Artist Interview - My Chemical Romance

by lisa sharken

Meet Ray Toro (above, right), guitarist with New Jersey's red hot rockers, My Chemical Romance. We had the chance for a long distance chat before MCR hit the stage in Germany to support its highly acclaimed new disc, The Black Parade.

Toro filled us in on what inspired him during his formative years as a musician and detailed the gear he uses live. We also got the scoop on how MCR crafted its monstrous guitar tones in the studio.

Which players had the greatest influence on your musical style?
My two biggest influences have always been Randy Rhoads and Brian May. I was a fan of Randy Rhoads because he was one of the first players I can remember who mixed classical music with a metal and hard rock style of playing, and he did it very tastefully. It was really inspiring. "Dee" was just so moving because he wrote it for his mother and it was a classically influenced piece. What I like about Brian May is that he views the guitar like an orchestra. His guitar playing is very symphonic. I'm just a huge fan of how he layers and harmonizes things like an arranger or a conductor. A little later, probably because of Randy Rhoads' influence, I started listening to classical guitarists like Andres Segovia and Christopher Parkening. I was obsessed with the way they would take classical pieces and arrange them for a single guitar with the way they have moving melody and bass lines that work together. Segovia was one of the guys who made classical guitar a respected instrument. When guitarists first started playing like that it wasn't really looked upon as artistic. He traveled the world and was a champion for having classical guitar recognized as a concert instrument. Parkening was Segovia's student and he carried on his legacy.

Have your listening tastes changed? Do you still listen to the music that influenced you when you started?
Yes. I don't listen to much new stuff. I don't know if it's because I'm a music snob. I think that I've always been very careful about listening to current music and being influenced by it. I'm afraid of stealing stuff from it. But there are a couple of new bands that I like, Muse being one of them. I love Muse. They have great guitar work and great songwriting. They're one of the few new bands that I can listen to nowadays. But pretty much, I just listen to the same stuff I used to listen to when I was younger.

With older music, do you tend to pick out things you hadn't noticed before when you listen now?
Yes. That's the best thing about music. Depending on what situation you're in when you're listening, you're just in a certain head space and you'll pick up on little things that you never heard before, especially when you're listening to stuff like Queen or Pink Floyd. You'll pick out things like harmonies or nuances in the guitar playing or singing, or you'll hear little mistakes. I recently listened to Led Zeppelin and noticed that sometimes Jimmy Page's guitar was going out of tune while they were recording, but it adds character. If you listen to "Stairway To Heaven," you'll hear how he's doubling certain things on an acoustic guitar and he's playing the same thing on an electric, and it's panned left to right. These are things that I never used to pick up on when I was younger. But now I can hear those things and it gives me a different appreciation for the music.

Tell us about the gear you're using live.
Right now I'm using the Marshall® DSL100 with two 1960A cabinets. I don't use many pedals. I have a Dunlop® Crybaby wah, Boss® EQ pedal, Boss Pitch Shifter to do harmonies, Boss Chorus Ensemble, and Electro Harmonix® POG Polyphonic Octave Generator, which is really cool because you can set it up to play one octave below, an octave above, or two octaves above. You can make your guitar sound like a Hammond® B3 organ when you use that in combination with the chorus pedal.

My main guitar right now is a Gibson® Les Paul® Standard that I think is either from '91 or '93 and has Seymour Duncan Phat Cat (SPH90-1) P90 style pickups which are the size of a humbucker. They're amazing. I'm really psyched about them. I have another Les Paul Standard which is probably from '93 and it has a Seymour Duncan JB (SH-4) in the bridge position and the neck pickup is whatever came on the guitar. My brother was a huge influence on me and he was the one who showed me how to play guitar. He turned me onto the JB. It was the first after market pickup I bought because he said that I had to get a Seymour Duncan JB!

