FOZZY had the opportunity to open for Iron Maiden in 2019. Guitarist Rich Ward talked about the experience on Knotfest’s Squared Circle Pit.
“That was another one of those things,” Ward said. “As a 13-year-old kid, Iron Maiden was my favorite band. And I’m opening for Iron Maiden — main support. I’m standing on the floor that’s got all of the — you know how everything there is all branded and they’ve got stage props and everything’s behind me. But then I’m trying not to get in the moment too much, because I don’t wanna go, ‘Selfie. Look where I’m at.’ I don’t wanna be that guy because I wanna keep it in check.”
Ward and FOZZY’s interactions with Iron Maiden and also the band’s singer, Bruce Dickinson, have been overwhelmingly positive. But Ward admitted that’s not always the case when it comes to meeting your heroes. He said he makes a conscious effort to stay grounded, no matter what success he or FOZZY may achieve.
“Let’s think about all of the crazy people in the music industry that let that get to them,” Ward said of fame.
“I’ve had lots of bad interactions with famous musicians over the years that I was a fan of, and I tried to meet them because I’m a fan. At my core, I’m still that 13-year-old kid standing in front of a mirror playing guitar. I’m still a fanboy. And I’ve had some bad interactions. And those are always because somebody forgot that they didn’t cure cancer. They forgot that this is a privileged life that entertainers, people in our business have. It could all go away, and it has.”
“You look at bands like Quiet Riot who were the biggest band in the world, and two years later they were playing clubs again. It doesn’t last forever. None of this stuff is guaranteed. And those bad experiences with people have taught me, when somebody comes up to me, as much as I may be embarrassed by the moment of someone’s really wants to meet me and I wanna tell them, ‘It’s okay. just play guitar.’ But I wanna honor that moment by listening to them and stopping what I’m doing to give them that moment, because for them it is important, because I made a song or I was part of something that they enjoyed. And I don’t ever wanna take that away from them. And probably, over the 25 or 30 years, 32 years that I’ve been doing this, I’m sure that I’ve had a bad interaction. But I make it a point, when people try to talk to me, that I never blow it off as insignificant or make it trivial.”
Ward talked about opening for Bruce Dickinson when the legendary Iron Maiden singer was on tour to promote his “Accident Of Birth” record.
“I opened for Bruce Dickinson solo a couple of times with Stuck Mojo,” Ward said.
“One time is the Milwaukee Metal Fest in 1997, I think, and we shared a dressing room with Bruce Dickinson, because it was like a festival common-area thing, and he had come up on stage and jammed with Stuck Mojo, like, eight months earlier. We played the Roseland Ballroom (in New York City). It was us and Fear Factory and Biohazard. It was at CMJ. And Bruce was in town to promote his new album ‘Accident Of Birth’ that was coming out.”
“And we approached him and said, ‘Hey, I know it’s not your song per se, but we do a cover of ‘Wrathchild’, if you’d like to come out and sing it with us.’ And he was, like, ‘Well, I’ve got some things going on. Maybe. Maybe.’ This was sold-out Roseland Ballroom, 3,500 people or whatever. We weren’t the headliner, but we were midway in the pack, probably on at, like, eight or nine o’clock at night. And we went onstage. We were all so nervous. ‘Is he gonna show up?’ We kept looking. It’s the singer for Iron Maiden. It’s my hero. Okay? I’ve seen him so many times from the front row. And after the third song, I looked over, and there he was standing on the side of the stage. And then we introduced him, and he came up and he sang ‘Wrathchild’ with us on stage.”
“And it was the greatest moment of my life up until that moment. I was literally trying to stand next to him as close as I could to him the whole time, as much as he would let me. I was a stalker, grade-A stalker at that point. But when I saw him at the Milwaukee Metal Fest eight months later, and I was backstage, he was, like, ‘Hey, Rich. How’s it going?’ He knew my name. And that meant so much to me that I will never not make those efforts, ’cause there are a lot of young bands that grew up that love Stuck Mojoand FOZZY. Some of ’em are in way bigger bands, but in our world, it doesn’t matter.”
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