop.
- SPIN

