I had no idea what to expect but I found out quickly when after our intro played, we ran onstage, launching into “Nameless Faceless,” and were met by forty mohawk-sporting, swastika-wearing, safety-pin-through-the-nose drunken skinheads. These guys were the real deal, completely 100 percent serious in their Aryan beliefs. When they saw our long hair and heard the pounding metal, they started laughing, playing overexaggerated air guitar, and headbanging goofily. In between songs, they yelled out, “Dokken!” or “Ratt!” They weren’t having fun, they were just full-on taking the piss out of our performance.
Normally, I pride myself on being able to entertain any crowd no matter the situation, but not even the mystic powers of Jericho the Voodoo Mon could turn them on this night. They were antagonistic, apathetic, unruly, and confrontational; they made Ogre from the Motörhead gig look like a thirteen-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert.
During “Wanderlust,” when I invited a guy with a ring through his lip to sing along, he told me to fuck off. So I eliminated the middleman and tried to lead a “ Fuck ” chant during “Feel the Burn,” but not even blatant cursing was going to win this mob over and I was met with total indifference.
We finally lurched our way to the end of the show and began playing “Freewheel Burning,” the last of the set. Unfortunately, the song that cracked the Motörhead crowd didn’t work for the Junkie faithful, so I decided to go down swinging. During the song’s lengthy guitar solo I jumped off the stage and physically tried to get the stone-faced crowd to rock. I figured if they wanted punk I would give them punk and spit attitude into their faces. But my attempt bombed bigger than a Randy Savage rap album. Nobody moved.
I was frustrated and pissed off, so when I saw a guy propped up against the wall smirking at me, I snapped. I got right in his face and snarled, “You better rock!”
He still didn’t move.
“You better rock, man! I’m warning you.”
He continue staring at me nonchalantly, so I shoved him on the chest as hard as I could. He got a surprised look on his face and began to sway back and forth.
“That’s right!” I thought. “I finally got this guy to move!”
Then his swaying turned into teetering, his teetering into tottering, and his tottering turned into a complete Kramer pratfall onto the ground.
That’s when I noticed the cast on his leg and the crutch in his hand.
Bollocks.
We got an offer to tour Germany that I insisted on taking despite Rich’s reluctance. He felt that Fozzy didn’t have a big enough presence in Germany and wouldn’t do well, and he was right. We played complete shitholes for sparse crowds of lethargic fans every night.
The second night in Berlin was especially bad. The gig took place in a club that was little more than a big empty room with hardwood flooring like you’d find in a high school gym. The room remained almost empty for the show, I blew out my voice, and halfway through the set somebody threw a roll of toilet paper onstage. Rich glared at me as he wrapped the TP around his neck mid-song, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was furious.
Afterwards he asked, “How did you like that show?”
“It wasn’t good.”
“Yeah, it was the shits. Not even that roll of toilet paper could wipe that turd up.”
Then he proceeded to tear a strip off me. “Listen, you don’t know everything. You need to listen to me sometimes. You insisted that we come to Germany, even though I knew it was a bad idea, and I was right. Contrary to popular belief, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. I know that you’ve been on the road for years too, and even though that’s wrestling and it’s still show business, it’s not the music business. So for the good of the band, you need to listen to what I say sometimes and trust me.”
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 Aborn to see such legendary Beatles locations as Strawberry Fields (an orphanage), Penny Lane (a side road that had no street sign as it had been stolen), and the grave of Eleanor Rigby. We went to Paul McCartney’s boyhood home and saw the house on Men-love Avenue where John grew up, including the intersection where his mother was hit and killed by a drunken off-duty police officer.
Ozzy was a great storyteller but a terrible bus driver. We’d often swerve from lane to lane in the middle of the night for no particular reason. (My deformed flashing of the horns is a result of a broken pinky that was never set
properly.)
It was a major thrill to see all of these places I knew due to my obsession with my favorite band, especially while I was on tour with my own band.
Tomorrow never knows how froot life can be sometimes.
