Aerosmith’s Joe Perry was born in September 10, 1950. Joe has been a pretty regular fixture in the pages of Guitar Player – the decades of the magazine’s life almost mirroring his life in ‘America’s greatest rock’n’roll band’. In May 2005, Perry was on the cover of GP, looking back over a lifetime of guitar plaing, with thoughtful and insightful takes on Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, live performance, and much more.
It doesn’t take long to figure out when you’ve arrived at Joe Perry’s house. Sure, as the gate to his rural Massachusetts estate opens you know you’re on the property of someone of serious means. And when you head down the driveway and come to a pride of sleek and dangerous-looking European sports cars – as well as a golf cart, which is perhaps an even surer sign of sprawling luxury – the case strengthens that you may be at the residence of a rock icon who has sold more than 100 million albums.
But even when you reach the rustically beautiful main house, you still may wonder if you’re in the right place. After all, this elegant spread could just as well belong to a CEO, a real estate mogul, or even a politician. How do we know this is indeed the home of the legendary Aerosmith guitarist?
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The answer is above you: a custom weathervane that erases all doubts – a big, glorious, rusty iron Les Paul in the sky telling you which way the wind blows.
Taking all this in, one question comes to mind: What if? What if Perry hadn’t reunited with Aerosmith in 1984? What if he and Steven Tyler hadn’t made amends, recommenced touring, and soon thereafter shot the “Walk This Way” video with Run D.M.C. that simultaneously made hip-hop, rap rock, and – once again – Aerosmith mainstream commodities? What if Perry wasn’t in a band that plays the Super Bowl on a semi-regular basis? What if his house wasn’t a virtual Noah’s Ark of vintage amps and guitars?
In other words, does the 54-year-old guitarist ever look back on all that has transpired and thank the stars that he didn’t end up like Uli Jon Roth or Ritchie Blackmore – a legend without the band that made him famous?
“All the time,” confesses Perry, settling down in front of his big Neve console at the Boneyard, the stunning home studio where nearly every note on Honkin’ on Bobo and Just Push Play, the last two Aerosmith albums, was recorded.
“We constantly reflect on the legacy of Aerosmith, and, honestly, we shake our heads in amazement. It’s a miracle that we’re still together after 30-plus years.”
It’s a bittersweet afternoon for Perry. For one thing, it will be one of his last days spent in the Boneyard, at least in its current incarnation. Along with his wife, Billie, and their youngest child, Roman, he and his studio will soon move someplace even more serene – a 120-acre Vermont farm just two hours outside of Boston. But if there’s even greater cause for reflection, it’s because Perry is about to share with GP readers something very close to his heart-something that, so far, no one outside of his inner circle has heard: his first solo release since rejoining Aerosmith.
The album is simply called Joe Perry, and, as the laconic guitarist gives the faders a shove and a raging symphony of soaring, scorching riffs leaps out of the monitors, a hint of joy in his eyes makes it clear that this is perhaps the most passionate, honest, and heartfelt artistic statement of his career. And, wow, is that a different headspace than the one he was in when he tracked his first solo record.
So, how come it has been so long since your last solo album?
Between all the public appearances, touring, and recording, Aerosmith is definitely a full-time job. Plus, I’m getting pretty much everything I want out of the band creatively. But I’ve accumulated so much of my own material concurrently-some of which I recorded after Aerosmith sessions ended-it eventually had to come out. And I didn’t want it to come out somewhere down the road as outtakes in a box set.
What’s the biggest difference between Joe Perry and the solo albums you did during your split with Aerosmith in the early ’80s?
Back then, there was a lot of anger-a lot of “f”** you” toward the other guys. That’s why I didn’t want to call this a Joe Perry Project album. It’s a different time, a different place, and the album was recorded for different reasons.
That was a tenuous time for Aerosmith. And right around then, Eddie Van Halen hit the scene and claimed that when he met you, you brushed him off. Is that true?
At that point, we were definitely going downhill. Our live performances were suffering, we were really messed up on drugs, and we were dealing with the stress and strain of being in the band for nearly ten years. If we had had our wits, we would have taken a nice long vacation and looked at things on a bigger scale. At the same time, Van Halen was starting this new movement in guitar, because Eddie was a genius. He was single-handedly moving guitar to a whole new level. We were the preeminent stadium headliners who were starting to crumble, and here were these young upstarts coming up, just reaching the peak of their game, ready to fill our shoes.
