“I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do, pal. I went in his mouth earlier today to test him out and he was fine,” Vince said confidently.
I didn’t want to tell Vince that I was terrified of the water boast, so I hesitantly agreed—but I wasn’t happy about it.
Chris Jericho vs. the Loch Ness Monster took place in a floating ring in the middle of a lake. It was a seesaw match back and forth, and Nessie was getting the upper flipper, so I dove out of the ring and climbed up a bridge. Nessie swam underneath and rammed it with his tail, causing me to tumble into his open mouth, as the ref counted to ten and ruled him the winner by ingestion. When we went to commercial break, Nessie spit me out into the drink and smiled.
“That’s how you do it, kid,” he said before submerging himself beneath the waves. As I was treading water I looked up and saw Vince smoking a cigar while giving me the thumbs-up.
The next day when I told him about my dream, he looked at me thoughtfully and nodded his head.
“Hmmmm, the Loch Ness Monster, huh? Is he available?”
I officially turned heel on The Rock during the Invasion angle by attacking him at the end of a match where if he lost, WCW would officially take over the WWE. Obviously he didn’t lose, but the damage was done and our feud was off and running. I finally had my sustained angle with The Rock and it was a huge chance for me. But there were forces at work, hoping to see me blow it.
A week into the program, agent Gerry Brisco (who had accompanied Jim Ross when he came to Tampa to recruit me years earlier) took me into a corner of the arena to have a private conversation.
“You’ve got to really step it up, Chris, because there are people on the inside that want to see you fail. They don’t believe in you. They’re burying you behind your back and telling everyone that you’re the shits.”
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I thought that the target on my back from when I arrived in the WWE had disappeared, but Gerry’s words reminded me that it was still there. As always, I would have to be extra careful and work extra hard if I wanted to keep my head above water in the WWE. But that was no problem for me; I’ve always liked a good fight.
Speaking of which, I notice you’ve been looking at me funny for the last few pages, hambone—you wanna go?
Later that night during a match with Kane on Raw, I jumped off the apron, landed flat-footed, and felt a flash of pain. I thought I had broken some bones, as it was difficult to put any pressure on my foot or to even stand. I tried to finish the match, and when I grabbed him to turn him over in the Walls, the combination of his long legs and my inability to put any pressure on my foot caused me to lose my balance and fall down. I got back up and tried again but fell down a second time.
I get asked on a weekly basis why I put the Walls on differently from the way I applied the Liontamer and this was the reason why. When I started using the hold in WCW, I would bend my opponent almost in half until he was vertical to the mat by driving my knee into the back of his head. I learned the move in Japan and carried it over to WCW when I was working with guys who were the same size as me or smaller. When I got to the WWE, most of my opponents were simply too tall to apply the move the same way. Big guys like HHH, The Undertaker, Big Show, and Kane just don’t bend like that.
So the answer is quite simple. I’m too short to do it properly to the guys who are that much bigger than me.
Not that that mattered now, because due to my wounded foot, I couldn’t have bent Kane even if his name was Gumby. But I gritted my teeth and tried it for a third time, ignoring the bolt of pain that shot up my leg when I finally got the hold on. I got the submission, but was totally embarrassed and all I could think of was Brisco’s talk with me earlier that day.
“I’m done,” I thought to myself. “The guys that are burying me have all the ammo they need now. They’re going to laugh me out of this place.”
But the reaction I received was quite the opposite. When I got to the Smackdown! tapings the next day, Paul Heyman (who had come to the WWE to work as a commentator) had some interesting news.
“Vince was really impressed with you last night. He knew you were hurt but you still did the best you could to finish the match.” I was surprised he felt that way. “Vince doesn’t expect you to wrestle tonight,” Heyman continued. But even though I was in a lot of pain and could hardly walk, sitting out wasn’t an option. After all, I was the same guy who had wrestled with a broken arm in Knoxville eight years earlier. (For this story check out A Lion’s Tale, available in adult bookstores everywhere.)
