“Battle through the zombies” actually sounds pretty kooky. Can we get that trending worldwide on Twitter please? Please put this book down and go post #battlethroughthezombies NOW and tag @iamjericho while you’re at it.
While I’m waiting, I’ll just hum my favorite Van Damme Substitution song. What’s a “Van Damme Substitution” song you ask? Well, I’ll tell you . . . because that’s the start of the story of how I was able to #battlethroughthezombies to meet Keith Richards.
Back in 1990 when I first moved to Okotoks, Canada, to train with the Hart brothers, I didn’t have a pot to piss in, nor the piss to fill it. So when I was invited to live with Bev and Jerry Palko in exchange for painting the fence surrounding their massive farm, it was a godsend. They were amazing people and I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.
Their son Tyler and I became great friends (still are) and we spent a lot of time hanging out listening to music and watching TV. That led to us becoming slightly obsessed with two things: the dancing skills of MC Hammer (and his hype man, No Bones) and the acting skills of Jean Claude Van Damme. A strange combination to be sure, which got stranger when we decided to combine the two ’90s pop culture icons.
“U Can’t Touch This” was the biggest song in the country at the time, and we thought it would be funny if we replaced the chorus with JCVD’s name. Which made it go a little something like this:
Da da dah
Da da da-dah
Claude Van Damme
Da da dah
Da da da-dah
Claude Van Damme . . .
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Kind of stupid for sure, but it made us laugh every time. Even more ridiculous was that in order to make his name fit within the meter of the song, we had to leave “Jean” off and just sing “Claude Van Damme.” We had so much fun with it that it wasn’t long before the Van Damme Substitution game mutated its way into every song we heard, because it was so easy to insert the name into any chorus.
Hey, Mr. DJ, let’s give a few examples . . . please cue up some ZZ Top:
The girls come running just as fast as they can,
Cause every girl’s crazy about Claude Van Damme . . .
Okay, now how about a little “Der Kommissar” by Falco?
Jean Claude Van Damme
Uh oh oh
Claude Van Damme is in town
Uh oh oh . . .
You get the point. Not only did the VDS remixes make us laugh, but I was sure if we sang them with commitment they would make other people laugh too. For years, I hummed “U Can’t Touch This” with the Van Damme chorus, but never had a forum to share the joke . . . until Jimmy Fallon got his own latenight talk show. I loved his work on Saturday Night Live, knew he would get my humor, and vowed if I were ever invited on as a guest, I’d pitch the idea.
I finally did get invited onto Late Night with Jimmy Fallon a few years later in 2010, but I backed off with the VDS suggestion because it was my first time on, and I thought it would be out of line to pitch such a weird idea. But the segment went well, and when I was invited back in 2012, I called Jimmy’s producer, Jim Juvonen, and explained the idea.
He asked if I could send him a sample, so I warbled a medley of VDS tunes into my voice app and shot the file over. He emailed me back and said he liked it and would pitch the idea to Jimmy. Then a few days later, he let me know that while they liked the idea, they had decided against using it. I was bummed, but you can’t fight city hall, and I figured that was that.
A few nights later, I was getting ready in my dressing room twenty minutes before the start of the show, when Jimmy, a great guy with infectious energy, exploded into the room like a whirling dervish.
“Chris, great to see you! Thanks for coming back on the show. Listen, I just heard about your Van Damme idea and I love it! It’s hilarious and I’d like to do it!”
Wow, that was a pleasant surprise, but it made me a little nervous. Obviously, I loved the idea too, but we hadn’t rehearsed anything and this was literally the last minute. How would we be able to pull it off on the spot? I expressed my concern to the boss.
“Don’t worry about it, man. Quest will just follow along with you.”
Questlove is the leader of Jimmy’s house band, the Roots, and they are the best in the world at what they do. They can play anything, and after I thought about it, I realized they’d have no problem improving the whole bit. We would find a way to make it work.
