Spiritech: Hey Rich, what are you up to at the moment?
Rich Ward: I've just finished writing and demo-ing out the new Fozzy record, a little side band that I've had for a few years that I do with a professional wrestler guy who works for the WWE, Chris Jericho.
Spiritech: A good band as well.
Rich Ward: Oh yeah? Cool. The record is really cool man, it's one of the best records I've ever written and I'm really fired up about it. So in any case, I came off tour in late November with Stuck Mojo in Europe and ever since then I've been working on this record and just finally finished, putting the final touches on it. Jericho wrote all the lyrics and it was nice because I had the lyric sheets to work off of to start with, because unless I have something really that I want to talk about, something that's either impacting my life or experiences that I've gone through or just topics of interest... Sometimes lyrics are difficult for me, it's like, what do you want to write about? When I'm writing, usually it's about heartache or I hate the president, or something, and it's like, I don't want to write another song about how the president's stupid, just like, good grief. There's so much territory, there's so many paths that are so worn down, you just want to find something fresh to write about. And Jericho's got a really cool mind, and he likes lots of kind of fantasy stuff, he reads a lot of fiction books, so it's really cool to get his lyric sheets. And of course I have to do some arrangement stuff sometimes to make his prose fit into the song structure, but it's been fun. I love writing and recording, it's one of my favourite things to do. And then today I have a keyboard session to work on some big, nasty Hammond B3 Organ stuff on some of the material, some of it has kind of a classic, Deep Purple on steroids kind of feel. There's going to be a couple of songs that are going to have a bit of that. And then I start tracking guitars tomorrow, so fun, fun.
Spiritech: How is the new Fozzy material shaping up compared to previous releases?
Rich Ward: It's just as heavy, it's probably... well actually there are moments on the record that are really, really heavy and then there's a couple of moments on the record that are a little more like... did you have the first Fozzy record, the self-titled one that had all the covers on it?
Spiritech: Yep, I did.
Rich Ward: We did a cover of 'Eat The Rich', which is one of our favourites. It's one of my favourite Fozzy songs, I really like that. There's a couple of Rock songs on the new Fozzy album that are similar to that, real kind of AC/DC, barnburner Rock 'n' Roll songs. So there's a couple of those, and the rest of the album is you know, something you would probably find familiar to stuff we've written in the past.
Then there's actually a 14-minute kind of Prog epic jam! (laughs) The record's crazy. It's a bizarre record, because it is a culmination of all the things that we've done over the years for Fozzy and also Mojo, 'cause it's obviously the same cast of characters and it's a really good record. I really think All That Remains is a good album, but I actually... and all people say this, "oh, this is our best record", but there is no doubt! I was laughing with Jericho on the phone last night about how good the record is and we're really... it's just in its demo forms right now, but just listening to the demos, it's pretty funny that we have pretty high confidence in the record. So, it's always fun when the record sounds good in demo forms. 'Cause you know, if you're doing demos, and you're like, well just imagine if it sounded bigger in the studio. If you don't have to paint the big picture, just the pencil sketchings are good, then you know you've got something good coming. So yeah, I'm happy about it.
Spiritech: Great stuff. Moving on to Stuck Mojo, The Great Revival is a pretty major departure from the rest of the catalogue, and to me it sounds as much like your solo album or Sick Speed as it does Stuck Mojo. Why did you decide to go out on a limb and make a pretty radical change to the Mojo sound?
Rich Ward: You know, the honest answer is because I just really try to write records that are an extension of what's going on in my head and you know, nothing could be more unnatural to me than feeling that I have to write a record that sounds a certain way. So really when it comes time, when we come home from the last tour and we say, okay, it's time to work on a new record, I just start working on it and I don't necessarily sit down with an agenda of it should sound like this or it should sound like that. A lot of times, the songs develop and as they're developing... if it was a clay pot you start shaping things as it goes, sometimes the clay pot just ends up looking a little different than you think it's supposed to. And that's just kind of the fun part of creating songs, is that sometimes they have kind of a life of their own and to be honest with you, I didn't think the record would turn out the way it did. It is definitely a different sounding record.
