THE NEWS
"Skylines and Turnstiles" is four lines a kid wrote in his parents' basement because he had nowhere else to put what he'd just watched. Gerard Way was 24, interning in New York and pitching a show to Cartoon Network, riding the train out of Hoboken toward the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 *. He didn't see the planes hit — he watched the buildings come down with everyone else on that train, and My Chemical Romance was formed the next day *.
THE LEGACY
- Way commuted daily from the Hoboken station; two routes run from there toward the World Trade Center area, and he was on one of them that morning *
- "It was like being in a science fiction film or like some kind of disaster film" *
- "A lot of the people behind me all had friends and family in those buildings; I didn't. So when that first building went, it was like an A-bomb went off, of, like, just this emotion" *
- He went home, went to the basement, and wrote — those four lines became "Skylines and Turnstiles" *
- The song landed as track seven on the 2002 debut *I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love* *
- On the 20th anniversary in 2021 the band posted: "Starting Mychem was a direct result of everything we experienced and witnessed during those horrific events" *
- A 20th anniversary edition of 2006's *The Black Parade* is coming, with the band sharing further details this week †
WHY IT MATTERS
Every MCR fan has heard the theatrics argument — the costumes, the concept records, the marching band drums — and this is the answer to it. "The world changed that day, and the next day we set about trying to change the world" *: that band exists because one guy on a New Jersey train couldn't put it down. As for the *Black Parade* reissue, the formats, tracklist and release date still aren't confirmed †.