My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero has paid tribute to his late ex-bandmate Bob Bryar, who was found dead in his home last week aged 44.
Per TMZ, the drummer was discovered in his Tennessee home on November 26, after last being seen alive on November 4. The cause of death is not immediately known, but authorities have ruled out foul play, with his possessions, including musical equipment and weapons, untouched.
Bryar was My Chemical Romance’s longest-tenured drummer, performing with the band from 2004 until his departure in 2010. On Monday, the band shared a tribute calling Bryar “an important part” of their history.
In an Instagram post shared yesterday (December 3), Iero wrote a lengthy tribute that reflected on his relationship with Bryar in the band.
“I still don’t feel like this is real… people your age, your peers, the ones you shared so much time and experience with aren’t supposed to just suddenly leave your life forever,” Iero began. “But I suppose permanence isn’t really a concept humans are meant to understand.”
Iero listed the “things that stuck out” about Bryar: that he was “an enigma of sorts” who “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 added, admitting that their relationship was kept to living together “on and off the road” and they would “trade a meme or photos of Lego builds”. “Someone would leave the other on read and an indeterminate radio silence would follow,” he wrote.
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“I’d hear rumblings of what he might be up to or some shit he’d stirred up online, but that wasn’t ever the person I was acquianted with,” Iero stated, calling Bryar “incredibly talented”, “eccentric as fuck”, “funny as hell” and someone “confident enough in his abilities to convince us that he was the right drummer for our band” without hearing him play.
Over the years, Iero found him “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 revealed. He recalled Bryar on the tour supporting 2006 album ‘The Black Parade’ when he “decided to position all of his drums flat so that there were no angles pointing toward him.” It made playing “more uncomfortable” and it would injure his wrists.
Iero remembered Bryar as the band member he “related to the most” because of his sense of humour that was “dark as fuck just like mine”. They had planned to get “semi matching tattoos” that each could fill in with marker pens each day on tour “when we undoubtedly found a new thing that got on our nerves.”
However, Iero noted, “there were also times when I think Bob disliked me immensely, and wished he could kick me out of the band.”
He would describe Bryar as someone who loved animals, and that an incident involving the death of Bryar’s dog “wrecked him emotionally.”
The incident was a turning point in his relationship with the band, Iero continued, saying that “he 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 2022 Bryar announced he would be selling his original ‘Black Parade’ uniform and using money from the sale to help “abandoned and sheltered animals in areas of Florida and South Carolina that are affected by Hurricane Ian”.
Iero revealed that he told Bryar in confidence that they could talk about his feelings 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.
“But ultimately it was a bandaid that didn’t hold, the damage was done and Bob was too far gone,” Iero reflected, adding that he told Bryar that “he was out of the band.”
Iero added that he had tried “a few times” to reach out to Bryar since then, but he “politely made it impossible”.
“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 concluded. “I hope you found some peace, BC. I’m glad the universe let me know you for a while.”
Iero then shared pictures of the duo from their time together in the band, including the tattoo that Iero had meant to get with Bob. Read the full post here.
In a statement at the time, Iero wrote on the band’s blog: “As of four weeks ago, My Chemical Romance and Bob Bryar parted ways. This was a painful decision for all of us to make and was not taken lightly. We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours, and expect you all to do the same.”
Bryar struck up a friendship with My Chemical Romance during their tour with The Used in 2004, and soon after became their drummer for their tour that year in Japan – replacing previous drummer Matt Pelissier.
His contributions can be heard on My Chemical Romance’s seminal 2006 album ‘The Black Parade’, the band’s most commercially and critically successful record. It debuted at number two in the United States on the Billboard 200, as well as on the UK Albums Chart.
In the subsequent years, Bryar continued to play drums, before announcing his retirement from music in 2014 to become a real estate agent.
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