Fozzy is an American metal/rock band formed by guitarist Rich Ward (Stuck Mojo) and professional wrestler Chris Jericho on vocals. It all started back in ’99 as a covers band, but eventually they started to work on their on songs. In January 2010 Fozzy released their long-awaited fourth album, Chasing the Grail, which is doing really well among both fans and critics and shows a band proud of the final product. In May a few gigs were booked in the UK as part of a European tour and sure enough we caught up with Chris Jericho for a quick chat just before the 1st of the two London gigs.
 Chasing the Grail has just been released, 4 months ago. How’s the response been so far?
The response has been amazing! We knew we had something special with this record so we took our time to get it right, there was no rush in doing it. As a result the sales have been great, it received lots of good reviews and the songs live are just amazing. So yeah, I’m glad we took our time to do it.
Have any video clips been made to help with the promotion?
No, because I wonder where the video clip’s gonna be played, you know? You go there, make a video, it goes to Youtube and that’s the end of it. Things changed quite a lot in the music business. People are illegally downloading records too, not buying it anymore, so that’s how things turned out. We’ve been doing this for eleven years now, and it didn’t use to be this way. But you just need to adapt, and we do lots of shows, in store appearances etc, so we always give an extra.
How often you perform live with Fozzy, considering you have a very busy schedule?
Yeah, well, we try to play as much as we can. The good thing with Fozzy is that we have a very good international presence, so there’s a lot of opportunity to go to different countries. We do shows usually every month, and this UK tour is very short but we were anxious to come back here and say hi to our friends. So far so good man, we did two sold out shows so far and we look forward to do 2 more shows in London.
How do you explain Fozzy’s success in the UK?
I don’t know man (laughs)! I think people just like what they like here. You can see that at the festivals, you know; we did Download a couple of years ago and you had Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Slayer, Garbage, My Chemical Romance, Fozzy, all these different styles, all these different genres, and people went there to see all those bands. As opposed to what happens in the States, looks like here people go after what they like to hear, rather than being too influenced by radio and MTV, for example.
I must say I wasn’t that familiar with Fozzy, apart from some covers I heard years ago. But I’ve been listening to Chasing the Grail and I had the impression it’s some kind of concept album on God. Would that be correct?
Well, some of the lyrics do refer to God directly, but it’s not like a religious album. We’re not a Christian rock band. If you take ‘Warmwood’, the last song on the CD, that one is based on the Book of Revelations, but that’s because I thought it would be a cool way to do it, since the song is 14 minutes long and has all those passages and changes. So, it goes in that direction sometimes, but we won’t start throwing bibles at the crowd, or anything like that.
What about ‘God Pounds His Nails’, where you say ‘drop to your knees/lean on your faith’ etc; were you intending to persuade people to ‘find God’ of something?
No, no, I actually got this title from a Stephen King book, and once again I thought it was a cool way to start a song – I usually find a cool title first and then develop it. So ‘God Pounds His Nails’ was taken from The Talisman, by Stephen King, and the song just developed into that direction, which is how the band works, always according to what we’re feeling at that specific moment. I’d write some lyrics and have some ideas for a song, then I show it to Rich (Ward) and he gets back with the music and we see if it fits.
In ‘Watch me Shine’, when you say “I don’t want to live without her”, are you talking about faith?
Not specifically. You see, Chasing the Grail can be anything; your faith, a girl, a job, a car, your life… Rich actually wrote those couple of lines, and that’s what he meant.
What about ‘Revival’, is that about Jesus’ second coming?
That’s the only song in the album Rich wrote the lyrics for. I think once again that’s what he meant, not the revival of God or somebody specifically, but just the revival of people being nice to each other because you know, things are not like that anymore. People are just minding their own business nowadays, whereas if you ask your parents or grandparents they’ll say people were helping each other those days, you know?
You retired form WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) in 2005 and then went back in 2007. You’re 39 years old now, how long you think you’re still be going until you retire for real?
I don’t know man, I just play it by ear. Even in 2005, I was not planning on retiring, I just needed a break plus there was a lot going on with Fozzy at that time. So I came back after a couple of years and you know, I just try to keep my options open and if see a chance of doing something else, I’ll go for it.
 Have you ever considered competing in the Olympics as a wrestler?
No, I was never into amateur wrestling. I always liked the show business aspect, that’s why when I was a kid I wanted to be either a wrestler or in a rock band. So I was playing in bands throughout all high school at parties, bar scene etc, and then wrestling took off before the band did, but I still wanted to keep doing music as I was missing it. The band lasted from when I was 12 to 19 and we were doing Iron Maiden and Metallica covers, that’s all we did, and I was playing the bass.
Since you’re a known wrestler, do you get often provoked by people at shows or in the street?
No, not really. Well, only if someone is drunk or something like that, when I’m at a bar. In the audience sometimes there’s somebody but that’s part of the show.
Jerry Only, from The Misfits, also did some wrestling about 10 years ago. Did you get to see him performing?
No because he was part of another company, the WCW.
Ok, I wish you a good gig and could you please let us know of you plans for the rest of the year?
Thanks. I will continue playing with the band and see it grow. Like I said, there’re all those places where people wanna see us play, so we’re going to Ireland, Scotland, France, back to England, Australia… Tomorrow we’re playing in Toronto. Then we’ll play in the States and I’ll go home for a while.
Denis Augusto
photos: Denis Augusto
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