I loved the first Van Halen record from the moment I heard it, and what was amazing about it was that it was full of stuff I’d heard before, yet it all sounded so new…
Joe Perry
I mean, I loved the first Van Halen record from the moment I heard it, and what was amazing about it was that it was full of stuff I’d heard before, yet it all sounded so new. For instance, that Echoplex sound Eddie did [at the end of “Eruption”] was such an old trick that I never would have done it, because I thought it was cheesy. But Eddie was from the next generation, and everything was new to him. And he was playing to a whole new batch of kids that didn’t grow up with that stuff, so it was very smart for him to use tricks like that on top of his naturally brilliant playing.
Suddenly there was this whole West Coast guitar-slinger movement that he started, and it was like, “Man, they ‘re beating on our door.” We were feeling the heat, so, yes, I’m sure there was a certain amount of jealousy going on with us at that time.
The first time I saw Aerosmith was when you had just rejoined the band. The arena was only half full, and you guys seemed visibly angry. To this day, it still stands as one of the greatest rock concerts I’ve ever seen.
We were in various stages of cleaning up, and we were out touring without a new record, but we didn’t care. We were rediscovering our band and seeing things in a new light. We were just as excited as the fans were that we were back – and the fans that came out then were hardcore fans that had been with us since the beginning.
That night, you played a fiery version of “Red House” and then smashed your Stratocaster and hurled the pieces over the back of your stacks.
I haven’t smashed a guitar in a while. It has become a bit of a cliché. But sometimes you do it, and it’s totally unexpected, because you just want to add a certain immediacy to the show-a moment people will walk away with and remember forever.
And if it’s done in the right spirit, you don’t even notice how hard it is to actually break a guitar like that. But you might be surprised the first time you swing one into the floor, because that thing comes back at you like a baseball bat.
Is it possible to have too many guitars?
I currently have four or five hundred, and, truthfully, I’ll never play them all. As much as I love them, I’m getting ready to sell some off. Obviously, I’ll keep the ones that have sentimental or historical value, but there are many that I’d rather have out there getting played than just sitting in a box.
The guitar parts on ‘Joe Perry’ sound immense. How do you get that live arena sound in a small studio?
Well, I certainly don’t drag in my concert rig! People forget that the Marshall stack was designed for the stage in an era when sound systems weren’t very good. Back in the day, when Jimi and the Stones were out there playing, only the vocals and maybe a couple of drums would get miked. The Marshall was essentially a miniature P.A. system for your guitar. It’s supposed to sound loud, it’s supposed to shake the stage, and you’re supposed to feel it when you’re 20 feet away. Though I tend to play quieter and cleaner than I used to, I still need at least two 50- or 100-watt stacks, because I’ll always prefer to feel the guitar coming directly off my amps.
But in the studio, I find smaller speakers and cabinets tend to record better. After all, simple physics dictate that the smaller the speaker, the more sound there is in a concentrated area for the microphone to pick up. For most of Hankin’ on Bobo, I used a little Epiphone amp and an old Fender Champ. Joe Perry is an amalgamation of tracks-some going back as many as ten years-and, yes, a lot of them were performed through small amps, especially an Alessandro 10-watt head and speaker cube, an [Alessandro] Working Dog combo, and a bunch of old Champs. I also used a Carr Mercury combo, Gibson combos old and new, and even a classic Danelectro, among other things.
Rocks was recorded on a 16-track machine, whereas Just Push Play employed as many as 96 tracks. Where does Joe Perry fit into that range?
When you start double- and triple-tracking guitars to get the so-called “fatter” sound, you’re asking for trouble. Some of my favorite records of all time feature one guitar, one speaker, and one microphone. So, ideally, that’s where you want to be. One guitar played right can sound huger than five guitars all multitracked together. The spirit of this record is more like Rocks.
When you’re doing an album like this one-where you’re playing nearly every instrument except the drums-how do you possibly foresee how all your tones, riffs, and vocals are going to fit together?
It’s all about leaving holes in the mix. One of the biggest mistakes people make is getting sounds that sound good on their own, and then expecting them to work in the final mix. If I soloed some of the bass tracks on this record for you, you’d hear nothing but subs and say, “I can’t even tell what note that is.” But when you blend it in with the other parts, it all makes sense.
And the same thing is true for guitars. For example, [Aerosmith co-guitarist] Brad Whitford and I have recorded so many records together that we instinctively know how to complement each other’s sound before the first mic is even set up. That’s what 30 years of songwriting, plotting, and planning will do for you.
There are some fantastic solos on this album. The “Hold on Me” solo opens with an amazingly vocal-like shriek.
That’s me plugged through a DigiTech Whammy pedal and an [HHB Radius3] Fat Man tube compressor. To get that “vocal” sound, you really just have to keep fooling around until you find what you’re after. It’s always a battle to get overdrive and sustain without losing tone. Sometimes you have to bring down the drive so that you’re forced into having to work the guitar a little harder.