My segment started, and after about five minutes in, Jimmy asked me about the Van Damme Substitution song. I smiled and bashfully asked the audience if they’d like to hear a sample. Of course they applauded, as the prospect of seeing this Chris Jericho wrestler guy singing songs about Jean Claude Van Damme was obviously too good to ignore.
I had given Quest a setlist of the songs for the medley, so we started off strong with “U Can’t Touch This,” leading right into “Sharp Dressed Man” (complete with a weird shimmy and shake across the stage), and finished off with “Der Kommissar.” The crowd burst into legit applause at the absurdity of what they were seeing, and the Roots were spot-on with their timing throughout the segment. But the best part of the whole bit was when Jimmy (who had been laughing his ass off and totally putting me over like a true pro) surprised me with a VDS of his own. He busted out “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog, and changed the chorus accordingly. Maestro, please cue up some Dog.
(Jimmy doing the Eddie Vedder part)—Jean Claude Van Damme
(Me doing the high Chris Cornell part)—Jean Claude Van Dammmm-hahammmm
(Jimmy)—Jean Claude Van Damme
(Me)—Jean Claude Van Dammmm-hahammmm . . .
I’d never sung the tune before, but I went for it and nailed that mofo. It was a great end to a great bit, and definitely one of the funniest things I’ve been involved with on national TV.
So what does this have to do with meeting Keith Richards? Hold your wild horses, I’m getting to that.
About a year and a half later, I was invited back on Fallon to talk about my match with Fandango at WrestleMania 29, which happened to be taking place just nine miles away at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
A few days before the show, Jim Juvonen called me to ask if I wanted to do another VDS spot. Does the Pope shit in the woods? Of course I wanted to!
I told him I’d think of a new theme, and a few hours later I hummed another medley into my iPhone, this time using boy bands as my inspiration.
Maestro, please cue up a little New Kids on the Block, “The Right Stuff.”
Oh Oh Oooooh Ooooh
Oh Oh OooooOh
Oh Oh Oooooh Oooh,
Claude Van Damme.
Then a little Backstreet Boys, please:
Tell me why, ain’t nothing but a heartache
Tell me why, ain’t nothing but a mistake
Tell me why, I never wanna hear you say
I want Claude Van Damme . . .
Now, let’s bring it back around with a little modern twist and play some One Direction:
Baby, you light up my world like nobody else
The way you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,
But when you smile at the ground it ain’t hard to tell,
Oh Oh Oh
You don’t know Jean Claude Van Damme,
Oh Oh Oh
You don’t know Jean Claude Van Damme!
This time the bit was approved and when I arrived at 30 Rock, I went straight into rehearsal and worked it out with the Roots. The medley killed for the second time in a row, and Jimmy once again put me over by singing along, especially on the 1D tune.
Now, I’m sure you have been wildly entertained by my VDS story, but I know you’ve been waiting patiently to hear my hanging out with Keith Richards story, right? Okay, allow me to come to your emotional rescue and tell you.
I was sitting in producer Jim’s office after my rehearsal with the Roots, shooting the breeze and catching up. The subject turned to upcoming shows, and Jim pointed o
ut a calendar on the wall with the next few weeks of guests scrawled under each date. It was a Thursday, and when I looked to see who was going to be there the following week, I was impressed that Keith Richards was scheduled for Monday.
Apparently, out of all the American talk shows, Keith only did Jimmy’s and had made multiple appearances, smashing it every time.
“If you’re going to be in town, you should come by. I’m sure Jimmy will introduce you.”
I thanked him for the offer, but told him since Raw was on Monday, I wouldn’t be able to make it.
Or would I?
