Godsmack drummer Shannon Larkin sat down with The Jasta Show and talked about his bandmate Sully Erna and explained why he thinks Erna’s vocals got even better with age.
“He’s one of those dudes, he’s a musician like us, but unlike me, anyway, he can just pick up — like he said, ‘I’m gonna learn to play piano.’ And three years later, he’s f*cking Elton John,” the rocker explained. “That dude could pick up a f*cking saxophone and be Clarence Clemons in two years or something; he’s got that talent. And when he got really good at piano, well, as a vocalist, you also know that piano doesn’t lie. If you’re off a millimeter, it’s very visible. So he got way better as a singer, and his brain’s changed. Everything happened. And most rock singers like Sully, they usually go down as they get older, because it’s your throat. It’s not like our drums or bass or whatever. But he gets better. And so that’s something, man.”
Though Larkin thinks his bandmate gets better day by day, Erna didn’t start his music career as a singer because he was ‘horrible.’ “I was terrible, man; I was a horrible singer. I mean, I’m not even kidding,” he explained during another interview. “When I first did my vocal tracks for the very first few songs that we did, I did all the drum tracks, all the guys did the guitar… all the music was done.”
“And I stepped in the vocal booth and I started singing the first few notes, and I literally watched my bass player walk right out of the studio. I’m, like, ‘Wow! Hang on, dude. I’ll get this.’ But that’s kind of how it evolved, in a nutshell. And then from there, I realized I had a lot of work to do if I was gonna step out and be in front,” the singer added.
The band recently announced a European tour to take place next year. The band will kick off their tour in Sofia, Bulgaria, on March 22nd, before performing in several other European cities, including Budapest, Munich, Berlin, and London. The tour will end with a show in Oberhausen on April 12th.