The other thing to keep in mind that I haven't really said anything about until I've started doing these interviews over the last week is that the record... half the record was unfinished. I had 80 minutes worth of music for this album originally, and the album was a little bit more of a.... it was really a massive undertaking. I wanted to actually release a double album, I had so much material and the album... when you listen to songs like 'Now That You're All Alone' and 'The Flood' and 'The Fear', you couldn't think of songs that seem like they should be on different records. I mean, they're really big in scope and they have real different moods and real different kind of personalities. And the idea was that this song would be kind of a... the album would be this big journey and that it would have all these twists and turns and it would be like a good suspense novel, that it would have lots of character development and then it would have these moments and bursts of speed and excitement and then there would be other moments of sorrow and other moments of joy.
You know, as a songwriter and as a guitar player, I'm not an artist. An artist is someone who does something of consequence. I make music that I enjoy, I make records that hopefully speak to people, but I'm certainly not arrogant enough to put myself in the league of artists like you would a Roger Waters or a Peter Gabriel, those minds that have made these masterpieces. But I did want to try to do something that was a little bigger in scope than things I had done in the past and as the songs started to unravel I said, "man, this could be something really cool and it would be a chance for us after all these years to do something that was a little outside the box". And if you're gonna go big, let's go big! (laughs)
But what ended up happening was, halfway through the recording process we got an offer to go and do this tour supporting a band from Denmark called Volbeat, and Volbeat is like one of the hottest and biggest bands in Europe right now, they're selling out venues from 1500-4000 seaters. And they wanted us to be the main support on this tour. We couldn't turn it down, but the record company, their contingency for us doing the tour, or requirement that they had was that we had to finish the record and have it ready to be released in Europe by the time the tour happened. I said there's no way that can happen, we're weeks away from this album being done. And they said, well, we're not going to support it with tour support, we're not going to support you guys being on this tour unless you have the record done. So we had a meeting and we sat down and decided that it was important enough for us to do it, so I basically had to take the songs that were most complete at that time... it wasn't pick out the songs that I liked the best or pick out the songs that made most sense together, it was just pick out the group of songs that were most finished to completion, finish those songs and put them on the record and then save the remaining tracks for the next album. Heck, 'The Great Revival', the title track, didn't make the album 'cause it wasn't ready! (laughs) I mean, how retarded is that? (laughs) But that's just... you know, ten years ago I would have gone into a seven state killing spree and just gone crazy and bought a ticket to Austria to try and kill everyone at the record company for holding the tour hostage. But you know, after doing this for so many years, I just recognized that the music business ain't about me, it isn't about my manager and it's not about my drummer and it's not about the record company, it's about everybody and there has to be compromise.
That's just the way it's always been. I remember in 1998 being on tour as the only support band on the Pantera tour, their first tour in Europe in a number of years and we're playing sold out arenas every night. And Century Media decided that they wanted to stop spending money, or as much money as they were on doing tour support for their bands. So they told us if we didn't give them all of the merchandise money that we had made on that tour to cover our costs, then they were going to pull all the tour support and the tour would end for us. Talking about taking us off the road supporting one of the biggest bands in the world in arena audiences, which we knew was such an important step in our career. So we gave them all the money that we had earned on that tour and went home completely broke and had no way to pay our bills. This was in '98 on the 'Rising' tour, which is when the band at its biggest success, and we went home broke and had to borrow money to pay our rents and eat, it was just ridiculous.
But that's just life, and you know, these kinds of things that have happened I really feel like has made me tough and made me a bit of a survivor. It's the same kind of thing... that's why Jericho and I get along so well, because we're both kind of survivors. I mean, everyone looks at him and says, "Oh, the guy's a WWE Superstar, he's got it made". Well, he sweated it out for years in Mexico and Japan and making no money and doing these small regional wrestling events for years, driving around in cars and sleeping in cars. And that's just the kind of stuff, that, I don't know, that's the stuff that I think builds character. Even if it doesn't help you in the music business, even if it's just something that helps to toughen you up and make you stop being such a baby when things get tough, you just, hey this is life and it's not what happens to us, it's how we react to it and how we respond that stimuli in life.
