In light of the recent UK tour and the upcoming show in the London Astoria, Chris Jericho of Fozzy took time to reflect on the ever growing popularity and fanbase of his band.
R13: How did you get into doing vocals?
CJ: I've been a musician since I was 14 years old, that's when I started bass guitar and started playing in bands. I started vocals shortly after that because no one else wanted to sing.
R13: What was the first record you ever bought?
CJ: The white album by the Beatles when I was about 8 years old.
R13: Did you find it difficult to go from covers to original song writing?
CJ: Well we started doing covers as just a fun thing, it was just a group of friends and it was weird because we ended up getting a record label right off the bat from the covers and the label wanted us to do covers. As the band progressed and we realised we wanted to do this more long term we knew that the only way to do that would be to play our own material. We have great chemistry as a band and great chemistry as song writers so that was never a problem.
R13: Are you going to make another DVD?
CJ: We loved the last one but we had a lot of legal problems with stuff we didn't own in it. I mean we wrote it, recorded it, directed it, starred in it, we did everything but we didn't own the actually licence to it which sucked. We've been recording stuff over the last couple of years so we'll maybe try and release one before the end of this year.
R13: How is the new record different from the last? Was there a new or different way of writing this time?
CJ: We really knew what path we wanted to take with this record and the direction we wanted to go in as a band. We spent so long working on this record by the time we got into the studio the songs were ready to go whereas before we wrote a lot of stuff in the studio. There was a lot more preparation and rehearsal that went into this album so we were 100% prepared when we went into the studio.
R13: Which bands would you personally really love to tour with?
CJ: Bands like Megadeath would be great, with the heavy heavy rock but the melodic side to it as well. We've got some shows with Motorhead coming up and those should be fun. Anyone that'd want to tour with us, we'd be happy to take them.
R13: While you're wrestling what do the rest of the band do?
CJ: They all have other things they do, Rich just reformed Struck Mojo and they did an European tour so he plays with them from time to time and he has other projects as well. Because Fozzy's getting bigger there's more opportunity for us now as word gets out and the time off is getting more few and far between.
R13: Where's your favourite place to play?
CJ: Well we love to play anywhere. We did a tour of the UK in February, like 4 shows but they were definitely 4 of my favourite shows that we've done so far. All the shows were tremendous and the fans were great. It was great to see so many fans of the band and the buzz and to see the band taking off like that. It was really cool to come over and see that, that's why we're coming back in May to play the London Astoria. It's going to be great to play such a big venue at the beginning of our UK career so to speak, even though we've been together 6 years we'd never been to the UK and to play that place off the bat almost is a huge honour.
R13: Are there any places you would like to tour and haven't yet?
CJ: Yeah, before the end of this year we're going to be hitting Australia and tour Japan too. We're going to do a tour of Europe too and go to German, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. We have a lot of fans all over the world and the fan base is growing so we'd love to play anywhere. We love playing places we've never been before where we know we have a fan base because we get feedback in emails from all over the place so we love to go to uncharted water.
R13: As a band what do you want to achieve?
CJ: We just want to take the band as far as we can go and we pride ourselves on the fact that when we play live everybody has a great time. This is show business you know and we're entertainers and we want to make sure that people go away entertained. We've never had a crowd yet that didn't enjoy the show and like I've said, I'm really pleased to see the band growing as it is and to hear the buzz about the band and we'll just have to wait and see what happens with Fozzy in five or ten years.
R13: Who are you own personal influences?
CJ: I've always been a huge James Hetfield fan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Dickenson; those are my favourite rock gods of all time. A lot of guys from heavier bands too that I've always wanted to emulate and play like and sound like too.
R13: Where do you get inspiration for lyrics from?
CJ: I usually write song titles first. I kind of write songs backwards, with a song title first, like something I think is a great song title like Days of the Week and Labyrinth, just random things I think would make great titles and then I write the lyrics.
R13: What would you prefer to hear; "Hey are you Chris Jericho the wrestler?" or "Hey are you Chris Jericho from Fozzy?"?
CJ: Well I've been wrestling for 15 years and it's been great and it's been a lot of fun but with the band growing and the way it's growing it's more exciting to hear "are you from Fozzy?". The thing is we have a lot of fans who don't care about wrestling and that's important and we have to have that for the band to survive. It doesn't matter if I'm a wrestler, a baker, a florist or a guy working in a shop or something, it's if the music is good or bad and if it's good people will check it out and if it's bad then people won't and that's basically the bottom line.