Artist:  Rich Ward (Fozzy) 

Date:   17 March 2010

With only days to go before the band hit the road on tour to promote their stunning new album 'Chasing The Grail', we catch up with Rich 'The Duke' Ward to find out how Fozzy have developed into the metal monster it is today.

MM - How are you today?
Rich - I’m doing great man, just got through some gym training then some guitar practice, now you are my first interview for the day, so it starts off good brother!  

MM - Good to hear, I must admit the new album 'Chasing the Grail' is my first experience of Fozzy and I have to say I was really impressed with what I was hearing.
Rich - Well it’s a good one to start with.  Fozzy has always been a side project for me and Stuck Mojo was always my primary band, and this was the first time I made Fozzy my priority.  All of the other Fozzy records I like for a lot of different reasons, the first record and the second one were mixed by Andy, my old time buddy, so obviously those albums sound amazing and then the third album was the first full original album with no covers.  We put that out in 2005.

In 2005 I was still working on a solo album I put out of Eagle Rock/ Spitfire called 'The Duke' so the Fozzy records still wasn’t my only focus.  It wasn’t until last year when Chris Jericho and I sat down and said ... “lets really set some time aside in our schedules to make the best album we possibly can”.   We got a budget together and I put everything else aside and wrote the record and demoed everything out in my home studio.  We knew early on that this one was going to something special.  You know that everyone who listens to music listens to it through their preferences and their likes and dislikes based on style, but we knew this record was going to be a good album on its own, and for true metal fans there is a lot on this record for them to like.

MM - Oh yes, obviously with Chris’s vocals sounding so good, I mean I’ve compared them to a mix between Ozzy and Chris Cornell. 
Rich -That is a very flattering comparison because Chris Cornell is one of the best vocalists of all time and Ozzy has one most distinguished vocals styles.  This is the first time for Chris Jericho where we didn’t try to record all his vocals in a couple of days.  His schedule as a professional wrestler on the road is really hectic, so the amount of time that he actually has to put towards the band, unless he has vacation time, it can be difficult to get a lot of days in a row. 

So we actually went for a different plan for his vocals on this album where I would come down… I live in Atlanta Georgia and he lives in Tampa Florida, so I would go down to Tampa and spend a couple of days working with Chris.  We’d focus in on two or three songs, get those songs recorded, then I’d go back to Atlanta to continue recording and work on other parts of the record. Then I would go back a couple of weeks later and Chris and I would focus on an another three additional songs. So we didn’t try to record all the songs at one time vocally.  It not only gave Chris time not only to focus in on the songs we were recording, but in the time off he was really able to rehearse and work on the vocal performances, knowing what songs he would be addressing for the next vocal session.  So it really worked well for him and it really allowed him to focus his energy to have the best vocals performances of his life.  

MM - Yes I suppose it took some of the pressure off him not having a time line, saying you have to have the vocals in so many weeks.
Rich - It sure does because there is nothing worse for a singer, if you, he or she has to perform on the day, knowing that there are no do-overs.  Nearly every album that I have done and this album was my fifteenth album I’ve recorded, for a vocalist it’s like being an athlete, some days you wake up and your voice is just not there, unlike a guitar player or a drummer, where you can have a cold or not feel the best but you still can perform.  But for a vocalist if the voice feels strained or it feels tired, or you have a cold, it really can effect the performance and if you’re on some kind of time restraint, not only will it mess with you vocally, but it can also mess with your head.  Because you're thinking ... boy my voice doesn’t sound great ... so your confidence is down also.  But this way is a really good way to focus on getting his best performance, but also mentally he was really prepared and felt good about the performances.  

MM - So how did the album take to put together?
Rich - I started writing the record in January of 09 and finished the mixing around the end of August.  I probably spent maybe three months writing the album and a lot of it was not just writing, but recording the album as well, the demos.  Because all of us, the band, don’t live in the same town, so what we do is, I’ll record and programme some drum ideas, record some guitars programme, the drum ideas, scratch out a basic melody based on the lyrics Chris had sent me.  Then I would send out all of those recordings to the rest of the guys and let them listen to it.  Then we would discuss them over the phone and then I would make changes, or they would make suggestions of changes.  

So we worked / collaborated over the phone, but the reason it took so long is obviously, you can write a record depending if you're inspired. You can write a whole record in a month.  That’s when a whole group is together, but with distances, it makes it a whole lot harder, to move at a fast pace.  Again going back to what we were talking about earlier, that was the big important part of making this album, was knowing we weren’t putting a deadline on ourselves and that the only timelines that we going to stick to were ones where we would push back things, if it was going to benefit the record.  

MM - The band have had various line-up changes since Fozzy began, does this affect the band as a unit? Rich -Yes it does.  No one likes to have line-up changes.  You know a band is a family and you want to keep the family together, but because Fozzy is a part-time touring band, when you take five people and have five peoples different schedules to work around, all of us have separate bands, some are married, some have other careers on the side apart from music, it becomes complex.  Not to mention the fact that anytime you don’t have a band that’s full time, people in the group are deriving their incomes through other means, and you get the conflict of finances and money always creates friction and friendships.

