Chris Jericho Interview: Fozzy, “Judas”, WWE & Rock Stardom

I really want to talk about your relationship with heavy metal as a whole, as it seems like something very engrained into your identity. Didn’t you even take your stage name from a heavy metal album?

Chris Jericho: “Helloween. Walls of Jericho. Yeah, I’ve always been a rock ‘n’ roll historian: a rockologist. I’m very much into the trivia, the stories behind the bands [and] knowing everything. I was one of those kids that used to read all the liner notes and that’s not as prevalent today as far as getting information, because you don’t really see those things anymore. But, still, I’m very much into reading websites and magazines and keeping up on what’s going on. It’s in my DNA at this point.”

I remember when I first got into Fozzy, you said in an interview that the band sounds like the bastard child between Journey and Metallica. Is that comparison still an apt one?

“I’ve added a little bit extra: it’s ‘If Journey and Metallica had a bastard child that was raised by AC/DC…’ And that’s basically our DNA in Fozzy. There’s also a lot of ‘70s funk. It’s rock ‘n’ roll with a smile. It’s groovy, it’s heavy, there’s a lot of vocals, a lot of harmony, a lot of melody. There’s not a lot of moshing at a Fozzy show, but there’s a lot of chanting, jumping and partying. It’s like Van Halen in 1981 when they were at the top of their game: we are the show, we want you to get involved and we expect you to get involved.”

I know when you were starting out your career you said your goal was to be ‘the David Lee Roth of wrestling’.

“Yeah, just to be the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll frontman in wrestling: Roth or Paul Stanley, any of those guys that just had larger-than-life personas. Those were the guys that I always was attracted to. I loved the singers that put on a show; I didn’t like the ones that just kind of stood there. That’s what I wanted to do in a wrestling ring and then, when we started Fozzy, I wanted to take the same techniques that I had stolen from music and put into wrestling and put them back into music. Any time you’re doing something live, if you connect with the audience, you’ll always have a gig. It’s the same thing with wrestling: wrestling’s not about body slams and dropkicks, it’s about getting interested and involved in what it is that you do.”