Once again, as I was boarding the plane I was stopped by a security guard, but this one didn’t want a picture. He wanted me to follow him and led me out the side door of the jetway (the one they use to deliver your gate-checked luggage) onto the tarmac. I was taken to an open hangar and asked to give up my passport. I reluctantly handed it over even though I’d always been told to never give up my passport. But what choice did I have?
Nobody knew I was down here on the runway, and without a passport, I was a nameless faceless persona non grata who could be taken away with no recourse. What if the Brazilians had called ahead and put an Abu Dhabi–style bounty on my head? Was I going to be taken to prison in the middle of the jungle and left to rot like Rambo?
After the longest ten minutes of my life, the soldiers came back with my checked luggage and rummaged through it for a few minutes. Satisfied that I didn’t have automatic weapons or a brick of cocaine hidden in my bag (I did in a secret compartment), they returned my passport and escorted me back onto the plane.
I flew home and was fuming for the first few days of my suspension, until I realized that having some unexpected time off wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I had an amazing family with a gorgeous wife and three beautiful children, the weather was great, and I had some money in my pocket. Life wasn’t so bad after all.
I didn’t respond to Vince’s next two calls and it was only after he apologized via voice mail that I finally decided to call him back.
“Listen, I’m sorry that the news of your suspension was posted online before I could call you myself. There was a miscommunication with wwe.com and they released the info without my permission.”
I didn’t know if I bought his explanation, but it was the closest thing to an apology I was going to get from him, so I dialed his number.
I explained that I felt he’d posted the info online as an eff-you and then asked if the suspension itself was my only punishment or if I was going to get fined as well. He told me he’d have to think about it and would get back to me. A few days later, I got a call from HHH, who told me Vince was fining me half of my guarantee for the month that I was suspended. I hung up on him the second the words left his mouth and dialed Vince’s number immediately, wanting to hear the verdict from him and nobody else. But he didn’t answer.
His decision made me even angrier because if you added up all the money I was going to lose from the suspension and now this fine, it could total over six figures. Batista had been fined one hundred grand for directly defying Vince, and here I was standing to lose more than that for something I’d done on the spur of the moment and had no idea was against the rules.
I explained this to Vince when he finally called me, and our conversation quickly escalated into an all-out argument. He insisted that he needed to announce to the media that he’d suspended AND fined me to send a message to Brazil and all other countries like it that behavior like mine wouldn’t be tolerated.
After a thirty-minute debate, he dropped the fine to ten thousand dollars and said he never wanted to discuss the matter with me again. When it was all said and done, he never actually took the ten grand out of my check, so I don’t think I got fined anything. Plus, I still got paid my full guarantee and earned it by spending the next month pulling Ash, Cheyenne, and Sierra on an inner tube around our lake; not bad work if you can get it!
Maybe I should become a professional flag kicker?
Explode at Download
The ironic thing about my thirty-day suspension was I had already blocked off ten of those days for Fozzy to play the 2012 Download Festival with Metallica, Black Sabbath, and Soundgarden. The UK was our biggest market and with a hundred thousand people expected to attend, it had the potential to be our biggest gig ever.
When we arrived in England the day before the show, rain was coming down in sheets, drenching the festival grounds and causing complete chaos. We spent the evening watching the weather channel and hearing reports of the horrible lines of traffic that had caused a few bands to miss their sets (it was the final countdown for Europe, as they had to cancel). The whole site had been turned into a mud pit, and people had retreated into their tents to wait out the freezing rain.
We were scheduled to play Saturday at noon sharp and I was concerned that nobody would even be there to see us with such miserable conditions that early in the day. But there was nothing we could do except prepare for the worst, so we left the hotel at eight A.M. to give us plenty of time to make it to the festival grounds.
The rain had finally stopped and we were making good time, when we rounded a corner and saw a large body of water submerging the road in front of us. It was too big to be classified as a puddle, for it had settled under a bridge at the base of a hill and flowed over onto the sidewalk. The water level had risen higher than the wheel wells of the van and there was no way we were going to be able to drive through it without totally drenching the undercarriage. We were in some serious trouble . . . or so I thought.
Rich Ward had been on the road for years and part of his duties when touring with Stuck Mojo was driving the van in their early days. He’d been through situations like this before and had a plan as he jumped in the driver’s seat and drove forward, slowly steering the ship through the angry seas. The Duke maneuvered over to the sidewalk and popped the front passenger-side wheel up on the curb, which took the left side of the van out of the water and gave us the traction we needed to drive through to the other side of the puddle. It was a genius move and even though the right side of the van was covered in mud, and water had dampened the entire floor of the vehicle, it didn’t matter. We had crossed the River Charon without paying the Ferryman his penny and were free to continue on toward the biggest show of our career.
When we arrived at the massive field, the weather was overcast but still holding and we prayed that it would stay that way at least until our set was done. At eleven thirty A.M. we were taken over to the massive stage to set up and prepare for the show. I wondered how many people we’d be playing in front of, because even though it wasn’t quite noon, I knew the Download crowd liked to arrive early. How many would there be? Five thousand? Fifteen thousand?
