FOZZY is back on the road on their wildly successful Judas Rising Tour and now it’s Australia’s turn. FOZZY is coming back to bring the high energy, can’t miss rock show that that is their trademark, down under! We chatted to Chris Jericho about the upcoming tour as well as how to deal with the road.
Metal-Roos: I have to say first of, it is an absolute honour to be able to chat with you today. I have followed your work for many years; the way you have been able to re-invent yourself time and time again in the professional wrestling world, your work ethic and tireless efforts as a performer are inspiring. Currently your band Fozzy are stronger than ever with the latest release Judas achieving numbers across the board that musicians dream about. Then the highly successful tour in the states and the UK, and now you are about to grace our shores for the first time in 5 years. You guys must feel on cloud 9 that all the years of hard work and believing in your music is paying off…
Jericho: Yeah man, I mean it has been a slow climb for the band but we have been able to grow with every record. This record has been a big breakthrough for us. So, it has been a long time coming but in a good way. You know, the video did a million views in a week. I mean, I don’t know the reason for it but now we’ve hit this moment. We will try to take advantage of it and ride it as long as we can. Here we are almost a year and a half later doing just that, still on the Judas Rising tour. This is the last night of the US tour, we’ll take a few weeks off and come down see you guys in Australia and New Zealand. Then we head over to Canada and we’re done! The tour’s done and it’s time to go back and make some new music at that point, but it’s just been a really cool ride for us.
Metal-Roos: You guys are coming over to Australia and New Zealand in November. I’ve read that you guys are super pumped to be coming over here and we’re super pumped to have you. Can you tell me what the best and worst thing about coming to Australia is in your opinion?
Jericho: Well, the country itself is just great, the people are awesome and we always have a good time in Australia. I have every time I’ve come out, whether with Fozzy or with WWE and everything in between. I think that the worst part are just the flights… it’s a long way. But I think that’s why you guys are such a great Rock n Roll country, I’m sure not every band comes there as much as they would like because it’s a long trip. So, when you guys get someone you wanna see it’s always a huge success. We know it’s gonna be a great tour cause it has been five years, that’s a whole new generation of Fozzy fans as well as the fanbase that we have behind us from the tours we have done there in the past.
Metal-Roos: If I can talk about how you got into singing and music who was it that first made you want to be in a rock band? Did you always want to sing?
Jericho: Yeah, I’ve been in a band since I was 13 years old, huge Beatles fan, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Kiss, those are the kinds of bands that really inspire me, you know… Queen, all the bands that have a great frontman. I always related to those bands because I wanted to be the ultimate Rock frontman, not just on-stage but in a wrestling ring as well. There are qualities that frontmen use to connect with the audience… bringing that to wrestling, there are also qualities from wrestling that I brought back into music again so it’s a very cyclical symbiotic type of mindset.
Metal-Roos: When growing up did you have any venues or events that you were desperate to play? Have you achieved this?
Jericho: Well, obviously the Whisky in LA is a monumental place. There’s been a lot of those paces that we have done. I think now we have played at every great venue across the world and now its time to start aiming for those big arenas… Maddison Square Garden with Fozzy would be cool for me. Not just arenas but countries, I wanna go to Japan with Fozzy, I wanna go to South America with Fozzy…
Metal-Roos: Wacken last year must have been amazing…
Jericho: Yeah, Wacken is always a great show. We played there twice on the second stage. Now the next step is to get on the Main stage. It’s a great festival and it’s so huge, we did Main stage Download the last time we played England. That’s a huge one for us. But on this tour, we had a motto that it doesn’t matter about the size of the crowd, we will put on the best show we can. We went from Jacksonville with the smallest crowd to headlining Orlando with a massive crowd, but both shows were great shows. There are different ways to work different crowds, you can do a sold out show, but when it’s a small crowd, that’s the true test of a band.
Metal-Roos: When Fozzy began, what drove the decision to record two albums that were mostly covers?
Jericho: It’s just kinda how we were signed… Megaforce records signed us when we were a cover band. I mean it was a great experience for us but I think we realised that we had great chemistry, and we had something more to offer than just playing other people’s songs. So, we started writing our own and that took us to where we are today.
Metal-Roos: Can you explain Fozzy’s writing process? Do you collaborate with any songwriters?
Jericho: In the past it was Rich and I who wrote all the songs. We worked with our producer Johnny Andrews very exclusively and extensively so he had a lot of song-writing in there as well. But I’ve learned over the years it doesn’t really matter who wrote the song. As the singer I have to sell this song to the world and as long as it’s a good song it doesn’t matter who wrote it… if it’s a great record it doesn’t matter who played the original parts on it. You realise we’re all in this together man. It cuts down on the ego that can come into play, we just wanna do a great record, a great show and the rest let it fall where it may.
Metal-Roos: I read that you have the cover of Sin and Bones tattooed as a part of your sleeve. Can you tell me why that specific album?
Jericho: Oh, just at the time I got it done, that was the newest record that we had put out. I liked the imagery of it. I thought it was a cool looking piece of art, and that it would make a great tattoo and it was the first major work I had done.
Metal-Roos: You are the very definition of road dog, incessant touring with both wrestling and music. Do you have a top three Dos and Don’ts for the road?