And so, I know it's a long answer but I wanted to be kind of through and let you know that the record... I really love The Great Revival, I think it's got some amazing songs on it, but it may not make as good a sense as it would have if you'd had a chance to hear the whole album in context, the way that it was designed to be. Because like I said, if you listen to the songs... the album only has nine complete songs on it, plus a few little segue pieces, and when you listen to those nine songs by themselves I think they're great songs, but in context I don't know that they make as good a sense together as if you had all of the other pieces in there, because the album was kind of on a loose level was kind of a concept record. The good news is that today, most people get their jams off of iTunes, and so they put them into their playlist. So for that reason alone, it makes it okay, because as I know, the way people consume music these days is not the same way that I used to when I used to go and pick up the new Iron Maiden record and put it on the turntable and stare at the cardboard sleeve while I listened to both sides of it in a row, you know? So that's the good news.
Spiritech: Indeed. Now, when Stuck Mojo started out in the early 90s combining rap and metal definitely wasn't a cool thing to do. Funnily enough, here we are in 2009 and the popularity of that style of music has come and gone. What do you think of this development- do Stuck Mojo not care about trends at all?
Rich Ward: Well, you know, I would be disingenuous if I said that it sucks that trends dictate us as consumers in general. When it became trendy to have muscle cars in the States, everyone had the big V8 muscle cars and then it became trendy for everyone to buy little two-seater sports cars then they had that and then it became trendy to have big SUVs and then it became trendy to have little hybrids. But then everyone always turns their nose up at what they thought was cool three years ago. I always find it funny with a little bit of perspective to look back at all of the things that have changed over the years.
When I was in high school, hair metal was the big thing, it was all about Motley Crue and Twisted Sister and the LA Strip was the hot thing in the late 80s. And now everybody spits on that like it was stupid. I never liked that style anyway, I never paid it any attention just because it didn't speak to me. But then Nirvana and Alice In Chains and Soundgarden were the big thing and then of course that became unpopular and it moved into nu-metal, and then after nu-metal it was true metal, and next year it'll be friggin' beef stew metal, it just... I guess what I'm saying is that you just got to write music you enjoy, that you feel... I knew I was going to catch hell for this record, I really did because I know most old school Mojo fans want to hear Rich Ward riffs and want to hear Bonz rap, or now Lord Nelson rap, and to do these four minute, kind of aggressive, the old school Mojo formula.
But it was like, that's just not who we are as a band anymore, we've had changes and as a musician I'm not the same guy I was ten years ago. You know, I'm influenced by different stimuli and life and I just wanted to kind of be one of those guys who is honest, who doesn't float with the trends. Because let's face it, Limp Bizkit was a rap/rock band, or a crossover band and then Fred tried to kind of start singing later because he realized he needed to because that style of music was going out of vogue. Same with Papa Roach, they were rap/rock and now they say they're punk rock. You know what I mean? I'm not ashamed of who we are, just because rap/rock or nu-metal or whatever is not popular, I mean, anyone who's followed this band's career knows we don't sound like those bands anyway. We never have, we've always kind of been our own man and did what we did. You put a Stuck Mojo record on and play a song and then a Limp Bizkit song on and it couldn't sound any different.
That's not to say that I dislike Limp Bizkit; I mean, I don't own any of their records, but if that's your thing and you like them then cool. But usually people who like Limp Bizkit didn't like Mojo anyway, because they thought we were too aggressive or thought we were too political or whatever differences delineated the two bands. But you've got two options- you can follow the trends and live and die with them, or you be your own man and you do music that you speak to and if it doesn't work out, at least you can do down swinging and say, "hey, I made a record that I felt strongly about" and have a little bit of pride in it.
