{"id":1682,"date":"2011-07-18T17:58:14","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T00:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2014-08-01T19:58:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-02T02:58:01","slug":"shannon-larkin-sets-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/?p=1682","title":{"rendered":"Shannon Larkin Sets the Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Godsmack is in your face, kick you in the ass heavy metal. Not only do they not apologize for this, but they embrace it. They are touring and promoting their fifth studio release, the 2010 album, The Oracle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As part of our 2011 Mayhem Festival coverage Amy spoke with Godsmack drummer, Shannon Larkin to promote the upcoming tour stop with the Mayhem Festival \u00a0in Cincinnati at Riverbend Music Center on July 20th<\/sup>. In the interview Shannon discusses the band\u2019s writing process and is happy to set the record straight about crazy rumors with a famous rock star groupie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: I wanted to start with the important questions, I know you love football. What do you think is going to happen with the lockout?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: I can just hope they will play. What do I think will happen? I think they\u2019ll work it out. There\u2019s millions of dollars being lost with all this bullshit. I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll work it out. If not, there will be no pre-season and then the teams will look sloppy as hell. But we will still enjoy football.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: I hope so. They need to practice. At least the Bengals do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: You guys have been playing on the Oracle tour for over a year now with the new album that came out. What\u2019s been the highlight of the tour for you guys?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: The highlight of the tour?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: Yeah<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: Well it\u2019s probably this next leg. This is the biggest tour for The Oracle with this Mayhem Festival thing. This is going to probably be the highlight of it being able to grace the stage with bands like Megadeth, legendary, and Disturbed who are carrying the torch. Machine Head, Trivium, and In Flames have fans that are just killer. This will definitely be the highlight for us in this whole Mayhem tour. And we\u2019re very excited after this, we\u2019re going to go up to Canada where we haven\u2019t toured in like five or six years. We are going to tour Canada for a couple weeks hitting every nook and cranny of Canada and end the thing in Alaska which is always fun, trippy, weird and cool. It\u2019s a very exciting time for us. After that, we\u2019ll take a break over the holidays and get together next year and decide when to go and write the new one. In the meantime, let me just mention that Sully has put a solo record Avalon<\/em> and I think he is going to try to tour the west on that in November and my side project Another Animal<\/em> with Tony and Robbie is going to make a new record also and that is probably what is going to happen after Godsmack\u2019s wheels slow down and stop blowing with Oracle<\/em>. And then we\u2019ll kick ya\u2019lls ass next year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: I just actually photographed Sully\u2019s solo tour, it just came to Columbus a couple weeks ago. It was really cool, interesting. It is a very different vibe than Godsmack. It wasn\u2019t at all what I was expecting. It was an amazing show.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Shannon: Oh cool. Watch out for Another Animal<\/em> baby. We\u2019re coming. Our claws are back out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: I actually thought about you when I was prepping for the interview, I actually saw George Clinton for the first time live this past weekend at the Essence Festival in New Orleans and I know you\u2019re a big George Clinton fan. Are you still playing Funk music? Are you still doing that on the side as well?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: Yeah. Funk is basically the coolest music for a musician to jam with his friends. If you get in a room, like Tony, Robbie, and myself or Tony and Chris, Chris is a bass player and\u00a0Tony\u2019s best friend, and they have been jamming together for over 20 years. They know each other musician-wise like the back of each other\u2019s hand. As a drummer, to play with these two guys is just the sickest thing as a musician. If we can hit one funk rift, we can jam it for like an hour with smiles on our face and tequila in our bellies. It\u2019s the funnest thing ever. I love Funk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: George Clinton just made me smile in general. He cut off all his hair. I didn\u2019t even recognize that it was him at first. It was just an amazing thing to be there, to be a part of. I became a fan instantly, seeing it live.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: It\u2019s just fun right?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: It is fun. That is the word to describe it. It was just fun to be there, fun to be taking pictures, fun to just be in the room.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: It just makes your ass smile.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: Exactly. Every time I watch heavy metal drumming, I am always in awe anyway. It has to be the best workout you can possibly get. How do you stay in shape because it seems like it is really hard on your body?