Chris Jericho
/By Sebastian Mackay
There's a standard set for talking about Fozzy, it becomes the Chris Jericho Show (WWE Superstar, author, world's number one podcast Talk is Jericho, lead singer of Fozzy - see what I mean?) and in the whirlwind of talking about Chris (who is an awesome guy and talks the talk while reinventing both the talk and the walk) Fozzy (and the new album Do You Wanna Start A War?) almost gets entirely abandoned.
Yes, I'm guilty as charged. It's CHRIS JERICHO.
(If you're up for a bit of "all about Jericho" you're in the right place)
Notice the fanboying? Yeah, well it's something he gets a lot of.
"I mean," Chris says with a moment of thought, "sometimes people forget how to treat you." (There's a bit of joke between us but I'm just glad I'm not the only one.)
"I'm fairly, mostly, polite," he continues, "and welcoming and I know how someone feels when they meet someone they idolise. I met James Hetfield [you should ALL know who he is] a couple of years back and I was shaking and almost crying. If I met Paul McCartney I'd disappear into a cloud of dust."
It's okay, if you happen to be on the street somewhere in America (he's returning to WWE in the next couple of months so we're not likely to be on the tour cards for a while) and bump into Chris and wet yourself. Okay, don't wet yourself but he knows how it feels. Because whether it's wrestling or music he's in the spotlight in both worlds.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a cool feeling [being freaked out over] and it's like a pat on the back for years of hard work. I don't take it for granted, it's great to have people come to me and want my signature and want to take a photo. If they didn't want to," Chris pauses for a second. "It would be bad because it would mean I was irrelevant."
Underneath all the fame and the fanboying there is a guy, somewhere in America, at the other end of the phone. And he and his band are releasing a new album Do You Wanna Start A War? That album comes out this Friday and when you peel back Chris' layers it becomes clear that the guy we're all freaking out over is, for better or worse, just a guy.
"There are personal songs on there," Chris says, "and they're the ones that people relate to and feel. I write some songs about fantasy and fightingdragons but I've never fought a dragon and so I don't know how it feels [one of few things remaining on his bucket list]. It's the sad songs, the emotional songs, that people connect to. And for those, you have to dig deeper."
He recounts a story of his dog being hit by a car when he was 10 years old and that while he can't necessarily write about that, he's mines that emotion for his songwriting. "I will write a long about loss, or a break up, or relationship troubles, stuff everyone can relate to. That's what's important."
Without getting into the psychology of celebrity and celebrity worship: the guy that writes about getting his heartbroken, that's the guy we all connect with. Not the pretty face or the man that dances around in leotards dishing out "Code Breakers".
He does have one thing many of us wish for: a sense of true fearlessness and a take on success that doesn't count adding up the figures in your bank account.
"I say this as a wrestler and a musician: I don't have any fear when it comes to trying things creatively or career-wise. People laughed when I said I wanted to be a wrestler and they said: ‘you're too small', ‘it won't happen', and they said the same thing when I said I wanted to be in a band. They said I couldn't sing. But I knew I could do it."
So as the fairytale goes: He tried it, he worked at it and he tried again until he succeeded.
But I wasn't satisfied, it's easy to say you're fearless when you're on the top of the world. I probed and prodded him a little more and at last he relented.
"My fear is this: Not trying to do something or not seeing something the whole way through because it might not work out. When you try something, if it doesn't work out, then that's not failure. That's experience. True failure is never trying anything because you're scared it might not work out."