Gerard Way takes inspiration from British favourites on new album, ‘Hesitant Alien’

In the August issue of DIY - a massive Reading & Leeds preview special, out Friday 8th August - Gerard Way opens up about leaving My Chemical Romance, and the creation of his debut solo album ‘Hesitant Alien’, due out on 29th September through Warner Bros. Records. Without the influence of his former bandmates, working on new material allowed the former frontman to further indulge his own influences, and they’ve enabled him to tread a somewhat different path.

“I got to go extremely deep,” he explains. “I knew that if I wanted to make a song that was going to sound like The Jesus and Mary Chain, it could really go that far. When you’re in a band, everybody has a fingerprint and that’s what makes that band special. No matter what type of song you’re trying to do in that band, it’s always gonna have that fingerprint on it. When it’s just your singular fingerprint on it, you find that you can go deeper with it.”

Whilst My Chemical Romance had lurked at the heavier realms of his tastes – from Iron Maiden to the Misfits – his new album became a place for Gerard to explore his love of other spheres. “[It has] everything from shoegaze to Britpop, and it’s a very British album. Everything from fuzz rock to noise rock, to experimentation, to Berlin-era Bowie and Iggy stuff. I’ve definitely distilled it into some other thing, and there’s a thread of that throughout the record, but I went deep into my influences.”

Read more in the August issue of DIY, out Friday 8th August - pre-order your copy below. Also in our new issue, Merchandise and Frank Iero talk about their new albums, we go into the studio with Charli XCX, Paramore and Chvrches compare war stories, Bombay Bicycle Club help you decide who to see at Reading & Leeds, and Twin Atlantic give some very bad festival advice - plus lots more besides.