English rock legends The Kinks released “Father Christmas” in 1977. The upbeat, holiday classic tells the story of a mall Santa who gets mugged by working class kids for his money. The kids want Father Christmas’ cash, and they tell him to leave the toys “to the little rich boys.”
Back in 2019, Chris Jericho and the Christmas Helves (comprised of a group of Tampa-area musicians) released their spot-on cover version of the tune. Proceeds from the song went to the JDRF for research for juvenile diabetes.
Jericho spoke with Paste Magazine at the time and explained why he chose to cover the tune.
“Obviously it’s a great song,” Jericho said. “More importantly it represents what I was looking for and why I wanted to do a Christmas song in the first place is there’s not a lot of Christmas songs you can listen to. There’s a good handful but I wanted to contribute my own because, more importantly, I know you’ll get airplay at least once a year if you do a Christmas song. Because every year somebody’s doing their Christmas special, “Johnny’s Rockstar Christmas Special” and you always hear the same songs over and over again because there’s not a lot of options. So “Father Christmas” is a great tune. I love ‘70s Kinks, I think it’s a very underrated era for an underrated band. It’s a great tune that fits my vocal style, the attitude is great, and it wasn’t overly covered to wear people have heard it a million times before. It ticked all the boxes of what I was looking for when I decided to do a Christmas tune.”
The AEW star and FOZZY frontman continued: “The original song, he sings a very dirty, 1977, English punk style, which sounds great, and I just knew fit the way I sing. And also as well, make it more of a rock ‘n’ roll version, I could nail that. So it turned out that my instincts were correct and it really was kind of a perfect song. It’s fun to sing, too. And also not the easiest song to sing. That’s what I love about covering other band’s songs, is that you think you know a band’s songs until you actually try to play it. There’s a lot of intricate stuff here, inflections I’ve never noticed, attitude here that I’d never heard before, so you get a new appreciation for the song and for the songwriter.”
Check out Jericho’s cover version of the song below and compare it to the original. And from everyone at Web Is Jericho, we hope you have a Merry Christmas and a killer New Year!
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