Meeting Keith Richards had been a dream of mine for years, as I’d been a marginal Stones fan since I was a kid. But ironically enough, it wasn’t until I saw their reunion concert in December of 2012 on PPV—promoted by Vincent K. McMahon himself— that I got REALLY into them. Now that the Stones were one of my all-time favorites, I started thinking about the logistics of whether I might actually be able to make this meeting happen. Raw was nine miles away at the Izod Center in New Jersey, and under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have presented a problem. But Jimmy taped his show at 5:30 p.m., which meant the show wouldn’t be over till around 6:30 p.m., which meant I wouldn’t get of there until around 7 p.m. That would still give me an hour to get to Raw before it started at 8 p.m., but nine miles in New York City at rush hour could take nine hours. However, this was a once in a lifetime chance, so I decided I needed to find a way to make it work. This was a chance I had to take . . . after all, how many chances was I going to get to meet Keith fuckin’ Richards, right?
When Jimmy came into my dressing room before the show, I mentioned what his producer had told me about Keef.
“Dude, he’s like the nicest guy ever. If you come down here, I promise I’ll introduce you to him. He’ll be happy to meet you!”
It sounded too good to be true, so I was very direct with my retort.
“Jimmy, are you just stroking me? Is this like a Hollywood thing where you’re saying it but not meaning it? Because if you’re serious, I’m telling you right now I’ll be here on Monday.”
“Be here Monday at 5 p.m. sharp and I’ll introduce you to him. No bullshit. I’ll make it happen.”
Well, once he said that, there was no way that I wasn’t going to take him up on it. But how was it going to work? There were still a dozen things that could go wrong to cause me to be late for Raw, or even miss it completely. It would have been a lot easier to thank him for the offer and try to catch Keith the next time he was in town. But I knew there might not be a next time, so I had to find a way to make it happen now.
The first step was to hire a car to take me into the city. If I didn’t have to worry about parking, that would save me some serious time. I could get dropped off directly at 30 Rock and have the car wait until I was done, then have it take me back to Jersey pronto. If traffic wasn’t too bad and I was able to connect with Keef directly after the show, I could be back at the arena by 7:45 p.m. Which would be great, unless I was in the first segment of Raw at 8 p.m. sharp, in which case I’d be cutting it way too close.
So the next step was to try and see if my segment could be placed later in the show. It was the day after my big loss to Fandango at Mania, so I was scheduled to rush the ring as he cut a promo and give him a beatdown. There wasn’t much to rehearse, which helped my cause, so I tracked down Dave Kapoor and told him about my plan to see if he could help.
“That’s up to Vince, but I’ll do the best I can to have it put it on later.”
I knew Dave would do what he could, but he wasn’t the boss, and even though my original strategy was to kayfabe Vince about my journey into the city, I knew the smarter move was to keep him in the loop. That way if something went wrong, at least he would know about it. But there was a much bigger potential problem: what if he said no?
That was a chance I was willing to take, but if he forbade me from going and I had to decide between the WWE and Keef, I honestly wasn’t sure which one I’d choose. The good news was that since the Stones were Vince’s favorite band not named AC/ DC (he had seen them live, hired a Stones cover band to play a WrestleMania after-party, and had promoted their reunion concert a few months earlier), I figured if anybody would understand my desire to meet Keith, it would be him.
I found him in his office and explained that I had the chance to meet Keith in the city, but might not be back to the arena until close to showtime.
“I know you understand how rare of an opportunity this is, and I really want to do it. It would really help me if you could put me as late in the show as possible. I really think I can make it back in time.”
Vince looked at me with a reflective gaze. “I’ve never met any of the Stones,” he mused. “I was supposed to before the PPV we did together, but traffic was bad and I missed my shot.”
Then he stared at me sternly.
“Well, Chris, you have to go. I’ll try to put you on later in the show, but don’t fuck me on this. You better have plan A, B, and C to get back here on time.”
“I’ll rent a helicopter to get me here if I have to, Vince. I won’t miss Raw, I promise.”
We shook hands as he told me have a good time and that was that. It reminded me of the time I asked my mom if I could sleep over at my friend Gouge’s house when I was sixteen years old, knowing that he was having a party and we were going to be drinking. When she said yes, I felt like I had just escaped from jail, and I was feeling that same euphoria of freedom (sounds like an album title) right now. However, as cool as drinking with the Gouge was, I had a feeling that hanging out with Keef was gonna be a whole lot cooler.
