Godsmacked

Godsmack has begun their assault on America. Within a short amount of time you will not be able to escape, they will be everywhere. "Whatever," the first release from the group’s self-titled major label debut album, has been ruling rock radio and MTV for several months now and the second release, "Bad Religion" has solidified Godsmack in the minds of those who like the rock.

The four piece band out of Methuen, Massachusetts will be taking it on the road on this summer’s OzzFest Tour along with Black Sabbath, The Deftones and Primus. I talked with Sully (vocals) and Tony (guitar) while they were taking a quick couple of days off in New York City between there current tour.

 

  How’s the album doing? 

Sully: Great, it’s doing great. We just went gold, we got our plaques last night, it was pretty exciting.

 

  So you guys are from the Boston area. 

Tony: I lived just north of Boston, right on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire line.

Sully: I grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts and now I live in Salem, New Hampshire.

 

 What was the scene like when you guys were getting started. 

 Sully: There wasn’t a big music scene. In Boston it was kind of dead at the time, but Powerman 5000 was doing something, and soon after that, they got signed and left the area. There’s a band called Bad Mother Seed that was pretty good, and some other different kind of alternative bands. Boston went through kind of a drought for a while. I think that was a blessing in disguise for us to slide into this void. I think something was missing.

 

  And you guys kind of filled it? 

Sully: Yeah maybe, I’m not really sure how is all worked out but I know that the music scene was just not happening at the time.

 

  Were the clubs in the area open to having live music or was it more a DJ kind of thing? 

Tony: They were doing both.

Sully: We just took a 60 mile radius and beat the shit out of it. We made as much noise in New England as possible, rather than trying to venture out. The thing we wanted to do is just make as much noise in our area as possible and eventually we started attracting record labels and managers. We were selling out clubs in the area and selling 1,000 records a week on our own and it created a really good hype for us in New England. Plus WAAF, a local radio station, picked us up, and between it all—them picking us up and helping us out, the radio spinning one of our songs for like a year, and being picked up a local record chain called Newbury Comics that distributed our record before we had anything going on—it just started snowballing. The radio play would trigger better live shows and the live shows would trigger better sales.

 

  So nation wide you guys are starting to be received really well? 

Tony: Yeah, at first when we came out, the radio play wasn’t happening, it was almost like starting over in different areas.

 

  They’re playing the shit out of you guys here. 

Sully: Where are you out of?

 

  We’re in Chico, it’s about an hour north of Sacramento. 

Sully: Yeah we’ve played Sacramento, like, three times now.

Tony: That was one of our earliest markets. That was one of our first markets that we went to and it was huge.

 

  How active are you guys on the www.godsmack.com site? 

Sully: I haven’t been lately. We’re letting go of the guy that’s been running it right now ‘cause he’s been slacking. We’re in the midst of hiring another company, it’s having some downtime right now but when it comes back it’s gonna be super hot. These guys are going to be doing the newest, coolest stuff on Web sites.

Sully: I want to do a memory lane link, with pictures of us from the beginning ‘till now; pictures of us doing different things, hanging out at a party, backstage shit or what the band looked like in the beginning or what the band is doing now.

 

  Do you feel a different connection with your fans through the internet? 

Tony: It’s good and bad—it’s more accessible for merchandise, and it’s good finding out where a band is playing. But if you remember in the early and mid ‘70s when bands like Zeppelin and Aerosmith were happening, they were fucking rock stars, you didn’t know what there voice sounded like, you didn’t know what they looked like. Any picture you could scrap up out of a magazine you would paste it up in your locker or whatever. You’d cherish the thing. If I ever found a picture of Joe Perry I would hang on to that thing with my life. It’s kind of a cool thing, those guys were doing it without all that and now people don’t even need to go to a live show, they could just get the video on the computer and watch it live or whatever.

 

  So Godsmack will never do a net show? 

Sully: No, I don’t think so. I’m not into that, unless they make us.

 

  How’d you guys get hooked up with Universal? 

Sully: They actually tracked me down in my bedroom when all the shit was going down with us. Luckily we had just hired Paul Geary, who is our manager, at the time. He used to be the drummer for Extreme. We just got him on board, so I ended up pawning the phone call off to him. He’s really been responsible for taking this thing to another level.

 

  How is the tour going? 

Sully: We’re just about at the end of this leg, we have a couple more dates left then we’re taking a week or two off and then we’re doing OzzFest.

 

  Sweet, are you pretty fired up for that? 

Tony: Yeah, we’re really psyched for it.

 

  Are you big Ozzy fans? 

Tony: Yeah me and Sully are.

Sully: It’s not Ozzy though, it’s Black Sabbath—the original lineup.

Tony: That’s actually even bigger for us because I grew up on Black Sabbath.

 

  How influential was Black Sabbath in your playing? 

Tony: It definitely shaped how I play today. That stock, heavy sounding guitar.

 

  Who else is going to be at the OzzFest with you? 

Tony: Primus, Deftones, Rob Zombie and a whole bunch of other bands. 

  What’s on schedule after OzzFest? 

Sully: The day after we’re doing the last day at Woodstock ’99.

Tony: Then we’re going to Europe for three weeks. Then we’ll be back, headlining at theaters promoting Rock Against Racism. It’s a rumor right now, but the Jim Rose Circus might open up for us.

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