Lawrence Loves Godsmack

Every town and city seems to hang on to their home-grown celebrities. Boston's got those we're proud to call Bostonians and those we'd rather dismiss. Lawrence, Mass. is home to Godsmack front man Sully Erna. The key to the city is symbolic these days, it really doesn't open any locks. Theoretically it gives you an "in" however. The bloggers at AOL's music blog reported earlier this month on the ceremony:

Erna, who spent his formative years in the Merrimack Valley town, was presented the key -- which he resisted using to key the pickup trucks of those guys who tormented him in high school -- at a ceremony on Tuesday [January 16]. Erna got all teary-eyed when accepting the award -- an honor that was arranged by Lawrence City Councilman Nunzio DiMarca, who reminisced that "[even] when he was washing dishes at my brother's restaurant, he's always been a very polished young man."

These nice words from a hometown city who the singer himself described on the website for his soon-to-be-released memoirs The Paths We Choose as

I remember [Lawrence] 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.

Tune in during 2012 when Staind's singer Aaron Lewis gets the key to Longmeadow.

HT onward. Bomb.