During an interview with Spin, Fozzy’s Chris Jericho recently talked about the influences behind his band’s sound. He listed the other musicians that impacted their style and first mentioned The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
In 1999, Chris Jericho, Rich Ward, and Frank Fontsere formed Fozzy. Like many other bands, they experienced line-up changes, and right now, the band consists of Jericho, Ward, Billy Grey, P. J. Farley, and Grant Brooks. Their sound is known for harboring pop, rock, and heavy metal elements. Jericho had described their sound as a mix of Metallica and Journey.
The band members all admire musicians from most genres, and Jericho recently talked about these artists. These acts and the sounds have inspired them, but while being into classic rock and roll bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, their sound has extended to other bands like Madonna, Duran Duran, and Earth Wind & Fire.
He stated this in his recent interview and talked about these bands. Jericho is personally into The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden, Metallica, KISS, AC/DC, and Ozzy Osbourne. Still, because his bandmates are into other genres, their hooks have been inspired by them as well. These inspirations have made Fozzy successful in radio over the years.
Regarding their influences, Jericho’s words follow:
“I’m really into The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden and Metallica, KISS, AC/DC, Ozzy, that sort of stuff, and so is Rich, but Rich also loves the ’80s pop music like Billy Ocean, Madonna, Duran Duran, and so do I. He also loves yacht rock, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire. I dig those bands too. We have a lot of elements of that music in our band as far as hooks.
A lot of our songs have a triple hook, where you think, okay, that’s the hook, that’s the hook, that’s it. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had some great success at radio over the last five years. We’ve had six consecutive top 25 hits, and that’s because of the hooks. A great song Slayer could play, or Buddy Holly could play. They can play the same song; the delivery is one thing, but the hooks and what sticks in your head is what matters most.”
Though many bands would count The Rolling Stones and The Beatles when speaking about their influences, Fozzy has another advantage in looking up to them. Instead of drawing inspiration solely from their works, all the band members had different tastes that eventually created their unique sound.