But the coup de grâce of the “real” Beatles tour was meeting the Hursts’ family friend Johnny Hutch. I know that doesn’t sound too impressive upon first read, but stay with me, Apple Scruffs. Johnny Hutch was a member of the Beatles for about a minute, when John and Paul tapped him to play a few gigs after Pete Best’s departure and before the arrival of his replacement, Ringo Starr. I couldn’t believe my luck when I found a picture of Johnny playing with the Beatles in a magazine for him to sign.
We knocked on his door and I was awash with the anticipation over hearing the certain astonishing tales Hutch must have about his awesome (albeit brief ) stint playing with the biggest and most influential band of all time.
Nobody answered the first knock, so Paul tapped his knuckle against the door again.
Suddenly it flew open and an old man with a weathered ruddy face appeared croaking in a sour voice, “What the fook do you want?”
The smile dripped off my face like yellow matter custard.
Paul laughed and said, “Johnny we just came by to see you and have a chat.”
“What do you want to talk to me for? I got nuthin’ to say.”
“Well, Chris here would like to hear about when you played with the Beatles.”
“The Beatles? Yeah, I played with the Beatles, and they were shite! They could hardly play their fookin’ instruments. Pretty boys is all they were.”
I was taken aback by Johnny’s statement. I was so used to hearing everybody say that the Beatles were gods that it was almost blasphemy to hear someone who’d played with them say they sucked.
But when I thought about it, I understood where Johnny was coming from. I’ve heard of a dozen wrestlers that never quite made it talking the same way about me.
“Jericho is the shits! He can’t work—he just got lucky!”
Most of the time they were simply bitter because they never made it, and Johnny was the same way. His band the Big Three was also managed by Brian Epstein, but they didn’t hit the big time and Johnny was still resentful about it.
“The Big Three could outplay the Beatles and we could outsing them too! And Ringo … he left Rory Storm completely fooking hanging so he could run off and join the Beatles. He’s a right shithouse to have done that!!”
I thought Johnny might have a better disposition if I changed the subject to what he was doing now.
“Are you still playing, Mr. Hutch?”
He responded grumpily, “No, I don’t fookin’ play anymore. There’s no reason for a sixty-five-year-old man to get up on a stage and make a fool of himself.”
I walked right into another shithouse when I said innocently, “I saw McCartney live a couple of months ago and he sounded amazing.”
That brought back the fire and Johnny turned into a Blue Meanie once again. He stared a hole right through me and said slowly, “Really? Well, the next time you see McCartney, you tell him I said he’s a fookin’ wanker.”
Um, okay. So the next time I talk to Paul McCartney—which will be the first time I talk to him—I’ll have to remember to open the conversation by saying, “Hey Paul, nice to meet you. By the way, Johnny Hutch in Liverpool said to tell you you’re a fookin’ wanker.”
We stood there for a few seconds in awkward silence until Ed and I decided it was time to leave the good day sunshine personality of Johny Hutch alone. I figured before I left, I’d try to get him to sign the picture I had. When I opened the magazine and showed him, his face instantly softened.
“Is that you?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said with a wistful smile. “I know that’s me because I remember buying that jacket. They brought jackets like that in from India. I used to hang out by the docks and wait for the ships to come in with those clothes. They always had such great stuff. I loved that jacket.”
Suddenly the crotchety old man who hated the Beatles had been replaced by a kid in his early twenties who had his whole life ahead of him.
“Will you sign it for me?”
“Absolutely,” he said, delighted. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
I ended up talking with a former member of the Beatles for the next twenty minutes. And he told us some great stories, but I’ll save those for Johnny’s book should he ever decide to write one.
When I got back to the bus, Ozzy was polishing the hubcaps for some reason and looked up, squinting behind his Coke-bottle lenses.
John, Paul, George, and Johnny? It was true for a while, as Hutch was one of only five people to drum for the Beatles. Can you name the other four? Maybe Mike or my scarf know the answer.
“So ya went to see the Beatles sights, didya? If you want the full experience, you have to take a ferry cross the Mersey, lad!”
