“In America we play five or six nights a week and we’re in a tour bus, and in Australia we’ll be flying between every gig and staying in hotels,” he says. “It’ll be a cool experience, especially for Godsmack because we’ve never played there, although I did do the Big Day Out with my last band, Amen, so I got a little taste of what it’s like to tour that way. It’s not even like work, man. It’s like a vacation. And Down Under in the summer? It’ll be awesome.”
1000hp is a particularly strong release for the band, with an energetic-yet-relaxed vibe and big, crunchy sonics. And in typical Godsmack fashion, it took quite a while for it to come to life. We’re not talking Metallica’s seven years between records, but it’s getting up there.
“If you look at our history we usually take three to four years between records and people always ask, ‘Why so long?’ ” Larkin says. “We’ll tour for up to two years all around the world and then take six to eight months off just to get out of each others’ faces for a while so that when we get back together we’re still hungry and excited and so we don’t burn out. That’s why it takes so long between records for us. And we’re lucky to be able to afford that luxury.”
But this time around, the band adopted a different strategy: whereas previously they would go to a different city to do the record, this time they found a warehouse and converted it into a combined recording studio, rehearsal space and storage facility and kitted it out with the band’s old stage backdrops and memorabilia.
“We really Godsmacked the place out and made it really comfortable. So we wrote the record in this place and we also had Dave Fortman, the producer, come in and set up the recording studio part. So for the first time in our lives we were able to write and record in the same spot. There was no apprehension when the red light went on. We sat there for months writing these songs, so when it was time to record them I was in the exact same spot where we wrote them. And I think we got the most natural recording that we could,” explains Larkin.
“If I look back at past records there’s always something where I say, ‘Oh man, I wish I would have played this differently.’ Or, playing live if I’ve got a fill or a move that I put into a song that came after being so comfortable with the music that I was allowed to take the leash off, well this time, by the time we wrote and started recording there was no leash on us. Everybody reacts enough with the music and the environment we were recording in to be able to really play from the heart.”
Aside from playing for bands like Ugly Kid Joe, Amen, Snot and Godsmack (and some work with Stone Sour), Larkin has the distinction of having played one show as the drummer of Black Sabbath, when then-Sabbath-drummer Mike Bordin had to miss a show due to Faith No More commitments. “That was the highlight of my life, probably,” he exclaims. “One of the first albums I ever heard was a Black Sabbath album, and like 30 years later I got to play a show with them. Robert Trujillo, who’s Metallica’s bass player, at the time he was with Ozzy and I’d met him when he played with Suicidal Tendencies. I was in Ugly Kid Joe and he was really impressed with our singer, Whitfield. Next thing you know, he’s playing with Ozzy and they had to do a make-up show and I was in the right place at the right time.”
But he almost didn’t make it.
“I’d never ridden on a private jet before. I get on and it’s Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ozzy, Joe Holmes and Robert Trujillo. And I’m sitting there with my headphones on, we take off and start flying towards Columbus and all of a sudden it gets really hot. I take my headphones off and Ozzy gets up and goes, ‘It’s fucking hot here, man,’ and smoke starts pouring out of the air conditioning. Then the plane starts to tilt and teeter, and it’s turning around and the captain comes on and says, ‘We have an electrical problem. We’re turning this plane around.’ Everybody’s looking out the window going, ‘Holy fuck,’ and I’m looking out the window going ‘Fuck it. If this plane is going down, I’m a legend. I’m the drummer for Black Sabbath’.”
BY PETER HODGSON
