#anyway there is like full concert footage of this show on youtube if youd like to live vicariously through that.

[sendmyresignation]

A small but nonetheless important detail (to me) is that Ray and Gerard attended the same Maiden show shortly before My Chem started, which I would argue rekindled their friendship and was the catalyst of their creative partnership. They initially met in the 90s through Shawn Dillon, who Gerard met in art school and was in The Rodneys with Ray. Gerard and Mikey had seen the Rodneys perform live at some point, but never became close friends with Ray and (based on the tone of retrospective interviews) might have drifted apart after Gerard graduated. Obviously, the interim timeline is incredibly tenuous (especially when you add Nancy Drew into the mix), but, according to a scanned interview on the comm mychemicalmedia, “Cruising For Crazy,” which Gerard and Ray wrote together for Breakfast Monkey, “predates My Chemical Romance by four months.” Considering Iron Maiden’s schedule during their Brave New World tour (significant because it was Bruce Dickinson’s first tour back after he departed from the band for much of the 90s), the only time Ray and Gerard would have had the opportunity to see Maiden before this period would be the August 5, 2000 date at Madison Square Garden. In the Rolling Stones  interview Gerard mentioned the show, the specific wording says they “reconnected” after attending “the show together” and immediately dovetails into a discussion of My Chem’s demos, suggesting without the show Gerard might not’ve been close enough to Ray to call him in 2001 and that this particular MSG show, like many other’s in the members’ past, was a point of creative inspiration and connection for the two of them.

Excerpt from the My Chemical Romance Heavy Metal Primer detailing the circumstances in which Ray and Gerard met in the 1990s, as well as their creative rekindling at an Iron Maiden show they attended together in 2000, just before My Chem was formed