The My Chemical Romance song taken from David Bowie and Pink Floyd
By the end of the 1990s, the idea of classic rock had become a bit of a cliché. Even though many giants like Tom Petty and Paul McCartney were still roaming in the shadows of the music industry, none were necessarily expected to reach the top of the charts. In the era where nu-metal and post-grunge dominated the scene, though, My Chemical Romance emerged with an emo take on classic rock.
Then again, the emo giants were far from the first band to think of the idea of emulating their classic rock heroes. Before the 2000s, artists like The White Stripes were already making songs indebted to the stone age of rock, writing tracks that could have easily emerged from the blues tradition.
Around 2001, the garage rock revival started to sink its teeth into the genre, with bands like The Strokes and The Hives embracing the ramshackle sounds of rock music. Even though these acts were known for bringing the genre back to basics, Gerard Way was always looking to make something more extravagant with My Chemical Romance.
Forming shortly after the September 11 attacks, Way wanted to make music that would mean something much more than traditional rock, sculpting every album as a loose concept throughout its runtime. Inspired by his hard rock and hardcore punk, the band’s debut, I Brought You My Bullets… would lay the groundwork for where they would be going, ultimately deciding to embrace pop-punk on their sophomore release, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
After seeing what could be done within the medium with Green Day’s American Idiot, Way thought the band could dream bigger for their next album. Coming up with the tale of a dying cancer patient wasting away his life in a hospital, The Black Parade would become one of the biggest albums of the decade, as well as a nostalgic trip through rock’s past.
While the most apparent inspiration for the album was Queen on songs like ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’, the band had two clear bands in mind when opening the album. Starting with the sound of a heart monitor, ‘The End’ welcomes the audience into the story, building to a bombastic climax before dropping them into the first proper track, ‘Dead!’.
When discussing putting together the song, Way cited Pink Floyd’s The Wall as a direct model for the intro, saying, “I think we wanted ‘The End’ to feel a little bit like the beginning of The Wall, there’s a song called ‘In The Flesh’. We wanted it to feel very much like that kind of beginning, like that you were about to get taken on a journey.” While the song has a similar bending guitar riff to welcome the listener into the world of the album, there’s also an apparent influence from David Bowie’s masterpiece The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.
Based upon the opening chords that loop throughout the song, the track pays homage to Bowie’s opening track, ‘Five Years’, down to the chanting of “Save Me” towards the end of the song to evoke the “Five Years” refrain of the Bowie classic. Even though the band wore their influences relatively close to the chest, it was never about wearing classic rock as some elaborate costume.
For all of the legends that helped create this record, Way and the band had created one of the most elaborate concept albums of their time, seeking to tell a story of mortality through the lens of rock and roll. The genre may have gone through various twists and turns since the likes of Bowie and Floyd, but by borrowing from their influences, My Chemical Romance were taking the same creative risks that their heroes did.