That’s how it’s always been ever since I started in bands when I was fifteen years old.  There’s always that one guy who's not happy and he’s not happy about the direction of the music, or he’s upset because he hasn’t been able to make his rent payment in couple of months, because he can’t balance his cheque book and it effects band camaraderie.  There’s a long list of things. 

Luckily for us in Fozzy we’ve never had falling outs because of real conflict where we hate each other or because of drugs or things like that, or some bad break up, it’s always been a hand shake.  Say I understand, we’ve always been able to walk away, it always works out with a smile on our face, as you always want it to happen.  It’s just like you have a girlfriend for six months and you can get together and say hey its been good, and we’ve had a good time, but it’s not the perfect match and maybe we should go our separate ways, and that’s how it goes in not just in Fozzy, but in Stuck Mojo.  And I find that the more bands I meet over the years the more I find out.  

Even the bands that have been together for years, when you're touring with another band you always find out the inner politics of certain bands and you find out which guys don’t get along.  Which guys what their own dressing room.  Who wants their own tour bus because they can't get along and which guys don’t talk to each other until they’re on stage.  It’s interesting from my perspective as a real fan, I was a fan boy before I was a musician, which is the reason why I wanted to play guitar, because I was such a big fan of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, the Scorpions, Ozzy and Metallica.  Those bands really influenced me to want to play guitar and be in a band. 

It's interesting because when you're young you always think these guys are friends, they’re like brothers, they are together and they all love and respect each other, and as you grow older and draw back the curtains and see the workings of these bands, then it becomes an interesting study into human nature and how people work under stress.  Because the music industry, like a lot of the entertainment industry is very stressful.  There are a lot of dishonest people in record companies and in management, and it puts a lot of pressure on a group of guys, and it only takes one weak link in the group, with one person who may have some issues that they are keeping to themselves, and as soon as there becomes lots of stress and tension, boy do they come to the surface quickly.  You quickly see what your band is and how strong your family is.  

MM - I’ve noticed with Fozzy band members have left then came back again, so they must have been some amicable departures.
Rich -Yeh, I know you're referring to Frank Fontsere our original drummer.  He and I have been in bands since 1991, before I even formed Stuck Mojo.  I used to guitar tech for his band in Atlanta.  He and I have been friends forever.  We went to see Metallica together on the 'Justice For All Tour' in 1988, when we were little kids together. There just became a point where I could tell he was angry towards the music business and he didn’t have the same enthusiasm.  His work ethic had changed and I could tell he wasn’t happy on tour.  We had a discussion and we thought it was best that we tried moving separately in different bands.  We stayed in contact over those years then a couple of years later we realised how much we missed each other as band mates, and he is without a doubt the best drummer I’ve ever seen play live, never mind played with.  He’s been a musical brother and a real family brother for years and it’s an honour having him back in the band.  I think Fozzy has benefited a lot from having him back, so we're real happy to have Frank Fontsere behind the drum kit again.  

MM - Going back to how the band actually came together, had you actually heard Chris sing before he joined the band.
Rich - NO! We’d never heard him sing before.  We had a covers band that we put together just for fun in Atlanta when Stuck Mojo weren’t on tour called Fozzy Osbourne and it was long before Steel Panther.  We wore costumes and had stage names, we dressed up and threw all the shapes on stage.  It was a real fun band.  It was never about making money, it was just about playing our favourite songs.  While we had a month at home on the tour and I met stage Chris Jericho backstage at a wrestling event one time, and he’s such a big metal fan, we had a great conversation and I asked him if he’d be interested in being a guest singer in Fozzy Osbourne at a show.  We picked out a setlist, talked over the phone for a couple of weeks discussing which songs we would do and we played a show without stepping into a rehearsal room with each other beforehand.  It wasn’t pretty, because you can never expect anything musically to be perfect if you haven’t played together before.  

But there was something special about Chris’s energy on stage and his ability to command and control an audience.  He just had amazing charisma and so because we had so much fun at that show, we booked him for couple more and after our third show our manager stared getting phone calls from record companies, because the buzz had really gotten round about what we were doing.  We had Johnny Z from Megaforce offered us a decent amount of money to make a covers album under the name Fozzy and we thought WOW! We’d never thought about this, who in their right mind would have a covers band make an album?  You’d never think about it.  

It was just opportunist and we thought it would be a lot of fun and things just grew and grew.  I think that is one of the attributes about Fozzy, things are never forced.  It was never five guys in a room with a manager, record company and an agent making plans on how you can be this amazing supergroup.  The idea was five guys who really respect each other and really enjoy playing music together, writing and recording together and having fun.  When you're doing it with pure motive, you know there are a lot of bands who make albums and work hard because the end result they want is to be famous, and then there are those bands who get together and play for the pure passion and joy of playing music. You can almost tell which bands are which.  

