Sevendust Guitarist John Connolly Plays ‘Would You Rather?’
While Sevendust were on tour in promotion of their latest disc, 'Time Travelers and Bonfires,' we caught up with guitarist John Connolly before the band's show in New York and he graciously agreed to play a game of 'Would You Rather?' with Loudwire. Check out his intriguing answers below:
Would you rather be really late for the show or mess up onstage? Why.
I’d rather mess up onstage. I mess up onstage all the time. Messing up onstage is funny, if you do it and you’re very gracious about how you go about doing it and if you can repeat it you can actually turn it into a part. Messin’ up sometimes that’s where the magic happens, sometimes the accident is where the coolness of the song comes into play. You’d be surprised at how many demos I listened back to where it’s like, “That note was completely wrong but it was amazing,” and then you write a whole song around that concept. Being late, no because you can't ever get it back. If they’re out there jamming without you that really sucks. [Laughs]
Would you rather have lunch with a music icon who has passed away or a musician who isn’t an icon just yet? (Who would it be and why?)
Wow, the future one is kind of tough because you’re trying to predict. I don’t know, it would be really easy to say an older one because you get to pick their brain and learn stuff. But it would be cool to sit down with someone like Justin Timberlake, he’s about five years away from taking over the world. [Laughs] He’s doing whatever he wants to do, it’d be cool to just sit down with him for a minute.
The reason I throw his name out there is because our bus driver actually drives for him when he’s not out driving for us. It seems like his work ethic is amazing, he takes all of his own meetings and handles all of his business, on-site and at the venue. He’s up out of the bus, he’s working all day long, doing meet and greets, then back on the bus to the next town. You look at someone like Justin Timberlake and then you look at someone like [Justin] Bieber and it’s like this is what you should do when you have all this talent and this is what you shouldn’t do.
Would you rather be an ‘80s rock band in present day or would you rather be Sevendust in the ‘80s?
Wow. I would love to be Sevendust in the ‘80s. We would absolutely freak people out. They wouldn’t have any idea what to think because most of what we’re influenced by is ‘80s and early and mid ‘90s to get to where we were. For every Warrant song Clint [Lowery] knew there was an Alice in Chains song Vinny [Hornsby] or Morgan [Rose] knew or a Jane’s Addiction song that I knew. Yeah, we would freak people out because this would have been before Korn before Rage Against the Machine before any of that. Before Pantera! We would have superseded our biggest influence, arguably of all time. And then fans would have been “Man Pantera’s rippin’ off Sevendust” -- imagine that? [Laughs]
Would you rather live in a world where people break into song or people break into mosh pits?
Man, mosh pits are a lot of fun but on a huge, massive scale it would have to be breaking out into song. That whole mosh pit thing kind of actually sounds like the holy wars overseas right now. With songs, at least everyone shakes hands and hugs at the end and goes about their way.
Check Out Our Interview With Sevendust Aboard Shiprocked 2014: