Exclusive: Chris Jericho on his new band Kuarantine, if there are other KISS fans in the AEW locker room, the Jericho Cruise & more
Few professional wrestlers, if any, have been innovative to the extent of All Elite Wrestling's inaugural World Champion Chris Jericho.
Not only did Jericho make his in-ring debut 30 years ago in 1990 and capture major titles in multiple promotions around the world, but he has further crossed over into mainstream success thanks to his work as an actor, author, musician, podcaster, and television host.
In early 2020, Jericho has not only been keeping busy with AEW, putting the finishing touches on the next Fozzy album, hosting Talk Is Jericho, and popping up on a variety of other people's films and television programs; he was part of several Kevin Smith productions beyond appearing on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. But it has also seen him be very active with quarantine-based projects, like appearing most Saturdays on the Saturday Night Special via Facebook Live.
Beyond the upcoming third edition of Chris Jericho's Rock 'N' Wrestling Rager At Sea, another project keeping Jericho busy in the midst of the current pandemic is his new band Kuarantine. Featuring Kent Slucher (drummer for Luke Bryan), guitarist Joe McGinness (of KLASSIK '78) and bassist PJ Farley (of Trixter) with Jericho on vocals, Kuarantine officially launched last month with a music video for their cover of the KISS' 1987 deep-cut "No No No."
I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Jericho by phone on June 2, 2020 about Kuarantine, KISS, performing with former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick, his musical roots and plenty more. The full interview is embedded for your listening pleasure, while part of the interview has been exclusively transcribed below for Sportskeeda.
On whether there are any fans of KISS in the AEW locker room besides him and Frankie Kazarian:
Chris Jericho: I think pretty much everybody likes KISS. Frankie's more of a Metallica guy. He would go toe to toe with anybody on the Metallica end. As far as being a hardcore KISS fan, I'm pretty much the stand-out.
Luther's a metalhead... [Jon] Moxley's a big metalhead. Actually, Moxley likes the KISS Animalize show, the Uncensored show from MTV from '85. I know that for sure. KISS pretty much permeates anybody who likes rock & roll.
On guests he still hopes to have on Talk Is Jericho:
Chris Jericho: To this day, David Lee Roth is one of my bucketlist guests for Talk Is Jericho that I haven't had on yet.
On whether Kuarantine might be performing on his next cruise:
Chris Jericho: You never know. Some of those songs are hard to play and sing at the same time, but if we get a little setlist going, there's no reason we couldn't do it. The songs are a lot of fun, and once again, they're all very rocking. They're very party, good-time music, which is what we stand for on the Jericho Cruise. It's definitely not something we haven't spoken about, for sure.
On whether Kuarantine is a real band, not a side project:
Chris Jericho: I never do anything small, so I said "Let's take it to the streets and see if in the middle of a pandemic we can start a band playing obscure 80s KISS songs and get it on the radio." Which is exactly what we did. It just starts off as a thing between friends and we realized that there was a market for something new, especially this kind of good-time rock & roll in this day and age.
When there's not a lot of bands putting new material out, because you can't tour on it, we're kind of the best case version of what a band can do... Since there was such a great reaction and we had so much fun doing one, let's do another and see where it goes from there.
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