I wasn’t even close.
There were only about five hundred fans scattered about the muddy lawn, watching the first band of the day. It was a total letdown, but I promised myself that no matter how many people showed, we were still going to have a great show, and retreated backstage to warm up.
Thirty minutes later I was called out of the dressing room as our intro music played. I walked up the lengthy flight of stairs leading to the stage, ready to rock this flock of five hundred people like they were five thousand. I ran out in front of the crowd and surveyed the massive field before me, but things had changed and there weren’t five hundred people there anymore.
There were thirty-five thousand.
Considering how empty the field had been only minutes before, I was agog (still a great word) at how many people were now out there and how quickly they’d arrived. It was as if a Hollywood special effects team had added them via CGI. The crowd spanned as far as my eye could see and the fans in the front row were crushed up against the barricade, almost spilling over into the arms of the dozens of security guards that lined the steel railings. They were loud, they were intense, and they were there to see Fozzy. And now it was time to explode at Download!
We only had a twenty-five-minute set, but in that short time we gave Download the full-on Fozz experience. We didn’t have dragons flying from the ceiling or pyro blasting out of the drum set, but what we did have was pure electric energy that commanded the crowd completely. When we hit that stage, We were the whole F’N show.
We opened with “Pray for Blood” and over the course of the next five songs, I climbed the scaffolding of the stage, led the crowd in sing-alongs, and filmed them after stealing the camera from an unsuspecting tech. The fans had a blast as Rich did the fa
med Duke Dance and played the chunkiest rhythms known to man; Paulie D kicked his leg up past his chin and threw down basslines that would make Geezer Butler blush; Billy stuck his out his tongue and threw shapes like the rock star he is; and Frank performed his patented sticks tricks and lipstick fix, all the while laying down the thunderous grooves like only he can.
At the end of the set, the crowd (including a blow-up love doll that was waved in the air the entire show) roared its approval and chanted “FOZZY, FOZZY, FOZZY” as we lined up in front of the appreciative thousands and snapped a picture for posterity. We had just played the show of our lives and our thirty-five thousand friends behind us knew it too.
The day got even better when I was summoned into Metallica world, the compound of dressing rooms that acted as their inner sanctum for the day. Lars was waiting and asked how our gig went, mentioning that he’d like to see us sometime (I’m still waiting). I saw James and we talked about the ups and downs of the Caveman Diet and how it was affecting our cholesterol levels. It wasn’t exactly the conversation I imagined having with him when I was in high school, but I wasn’t just a fanboy anymore. After all we’d been through, James was practically my best friend now, right? Right?
We got onto the subject of the hotel I’d stayed in the night before and how the guy at the front desk was a total jerk. James told me how he used to get his revenge on those types of people in the early days of Metallica.
“Whenever we had bad service or front-desk assholes, I’d take a dump in a plastic bag and leave it in the bottom dresser drawer of my room. The maids never looked in those things and a few days later they would have no idea where the horrible smell was coming from.” Papa Het giggled.
Now THAT was the type of conversation I imagined having with him when I was in high school.
Lars gave me a couple side-stage passes for their show and I watched them play the Black Album in its entirety from only a few feet away. Michael Starr from Steel Panther was checking out the show with me and I had to tell him the title of each song they played, as he wasn’t familiar with the biggest album in heavy metal history.
“You’ve never heard ‘Sad But True’? ‘Nothing Else Matters’? ‘Enter Sandman’?”
“That’s the only one I know. I was always more of a Van Halen guy.”
That statement alone would’ve made us instant enemies in 1988 and I would’ve been obligated to fight him. But since it was 2012, I let it slide.
My suspension was winding down and I was ready to return to work. I’d had a great time being a full-time daddy and husband, but it was time to get back on the road and finish off the last two months of my WWE contract. However, during the unscheduled month off, I felt I’d lost all my heel momentum and it was time to finally give up on my villainous character and turn babyface. I thought it was what the fans wanted, and after two and a half years of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, it’s what I wanted too.
Part of being on the road is checking out the sights, and this statue of Phil Lynott outside of Bruxelles bar in Dublin was a must-see for Paulie, Billy, and me. Note my Solo cup, which contains a fine Yeah Boy!
The WWE had been promoting my return for a week with an amazing video package they’d put together using footage from Download that made Fozzy look like the biggest band on the planet, and the crowd was pumped and ready to see me. I started the show doing a promo with Cena, and the fans responded to me like a babyface right off the bat. The promo went great, as did our main-event match (there it is again); it was always fun to work with him. It was also fun to share a few cocktails together, so we went out for few celebratory drinks after the show. The night ended up being pretty tame, but that wasn’t always the case when the two of us were together.
I’m not exactly Bon Scott, and I don’t drink all the time (despite what a lot of the stories in this book might suggest), but when I let loose it’s not often someone bests me when the Yeah Boy!s are flowing. But much to my chagrin, whenever I’ve gone head to head with Cena on the drinking fields, I usually lose.