How did that strikingly lyrical solo on “Can’t Compare” go down?
That was a shocker. I had just plugged in my [reissue] Mary Kaye Strat, and I said, “Paul, let’s see if we’ve got a sound.” We did a take, and, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever played anything that came from as deep inside as that solo. It’s totally pure, unadulterated, and straight from the heart, and it became a mini-movement within the song. It’s a love song, and the solo is just a pure musical expression of the lyrics.
Getting a great take like that is what just about every guitarist prays for when the red light goes on. Any advice on how musicians can make the magic happen more often?
Sometimes you get tracks like that when you aren’t even aware you’re recording, so perhaps a total dissociation from any kind of pressure is part of it. That’s probably why the coolest licks sometimes happen during a song’s fadeout-it’s like the guitarist is thinking, “Well, the song is over. Now I can relax and cut loose.” On the other hand, sometimes that pressure works for you.
But one bit of practical advice I can offer is to make sure that from the get-go your signal path is always clean. Then, if you do play something magical, you can keep it. You don’t want it ruined by a 60-cycle hum or a standing wave. Even if all you have is a one-channel project studio, make sure that when you cast that net there are no holes in it. And then just let it fly.
“Push Comes to Shove” has a bit of a swung-sixteenths funk pocket.
Yeah, I wanted to have some of that “Last Child”/”Walk This Way” feel on this record because we kind of skipped that vibe on Bobo-which I was little bummed about, because it’s such a big part of Aerosmith’s roots.
In the early to middle ’70s, Aerosmith’s strategy for success was to tour the states constantly. But let’s say Joe Perry was your first album. I imagine your approach to breaking in would be quite different in this day and age.
Not really. We can’t control the internet or cable television, but things really haven’t changed that much. You still have to prove yourself as a live band, and you still have to catch a lucky break somewhere. If you’re tenacious and talented and have good songs-and if you don’t quit if nothing happens right away-you’ll slowly build an audience, even if you never get picked up by VH1 or MTV. There are a lot of bands out there that will never make the cover of Rolling Stone, yet they deliver live, and they can still sell a couple of thousand CDs in every town they play. And that is in your control.
An Aerosmith show is a visceral, physical experience, an athletic event, really, where the music is the vehicle for something bigger. You may not have the purest technique or play the most perfect solo of your life at a big show like that, but you will bring the audience along with you wherever you go
Joe Perry
Many guitarists dream of playing gigantic concerts. Are there any downsides to the big stage that aspiring rock stars don’t consider?
Well, first of all, you give up a lot of your life to do those kind of shows – to be on the road all the time, to put together huge tours, and to have it all come off with that level of production. On a show-to-show basis, though, I find that because of the energy required to put on that kind of performance-the adrenaline that gets so strong it sometimes makes my hands shake – I’ll just never play as good in those circumstances as I do down here in my studio. Unless you plan on standing glued in front of your amps all night, you’ll never get the same level of connection with the music.
The classic example of that is Jimi Hendrix. The Jimi you hear on all those early live bootleg tapes is so different than the Jimi you hear on his records. When he was out there trying to make a name for himself, he was putting all his energy into his rock and roll shows – burning guitars and all that stuff – and his guitar playing was all over the place. He was barely in tune. Of course, there’s still brilliance there, but it’s a different kind of brilliance than what he was doing in the studio.
And, in a sense, the same is true of an Aerosmith show. It’s a visceral, physical experience, an athletic event, really, where the music is the vehicle for something bigger and more exciting. You may not have the purest technique or play the most perfect solo of your life at a big show like that, but you will bring the audience along with you wherever you go. It’s a tradeoff, and I’ve come to grips with that.
In your 1979 GP cover story, you said that you didn’t consider yourself “much of a guitar player.” Has your perception of your skills changed over the years?
As far as being a guitar technician, I still feel the same way – I don’t really have any technique to speak of. Anybody who is a real guitar player can listen to my playing and know that I wasn’t schooled and that I didn’t study music. I don’t know jazz, music theory, or any of that stuff. It’s all strictly feel. If there’s a certain riff I’m hearing in my head that I want to play on the guitar, I’ll fumble my way through the music until I can get it happening. I know a lot of players who can play Hendrix note for note, but I can’t get into that. I could have gone down the technique road, but it never appealed to me. I never like things to sound too polished.
This interview was first published in Guitar Player, May 2005. For the latest information about Joe Perry, including tour dates, visit his website.