“It’s froot, Paul, I want to work tonight. I’ll just tape up my foot.”
That night I was in a six-man tag with Rock and me on separate teams. After the match, I further cemented my heel status by beating the crap out of him and mocking him by standing on the second rope and smelling his nonexistent cooking.
By working the match with my injured ankle, I impressed Vince with my tenacity. As a result, he started working with me and giving me more direction on how he wanted me to act in the ring and backstage.
One night I had an interview with Terri Runnels on Raw, and right before we went live, Vince handed me an apple.
“While you are doing your interview I want you to start eating the apple. As you’re talking, I want you to spit chunks of it in her face.”
Confused, I asked, “Why?”
With a gleam in his eye, he said, “Because it’s a real asshole thing to do. Really spray it on her! Get it all over her kisser!”
I thought it was a terrible idea, but I did what I was told and spat apple chunks all over poor Terri (who had no idea it was coming) on live TV. It was disgusting, but it worked. People began booing and chanting, “You suck.” Afterwards I told Vince that initially I thought the apple was a brutal idea, but in the end it really worked.
“Of course it worked. That’s why I told you to do it.”
As a matter of fact, it worked so well that years later Vince gave the apple-spitting gimmick to Carlito. But let it stand for the record that I was the first apple spitter in the WWE—a Hall of Fame– worthy achievement if I’ve ever heard one.
Because I was a heel in wrestling, by proxy so was Fozzy. It became froot to boo us whenever we were mentioned in the WWE because of all the dirty deeds I committed on the show. Originally I adhered to the theory that all publicity was good publicity, but in retrospect it might have been a better idea if I had kept church and band separate. The WWE exposure made the fans aware of Fozzy, but also gave them the false impression that we were not to be liked.
We were slated to perform on Raw at the Scope in Norfolk to promote Happenstance. I was in the middle of a feud with Ric Flair and had attacked and bloodied him earlier in the show. Flair was God in that part of the country, so my actions didn’t exactly endear me to the thousands of people in the arena.
As soon as the stagehands began setting up our equipment during commercial break, the crowd began to boo. Bud was standing next to me in Gorilla with a morose look on his face.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life to play arenas. Now I’m getting booed,” he kept saying over and over. Getting jeered was a way of life for me, and normally I considered it a compliment, but not in this case. Vince smiled at me and said, “This is gonna be huge for your record sales.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t, as Happenstance sold less than Fozzy. People still weren’t sure if we were a legitimate band to be revered or a joke to be booed, and the fact that we were still wearing wigs didn’t help either.
When we got our cue, we ran onto the huge stage and launched into “To Kill a Stranger,” a new original song that kicked off the album. Despite our energy and my over-the-top efforts to get the crowd into it, nobody did. I wanted them to hate me, then like me, then hate me. All in the same night. It was like TNA booking.
After we finished playing our first song, I asked the crowd if they wanted to hear more Fozzy and they booed me out of the building. Then Flair came out ba
ttered and covered in blood and the crowd erupted into the cheers I’d been pandering for.
Flair was a madman as he tore apart our gear, smashed up the drums, and chased me down the ramp with one of Rich’s guitars. He whipped it at me and it bounced off one of the ringposts, smashing it into a dozen pieces. After the show, our bass player Watty got Flair to sign a piece of the broken guitar as a souvenir.
He should have got him to sign a piece of my broken ego while he was at it, ’cos the whole performance was a disaster.
Not only were we panned live, but we didn’t fare too much better on TV either. It’s hard enough to sound good when you play live on TV because the sound gets compressed into the small TV speakers and sludges it up. To combat this, Rich had spent a lot of time with the WWE soundman to make sure our mix was as perfect as possible during soundcheck. But right before we went on, the Kidd decided that his guitar wasn’t loud enough and turned up his amp. Therefore all you could hear during our performance was his guitar. The drums were buried, Rich’s solo was nonexistent, and my vocals were dry and raw (of course they were). Worst of all I sang like shit, which didn’t help us either.