Jericho: Everything comes with experience. It’s not a Dos and Don’ts thing… it’s just knowing how to manoeuvre through an airport, and make sure you are happy with the service you get. Traveling is hard through airports, I could probably write a book on the subject someday… “Jericho’s dos and don’ts of travelling”. You gotta have the confidence to get what you want, although it does help to have three million frequent flyer miles on Delta or whatever… haha
Metal-Roos: Do you have any rules when it comes to taking care of your voice?
Jericho: Staying hydrated is a massive cornerstone, but just don’t strain your voice. With a very durable strong voice I can do five or six shows in a row. But you don’t go to a club afterwards, you don’t go where you would have to yell over the top of something, just going back to the bus and hanging with the guys is cool. You can always tell when you’re straining your voice. That goes for singing too, if it gets to a part that you struggle with and your voice isn’t up to scratch. I just grey out and let the guys sing it… cause we got four guys singing on stage anyway, no one will notice if I don’t sing a couple lines or a word, if it’s just going to do more damage to me than not.
Metal-Roos: You’re still in peak physical condition. How do you find training on the road?
Jericho: Our guitarist does Yoga every single day out the front of the bus. For me, a Fozzy show is 90 minutes of cardio, jumping and running and singing those notes is very exhausting. We take a bike with us and find areas to ride in. But I have also re-acquainted myself with the gym recently and have been enjoying getting off the bus, grabbing an uber to a gym and working out for 45 minutes or so, makes things smoother. There are a lot of different ways to keep yourself fit… our drummer goes for a run every morning. You have to do these things because there is a lot of spare time and if you aren’t doing something productive its very easy to get fat and lazy, which makes it hard to Rock n Roll.
Metal-Roos: With this being your 5th tour of Australia, and us being so far away is this a difficult country to play and it be worthwhile?
Jericho: That’s where the business side of Rock n Roll comes in. Can we make enough money to make this worthwhile? To go there to play in Australia is always worthwhile, we have a great fanbase there. We do have to ‘dot some Is and cross some Ts’ to make sure that it all works out, but I think we have a great business model. We have a great VIP meet and greet that puts a lot of gas in the tank, so to speak. Online people complain about being charged to meet you, but it’s a part of business. It’s not just a meet and greet, I think it’s something special…it’s an experience, and we’ve tried various incarnations of the VIPs from, having dinner with the fans, or whatever we were doing… then we realised the way to do it would be a five song mini-concert, which is fun for us, cause we get to play some songs, that we’re not gonna play later that night, fun for the fans for the same reason, and it’s something cool. If I wasn’t in the business and Metallica offered a VIP experience where you can go and watch the band with 20 other people play some songs that they aren’t playing any other time, I would pay that in a second!
Metal-Roos: Oh hell yeah! haha
Jericho: Plus it makes every night different for us as well…
Metal-Roos: Your Podcast Talk Is Jericho is hugely popular, and you have been able to chat with some seriously massive guests, who are some of your more memorable interviews, and who would you love to have on?
Jericho: It’s funny they come and go so fast because I do two a week. Most of them are pretty good, some of them are better than others… I loved the Vanilla Ice episode, that stands out to me. Tony Iommi, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Lars Ulrich, those kind of guys… Hulk Hogan was great… talking to Stone Cold Steve Austin just about music, talking to Dean Ambrose just about the paranormal. Those types of things are fun too, cause these guys don’t usually get a chance to talk about anything other than wrestling. Lemmy was awesome, he was one of my favourites… people said “Lemmy’s not a good interview…he doesn’t like to talk” I said “Well, we’ll figure something out” and we had the best time, just non-stop cool stories and laughs. I’ll put anyone on the show that I find interesting. I get pitched a lot of people, but that doesn’t appeal to me, I would prefer to bring my friend from high school on, who I know is insane and will get a laugh out of people, that’s a perfect guest. I wanted to make the show about me, as far as, people trust me and enjoy the things that I do. The I promise that every guest on Talk Is Jericho will be good. If I don’t find them interesting I won’t have them on the show.
Metal-Roos: Again, thank you so much for speaking to me today. One last thing…You have made it to the pinnacle of two tough industries. I couldn’t imagine how many massive egos you deal with on a daily basis. How do you know when it’s the best time to stick to what you believe in and when it’s time to compromise?
Jericho: I think once again that’s an instinct that you get over years of doing it. If it’s something you really believe in, then you gotta stand up for it. Especially in a band situation which is like a five way marriage. With two leaders in the band, you gotta know sometimes when to step off. If four guys say we’re not playing a song and I wanna play it, I’m not gonna say “well we’re playing it cause I’m the singer”… like if these four guys don’t wanna do it, no matter how much I wanna do it, I’d have to force them to do it and they might tell me to fuck off anyways… so if they do play it it’ll be under duress, it wont go over well… you just have to know those limits, but when you have known the guys for as long as I have, it’s really like being married when your wife is pushed to the limits. You think “maybe I shouldn’t stay out all night, it’ll lead to a big argument and I don’t wanna deal with it”. You gotta know the people you are working with.
FOZZY Judas Rising Australian & NZ Tour Dates:
Wednesday 7th November AUCKLAND The Studio
Friday 9th November MELBOURNE Max Watts
Saturday 10th November SYDNEY Manning Bar
Tuesday 13th November ADELAIDE The Gov
Wednesday 14th November BRISBANE The Triffid
Tickets: http://silverbacktouring.com.au/fozztralia
