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If you could choose any artist to be in your dream tour lineup, who would it be?

There’s quite a few, we’ve been fortunate enough to tour with a lot of great bands over the years – we had a lot of fun with Slash, Hardcore Superstar and Theory of a Deadman. I think it would be great to tour with Avenged Sevenfold, I think it would be great to tour with KISS, with Guns and Roses, Slash, Shinedown I think would be a great tour for Fozzy because like I said we make sure that people have a great time when we play. We’re a great support band because it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard of FOZZY of not, you still get into it. You see that all the time, we’ve done some shows where you can see that people are a little bit confused at first because they’ve never heard of Fozzy, but at the end of the set, they’re chanting Fozzy – it happens every night. You can basically put us with anybody and it would be a good show because we know how to open up the crowd and we know how to connect with the crowd, which is a supports thing when doing a live show.

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Do you consider Fozzy maybe to be the last of a dying breed of metal acts? Would you consider it to be a dying breed because I know that these days there seems to be an advent of mumble rappers and soundcloud rappers that have really swept the scene at the moment. Do you think that maybe metal might be heading on a downwards slope? What do you think about that?

You know, on the surface, you might think that but in reality, there are a lot of great rock n roll bands, I mean, look at Halestorm, look at Hardcore Superstar in Europe, or bands like Sleep are really big right now, that’s just good old rock ’n roll with heavy edge, and that’s what Fozzy does too. I remember we went to Europe for our first tour a couple of years ago and a DJ asked “How does it feel to be starting this whole new trend that’s just good rock n roll?” And I didn’t know that we had started any trend, but I guess in a way we kind of have because like you said, there are a lot of mumble rappers and a lot of kind of thrashier acts with monster-type vocals, and we don’t do that, you know, we say that if Journey and Metallica had a bastard child and it was raised by AC/DC, that would be kind of Fozzy’s sound. And I think that still resonates, and then you kind of throw in, you know, Van Halen, in 1980, where there’s just one stage and there’s no bombs going off, and there’s no dragons to slay on stage it’s just four guys – five guys – having a good time and getting the fans and the crowd involved and getting them to be a part of a show and that describes perfectly what we do.

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Do you have any advice for any aspiring musicians who maybe wouldn’t have taken the path that you did (aka World Heavyweight Champion) on how to get where Fozzy is now?

I think that basically you just have to not put any rules or boundaries on yourself, and just go for it, and if you have a dream, if you have something that you wanna do, just make it happen! You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be in a rock band, I wanted to be a wrestler. Not a lot of people thought that I could do that, but I did, and here I am today, doing both at the highest levels, and I think that’s because I believed in myself. I didn’t take no for an answer, and I didn’t ever put boundaries on myself for what I could and couldn’t do.

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I’m in the middle of your fourth book at the moment. And that’s quite the message throughout it – believing in yourself and really aspiring to achieve any goal that you want to. Through reading those books I was wondering what’s a typical day for Chris Jericho? Because I know you have a family, you have a band, you have a podcast, you have a cruise heading up and a wrestling career and all these acting gigs, what goes on in a typical day for Chris Jericho? How do you manage to fit everything into one day?

That’s the thing, there is no typical day for Chris Jericho, I get asked that question quite often, but I mean, you know, like I said, on this tour alone, we started in Hungary and next day I’m in the Czech Republic, next day I’m in Italy, next day I’m in Germany, next day I’m in Switzerland, you know? So it just kind of goes with the flow of whatever it is that I’m doing at the time, so it’s very interesting to not be in my shoes, because you never know what’s going to happen or where I’m going to be or what I’m going to be doing so the typical day is that there’s no ‘typical’.

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Do the rest of FOZZY get upset with you when you tell them that you want to wrestle for a period of 6-12 months or if you want to go and pursue one of your other ventures for a few months? Do they get upset with you?

I don’t know because I do everything based on Fozzy’s schedule. So that’s basically, you know, Fozzy’s been the priority for the last seven or eight years, and you can really see the growth of the band in that time frame. You know, a band can’t work, year in and year out, 365 days a year, so you record a record, you release it, you tour around it for, you know, a year/a year and a half, however long the tour goes. And then, you take a break, and the time frame for that break is usually when I’ll go back to wrestling. I mean, right now, this year I’m doing some work with New Japan Pro Wrestling but that’s not affecting Fozzy’s schedule because it’s only 3 or 4 matches as well. So I still stay involved, I still work as much or as little as I want on other projects and just base them all around what Fozzy’s doing.

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Do you think having a break is healthy for Fozzy and maybe that’s why it’s kept it going for so many years? Do you think that’s had something to do with that, that you all get to spend time away from each other and to let the creative juices flow?

It’s what most good bands do, you know? If you start going tour-record-tour-record-tour-record too much, it gets kind of stale for a band. In 2016, we made a deal with each other to take the whole year off. No shows – nothing, just stay underground and I think that really benefitted us because with ‘Judas’ the song – when it was released, it went through the roof, I mean, we’d never seen anything like it – the song did a million views on Youtube in one week – we couldn’t believe it. So, like I said, I think it really benefitted us but now that we have all this this momentum, I don’t think we’re going to take that long of a break but you still have to take a break to recharge and just, the market has to deal without you for a while – the absence makes the heart grow fonder – that sort of thing.

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Is that a unanimous vote amongst the group or do you have many creative differences?

It’s not really a vote, it’s just that everybody in the band is a pro and knows how it goes, like I said you cant work 5 years straight – theres only so many places you can play and so many tours you can get before you have to refresh and do a new record. It’s not that we go and vote on it, it’s just the way it is. You know that, I think this tour probably ends – unless something else comes up – but it’s probably going to end in Canada in November, and then we know it’s every man for himself for a while, as the new songs get written and you start putting together the next chapter.

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You mentioned New Japan Pro Wrestling just before, would you say that that is maybe a career highlight for you? How have you enjoyed your run at New Japan this year?

Yeah, it has been a good highlight, because nobody expected it to happen, I think it was a big surprise, a big shock for the wrestling world, and for everybody involved, and I think it was a good surprise, I think people were legitimately happy to see me kind of take that chance and go to New Japan. I know business-wise, it’s gone through the roof with Chris Jericho’s involvement, I think it’s one of the reasons it’s helped the company to stand the way that it has. It was a great idea, it was a great business decision, and a great creative decision and I really enjoyed it.

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I agree, I definitely really enjoyed your stint in New Japan over the last 12 months or so, that was all for me, that’s all the questions that I have, I just want to thank you so much for the time that you’ve spent to give us your interview and I look forward to chatting with you in the future, thank you very much.

Thanks, talk to you soon, bye.

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FOZZY

‘Judas Rising’

Australian and NZ Tour Dates

Wednesday 7th November / The Studio, Auckland / Tickets

Friday 9th November / Max Watts, Melbourne / Tickets

Saturday 10th November / Manning Bar, Sydney / Tickets

Tuesday 13th November / The Gov, Adelaide / Tickets

Wednesday 14th November / The Triffid, Brisbane / Tickets

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Tickets

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Connect with FOZZY

WEBSITE// FACEBOOK// TWITTER// INSTAGRAM// YOUTUBE

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AMNPLIFY – JAS H