By the time Flair came onstage, it was a mercy kill, not an interruption.
CHAPTER 20
Rock and Roll Is a Dangerous Game
Because of my day job with the WWE, Fozzy couldn’t do any substantial touring, so in order to play as many gigs as possible, we would book gigs directly after WWE shows. It was quite taxing on me physically and mentally, as I would work my match (trying not to scream too much to avoid messing up my voice), then drive straight to the Fozzy concert. Sometimes the crowds would be good. Other times, not so much.
One high point of that tour came when we played Winnipeg. The Peg isn’t just a great wrestling town, it’s a great rock and roll town too, and the place was packed. I went straight from the matches and changed into my rock clothes along the way. I arrived just as the show started and I could hear the crowd going nuts as soon as I rushed into the backstage area.
I hadn’t soundchecked with the band, and as our entrance music hit, I ran across the stage for the first time. I spotted a little balcony at the side and thought it would be an exciting start to the show if I leaped off the stage and swang from the terrace for a few seconds. What I didn’t know was that there was a gap between the stage and the balcony, and as I planted my foot to jump, I plunged into the hole instead. My knee hyperextended and I felt something pop as the tips of my fingers strained to hold on to the balcony.
Let me hear you scream!! I cut my hair short the day after this 2004 gig in NYC.
I’d just wrestled a grueling match and managed not to get hurt, then tweaked my knee thirty seconds into a Fozzy gig.
Rock and roll is a dangerous game, kids.
That statement became the ghastly truth on February 23, 2003, when we played a show in Albany, New York, at a club called Northern Lights. Even though there was hardly anybody there, we still treated it like we were playing in front of 25,000 at Bang Your Head. We ran around the stage like lunatics, coerced the crowd to sing along, and finally got them to cheer when we set off our usual pyro. We tried to use as much pyro as we could during each show even though it was expensive, because it added a lot to our overall presentation.
That night Rich tried a new device that shot flames from the end of his guitar when he activated a little rocket on the headstock. It was a great gag and the sparse crowd gave us a smattering of applause in appreciation.
However, when he shot off the sparks, they spouted straight up to the ceiling, causing a small wave of fire to briefly fan across the tiles.
“Did you see that?” I asked Rich, laughing. “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!” he replied, and we launched into the next song. After the gig we drove to Reading, Pennsylvania, and Rich and I were sharing a room. I was flipping through the TV channels and stopped on CNN when footage of a fire caught my eye. We watched in horror as a grisly report unfolded of how L.A. metal band Great White had just begun their show at a club called the Station in Rhode Island and their opening pyro engulfed the place, killing a hundred people. It was one of the worst fire-related tragedies in U.S. history, and Rich and I were horrified. We’d been laughing to each other only hours earlier when the same thing almost happened to us. We haven’t used pyro since.
We had a terrible crowd the next evening in Reading as nobody was interested in seeing a band play the night after the Station tragedy. But the night after that we had a great crowd and show at the legendary Brooklyn venue L’Amour. Everybody from Dream Theater to Metallica had played there, and it was a good morale booster.
Earlier in the day we did an interview for WSOU, a college radio station, which was the third biggest in New York City, and Happenstance was number one on their charts. It was the first time we ever had a number one record anywhere and was quite the froot milestone, made even sweeter by the fact that number two was The Blessed Hellride by Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society.
* * *
The New York area was our best market by far, and we played half a dozen gigs there on the Happenstance tour alone. We accepted an invitation to play the March Metal Meltdown at a place called the Cricket Club in Irvington, New Jersey. I was excited because not only were we sharing the bill with such platinum sellers as Anal Cunt and Goatwhore, but also with Raven, one of my favorite bands when I was in high school. Headlining the festival were England’s Status Quo and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal All Stars, which included Dennis Stratton, one of the original guitar players of Iron Maiden.
With the caliber of bands on the show, I was expecting a big crowd and a nice venue.
