Singer Gerard Way welcomed the guitarist for the band's encore as they topped the opening night of the three-day event.
The BBC reports that May and MCR led the crowd in a mass sing and clapalong for the Queen classic “We Will Rock You,” complete with fireworks synchronized to the music; May then stayed on for the final song of the night, “The Black Parade.”
MCR had much to prove with the Reading crowd: they last appeared five years ago when they were pelted with plastic bottles during their performance after having to follow thrash band Slayer on stage.
“I wrote an email to Brian after getting his email off [producer] Rob Cavallo,” Way told NME. “There was this story that you [Queen] played a show in Paris and got booed off and Freddie [Mercury] said, 'We’re gonna come back and be the biggest band in the world'. And after what happened to us at Reading in 2006 [when they were bottled], people would ask us, 'Are you gonna do that again? [play the festival]' and I’d go, 'Not unless we're headlining it.’”
“So I told him this whole story and how we were gonna go back and could he give me some advice,” continued Way. “So we just got talking and I went to his house – I got off a plane, went to his house, went to his jam room, jammed out, did a soundcheck. I had a feeling that morning, it flipped in my brain, not, ‘Are we ready for this’, I almost felt like ‘Is the crowd ready for us?’”
Queen
My Chemical Romance – We Will Rock You/Welcome To The Black Parade
With guest Brian May of Queen
Reading Festival – August 26, 2011
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