Chris Jericho Explains How He Built Fozzy Into A Modern Rock Mainstay

Wrestling star Chris Jericho’s hard-rock band, Fozzy, has released eight albums since 2000, including three consecutive sets from 2012 to 2017 that charted on the Billboard 200. (2014’s Do You Wanna Start a War fared best, peaking at No. 54.) Fozzy, which most recently released Boombox in 2022, regularly tours the United States, making radio station visits and doing other local promo along the way. Jericho spoke by phone from his Tampa, Fla., home.

How important for you and Fozzy is the recognition that comes with chart hits?

We never realized how important rock radio is to a band’s success until we started getting played on rock radio, and that started with “Judas,” back in 2018. We’ve had six Top 10 hits since on the mainstream rock charts. It really makes a difference for the band’s growth — people coming to the shows, the notoriety of the band. We’ve become a radio artist now. Every song we’ve released gets played across the country.

Do you go through all the radio promotion exercises, visiting stations across the country, or do you avoid it?

No, no, no, I don’t avoid anything. Any type of promotion that I can do, I’ll do it. If you put something out, you want to make sure people know it’s out there. You visit a radio station, they’re going to play your song more… It really is a long-term chess game with a lot of strategy involved.

When a Fozzy song hits the charts, how do you celebrate?

It’s always cool. But this is a business. We’re not playing rock star in Fozzy. If we hit No. 1, I’d celebrate, because that’s the highest you can get. “Judas” got to No. 5 and they’re playing it in football and hockey and wrestling stadiums around the world — but how can we do this for the next song? We’re always looking forward. It’s not like, “Wow, we’ve made it because we’re on the radio.” You make it when you get to the Shinedown or Van Halen level, when you’ve had 20 No. 1 songs.

How much does your recognition as a wrestler help streaming and sales?

We’ve had to work twice as hard to gain people’s respect over the years, just because I’m in the band. But that’s changed, now, where I think Fozzy stands on its own. People aren’t playing our songs on the radio because I’m a wrestler, they’re playing our songs on the radio because people like them and we’re good. Once we got past that initial hump years ago, people look forward to hearing the new Fozzy tunes — they know it’s going to be perfect for radio, it’s going to be catchy, it’s going to be melodic, it’s going to be heavy.

What are you working on now?

Our Boombox record took about three years to make. We were calling it Chinese Fozzocracy because of the pandemic. You didn’t want to put out a record without being able to support it. We put the record out and three songs went Top 10, three more songs went over great live and the other three songs went to the Fozzy Dead Song Graveyard. And that was a shame, because all those songs were great. Now the idea is to do one song at a time. That way, every song gets a chance to live or die on its own.