Lionheart. Y2J. Moongoose McQueen. The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla. Whatever name he’s gone by, the one thing that has remained a constant for Chris Jericho is entertainment.
First, he made a name for himself in the ECW, WCW, and WWE as one of the top wrestlers of his era. His musical passion saw the light in 1999 when Jericho joined guitarist Rich Ward in the cover band Fozzy Osbourne. Shortening their name to Fozzy in 2000, the band took off. Five albums and fourteen years later, Fozzy is preparing to release their sixth album, Do You Wanna Start a War this week. We had a chance to talk to Chris about the new album, Abba, doo-wop Slayer songs, vinyl, and much more.
You’ve been busy! Dates with Fozzy coming up, a new album coming out, and a big return to the WWE a week ago…
Yeah, it’s just par for the course for me, man. The WWE thing kinda just came about at the last minute because we were off the road with Fozzy for a couple of months. The timing just really worked out well. Always busy, man.
What’s your take on where the WWE is nowadays?
It’s great man. It a very reciprocal business. Characters come in, and take control, take charge. The WWE will never die, man. It continues to grow. As it grows, new people come in and freshen the scene up. It’s always a very exciting time.
Way back when Fozzy Osbourne was something you did for fun, doing covers, did you ever think it would morph into Fozzy and go as far as it has?
At the time, when we started, it was just a fun thing. It was a good way to get my feet wet in the music business. I had been a musician since I was twelve, but had never actually made a record or done tours. I think once we started doing our own thing and becoming an original band, especially when we made Fozzy the priority back in 2009, that’s when I would totally say, “Yes, I expected this,” because I wanted to be the biggest band in the world.
That’s what you have to think when you’re doing anything, you want to be the best at it. You don’t get into something, and go, “Well, I’m just gonna do it, have fun and see where it goes.” No, I wanna fucking have the best band in the world, I want Metallica’s job, and when we made this band a priority, that’s kind of the mindset.
The fact that we’ve gotten to this level is huge, it’s great. It’s so gratifying and rewarding to see how far we’ve gone. Two years from now, when you and I speak again, I want to be even further up the ladder from where we are now, and further up the ladder two years after that. I think that’s the best way to look at things. So, yeah, I expected it once we made this a priority and took this as seriously as everyone is taking it now.
What can we expect from the new Fozzy album, Do You Wanna Start a War?
The only rule we had with this record is that we had no rules. We didn’t want to make a record that was like anything that we had ever done before. We wanted to take our sound to the next level. You know, a lot of bands can kind of fall into a trap of doing the same record over and over again, and that’s fine. We love bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica, we love Avenged Sevenfold but we also love Queen and Pink Floyd, Zeppelin and the Beatles, bands that would make a different record every time. There was really no rules or chains as to what kind of songs they would do.
I mean, if you look at a Queen record, there would be a metal song, a rock song, a pop song, a dance song, a rockabilly song, a ballad. It was all good, because it was Queen. That’s what we wanted to do, just make a really diverse record with good songs. I think that’s the difference. There’s some songs that are more danceable songs, you could hear them at a dance club. There’s songs that you could hear at a strip club, there’s songs you could hear at an R&B club, but they are all good, they are all heavy and they’re all Fozzy, and that’s what we wanted to do.
So, I have to ask about you guys doing a cover of “S.O.S.” by Abba. How did that happen?
We were listening to music in the dressing room, an iPod on shuffle, and that song came on. We just realized that there are some really cool riffs in it. Great chord changes, great chorus, and it would be perfect for us to do a heavier version of it.
It’s such a dark song, it’s such a depressing song, it really lends itself to being a heavy rock song, and again, nobody would cover Abba. Most rock bands would cover Sabbath, or Maiden or whatever, and we thought that this song fits perfectly, it’s completely outside of the box. Everybody knows it, and when you hear it, you go “Holy shit, does that ever sound good!” That’s why we did it, it really fit the whole vibe of what we wanted to do…no rules.
It’s always amazing when bands find inspiration from what some would consider unlikely sources. The results are usually pretty surprising.
Yeah, ’cause a good song is a good song, man. It doesn’t matter. You could take the heaviest song of all time…take “Raining Blood” by Slayer, and break it down just to the melody, and you could have five guys standing around the fire in downtown New York City singing that as a doo-wop song. A good melody is the same whether there are drums and guitars on it or not. That’s all that matters.
Absolutely. So, you’ve been on Dancing with the Stars, hosted the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, more than once, I believe. You’ve appeared on @Midnight on Comedy Central…what haven’t you done that you are just itching to do?
I don’t look at it that way, man. All those things came to me, I was free, they sounded like good opportunities, and I went for it. What I have an itch to do is the same thing I’ve had an itch to do since I was a kid—be in a rock band, and be a wrestler. That’s all I ever wanted to do. All these other things are just cool offshoots of that—projects that come across my desk, so to speak, that sound interesting to me and I think I would have a good time with. I don’t do things that I don’t want to do. I don’t do things just for monetary purposes. I don’t do things just because someone wants me to do it. I don’t do things because I want to be on TV. I do things because I find them to be interesting projects.