The SUV showed up at the arena at 4 p.m. sharp, and I was off to the city. Traffic was pretty light and I arrived at 4:30, a full thirty minutes early, so I picked up my credentials from security and went up the elevator to Fallon’s greenroom at the end of the hall.
I walked in and was surprised to see Dennis Rodman sitting on the plush green couch, surrounded by his entourage. I hadn’t seen Dennis in fifteen years, since we were both working in WCW. He was a hot commodity at the time, and Eric Bischoff had signed him for a handful of PPVs that had drawn some pretty big numbers. (Even the one where he arrived an hour before the show and fell asleep in his corner holding the tag rope DURING his match.)
But overall Dennis was a good guy, and it was nice to see him again. We shot the breeze for a few minutes, and he told the story of how he had recently been with Kim Jong-un in North Korea and had attempted to facilitate world peace by arranging a phone call between Kim and President Obama. However, the tale was cut short when Jimmy (ever the ball of energy) popped his head into the room and said, “Hey, Dennis! Great to see you, man! Chris, are you all set?”
I nodded and followed Jimmy out the door. The fact that he hadn’t invited one of the top-ten most famous players in NBA history to join us showed just how exclusive this meeting really was.
“Keith just arrived and he’s in a great mood. I know you’ve got to get out of here, so let’s go see him now before he gets busy.”
I was amazed by Jimmy’s hospitality and how concerned he was with my situation, despite the fact that he had his own national talk show to prepare for. But none of that mattered as we rounded the corner and stopped at a closed door. Jimmy knocked twice and a middle-aged lady opened it and let us inside. We walked into the small sixteen-by-sixteen-foot room, and there was Keith Richards, one of the biggest rock stars of all time standing in the corner. He was a few inches shorter than me, with a gray headband wrapped around his tousled gray hair, smoking a gray cigarette. The wrinkles on his face were more prominent in person and there was a slight old-man’s pot belly discernable beneath his T-shirt (also gray) that displayed the slogan I ONLY TAKE THE STUFF TO STOP THE BLEEDIN’ emblazoned across the front.
He smiled and cackled his famous gargling razor laugh.
“Jimmy! How are you, man?”
“I didn’t think you were in here, Keith. I couldn’t smell any
cigarette smoke,” Jimmy remarked with a smile.
“Yeah, man, I just got this new ashtray that sucks up the smoke so you can’t smell it,” he said with wonder, despite the fact that my grandma had the same contraption in 1977.
“Keith, this is my friend Chris Jericho. He’s with the WWE and just wrestled in MetLife stadium yesterday in front of seventy thousand people!”
Keef took a drag of his smoke and slurred, “Far out, man,” with a nod. I’m sure he was thinking, Wow, you played one stadium? Congrats, kid, that’s a good little accomplishment for you . . . now get back to me when you’ve played a thousand of ’em like I have.
I nervously mumbled a few words about how much of an honor it was to meet him, then recovered quickly and asked him about his grapefruits. Now, I wasn’t referring to Vince McMahon testicular grapefruits, but rather the special strain of large citrus plants he grew at his home that Jimmy had told me about earlier. Keith launched excitedly into a detailed description of his special produce and how he cultivated them. Then he reached into the mini-fridge on the floor and pulled out a glass bottle for Jimmy.
“This is the soda from Jamaica I was telling you about, man. I brought you a sample. You’re going to love it.”
After more small talk, I mentioned that I’d seen the Stones PPV a few months earlier and one song in particular had stood out to me. They had done a smoking rendition of Freddie King’s “Going Down,” featuring a high-powered four-man guitar duel between Gary Clark Jr., John Mayer, Ronnie Wood, and Keith himself. I mentioned that while the other three guys had pulled out their most dexterous solos, when it was Keith’s turn he merely played one note, bent up the string and struck a kickass pose. Then he swaggered back to the drums like a fuckin’ boss with a shit-eating grin. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, and I asked him about it.
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