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: My thing is just trying to keep the weight on. I sweat so much with that workout and it\u2019s so hot on stage. Usually if it\u2019s not a thousand lights, then it\u2019s a hundred degrees out. So my biggest problem is that it doesn\u2019t really beat my body up. I just lose weight every night. I eat, believe it or not, I\u2019m a 120 pounds soaking wet and I eat like a horse but the way I play it just burns the calories. My biggest problem is trying to keep the weight on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: Now you\u2019re just making me angry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: I know, I know. It\u2019s crazy. I used to do all these elaborate stretches and all this crap. Now as I get older, I just do a 12 ounce curl, pick up the sticks and walk on stage. It\u2019s getting easier if anything rather than harder for me. I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: After I met you last year, I heard your name mentioned on a VH1 special on famous rock star groupies with Pamela Des Barres based on her book Let\u2019s Spend the Night Together<\/em>. I don\u2019t know if you saw it. It aired about six months ago. They were talking about you being in Arkansas with \u201cSweet\u201d Connie. I said if I talk to Shannon again, I may ask him about how that came about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: You may have to excuse the crudeness here but all I can say about that is, she sucked somebody\u2019s dick that day but it wasn\u2019t mine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: I\u2019m glad you could set it straight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: That was shocking even to me and I\u2019ve had a lot of shit said about me over the years but I figured if I cheat on my wife it\u2019s not going to be with a 60 year old. Evidentially, she is really into drummers. I didn\u2019t see it honestly, but my friends, believe me, all my friends told me \u201cOh my God, you and Keith Moon and John Bonham.\u201d I don\u2019t even know if she blew those guys, but she definitely didn\u2019t blow me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: That\u2019s good to get it straight from you. I was shocked when I saw it. My initial reaction is that there is no way. I know things get crazy on the road, and I\u2019m sure there are many stories through the years but that one did not seem right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: Yeah, I know. Another thing someone told me was she holds up a pair of drumsticks and says they were mine. They were red-tipped drumsticks which I have never played in my life or career. So she, I don\u2019t know, I think she\u2019s just one of those groupies looking for attention and, unfortunately, I was the guy she picked to say that she blew. But not true.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: Well alright, I\u2019m glad we could get the straight story. Have you guys started working on new music on the road at all?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Shannon: Yeah. Well we all have our own handheld recorders and we all are always writing rifts constantly. Tony will play guitar all day long if he\u2019s at home or on tour, he has a guitar in his hand all day. He just plays and plays and plays and rifts come out of him like a machine. He is a machine. So he has a 100 rifts right now ready to go. I do the same thing. Everybody is constantly writing and every Godsmack song starts with a rift. It\u2019s like the soul of the song is the guitar rift. So are we writing, yes. We\u2019re all engaged in it. When we finished recording the Oracle<\/em>, the very next day we were writing for the next one. It\u2019s just a constant, ongoing thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: What can we expect at the Mayhem Festival? What can we expect from Godsmack that night?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: You can expect hard rock, blue collar, kick ass set of heavy ass metal, and a big ass drum solo with me and Sully going head to head. You can expect \u201cForever Shamed,\u201d which is my song of the Oracle<\/em> record and that\u2019s it. There are no bells and whistles on this one. We\u2019re going out there in jeans and t-shirts. We don\u2019t have pyro. We don\u2019t have video. We have amplifiers, guitars, microphones, and drums on the stage and the four of us are going to do our damndest to kick everybody in the face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy: Did you guys have any good moments in Cincinnati from the last tour?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shannon: Yeah, that\u2019s always an energetic crowd and the Riverbend is a killer place to play too. It\u2019s just fun. And people always say, \u201cWhy do you like that city so much?\u201d or \u201cWhy do you like this city so much?\u201d and it\u2019s hard to explain why. It\u2019s just a vibe. Cincinnati always has such a great vibe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Godsmack is in your face, kick you in the ass heavy metal. Not only do they not apologize for this, but they embrace it. They are touring and promoting their fifth studio release, the 2010 album, The Oracle.   As part of our 2011 Mayhem Festival coverage Amy spoke with Godsmack drummer, Shannon Larkin to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,906],"tags":[923,922,1608,921,918,920,1610,205,919],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1685,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefirst3songs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}