Take a band like Maiden and you know they have always done it for the passion and the privilege of making music, that’s the most important thing to them.  Then you take a band like KISS and for the majority of their career the goal has been being famous and making money, it’s more like a business machine rather than being about the songs or the album.  So I’ve always been attracted to the Iron Maiden side of things, they were always my hero’s growing up.  They never wore fancy costumes and you never saw pictures of them passed out on the LA Strip on drugs.  It was always about the songs and the camaraderie about the band and I was always attracted to that.  Not that I'm comparing Fozzy to Iron Maiden, one of the greatest bands of all time, I wouldn’t do that, but certainly the spirit of Fozzy is more along the lines of Iron Maiden, and we try to just keep that, what I call the pure emotive.  

MM - Yes when you watch a band live you can see if the band has a spark on stage and you can tell when they're just going through the motions.
Rich -True music fans can tell by the end of the first song whether that band is having a good time or not.  You can tell if the band is, as you said, just going through the motions and they just want to get the show over with.  They’re just doing it for the themselves and for the ego, or for the whatever...  You just fill the blanks, there is always an alternative motive.  You can tell the bands that are doing that and for me that’s a pretty ugly attribute that when I’ve seen bands on stage where there is nobody looking at each other, when it looks like there isn’t any passion behind it ... I don’t mean you have to be like Van Halen where every night is a party and everyone is smiling, for me the day when I walk on stage and look around at the guys I’m playing with and there is a lack of passion, I’ll just go home.  For me why bother?  I mean I can get a job and play music for fun and do that for joy, but if I’m going to do it and get the bands supporters to pay twenty or thirty pounds to come and see a performance in the UK, then they deserve passion.  They deserve 100% of our effort.  We should come into town in shape, fit, at the top of our performance and give the 110% and let them leave the concert thinking they got more than their monies worth.  If we can't do that then we don’t deserve their support.    

MM - You just touched on the fact that the band is coming over to the UK to do a few shows soon.
Rich -Yes we’re coming over in the middle of May, I believe the shows are the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th.  We're in Glasgow on the 13^th, Rock City in Nottingham on the 14^th and then we’re doing two shows on the 15^th in London.  

MM - Yes I noticed you doing a matinee show.  Two shows in one day at the same venue. Rich - We’ve got the a different opening band on each show and we’re changing the set-lists for both shows as well.  So if someone who's coming to both shows, they will see two different performances, which I think, will be cool.  We've only done this one time before, when Fozzy came to the UK before.  I think it was in 2005 when we played a matinee show in Manchester then we did an evening show in Liverpool.  Two shows in one day, but we’ve never done two shows in the same city.

We’re really excited about it.  The last couple of times we’ve played the larger venues like the Astoria, but this time we thought we'd play a smaller venue like the Garage and do two shows.  Yes I love playing the big theatres, they are always fun, but there is something about playing a medium sized club, the energy is different.  Being closer to the fans, having that close contact where you can look everybody in the eye.  The energy is better, the rooms are sweaty, the whole vibe is better.  

MM - Yes I know what you mean, when you go to say an arena show and you're at the back of the venue, the band are just dots on the stage, anyone could be on and you wouldn’t know.
Rich -Yes that’s exactly right.  I love playing big stages, I love the freedom of being able to run around.  I love big festival shows.  But the down side of it is the disconnection between the audience.  You could be playing anywhere, you could be in San Antonio Texas or you could be in Paris, because you're so far away from the audience the connection is different.  

MM - I know we're running short of time so I’ll close with this one.  Where do Fozzy go from here then?
Rich - Actually I’ve started working on new songs and ideas for the new record.  After doing 'Chasing The Grail' and seeing how long it took to properly write and record this record, I thought what I’d do is try to get a little bit of a jump on this and get ideas together early, so that it's not hurry up and get the album going.  I can really take my time on it and I’ll see where the ideas go. 

The camaraderie and energy in the band is just great at the moment.  The reviews of the album have been amazing and we’ve just been really inspired, you know how it is, sometimes there is just a spark in life and all of sudden from that spark comes this fire and you really want to hold on to it because this feeling is great.  So we have the sense of urgency to continue working really hard.  We’ve been rehearsing as a band every day.  We don’t rehearse with Chris because he’s touring with the WWE, but we as a band have been rehearsing everyday. It’s been ten years since I’ve been in rehearsals every day with a band.  I feel like a kid again, just playing it loud and the energy of being in a rock band every day.  We’re playing so well and we’re operating as a family and I’m really excited.  Our first show is in Phoenix a week from this coming Friday, and we’re just really excited about getting out there and being able to shake hands with everyone and thank them for their support.  

MM - Well as I said at the start, this is the first time I’ve heard anything by the band and I was totally blown away.  This album will definitely feature in my end of year comments come December.
Rich - Well thank you Barry for you kind words, it means so much to me.  From the bottom of my heart and for talking to me today and I’m looking forward to seeing you when we come over. 

MM - Well thank you Rich and I’d like to wish you and the band all the best with the album and tour and hopefully I’ll catch the band on stage here later this year.

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