Godsmack’s hard-living frontman, Sully Erna, comes clean about addiction, infidelity, and other rock-star perks.
Living in Sin with Sully Erna
It should have been a year of celebration for Sully Erna. Godsmack had just finished a year on the road opening for Metallica; their 2003 record, Faceless, went platinum; and their acoustic follow-up EP, The Other Side, wasn’t far from going gold.
But 2005 was hell. Erna almost lost his girlfriend, nearly broke up the band, and experienced the kind of writer’s block that can drive a songwriter to suicide. But near the year’s end, he began to sort out his life. With help from an unexpected source, he poured his desperation and dishonesty into writing. Taking a backseat to his traditional role as the band’s sole writer and composer, Erna focused squarely on his lyrics this time and gave his bandmates room to write, making Four Godsmack’s most diverse record.
What could possibly bring a rock star back from years of heavy partying and a near nervous breakdown? Ask Sully.
The lyrics on Four are candid and confessional. What inspired them?
Sully: The year 2005 was, by far, the worst fucking year of my life. My relationship went through some intense hiccups and got really funky. We’d split up for a while, then get back together. The only good that came out of it was [that] it was a real strong year for cleansing. I quit smoking and even quit drinking for eight months, which was a real accomplishment for me.
Were you a heavy drinker before that?
Sully: I was full-blown. Me and [our drummer] Shannon [Larkin] would go through two cases of beer and at least a bottle and a half of whisky a night. For every show, we’d have a case of Pedialyte on our rider because if you drink a bottle of that, the hangover’s gone. Before you go onstage you drink a bottle of wine, the buzz kicks in, and you’re ready to roll. After the show I’d drink heavily again, and that would lead to other shit, and I’d end up sleeping with two or three women a night. It became a vicious cycle.
Did the binge drinking ever cause a life-threatening situation?
Sully: Going through Europe, I would wake up at seven or eight in the morning and have my hand on my pulse. I would fall asleep to my heartbeat because I felt like it was going to stop, it was beating so slow. That’s how scared I got. It was a really weird, gross feeling.
Were you doing drugs, too?
Sully: No. We’ve never been into the drug thing. We all got through that at a much younger age. The drinking was definitely the demon in my life out there. It was just very excessive — and we learned from the best, hanging out with Dimebag [Darrell] and the Pantera boys. That just kicked it to a whole other level. Once you get them as mentors, your expectations are a lot higher when you’re out there partying.
What triggered you to quit boozing?
Sully: It was a cumulative thing: the lying, the dishonesty, the feeling crappy every night. You go out. You play the show. You hit the bottle. You’re drunk. The chicks are back there. The party’s back there. You’re the spotlight of the whole thing, and you get consumed by that. Next thing you know, you wake up the next morning and you’ve got some stranger in your bed who you don’t give a fuck about, and you can’t wait for her to get the fuck out of there. Then the next night you do it again. And it’s a new chick, so you go, “Oh, she’s hot. I haven’t fucked her yet.”
What’s so bad about tipping the bottle and banging groupies?
Sully: It’s crazy out there. The Faceless tour was awful. There were times when there were 40 or 50 people jammed on the bus. My bus used to be nicknamed the Combat Zone. It was ridiculous. It’s drinking, it’s women, it’s fucking rock ’n’ roll and getting lost in that world.
But that’s every guy’s fantasy.
Sully: There’s a vision you have [early on] about what it’s like to be a rock star. When you jump into it and start to live it, you’re like, Cool, this is what I wanted to do. Then all of a sudden, it consumes you and turns into this awful fucking creature. You [start to] feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. There’s no satisfaction in it, and it becomes an addiction. In the end, I came clean with my old lady and told her about every fucking girl I ever cheated on her with.
What was that like?
Sully: It was awful, but I couldn’t deal with the lies and the covering up, and lying to lie, and lying because you forgot what you lied about. For years, I fuckin’ made my girlfriend think she was the biggest exaggerator, liar, and drama queen there was because I was so good at covering my shit and telling her I was out there working my ass off, and making her feel guilty.
How did she react?
Sully: I think intuitively she knew. She just needed to hear it come out of my mouth. She broke down and took it like a champ, cried, and walked away. It never got to the point of eye-scratching and kicking in the balls. It was more like I broke her heart, and it was one of the saddest things I ever had to deal with.
Was that the end of your relationship?
Sully: I was lucky. Most women would have gone, “That’s it, you’re done.” I rightfully deserved that, but she chose to put that aside and work through shit. It’s been getting a lot better since then.
Couldn’t you have just stopped sleeping around without telling her you cheated on her?