Spiritech: Cool stuff. For something a little different, I'm going to name a few songs from the Stuck Mojo back catalogue and wanted you to share your thoughts on the meaning behind the songs and any other interesting details about them. The first is 'Metal Is Dead' from Southern Born Killers.
Rich Ward: That has a lot to do with the conversation we were just having. The song was kind of a warning to guys in metal bands to not worry about trends, and it was kind of like, look at what happened in the late 80s when everyone wanted to be a hair metal band. Then because everyone sounded the same, it got boring and that trend died out. And then everyone wanted to be like Korn and then all those bands became super popular and then it died out. And it's kind of like, hey, the true essence of metal is not there any more. When I was growing up, Iron Maiden sounded like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest sounded like Judas Priest and bands in the 70s and 80s were making an effort to sound original. It was really like a badge of honour to be something that was unique. I mean, think about it, Dio sounded like Dio and Van Halen sounded like Van Halen and Scorpions sounded like Scorpions and Ozzy had his own sound. And to me, that was brilliant; I loved that those albums were so different.
And now, you know when I listen to records side by side, a lot of these new albums really sound similar to me. The production is similar, the songwriting style is similar. You could almost interchange lyrics from song to song and it's the same jam. And I know I'm generalizing- there are many, many bands who this is not true about, but there are also many, many bands this is true of, and so the song 'Metal Is Dead' was kind of a "hey man, the spirit that attracted me to metal music when I was growing up seems to have left".
And now we seem to be like a bunch of sheep, following around the shepherd and whoever the shepherd of the month is, whether it's Machine Head or whether it's Killswitch Engage, everyone's in a rush to sound just like them and be "look at me too, I'm just as cool as those bands". There's been a little lack of identity and that's basically what that song is about. It's not to say that metal music is dead, but the spirit that inspired generations of metal guitar players to be original and to try and do something different, it was kind of an inspiration to reach for the Randy Rhoads and the Dimebag's of the world who redefined metal and try to follow those paths.
Spiritech: Okay cool. Next song is 'Not Promised Tomorrow' from Snappin' Necks.
Rich Ward: That song, we had a couple of friends of ours who died really close together. One was killed by a drunk driver and the other was murdered, in a really short period of time. And we just started thinking, man, what a great call to arms to everyone to live for the moment, to try and be as good as we can to our family and friends and try to live at a 110% at all times, because as the chorus says, you're not promised tomorrow and it's important to stay focused and live in the moment and try to get the most we can out of every second.
Spiritech: The last one is '15 Minutes' from The Great Revival.
Rich Ward: I'm not sure if it's the same in Australia, but I'm sure that it's at least there, but the dominant culture in the States right now is being famous for being famous. And it's all kind of brought on by the Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan culture that we have, which is that these people don't do anything. They don't produce anything of consequence, they're not really actors or actresses and they're not really musicians, they're just kind of like celebrities. And because their celebrity is so prevalent in our mainstream culture, there's a whole new generation of young kids in the States who want to be just like them.
Spiritech: I don't know if you saw the South Park episode 'Stupid Spoiled Whore', which spoofed that entire mentality amazingly well.
Rich Ward: I didn't see that one but it's one of my favourite shows on the planet, I normally just download them from time to time from iTunes, I'll have to check that one out. Is that about them?
Spiritech: Yep.
Rich Ward: That's basically what the song's about, that there's such a rush for folks to be famous, but what does that even mean? You know, you watch American Idol and you see these kids who audition for American Idol who have... they've never spent any time trying to really be a singer. They haven't gone to vocal coaches, they haven't played in bands and they haven't made any effort to be really good singers. They just go on the show and audition, and if they don't get selected, they cry like it's the end of the world, like, "this was my dream!" What, to be a singer or to be on the show? 'Cause if your dream is to be a singer you can still do that, the show is not the be all end all for being a musician. But to these people, the only goal in life is just to be famous.
