FOZZY Frontman Discusses Band's Songwriting Approach

JukeboxMetal.com recently conducted an interview with FOZZY frontman and WWE wrestling superstar Chris Jericho. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On FOZZY fans who are also wrestling fans:

Jericho: "There's always people who come to see the show who are wrestling fans or Chris Jericho fans or whatever, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because whatever it is that gets them in there they will always leave FOZZY fans. It's evidenced by the fact that we're able to continue to keep coming over [to the U.K.], and continue to expand. I mean, the shows we've done on this tour have been amazing and we're coming back again in November, and it's just one of those things where I think people just dig the music that we play. Like I always say, Bruce Dickinson is a pilot, but it's not like IRON MAIDEN are always singing songs about lavatories and sitting in seat 3D, it's just something that he does when he's not in IRON MAIDEN, and that's what wrestling was like for me, and now I don't even do that anymore, so it's just about the band."

On FOZZY's self-titled debut, which included two original songs alongside eight covers, and the band's eventual decision drop playing covers and to pursue playing original material full-time:

Jericho: "When you start a band you want to play your own stuff, and the gimmick was fun while it lasted and then it was time to move forward and do our own thing and that's when we decided to just go with our own stuff. And 'Fozzy' came from 'Fozzy Osbourne,' and we were like, 'Do we change the name of the band?' I was like, 'You know what?! Some of the biggest bands of all time have some of the weirdest names. PINK FLOYD, LYNYRD SKYNYRD, KISS, HELLOWEEN, METALLICA, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS. DEF LEPPARD! Gotta be the worst one! When you think about it just on its own it's a deaf can't hear leopard. But you hear it so many times it becomes part of pop culture and it doesn't matter anymore and I think that's kind of where we're at, too."

On finding his way as a singer:

Jericho: "After we recorded the 'All That Remains' record, I went to a vocal coach. And we did a lot of touring on 'All That Remains', which helped a lot, too. What that did was help me find who I was as a singer, where I felt comfortable. And Rich [Ward, guitar] writes great melodies, very challenging melodies. They're not easy. Especially when you're recording, they're very intricate, lots of details. And so to take the vocal lessons, doing all the touring that we did, and then to have Rich knowing that there was more there in my voice to write really cool melody lines, it really made a difference. The other big thing is that we took our time recording. The other albums it was like, 'You've got ten days to get all your vocals done.' With this one ['Chasing The Grail'], it was like, 'You come to Florida for a day or two,' we do two songs, three songs. I go to Atlanta for maybe a week or two, we do a song. So it was a long drawn-out process of maybe two or three months where we didn't have to rush and that's really made a difference. Because you've got two or three good hours of singing a day. That's it. You can't sing seven, eight, nine hours a day because by the end of that time you're done. Or you might still be hitting the notes, but it doesn't have the same power or quality. I really found that out on this album."

On FOZZY's songwriting approach:

Jericho: "When I give Rich the lyrics, he has feelings about the songs. He gets inspired in different ways. It's funny, because on the last album when I gave him a song like 'Broken Soul', for example, it was a heavy, dark kind of thing. I don't even remember what I wrote about, something evil and murderous. But he came back with this beautiful piece of music for it and I thought, 'Well, I guess I need to kind of rewrite the lyrics to fit the style of the song now.' It's not just, 'Here it is, it's done.' He'll chop off some stuff, like 'Friday The 13th', there was something like eight different verses for that that he cut down to four, and I was like, 'Oh, fuck, those other four verses were so cool.' But you write what's best for the song. There might be like a couple of different parts he's added where he's written lyrics for it or added another verse. So we just kind of throw back and forth. And the way that modern technology is, he can write a snippet, e-mail it to me, and I check it out, call him five minutes later and say, 'Well, that was cool,' and even though he's in Atlanta and I'm in Tampa, you can write your whole album that way. But it does start with him getting the lyrics and going, 'Well, I feel this one should be this.' Unless it's something like [new FOZZY track] 'Storm The Beaches' where I'll say, 'This is a long song.'"

Read the entire interview from JukeboxMetal.com.

Professionally filmed video footage of FOZZY performing the song "God Pounds His Nails" at the third annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which was held on April 20 at Club Nokia in downtown Los Angeles, California, can be viewed below.