GODSMACK, A PERFECT CIRCLE, MÖTLEY CRÜE Members Share Halloween Antics

Several hard rock stars recently took time out to spin some holiday tales with Launch Radio Networks.

GODSMACK drummer Shannon Larkin and vocalist Sully Erna recall one Halloween show where everything just went wrong...

Shannon: "We went to play in New Orleans, which Sully has a real weird stigma there. Of course we go to go onstage and half the mics aren't working, and it was just, we're all dressed, I'm dressed like a girl. And so we're standing there ready to rock, and all of a sudden, 'Oh, but we don't have enough mics for the drums'...I mean, all this crap went down..."

Sully: "Shannon was in a bra and a skirt and really bad lipstick. He looked like a Catholic schoolgirl from 'Slaughter of the Living Dead' or something."

TOOL/A PERFECT CIRCLE frontman Maynard James Keenan said one of his favorite Halloween costumes ever was a recent outfit with a timely political theme: "I dressed up like Dick Cheney a couple of years ago, and it was a pretty good costume. So I basically tried to go into the bar where I live and they stopped me and said that if I'm not gonna be in costume, that I had to pay a cover."

CHEVELLE drummer Sam Loeffler recalls how his band faced one especially tough Halloween crowd by going incognito. "One year, I think it was '99, we had a show with SLIPKNOT, and it was on Halloween, and we knew people were just gonna, like, tear us apart. So we all took our shirts off and we put on these executioner hoods, and we played the whole show like that. People had no idea who we were, it was funny."

POWERMAN 5000 frontman Spider One talked about the holiday hijinks he and his older brother, Rob Zombie, used to get up to. "Back when we were kids living in Massachusetts, we used to build these haunted mazes in our basement and charge, like, ten cents for the local kids to come through. You know, you'd jump out and scare them, but we would take it a step further and, like, cause physical harm to them. So they would be coming through the maze already scared, and we'd jump out with the, you know, whiffleball bat and hit 'em in the face or something. Back in the day, you could hurt people — no one cared."

MÖTLEY CRÜE singer Vince Neil will spend Halloween playing at the Verizon Wireless Theater in Houston. He has no problem working on the holiday, and he said his favorite Halloween was when MÖTLEY CRÜE played a show at the Limelight in Chicago: "Everybody was in costumes — I think I was a cowboy. And I just remember that the road crew was so drunk, and our guitar tech, his name was Rudy, and he was dressed as an Indian — the giant, drunken Indian, just falling down and stuff. And, you know, it's cool to play those things when everybody's in costume."