About The Paths We Choose

We can’t promise a night out with Sully, but his long-awaited new book offers you a truly authentic Sully experience.  The book is called The Paths We Choose, and it’s not about being a rock star or his life on the road.  It’s about his life growing up, and all the struggling, suffering, and sinning along the way.  It’s about the good times, and the time he almost gave it all up.  It’s about the people he loves and the ones who betrayed him, the bands he lived for and the mistakes that seemed like good ideas at the time.  But most of all, it’s about his never-ending passion for music.

“The Lawrence I remember was full of murderers, thieves, and rapists—and half the time those people were your next-door neighbors,” Sully writes of his childhood hometown in the tough Boston suburb.  He goes on to tell matter-of-fact tales of flying bullets, grade-school pot smoking, an outrageous seven-hour police chase, and much more.

Despite the danger and excitement of the streets, Sully’s world really revolved around music.  From the day he convinced his mom to pay for drum lessons, “beating the skins” was all he ever wanted to do.  When his father insisted that music should be nothing but a hobby, Sully made up his mind to prove him wrong.

As he grew older, Sully began devoting all his energy to one band after another, but each eventually fizzled.  Life became even more unpredictable.  His successes were equally matched by his frustrations. Pretty soon he learned that he’d need more than talent and passion to succeed; he also had to know who to trust.  For Sully, this meant only his family and a few close friends he still calls his brothers.

Sully couldn’t resist beautiful blondes, and his affairs with them were intense and often unstable.  Already outwardly hardened, he couldn’t open up.  Those bottled-up emotions, combined with his high-adrenaline lifestyle, seemed bound to catch up with him—and did.  In his book, Sully delves deep into the emotional struggles that almost forced him to give up his dream.

However at home Sully might seem as the lead singer of a hard-rocking, Grammy-nominated band, he is confidently aware that musical fame was never a given—that he could just as easily have gone on being “another punk on the streets.”  His success with Godsmack only came by an unlikely combination of talent, sweat, lucky breaks, and hard falls.  And as he could tell you, any one of his decisions along the way could have brought him to a dead end. 

But that just might be the whole point.  Sully’s story shows that whatever hardships we may face, ultimately, our choices determine our destiny.  He’s made the most of every advantage and obstacle he has faced, and reminds us that we can, too. 

Not that Sully considers today’s accomplishments his ultimate destination.  With the release of IV, the band proves its commitment to the future, just as with his new memoir, Sully shows us that for him, every day brings a new fork in the road—another path to choose.

The Paths We Choose is Available on February 7.