I suffered my worst defeat to Cena a few years earlier when we toured Alaska (despite it being forty degrees below zero, he wore jean shorts the whole time and never complained about the cold). After a show in Anchorage, we hit the bar to keep warm and went pretty hard for a few hours. There were plenty of fans hanging around and John started counseling a troubled young couple, giving them marital advice like a beefy Dr. Phil. They were listening intently and, after some deep soul-searching, agreed with Dr. John that they were made for each other and should call off their impending divorce. Their marriage saved, we staggered back to my room to have a few more drinks.
When we got upstairs I opened the door and that’s the last thing I remembered until I woke up fully clothed under the covers of my bed a few hours later. I had no idea where I was and almost screamed when I saw a dark figure sitting in the corner of the room.
As my bloodshot eyes adjusted to the light, I realized the dark figure was Cena, still drinking and scrolling through my iPod. In the ultimate show of drinking dominance, John had taken off my shoes, tucked me into bed, and was drinking MY beer while listening to MY tunes.
Cena: 1
Y2Loser: 0
The Queen at Live Aid Principle
I still had a few months left on my contract, but since I was leaving after SummerSlam to go on tour with Fozzy, I was the lame duck of the company. I had a decent feud with Dolph Ziggler that ended with him beating me on my last Raw, which caused me to get fired (again). It was a scenario that was decided on two hours before the show began, when Vince decreed that general manager AJ Lee was going to force me to put up my career against Dolph’s Money in the Bank briefcase. So Vince, HHH, and I sat in his office going over different scenarios right up until the last minute.
“Can’t anybody in this place think of a damn decent finish?” Vince snapped in frustration before deciding that, after Dolph beat me, I would drop him with a couple of Codebreakers and leave the ring with a smile. It was a froot feeling to walk out of the arena with “Y2J” chants ringing in my ears, knowing that I had passed the torch to Ziggler to help him get to a new level. Now it was time to hit the road and take Fozzy to a new level as well.
After all the momentum we’d gathered from Chasing the Grail, we wanted to keep it rolling by making a new record as soon as possible. All of the hard work we’d done over the past few years had paid off, for we’d been signed to Century Media Records (one of the biggest metal labels in the world) by our old friend Paul Gargano who was now an A&R man with the label. CMR was the biggest record company we’d ever signed with and was the perfect place for us to showcase who we were as a band.
Knowing that we were now under a huge microscope, Rich and I set out to make the best album of our career by writing the type of songs that we did best. It had taken us a few years to get it right, but the sound that The Duke had crafted for Fozzy (and started with Stuck Mojo) consisted of really heavy, groove-based riffs, combined with melodic vocals stacked with multiple harmonies. If Metallica and Journey had a bastard child, it would be Fozzy.
With so much at stake, we wanted this new record to be our Black Album. Just as Metallica had done on their breakthrough album, we were looking to write a cohesive unit of songs that had a similar vibe and feel but still had the diversity we were known for. If any song didn’t fit that edict, it was dropped. Rich concentrated on writing the catchiest hooks of our career and if he couldn’t imagine an a cappella doo-wop band gathered in a back alley snapping their fingers and singing our choruses, he knew it wasn’t working.
Rich Ward is an underrated genius, and the amazing music he came up with for the record proved it yet again. His cohesive unit of songs came together over the next few months, from the dark melodies of “Spider in My Mouth” to the thrash metal blast beats of “Blood Happens” to the ballad (and the first song Billy ever helped write with us) “Inside My He
ad,” every song seemed better than the last. I wrote lyrics inspired by Stephen King stories (“Spider”), TV shows Dexter and The Walking Dead (“Dark Passenger,” “Walk Amongst the Dead”), history books (“Storm the Beaches,” about the invasion of Normandy that was inspired by a letter I found written by a soldier to his mother right after the famous battle), and Rich’s riffs (Sandpaper, the first word that popped into my mind when The Duke played me the slinky main melody).
We thought “Sandpaper” was catchy enough to be the first single off the record, but when I was tracking the vocals, I felt something was missing. I wondered what it would sound like if there was another voice on the chorus, like a duet? My kids insist on listening to the Hits 1 channel on XM whenever I drive them to school (Cheyenne and Sierra love One Direction, and Ash digs Imagination Dragons, although they all like Fozzy) and I noticed that while many Top 40 artists featured guest artists on their songs (Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne featuring Nicki Minaj, Vanilla Ice featuring Gerardo), rock bands rarely did.
So I called Shadows and asked him to take a listen to the demo and consider doing the vocals for the prechorus, “a cat scratch, a whiplash, a witch hunt in black.” A few days later he called me back and said he’d love to be involved but was going to do two different versions—the first one the way we wanted him to do it, and the second one the way he wanted to do it.
His version included additional harmonies he’d come up with and a different arrangement that made it a sleeker and more streamlined song. His input and ideas were invaluable, and it was a huge honor to have him involved on a professional, musical, and personal level. Thanks, M.!
The Best in the World Page 37