Sully: No. I had to tell her. Before I did it, I went to the Arizona desert for two weeks and worked with these Native American medicine men to heal and tune me back in, because I was so stressed and I felt like I was going to snap. I never went out there with the intention of coming back and coming clean with my girlfriend. I would have taken that to my grave, but something happened. Here I was, asking for help through a higher power, and the next thing I know it just runs through my head on the plane ride home. And I went, That’s it. I’m coming clean with her. I’m gonna tell her everything.
How did you find the shamans?
Sully: When we were on the Awake tour [in 2001], we brought in a counselor because the band was fighting a lot and drinking a lot. We were wrecked from touring four years straight, and we came very close to breaking up. During that process, I went away to a retreat to try to get centered and get in tune with myself and become “de-rock-star-ized.” This lady I was working with introduced me to some great people in Tucson, Arizona, and one of them was a Native American medicine man.
What kind of rituals did you participate in?
Sully: They did stuff with sweat lodges, where you go into a teepee and they bring in really hot volcanic rocks. It becomes about 25 times hotter than any sauna. It breaks you down from man to spirit form. It’s what the warriors did back in the day when they prepared for battle. So I went in there for two hours and it was pitch black, and when I came out, I just collapsed. I had no energy left in my body. They also did drumming and prayers and chants to cleanse you and get rid of negativity. I came out a lot more in tune with the earth and the universe.
Are you into Native American spirituality now?
Sully: I really like it a lot. Maybe I was a Native American in another life. It’s very similar to witchcraft, which I have been studying and practicing for well over a decade, and which I have several degrees in. The two complement each other really well.
Was your relationship with the band affected by your new spirituality?
Sully: It made me feel very distant from them. I started thinking, Man, do I even want to do this? Are these the guys I want to spend the rest of my life with? I had all this weird shit going through my head.
“You wake up and you’ve got some stranger in your bed who you don’t give a fuck about. The next night you do it again. It’s a new chick, so you go, ‘Oh, she’s hot. I haven’t fucked her yet.’”
But then you returned to Los Angeles and started writing. Did Four’s confessional lyrics come easily?
Sully: No. It was the toughest record I’ve ever written. I had never opened myself up that way before. I had never gone through those kinds of emotions. I remember calling my manager and the band and going, “I’m done. I think I’m out, because I don’t have anything to write about. I don’t have anything left inside of me.” It was the first time in my life when I felt like a walking zombie. Months went by like that. The guys were banging out ten, 20, 30 songs, and I had nothing because I didn’t know what I had to talk about anymore. I wasn’t going to do an “Oh, it’s been a terrible relationship” kind of record again, because I did that on the first two records. And I dealt with all my addictions on my third record.
How did you break out of that?
Sully: I decided to write about the environment I had been living in and how it was such a bad place to be, and such a fake life. I came up with “Livin’ in Sin,” which was the first song I wrote for the record, and it really opened the floodgates. After that, I knew exactly where I was going. It would be about coming clean and realizing that I’d lived a life of sin, but there’s hope on the other side and there are better places to go.
Was the creative process different this time?
Sully: I’ve always written most of the material, then worked it out with the band. But with this, I detached myself from the process for a long time and just let the guys write the music, so it would feel really different than our other stuff. Also, we recorded it playing all together as a band instead of tracking all our parts separately.
What songs did you walk into the studio with?
Sully: When we were on the road we brought a little eight-track recorder with us, so we were always throwing down ideas. The guys really started to dig in when we did a yearlong tour with Metallica. We had 15 to 18 songs written before we even got into the rehearsal room, and 30 by the time we went into the studio.
What does the record’s title, Four, mean?
Sully: When we were at the height of hooking up with girls every night, if one walked by who wasn’t so hot, our old head of security used to hold up four fingers, meaning she’s a four out of ten. It just became a thing.
Now that you’re clean and monogamous, what do you plan to do for kicks on the road?
Sully: Man, it’s way too premature to know. I’m definitely going to take someone out on the road with me who’s gonna keep me in shape and keep my mind clear, whether it’s a boxing instructor or a physical trainer or a nutritionist. I want somebody who I can work with every day because I get very bored after I tour for too long, and I can easily get back into the wrong things if I have nothing else to do.
You must still have some vices.
Sully: I play poker for, like, 50 hours a week. I’ve been in some championships. I’ve taken down some serious players and worked my way into the world poker tours. I’m not a champion yet, but I’ll take down one of them someday.
We would mention that we found it interesting that Mr. Sully Erna went from poke her to poker, but of course that would be beneath us, so we will not. We will mention that — perhaps because of cleaning up their off-stage proclivities — Godsmack remains active and creative. They also have some of the greatest album covers ever, so you might want to check those out, even if you find the music a bit outside your comfort zone.
