Before Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, The Black Parade or even My Chemical Romance as we know them today, there was “Skylines and Turnstiles”.
The song was written by Gerard Way in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, after he witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center from across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey. Gerard was working in animation at the time and had been travelling to a meeting when the events unfolding in Manhattan forced him to question what he was doing with his life.
He returned to music, picked up a guitar and began writing. “Skylines and Turnstiles” became the first song written for what would eventually become My Chemical Romance, but more importantly, it gave Gerard somewhere to process what he had witnessed and how dramatically the world around him had changed.
The song doesn’t attempt to document September 11th or recount the attacks literally. Instead, it focuses on the emotional aftermath. Its lyrics are filled with uncertainty, loss and questions about what comes next, capturing the feeling of trying to return to everyday life after witnessing something almost impossible to comprehend. Gerard would later describe the beginnings of My Chemical Romance as a form of therapy for processing the trauma surrounding what happened.
That context gives lines throughout “Skylines and Turnstiles” considerably more weight. The song moves between images of damaged buildings, mortality and people trying to carry on, while repeatedly returning to questions about whether things can ever really be the same again. Even the title places the song firmly within the environment that inspired it, pairing the image of a changed skyline with the ordinary routines of moving through a city.
What started with Gerard writing alone soon developed into something bigger. He contacted drummer Matt Pelissier and guitarist Ray Toro, while his brother Mikey Way joined on bass shortly afterwards. As they began playing together, the music developed beyond Gerard’s original idea and the foundations of My Chemical Romance started to take shape.
Less than a year later, “Skylines and Turnstiles” appeared on the band’s debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, released in July 2002. It sits as the seventh track on the record, but historically it is where the story of My Chemical Romance begins.
The band themselves reflected on that connection on the 20th anniversary of September 11th in 2021, writing: “Starting Mychem was a direct result of everything we experienced and witnessed during those horrific events.”
They followed it with a line that has since become one of the clearest explanations of why My Chemical Romance began: “The world changed that day, and the next day we set about trying to change the world.”
More than two decades later, “Skylines and Turnstiles” remains a particularly important part of My Chemical Romance’s catalogue. It wasn’t written with an album, a career or a future arena-sized band in mind. It came from Gerard Way trying to make sense of what he had witnessed, and became the first piece of music in a story that would eventually reach millions.
Today, 25 years on from the attacks of September 11th, our thoughts remain with the victims, their families and everyone whose lives were affected by the events of that day.