We’re twenty minutes in to My Chemical Romance’s northern comeback, at Warrington’s Victoria Park. Although frontman Gerard Way has already addressed the crowd as ‘Manchester’ four times.
He means well. The show is happening equidistant of Manchester and Liverpool for logistical reasons; there’s already an outdoor stage in place in the park, ahead of the Neighbourhood Weekender. Plus, he looks as if he’s stopped off in the Northern Quarter along the way; he takes the stage in the kind of waxed raincoat he might have picked up from Oi Polloi.
That, in itself, is instructive. My Chemical Romance won the hearts of a generation of teenagers, and the ire of the right-wing press, with high-level emo theatrics, dressed in faded black-and-silver military regalia when they toured their mainstream breakthrough The Black Parade, and top-to-toe leather when they hit the road in support of their underrated farewell album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.