I’m kind of basing any other projects around my Fozzy schedule at this point. We’ll see, I have an open mind, man.
Are you a fan of the vinyl format?
Oh, absolutely, of course!
Do you still keep up a collection, or is it just something that you used to be into?
I don’t because most of the time I’m mobile, and that’s how I kind of create my playlists, my music is just mobile. My cousin is a big audiophile. He’s super into it and has a big collection. It’s cool to go play the old albums at his house.
It’s funny, I had my daughters at his house last year. They were only six at the time. Never seen a record player, ever. He had the new Chili Peppers on vinyl, and they came over and just scratched the needle right off the record. You can’t get mad at that. [We’re both laughing] They’ve never seen this ancient music playing device.
I love the concept that vinyl is coming back. You can see the back cover, and open it up to read the lyrics. Obviously the sound quality, too. It was just a better package back then. It was more of an event to buy an album than it is to just click a button on your iTunes. I also think that you listen to records more. If you put the record on the first song, then as you go across the room and do your homework, it was too much of a pain in the ass to get up, walk over to the record, and move it to song four because to didn’t like song three. Then after four or five plays, you started liking song three. That’s how you really got into records back then, and got into the music was just by hearing it over and over again, whether you wanted to or not.
Think back to your younger days—what’s one record that sticks out in your mind?
How deep do you want to go? I mean, I love the White Album. The White Album was great, because it had an amazing middle section, it had a poster with a collage of pictures on it, and I also really loved the Maiden records. They had stories on the cover, and little things, like twenty-five clues on the cover. The clock that was at 11:58 for “Two Minutes to Midnight” and things like that. You could sit there for hours and look at this cover and find all these little things. That’s something that’s definitely been lost, that fact that you at least had the option to get that whole vibe back again, now that vinyl has taken back over again.
We talked earlier about different musical influences. Who is one person that people would be surprised that you are really into.
I don’t know, man. I think my influences are pretty tried and true. I think Paul McCartney is the best songwriter and the best bass player of the best band of all time. People keep debating ,”Well, Geddy Lee is the better bass player, or Steve Harris…” They’re missing my point of that. He played the best bass lines for the songs. His bass lines, the way he weaves in and out of the Beatles’ songs is the best you’ve ever heard.
I think that people know I’m a big metal guy, but I’m a Beatles guy, too. The Beatles are an obsession for me, and have been since I was eight years old. I know more about the Beatles than most. Little intricate, stupid details that most don’t care about, and I could debate the band’s music every single day for the rest of my life. I think that sort of thing.
I think people know that I’m a music guy, but just don’t know how deep that really goes. I’ve never been a wrestling trivia guy. I don’t really know a lot about wrestling trivia, and quite honestly don’t really care. Music is different for me. I know things and studied things and read things that nobody would care about, but to me it means something, to me I get a kick out of it, and that continues on to this day.
It’s funny when people make comparisons of super-technical musicians to different types. People compare Yngwie Malmsteen to Angus Young, and you just can’t real guitar players would know that Angus kills Malmsteen.
Malmsteen is a good blues player, but Angus was one of the best guitar players of all time. He played the right notes for the song. It’s not what you play, it’s what you don’t play. Real musicians know that. The guys who really play music for a living and understand music will tell you that all day long. A guy like Malmsteen is great, because he was a pioneer of that style, but the thousand Malmsteen imitators—I don’t wanna hear it. Stay away, I have no interest whatsoever.
I was watching the Stones pay-per-view in December 2012, or 2013. There was a guitar war, they did “Goin’ Down” by Albert King. It was Mick, Ronnie Wood, Gary Clark, Jr., and John Mayer. They were throwing down these crazy solos over and over again. Then Keith came over there when it was his turn, and he just played one note – “BOWWWWWWWWW…” Mick just walked away, like “Fuck off!”
I had the good fortune of meeting Keith Richards, and I asked him about that, and he goes [in a Keith Richards-like voice], “Everyone was so busy, man, they’re playing so many notes, I thought ‘I can’t beat it, so I’m just gonna take one note and stick with it! I just gotta make sure it’s a good one, man!’” That’s rock and roll, right there. One note is all you need.
Steve McQueen once said, “I’m not sure whether I’m an actor who races or a racer who acts.” Are you a musician who wrestles, or a wrestler who plays music?
I’m an entertainer, man. It’s always come back to music and wrestling, and that’ll never change. That’s the way I’ve always looked at myself, that’s how I’ve always been. I’m a guy who got fortunate enough to have two ridiculous dreams that everyone laughed at when I told them I wanted to do it—and I’ve been able to achieve both of those dreams. That’s the way I would describe it.
Fozzy’s Do You Wanna Start a War lands on store shelves tomorrow—July 22, 2014.
