Check out this transcript of a phone interview between Godsmack frontman Sully Erna and Arthur magazine editor Jay Babcock!
I don’t know anything about Godsmack, but I gather they sell a ton of records and they seem to have licensed a couple of their songs to the US Army for recruiting commercials.
Babcock used a routine phone interview to confront Erna with some uncomfortable truths about the world, and Erna seemed unhappy about being called to account.
An excerpt:
JAY: …I have a quote from you here: “We’ve always been supportive of our country and our president, whereas a lot of people I thought” — and you said this in 2003, to MTV News, you said — “a lot of people I thought lashed out pretty quickly at what we did and I thought the government did everything pretty cleanly and publicly as possible.”
SULLY: Yeah‰ÛS?
JAY: Well, what are you talking about?
SULLY: That was my opinion at the time. The whole war thing, and trying to keep us up to date like‰ÛS If you remember, back in other wars, we didn’t have the opportunity to follow it through the media, and CNN, and the news‰ÛÓlive updates and that kind of thing. And I thought that for the most part you know we were allowed to follow it as best we could through the media sources that were feeding us information.
JAY: [incredulous] You didn’t think the media was being controlled by the military?
SULLY: Well, it could be. I don’t know.
JAY: You didn’t look into it?
SULLY: Listen. Are you a fucking government expert?
JAY: I’m not telling people to go join the military and then not knowing what the military is doing.
SULLY: I don’t tell people to go join the military!!
JAY: You don’t think using your songs — the POWER of your music, which you were talking about — has an effect on the people that hear it when it goes with the visuals that the best P.R. people in the world use?
SULLY: Oh man, are you like one of those guys that agrees with some kid that fuckin’ tied a noose around his neck because Judas Priest lyrics told him to?
JAY: You were telling me how powerful your music was, and what age the people are that listen to it, and you must have thought, “Well the Navy sure thought it was useful,” so you tell me.
SULLY: Hey, listen. The Navy thought‰ÛS. It’s the same reason why wrestlers work out to the music, and extreme motorcross riders listen to the music and do what they do. It’s ENERGETIC music. It’s very ATHLETIC. People feel that they get an adrenaline rush out of it or whatever, so, it goes with whatever’s an extreme situation. But I doubt very seriously that a kid is going to join the Marines or the US Navy because he heard Godsmack as the underlying bed music in the commercial. They’re gonna go and join the Navy because they want to jump out of helicopters and fuckin’ shoot people! Or protect the country or whatever it is, and look at the cool infra-red goggles.
JAY: You said to MTV, “We’re not a very political band but we’re supportive of the U.S. military and how they approach things.”
In his endnote, Babcock supplies footnotes to support the things he says to Erna in the interview – Erna’s own words and other facts. Babcock concludes:
I suppose to a degree it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but‰ÛS lives are on the line. People need to be held accountable. I’ve been trying to interview this band since 2003. I finally got my chance. It’s stimulated a ton of discussion — check out blabbermouth.net’s various threads, or the number of blogs and rock news sites that are now picking this up, or the comments below, or the endless barrage of juvenile hatemail we’ve been receiving ‰ÛÓ and it’s embarassed the band into silence on the issue, which is better than the jingoism they’d been spouting previously.
Finally: Please keep in mind that Sully is a MILLIONAIRE living in a comfortable life. His band is using their music to help recruit poor, under-educated, foolish, impressionable kids into the military at a time of worthless, pointless war, the consequences of which we — all of us — will be feeling for the rest of our lives. If he doesn’t care to discuss this ‰ÛÓ all of this ‰ÛÓ he shouldn’t do interviews‰ÛS especially with anti-war publications.
The whole transcript and supprting documentation are well worth a read. Thanks to Barry Smolin at KPFK for directing my attention to this story.
I‰Ûªm currently writing a paper on controversial television advertising. Ironically I am related to the Ad Exec responsible for putting that song in the Army commercial.(this is not why I‰Ûªm writing the paper, merely a coincidence.) I am also an honorable vet that served during Desert Storm as well as a fan of Godsmack(their live show is awesome) Anyhow, I digress, when the music for that commercial was being tested the Ad Exec responsible (who by the way is 58 yrs old) had no clue who Godsmack was or is. She was handed a CD with several song from various artists and was asked to pick one. She chose that song solely on its energy. You have to admit Godsmacks music has a lot of energy. A commercial is meant to sell a product. The Army was selling a product too‰ÛSthemselves. Would you rather be defended by an Army whose background music for their commercial is high energy and motivational one? Or, would you feel more at ease being defended by an army whose song is a catchy little jingle you catch yourself humming while you pick daisies? Lay off Godsmack. You articles portray you as a person looking to argue for the hell of it. That does not make a good journalist. If you want to attack someone for the use of the music, or you want to find out why it was used…go to the ad agency that produced/made the commercial. I’m sure you’ll find a much more interesting story. This interview was seriously lame. Please don’t tell me you have any type of degree in journalism. That would be quite an embarrassment