Then he started doing a weird little jig as he warbled “Ferry Cross the Mersey” by Gerry and the Pacemakers. I could still hear him cackling to himself as I crawled into my bunk.
CHAPTER 33
Steel Enema
In September 2004 I won the Intercontinental title for the seventh time from Christian in a Ladder match in Portland, Oregon. At only thirty-three years old, I had been IC Champion more than any other performer in WWE history. Not too shabby, especially when you consider that my dream when I started wrestling was to only win it once.
Christian and I had been in a number of Ladder matches, and we wanted to try something different for the finish of this one. We came up with the idea that we’d be fighting for the title atop the ladder, and in the process I would swing the cable the belt was hanging from. In our mind’s eye the cable would swing past Christian’s head, barely missing him, and then careen back and crack him in the back of the noggin when he wasn’t looking, toppling him off the ladder.
Sounds good on paper, right?
Unfortunately, when I swung the cable, it missed his head the first time—and zipped straight past him the second time. Then its momentum stopped and the title dangled in midair like a deflated balloon.
We looked at each other for a few seconds before I bulldogged him off the ladder and climbed back up for the win. So much for creativity, but as W. C. Fields once said, “Never work with animals or children … or cables with titles on the end of them … or ladders for that matter.”
He was right, because the botched finish wasn’t even the lowlight of the match for me. That came when I fell off the ladder awkwardly and it bit me in the ass—or more specifically went straight up it.
That’s right, intrepid readers, I was the proud recipient of a steel enema. I’m not exaggerating, either. I literally felt the ladder’s edge penetrating my anal cavity. It was like getting raped by RoboCop.
After the match William Regal walked past me shaking his head. He said that my fall was one of the worst things he’d ever seen and I looked like a wishbone. Yikes—there’s a mental image I can live without. My ass hurt so bad I could hardly walk, and I had to sit on one cheek for the next month. When I went to see a doctor I was diagnosed with a cracked coccyx bone, the little tip of cartilage at the end of your tailbone. When I asked him what he could do to help me, he smirked and threw up his hands. “What do you want me to do? Put a cast on it?”
In an effort to stay ahead of the curve, the WWE came up with an interactive PPV called Taboo Tuesday. The idea behind the show was that the fans could vote online to decide what matches were on the show. For example, fans would vote for the stipulation in the match between Randy Orton and Ric Flair. The choices were: (a) Steel Cage match; (b) falls count anywhere; or (c) Submission match. It was an interesting concept and totally legitimate: none of the performers (including me) knew how many votes each match was getting until the show actually started. However, while all of the other workers at least knew who their opponent was (just not the stipulation), I had to prepare f
or an Intercontinental title match against one of eighteen possible contenders. Christian, Batista, Shelton Benjamin, Jonathan Coachman, Chuck Palumbo, Billy Gunn, Rosey, Outback Jack, and seemingly everybody else on the roster who wasn’t booked were potential opponents.
With all of the possibilities of who I might be wrestling, I went to Kevin Dunn and asked if he could at least tip me off to who the top three finalists were, but he refused.
“Can you at least give me a clue?”
“Sorry, Chris. I can’t do that, it’s a secret.”
I understood that they wanted to surprise the fans, but did they need to surprise me too? It was my match, dammit!
Not knowing what else to do, I gathered all of the potential contenders in a room and asked each one of them what their finish was and what other moves they liked to do. It was impossible to try to put together a match with each of them, and I knew I’d have to call it all completely in the ring with whoever was the lucky winner. I was actually looking forward to it, as usually most of the matches were put together beforehand with the producers and directors knowing all of the big spots in order to catch them on camera. Common sense said that the guy with the most votes would be either Christian, Benjamin, or Batista. I also thought there was an outside chance that Coach might get voted in as a joke, and if he was, I told Vince that I would have to beat him in ten seconds.
I went to the ring with absolutely no idea who I’d be facing for the title. Then a drumroll played and the results of the vote were put up on the Tron. Shelton’s music played and the crowd got to their feet, excited that he had won the election. Shelton was really getting over at the time and his offense and leaping ability were among the best I’d ever seen.
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 27
