JOE PERRY HAS STILL GOT IT. THAT much is true. Considering he’s 73, you’d think he’d be slowing down, but here’s the thing — he’s not. Perry is as nimble-fingered as ever. And as I prepare to settle in for what amounted to a two-hour call with the veteran gunslinger, it becomes apparent that Perry is not only nimble but busy, too.
“I’ve been running around all week getting ready for the [Hollywood] Vampires tour,” Perry says. “It’s been crazy. It blows my fucking mind how busy we’ve been. When we started, I never expected to be this busy, but it’s been great. I’ve got all my guitars loaded up, and we’re ready to go.”
Indeed, those 73-year-old hands still traverse the fretboard of his array of well-loved Fenders and Gibsons with tenderness and ease. Anyone who has seen Perry live lately will tell you that his swagger remains, only to be matched by an unmistakable tone that — for 50-plus years — has defined America’s greatest rock band, Aerosmith.
And what of that tone? What’s more, what of the notion that Aerosmith — which after 50 years of breakups, shake-ups and extended pauses, is still composed of Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton, Joey Kramer and Perry — is America’s greatest rock band? Cutting to the chase, despite what some will say, Aerosmith is America’s greatest rock band.
As for Perry’s tone, boy, it’s sweeter and sleazier than ever. Of course, gone are the drugs, drinks and drama, but make no mistake, Perry can still summon the ravenous ghost of his stage-struttin’ past with ease. Now unencumbered and staring at the end of Aerosmith’s road down, like an outlaw would the barrel of a gun, there’s nothing left to prove. For Perry, though, the end doesn’t mean complacency. What he’s built is too important for that. And so it’s not over until he says it is. He’ll show up and burn it down like he always has. And it’s that same fire that leads Perry to sling his trusty “Burned Strat” over his shoulder, whip his grayed and frayed hair back, take a breath and swagger with utter confidence while wailing away at the riffs and solos that made him a legend.
Perry has seen it all — sometimes (but not anymore) through a hazy lens of too many illicit substances. And there’s an argument to be made that he’s forgotten more than he remembers. Not that Perry harbors many regrets when he thinks back, saying, “It’s too hard to pick any one thing, you know? But I guess, maybe if I didn’t drink the whole decade of the Seventies away, things would have been different. But beyond that, I’m proud of what we’ve done; there are no major regrets.”
The ugliest side of the music business saw Perry fall into a pit of his own making, only for him to climb out and dominate with more turbo-charged machismo than before. No, he was never the fastest gun in the game, nor was the technical side his bag. But Perry didn’t need to be; no one can take that from him. Nor could they endeavor to be him. He’s that original.
Still, when he thinks back on his origins, Perry, as is his trademark, remains soft-spoken and dutifully humble, “I really didn’t have a lot of guitar players around me growing up. I didn’t grow up in a musical family, and I didn’t come from a town with all these hot guitar players. I didn’t have many examples, which is probably why I play right-handed even though I’m left-handed. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a left-handed guitar until much later. It wasn’t until I got going with the guys and we moved to Boston that we started to hear other bands and stuff. That’s when I began picking up a few things along the way.”
In a world where sameness has become the standard, Perry chooses to stand out even at 73. Maybe it’s because that fire still burns, or perhaps he’s never done it any other way but his own. Regardless, when Perry hits the stage, all eyes are on him. And considering he’s shared that stage with Steven Tyler for 50 years, that’s saying something.
“Steven and I are the type of guys who like to run through the woods with BB guns,” Perry says with a laugh. “And for all the ups and downs
