Almost at the end of the UK leg of their world tour; Fozzy front man and WWE superstar Chris Jericho finds a little time to speak exclusively to Jo from YMT, here’s how it went…
Jo: Hey, how’s the tour been going so far?
Chris: Yesterday was awesome and most of the shows have been really really cool.
J: Yeah, you had your birthday on tour that must have been fun?
C: Yeah, it was fun it was our show in York. There were girls bringing cake onto the stage, what more could you want, cake and girls!
J: Did they sing to you?
C: Yes, they did, the whole crowd did!
J: Is that the usual reception you get over here in the UK?
C: Well, the UK has always been a second home to us since we first started coming here in 2004. This is the first territory that ever really embraced Fozzy, so that’s why we spend so much time touring here. This is the 4th tour of the UK on this record and that’s why we’re doing all of the university towns and smaller towns, because we want to and because people want to see us. It’s good because I don’t think there are a lot of bands from the states that can tour the UK as extensively as we do; we’ve kind of built a reputation on that, and like I said we’ve built a great fan base over here and it continues to grow.
J: Do you enjoy doing the smaller gigs, or do you prefer the bigger ones?
C: I enjoy them all, you know if we play a Sonisphere show it’s great with the big stage and the big crowd, but a lot of them haven’t ever really seen Fozzy, so you’ve got to work to really get them into it. These shows are easy because you’re playing for people who came to see Fozzy, it’s like you’re preaching to the converted. When we play towns for the first time though sometimes people don’t always know just how much intensity we expect from the audience and how much involvement we expect and once again I think we’ve built a reputation on being a very entertaining and fun band to see because of that. So when we go to places like Glasgow or London that we’ve been to many times they know, like they’re almost primed, they know their parts and what we want them to do, whereas when we come to a town, like I don’t ever think we’ve been to High Wycombe before so we have to help people into it, they’ll be into it by the end, we’ve just got to help them feel the vibe.
J: You’ve almost finished the UK leg of the tour, where to next?
C: Err, Germany, Denmark and Holland, I think about 6 shows. I think there’s 3 in Germany, 1 in Denmark and 2 in Holland? Something like that.
J: So what have you been up to on tour?
C: We’re actually writing songs for the next record back here [tour bus] when we’re not on stage. We wrote all of the lyrics a couple of months ago, and now Rich is kind of taking those lyrics and cutting them down to fit them into the melodies ready for the songs he’s doing. We were up until 8 in the morning last night, or last morning… Or earlier today [laughs], writing a really killer song that’s going to be awesome and it just came off the cuff. He had a riff, I had a title for it; he started writing the music and the melodies as I started writing the lyrics for it. He was like, yeah this is what I’ve got, and I was like this is what I’ve got and we were like bam..!
J…It’s 8 o’clock in the morning and you’ve had no sleep!?
C: Yeah, but with a great song to show for it!
J: When are you planning on compiling this all together and releasing a new album?
C: Well we’re going to start recording it, December, January, February and then have it out in June or July ready for next summer to come back and do all of the festivals over here and in Europe.
J: Which festivals will you be doing?
C: We’re not sure yet, obviously there’s some huge ones like we’ve just heard about Download with Sabbath and Metallica, so that would be great to do, we haven’t done that one in a while and you know Sonisphere is always an option, Bloodstock is always an option, there are a lot of good ones over here that we’ve been looking into.
J: I know a lot of people have said you should play Download.
C: Yeah, a lot of people have said that, we’ve been tweeting saying join in, I mean we’d love to play what with the year being such a monumental year, to be part of it would be amazing, even to be there as a fan would be too!
J: How’s Paul your new bassist fitting in?
C: He’s been amazing, he fits like a glove! Paul’s the missing piece of the puzzle that we were missing until we got him. Just from the way he looks, the way he plays, his stage presence, his personality. He’s just a great guy and he’s really experienced, he’s played with tons of bands, even guys like Billy Joel and Paul Simon, he’s one of those type of guys like a real head cutter. So to have him with us is amazing, he’s just the final piece of our puzzle and he’s going to enable us to move onto the next level that we’ve been heading towards over the past year and a half.
J: Who influences your music with Fozzy?
C: Rich and I have some different musical influences and some of the same ones. We both love Metallica and Iron Maiden and Sabbath and Ozzy and bands like that , I’m a huge Beatles fanatic, he’s a huge Journey, Styx, Foreigner kind of 70’s classic rock fanatic so I think that’s one of the reasons why our songs are very melodic, whilst being crushingly heavy at the same time. There’s always parts that you can sing along to it’s almost like if Pantera was crossed with Journey that would be our band, which is a strange mix until you actually here it and go, yeah there’s some really cool parts to this.
J: Being one of the world’s most famous wrestlers the lifestyle must vary to what you’re doing now, which life do you prefer?
C: Being on the road is being on the road, I mean there are different levels. Travelling on a bus is way easier than travelling wrestling wise, because wrestling you have to do your travelling on a bus then hotel, you get your bags you check in, you go to the hotel, you stay there for 3 hours you get up early, you go to the bus you go to the show, you do the show, you get back on the bus, you go to the airport, you go through security [he goes on!] This is like you do your show you come back and have a shower on the bus, you hang out, you talk you write songs, you go to bed you go to the next venue, it’s like this is our world, you never really have to leave it. But for me it’s I’ve been playing in bands since I was 12 years old, it’s not like I just woke up one day and thought hey, I want to be in a rock band. When I was a kid I had 2 dreams, I wanted to be a wrestler and I wanted to be in a rock and roll band, and wrestling just took off first, but I never stopped playing music, I never stopped playing gigs, and now we’re doing this and we’ve got it to the level it has after 13 years, it’s just as cool to me now as it was when I was going up the ladder in wrestling.
J: What is your biggest dream, music or wrestling?
C: Well, right now it’s music. You know I’ve made it as far as you can go in wrestling, it was fun but like I said I had these 2 dreams and now to see the band, all of this work is starting to pay off, I mean we’ve played 14 countries on this tour on you know so many great things have happened to us since chasing the grail came out that I want to take the band as far as we can go, and do as much as we can with it for as long as we can.
J: Will you go back to being a wrestler?
C: I don’t have any plans to as of right now, I wouldn’t say no but people sometimes get mad at me for saying I don’t have plans for it. But I’ve been really busy with doing what I’ve been doing with Fozzy and also stuff that I’ve been doing outside of Fozzy as well, so maybe at some point but for now no, I’m happy doing what I’m doing.
J: Where would you ultimately like to take Fozzy?
C: To the top! The toppermost of the poppermost baby as John Lennon once said. Yeah, I mean we’ve just got so much steam behind us right now and we’ve gone so far. We’ve just played our first arena shows in the States with Bullet for my Valentine and Avenged Sevenfold, and all the stuff we’ve done over here playing Sonisphere and touring with Anthrax, you know France is opening up for us, Germany is opening up for us, Australia’s opening up for us, you know. So to just continue doing what we’re doing and make a killer new record that’s going to continue to help us evolve and grow.