What do you like most about your Duncan pickups and what types of tones do you go for with each?
For the Phat Cats, I call it a "meat and potatoes" tone. It's very thick and punchy, just in the right spots. I use the guitar with the JB for songs that need a little more edge and more gain. The JB has a hotter tone and more gain than I get with the Phat Cats. It works really well for songs that are a little more riffy. A lot of our older material has more riffing going on with lots of single note picked riffs, and there's a lot more playing. On the new stuff, the guitar parts are a bit more simple. There are more chugging power chords and things like that. I find that the Phat Cats are better for that kind of stuff and I use the JB for the more shredding songs.

How do you and Frank Iero [MCR guitarist, above, left] differ as players? What are the most recognizable characteristics you each possess?
I'm more of a technical player. On the records, I play all the solos. I'm more into the harmonization of parts, so the harmonized leads on the records are usually me. I guess that's what I bring to the band and my metal influence. Frank is kind of the counter to that. He's very rhythmic in his playing and his lines. He plays all of the octave runs and the choruses, and the counter melodies to the main rhythm parts in the verses are his. The way he writes is very linked with what the vocals are doing. He listens very closely to what Gerard [Way, MCR vocalist] is doing and he finds a way to reinforce the melodies that Gerard is singing, but he adds some of his own things to it that either harmonize with what Gerard is doing vocally or with what I'm doing. He finds a really cool way of just fitting in the mix and hitting melodies that your ear wants to hear that fills in those gaps. He's really good at coming up with very cool melodic lines on the verses and choruses. It's a cool relationship that we have. Technically, he plays more of the leads, in a sense, and I play the rhythms, but I'm playing more of the leads in a solo sense. It's just very different depending on which song it is and we do whatever works best for the song.

Did your studio rig for The Black Parade differ much from the gear you use live?
We used the guitars we play live as our main guitars in the studio. I'm not a big gearhead. I go more on feel and I'm used to the way that my guitar feels. I'm comfortable with it, so that's what I used predominantly for the whole record, unless there were certain songs or parts that called for different tones that my guitar just didn't sound right for. The main guitar I used was the Les Paul with Phat Cats.

When we went into preproduction in Los Angeles, my DSL100 that I use live broke down. So [producer] Rob Cavallo let me borrow a 100 watt Marshall JCM 800 series head which was the loudest and ballsiest amp I've ever heard. Since it sounded so good in preproduction, we used it on the recording. I'm not sure what model cabinet we were running it through, but it was a Marshall. That was the main setup. On occasion when we were going for different textures, like throwing in an Electro Harmonix Big Muff or another distortion pedal, or any other kinds of effects, we usually ran it through a Hiwatt® head. That was pretty much it. We tried to stick to the basics and not get too crazy. We did use a Roland® midi guitar synthesizer for all sorts of cool sounds. We used that any time there was a heavier riff on the record. We usually doubled it two octaves lower than the actual note. A lot of the stuff you're hearing is just straight guitar tones that are very layered. On certain songs, like "The End," which is the intro to the record, when the tone gets really heavy and the single note riff comes in, we stacked it by tracking the lowest octave on the guitar to the highest. It's that Brian May type mentality of making the guitars very symphonic. Once in a while there's a chorus pedal or a phaser, but we're not a very heavy effects driven band. We like to plug straight into the amp and go. Rob has a huge collection of stompboxes and that's how we were introduced to the POG. He's got tons of vintage guitars too, and we used a few of them. For clean verses, like on "Mama" and "I Don't Love You," we were using one of his Teles. I think I used one of his Strats for the solo in "I Don't Love You." So we did use other guitars for certain parts, but the guitars we play live were the main ones used to record.

What advice can you offer to players who are trying to create their own identity in a two guitar band?
The best way to create your own style is to just be yourself. You can be influenced by what other people do and take the little bits that you like from the different players that you appreciate, but never completely cop someone's style. Put your own flavor to it. Play what makes you feel good and that's how you develop your own style. One of the fun things about playing with another guitarist is working on parts together. It's kind of what music is about -- working together as a team. When two guitar players can bring in what they do, make it bigger and better, learn from each other and influence each other, that's a cool thing. Frank and I have been able to do that and we've kind of rubbed off on each other. It's great to have that experience and it helps you to grow as a musician.

Lisa Sharken is Seymour Duncan's New York based artist relations consultant.