Gerard Way Talks Independence, Alternative Influences & Making Art

A little over a year after the disbandment of My Chemical Romance, frontman Gerard Way surprised his fans with a solo album, Hesitant Alien. The full-length was totally different from anything Way had done before, a move he considers to be very meticulous. 

"I’ve played with concepts so much in the past that it became a bit of a crutch. I thought the biggest way to challenge myself was to not have a concept and kind of tie a visual concept together," the singer told Fuse. "The visuals…I did a bunch of these drawings...even before having the title, I was able to kind of nail down the look from being such a big fan of [David] Bowie and Iggy Pop and ‘70s glam. I honed in on that and I added a little bit of Roxy Music and then the title kind of came out of that, too. The thing about 'No Shows,' the song is about independence. It took me a minute to really realize that’s what it was about. It’s about this fierce independence from a greater machine or a scene or even something that you built. The human connection is the most important thing. The concert’s not as important. The person on the stage is not as important. I was stressed out for a minute when I was coming up with a set for the live shows. I realized that I just need to be up there sharing and doing my thing. I only have an album’s worth of material so what am I going to do?"