GODSMACK RETURNING TO ROCK ON THE RANGE
Shannon Larkin doesn’t care if you don’t like his music as long as the contempt has some panache.
“If you’re going to hate it, hate intelligently,” said Larkin, the drummer in heavy-metal band Godsmack, which will perform on Sunday at Rock on the Range.
Unlike lead singer Sully Erna, who would rather stick strictly to music, Larkin gladly scrolls through online comments to see what the haters say.
He pauses to read the ones with detailed explanations of disdain. The only ones that sting, he said, are the ones that call the band a sellout.
“We don’t need to sell out; we’ve sold millions of records. We have money and fame,” he said. “We could have made a death-metal record, and it wouldn't affect our wallets.”
Fans called Godsmack a sellout when the band made its heaviest record, “Oracle,” eight years ago,
and they called Godsmack a sellout again with its most melodic record, this year’s “When Legends Rise.”
Making new records 20 years into a robust rock career often requires juggling what old fans want and keeping new fans engaged.
Larkin said the band long ago let the juggling balls fall to the ground.
They focus on pushing their work forward, ignoring those who would prefer the band to sound exactly as it did in 1998.
“When Legends Rise” features the first songs with synthesizers, and the track “Under Your Scars” opens with a gentle piano melody line and strings, previously unheard of in Godsmack music.
“You wouldn’t believe the time we spent on that to make sure it’s not cheesy sounding like the Scorpions in 1984,” Larkin said.
The more-polished sound is also due to bringing in several outside songwriters to freshen up Godsmack’s heartfelt (and often heartbreaking) lyrics.
Still, Larkin says, the result isn’t as divergent from early material as online commenters think.
“I attribute it a lot to we are all 50,” said Larkin, 51. "We definitely don’t want to be that band that is trying to be something we’re not. I like to say we still have aggression and youth in our bones, but we have to face that we’re all pretty happy guys now.”
Until two years and three months ago, Larkin wouldn’t have described himself as anything close to happy.
He drank too much but functioned well. No one told him he might have a problem.
After an inebriated ride on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle led to an accident, he checked himself into Recovery Unplugged, a rehab center founded by Aerosmith collaborator Richie Supa.
Larkin spent a month at the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, location, where he learned to look deeper into his subconscious.
“I don’t care if it’s Satan or that freaking lampshade over there," he said. "Whatever you feel you can look to as a higher power that’s greater than you and find that inside of you, then you’ll start to realize drugs and alcohol are extracurricular activities, even in rock 'n' roll.”
He now sits with the band while they take shots of tequila and doesn’t bat an eye.
Not only is he more content, but Larkin — a longtime student of the occult — finds that he’s able to remember the
information when he reads books on magic such as “The Tree of Life.”
"I did a lot of (reading) in my hotel rooms at night, drunk, and I loved it, but the knowledge would go away,” he said. “Now that I’m sober, I’m retaining all this beautiful knowledge. It made me feel smart again.”
Larkin’s mysticism also allows him to remain limber and focused while performing.
He practices yoga before shows and tries to stretch afterward. The breathing exercises connected to the practice are supposed to connect consciousness and unconsciousness, and Larkin admits he once had an outof-body experience onstage.
While playing with his blues-rock side project — The Apocalypse Blues Revue, which he founded six years ago with Godsmack guitarist Tony Rombola — Larkin felt as if he was floating above the band. A few seconds later, he returned to earth.
His explanation for the strange phenomenon: “What we perceive to be illusion is reality.”
Unless, of course, you call him a sellout.