I was wrong. The Cricket Club was one of the biggest shitholes I’d ever played in. This place made some of the dumps I’d worked in Mexico look like the Taj Mahal. It was in the middle of a dark and dirty ghetto, surrounded by a huge chain-link fence lined with barbed wire on the top. It reminded me of something out of Escape from New York (You are the Duke! A number one!). It was a firetrap and the first thing I did when we hit the stage was look for the exits to plot my escape in case a Station situation happened. I’ve done that in every place we’ve gigged ever since and always will.
We went on right after Raven, and I was too scared to say hi to their singer, John Gallagher. Here I was, one of the biggest wrestling stars in the world, too starstruck to say hi to a guy in a band that had just played to two hundred people. I’ve never lost that fanboy side of my personality, and that’s a good thing.
We played our set and half of the crowd left when we were done, leaving Status Quo (who packed arenas in the UK) to play for less than a hundred people. While I was checking out Quo’s set, I spotted Dennis Stratton talking with the promoter in the corner of the room.
I was stoked to see one of the original members of my favorite band, and since I was still kicking myself for not greeting Gallagher, I walked over to say hello. As I approached, Dennis and the promoter stopped talking and gave me the crook eye. I could tell that they had been in the middle of a heated conversation and I stood there awkwardly until Dennis finally asked, “Yeah, can I help you?”
“Hi, Dennis, I’m Chris Jericho and I sing in Fozzy. I wrestle with the WWE too and I just wanted to say hi. I’m a big fan.”
“Yeah?” He stared at me intently, obviously annoyed.
“Um, yeah.”
Denny kept staring a hole through me as if I was a prowler, so I thought I’d try to take things in a different direction.
“So did you like the show tonight?”
“Move along, ya tosser,” he said before turning his back and continuing his argument with the promoter.
I felt like a total idiot and briefly considered knocking his fuck ing block off, but I didn’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I physically assaulted an original member of Iron Maiden, so I just walked away.
It would’ve been a whole lot different if he was a member of Anal Cunt, let me tell you.
Right before WrestleMania XIX, Willis got a call from Howard Stern’s people asking us to come on the show. Stern was convinced that every celebrity band was shit and had put together his own group called the Losers to challenge them in a battle of the bands. Each band played one song in front of a panel of judges who then voted to determine the winner.
Previous bands that had suffered the wrath of the Losers included Tina Yothers and Jaded and Corey Feldman and the Truth Movement. But it didn’t matter who the Losers faced or how good they were, the judges unanimously voted Stern’s group the winner every time.
We thought by doing the show, it would be a great chance to show off what we could do to a whole new audience. The Losers may have been undefeated but they’d never battled the Fozz!
The day before the show, Rich and I decided there was no way we stood any chance of being taken seriously by Stern if we showed up wearing wigs and using fake names. We knew we were good and wanted to take our band to the next level. It was time to drop the gimmick.
So we decided we would debut the new Fozzy on the Stern show. It was like Kiss taking off their makeup on MTV—except nobody could see us because it was radio.
We showed up at Howard’s studio at 5 a.m. for rehearsal and soundcheck, then waited in the green room until it was time for us to come on the air. We met Howard before our segment, and I was surprised at how nice he really was. I realized he was just playing a character on his show, like I did on mine, and we hit it off great. But I was surprised at how nervous Howard was. He wouldn’t stop pacing back and forth through the studio, snapping at his crew members and chewing on his nails. It was amazing to see the man who invented shock radio being intimidated and unsure of himself in his very own studio.
The battle began and we unleashed “To Kill a Stranger” and sounded good, especially since it was only 7 a.m.—not exactly the best time of day for a singer’s voice. Even though it was radio, we still put on a high-energy performance, and during the guitar solo I ran over to Howard, grabbed his curly mop, and banged his head in time with the music. It felt good to be playing without the garish costumes and the wigs —no gimmicks and no bullshit. For the first time since we’d started playing almost three years earlier, we were a BAND.
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 16