My Chemical Romance‘s guitarist Frank Iero paid tribute to his former bandmate Bob Bryar, who was found dead in his Tennessee home last week at the age of 44.
In a post shared to Instagram on Tuesday, Iero wrote that he had “spent the past few days thinking about Bob a lot and the person i knew him to be,” and looked back at the memories that stood out the most. Iero remembered the drummer as an “engima of sorts,” explaining that he “often inhabited both ends of any spectrum at the same time.”
“He was my friend and my bandmate, but he was also a stranger to me for most of my life,” Iero continued, adding that while after their time together as a band they would “trade a meme or photos of Lego builds,” eventually someone “would leave the other on read and an indeterminate radio silence would follow.”
While Iero said that he would “hear rumblings of what he might be up to or some shit he’d stirred up online,” that wasn’t the person he had gotten to know. The musician went on to say that Bryar was “incredibly talented” and “confident enough in his abilities to convince us that he was the right drummer for our band” without any of them hearing him play. Iero also recalled Bryar as someone who was “eccentric as fuck” and “funny as hell,” and who was capable of “mean” enough to “cut you in half,” but also the “first one” to give you whatever he had if it would help you out or “put a smile on your face”
Over the years, Iero said he found Bryar to “incredibly self conscious and introverted whenever he felt placed outside of his comfort zone.”
“Bob often got fixated on things to a point of obsession and he liked to make things difficult,” Iero said. He said that during the band’s tour for 2006’s The Black Parade, Bryar “decided to position all of his drums flat so that there were no angles pointing toward him,” which made playing “more uncomfortable” and injured his wrists.
At times, Iero said that Bryar was the bandmate he “related to the most” because of his “humor was dark as fuck just like mine”. The guitarist revealed that they had planned to get “semi matching tattoos” that read “Bob/Frank Hates ___” and could fill in each day “when we undoubtedly found a new thing that got on our nerves.”
Iero pointed out that “there were also times when I think Bob disliked me immensely, and wished he could kick me out of the band.”
In his tribute, Iero said Bryar “loved animals,” and that a tragic incident that led to the death of Bryar’s dog “wrecked him emotionally.” Iero said that afterwards, Bryar “just couldn’t keep it together anymore” and that his “sadness, anger and distrust were too much to handle and took over all aspects.”
In 2021, Bryar auctioned off the drum kit used during the My Chemical Romance’s 2005 MTV VMAs performance to raise money for the Williamson County Animal Control and Adoption Center in Tennessee. The following year, he announced he would sell his original Black Parade uniform to help “abandoned and sheltered animals in areas of Florida and South Carolina that are affected by Hurricane Ian.”
After his dog’s death, Iero said he told Bryar that they could talk about what he was going through and “come up with a way to either fix the situation or figure out a plan” to discuss it with the rest of the band. However, “it was a bandaid that didn’t hold, the damage was done and Bob was too far gone,” and Iero was ultimately the one who told Bryar he was out of the band.
Bryar left My Chemical Romance in 2010 following the release of Danger Days, although he featured on the band’s singles collection, Conventional Weapons. (The group would later disband in 2013) At the time, Iero confirmed Bryar’s exit and said it was “a painful decision for all of us to make and was not taken lightly.”
In a short post shared on Monday, the band paid tribute to their former drummer, and said, “It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Bob Bryar, our former bandmate and an important part of the history of My Chemical Romance.”
“I don’t think I ever got to tell him I was sorry, I don’t know if it would have mattered… but I do wish like hell I finished the text conversation we had back in September,” Iero wrote on Tuesday. “I hope you found some peace, BC. I’m glad the universe let me know you for a while.” Alongside his tribute, Iero shared photos from Bryar’s time with the group and the tattoo they had planned to get together.
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