Still, Sully’s mother made it work and even managed to provide him with his first drum set when he was 5 years old.

“Watching your dad play in bands, watching practice and all that, you start to go, ‘Hey, I wanna play that drum thing.’ So that’s how it started for me. Then I used to beg my parents to take lessons so finally they found someone who would teach me that young. I just started going from there and never quit.”

Sully’s first signed band was Strip Mind, a thrash metal band he drummed for. They recorded one album for Sire/ Reprise Records in 1993, What’s in Your Mouth. It was not the rock ‘n’ roll career Sully had dreamed of. At the time he was going through problems at home, wasn’t showing up for practices, and was ultimately thrown out of the band because they didn’t feel he was dedicated. The band then self-destructed.

“If I was just to sIt behInd the drum
set agaIn and be nothIng more than a
drummer, I’d be lImItIng myself.
I want to contInue to learn and grow.
I don’t want to go backwards.”.
— Sully

A mountain of sound

“I was 25 when I was done with Strip Mind. Then I quit music. I was done. I didn’t want to play. I put my drums away. I’d been on the road since I don’t know how young. I was just tired of the whole thing. I was looking at myself like, Jesus, I’m 25 years old, I have no job, no life, no f-----g girlfriend, I’m sleeping on my sister’s couch, all my other friends got apartments and cars and they’re all partying and I don’t even got five bucks to buy a pack of cigarettes.”

After that Sully cut his hair and got a job, intending to become a proper citizen.

“Then when I was 27 I started getting the itch. I called Robbie [Merrill] and asked him, you know, let’s do some writing and whatever, we’ll just keep it in the studio and make it fun, no strict obligations, no practicing eight hours a day.”

After Merrill, Sully brought in Lee Richards on guitar. That was the initial spark of Godsmack.

“Then I couldn’t find a singer because everybody was still singing really high, like Queensryche. I wanted something with a bit more of a growl. I was a big fan of Metallica and stuff like that, so I just decided to try it. I sucked for a long time, until I got my voice to a place where I liked it and it started to work for the band. It kept evolving from there. That’s kind of the story in a nutshell.”

Almost. While touring with Strip Mind, Sully had met drummer Tommy Stewart, who was in a band called Lillian Axe. Tommy played with Godsmack for a year, decided things weren’t moving quickly enough and moved back to Los Angeles. Then Richards quit to raise the 2-year-old son he’d just discovered he had. Merrill brought in Tony Rombola on guitar, and Sully found drummer Joe Darko, though just as the band was about to sign, a last minute drum change was made. Darko was not the right man for the job.

“At that point the band was about to get its record deal. We’d been in it for three years and it was right there. We talked to Tommy and told him what was going on, [we] didn’t want to be held up and blow the deal, start looking for drummers and all that, we figured it was a sure thing. We knew he was a strong player, so we brought him back.”

Tommy Stewart played with them for two albums, Godsmack and Awake . In interviews surrounding Stewart’s