And it actually is sickening, because, to me it's a real poison in our culture, because when I think about what is the best marketing tool for extreme, militant jihad Muslims in the Middle East? What could be a better marketing tool to hate America then to turn on TV and see the decadence and the mindless nature that our culture has kind of descended into? Of course they hate us; all they get a glimpse of is what they see on TV. Can you imagine if you just turned on TV for three or four hours and watched what American culture, the mainstream culture is? Yeah, I'd hate us too! So for me it was really important to write a song about how it really is... if we follow down the path like we have, it could really end up being something that destroys a generation of young people if they can't break out of the cycle of, it only matters what kind of clothes I wear, it only matters what kind of car I drive, it only matters if I'm famous, if I'm popular and you obviously can't build a life on that. And if you do, it's a flimsy foundation.
Spiritech: You mentioned your new overseas label Napalm Records earlier. They are a label more associated with Goth and black metal bands than an act like Stuck Mojo- where does the band "fit" on that roster?
Rich Ward: You know, like a prostitute with STDs, we don't fit! (laughs) But it's the same way that we "fit" on Century Media when we signed with them. I remember when we signed with Century Media we were looking over the roster of bands they had, this was in '94, and half the logos I couldn't even read, they had the crazy black metal logos. I just looked at my manager and said, "are you sure this is the right label for us?" Because you know, it was Rotting Christ and Pestilence, all these bands... when we first signed, we were two black guys and two white guys playing rap-metal. So when we were looking for another label, when we looked at the roster of Napalm, I thought, this feels just like home! (laughs) The same thing! It was extreme metal bands, black metal bands, Goth metal bands and it feels good to be the only band on the label that does what we do, because at least we don't get kind of lost in the... you know if the owner of Napalm ever has an interview where he's asked, "Who's your favourite Goth metal band on your label?" Well, he has to kind of go through the Roledex of the 30 that are on there and decide. But if someone goes, "Well, who's your favourite non-Goth metal, non-extreme metal band on the label?" Well, they only have one and that's us (laughs), so it's an easy pick for who stands out the most. Which you know, could be a bad thing as well, but I'd rather be the biggest fish in the small pond than get lost in the soup, you know?
Spiritech: Changing topics again- when will we see Stuck Mojo in Australia for a long overdue tour?
Rich Ward: (laughs) I know man, I've been begging for that tour for so long. If I was a betting man, I'd say it's going to be this year. Obviously the guys at Riot! are good friends of mine and we have discussed Mojo coming over time and time again and it's just been an issue of timing really. John from Riot! is finding the right tour to do because obviously for Mojo's first tour, we need to come over on a package with a couple of other bands. There was discussion a year ago about bringing over Annihilator and Mojo together, because the bands are really different but it would draw from the same metal crowd. That fell through and now we're just kind of waiting on that right tour. But eventually we'll all probably just throw our hands up in the air and say, hey, the right tour probably will never happen if we're just waiting for it so we'll probably just book it and tour with some regional bands.
Either way for us, the goal was just to come over and even if it's only four or five shows have a chance to play for those fans. 'Cause when we originally released Southern Born Killers, I know you know this, but over the Internet and I looked at all of the folks who were ordering the record and we sold several hundred copies just by mail order alone to Australia. So I know the fan base is there, you know if someone is going to go the trouble to mail order the album off the band's website a CD, then that's gotta be a good fan. So there's no telling how many other fans who would love to come see the band, but are just not going to go to the trouble of going to PayPal and special order a CD that they can download for free off the Internet. So, with that said I know we've got a good fan base there and I would just love to come over again. We were over with Fozzy in 2005, it was one of the best tours I've ever done and I just love the country and just looking forward to coming back.
Spiritech: Final question- do you have any last words for PyroMusic.net readers?
Rich Ward: Just I love ya, I'm so sorry that we seem to be that band that just can't seem to get our crap together to come over and see you guys and say thanks in person, but it's going to happen. I'm just really, really excited at the possibility of that tour happening this year.
- Spiritech
