Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [118]
He put me in my place and made me realize that I was getting way out of control. Even though in one respect I’m the face of Fozzy, Rich is the conductor of the band and my partner. I’d forgotten that and had been making every decision, some without even consulting him. After that show I took a step back and gave Rich more credit and more respect, and quite frankly, that’s the only reason why Fozzy is still around over a decade after we started.
Being in a band is like being married (but to sweaty dudes, not a hot blonde), and you have to compromise and give and take in order to make it work and stay together.
But I’m sorry Rich, the sex is much better with my wife.
We did another successful run in the UK, including another sellout at the Astoria, where a representative from SPV, our European record label, showed up and asked us, “Why are you guys back here again?” They hadn’t done anything as far as supporting the band and they couldn’t figure out why we kept selling out our shows. But instead of embracing us and jumping on the Fozzy bandwagon, they left us to fend for ourselves. It worked out better anyway since we were forced to become self-sufficient and make a profit without any tour support from the record company.
One of the ways we were able to do that was by having opening acts buy onto our tours. Because we were selling out most of our shows, less established bands who wanted to make a name for themselves paid us for the right to play with us.
That was another rude awakening to the music business for me. I had always been under the impression that when Metallica opened for Ozzy in 1986, for example, Ozzy had scoured the planet to find a band he liked well enough to take on tour and had handpicked Metallica. In reality, Metallica’s record company probably paid Ozzy’s organization a good chunk of change for the right to open the shows and be seen by a much larger audience.
We used the money the opening bands paid us to pay all of our road expenses, including a big, luxurious tour bus. It was a double-decker, with a spacious lounge in the back and twenty-four comfortable bunks in the front. This ride was Bruce Dickinson compared to our original Blaze Bayley coach.
The drawback of having the other bands pay our road expenses was that they shared our bus for the duration of the tour. Fozzy has a strict no-smoking, no-drugs policy, which wasn’t very rock and roll, but Rich had been through it all during his ten years of touring and didn’t want to deal with the debauchery.
Unfortunately, there was no way to enforce a no-pissing policy, and the bathroom stunk so bad after two days of constant urination (Tour Rule #1: no pooping on the bus.) that we had to seal it shut with gaffer’s tape to keep the stench at bay. The tape was the idea of our driver Ozzy, who’d earned that nickname because he looked and sounded like—well, Ozzy.
As he sealed the bathroom tomb, he stuttered in his thick English accent, “Gotta watch wha ya eat when ya tour, lads. No leafy greens or coffee.”
Apparently not only was Ozzy a bus driver, he was a gastroenterologist as well.
One of our opening bands was called 19th Century and they hailed from Liverpool. When the tour wound its way through their city, their guitar player Paul Hurst offered to take me on a “real” Beatles tour. He knew how much of a Beatles fanatic I am and wanted to get me away from the Magical Mystery Tours of John Lennon’s junior high school and George Harrison’s favorite chip shop. Hurst’s father had been a local musician his whole life and used to hang out with Lennon, and had the pictures to prove it. He even gave me this really froot picture of John sitting on the exact same couch I was sitting on as I looked at it.
Paul took me, our new guitar player Mike Martin, and Fozzy’s visual timekeeper Ed