INTERVIEW
Joe Perry
On the Move
BY BoB CIAnCI
Anthony Joseph “Joe” Perry, a true American
rock guitar hero, has held down the lead guitar chair for nearly 35 years with Aerosmith,
often touted as America’s premier rock band.
Born and raised in the suburbs of Boston,
MA, Perry, of Portuguese and Italian descent,
was taken with the sounds of the ‘60s British
Invasion bands, and counted Jeff Beck, Jimi
Hendrix, and particularly Fleetwood Mac’s
Peter Green as inspirations.
Formed in 1970 in Boston, Aerosmith paid
their early dues, played hard and partied
harder, and enjoyed hits like “Walk This Way”
and “Dream On.” In the summer of 1979,
Perry, at odds with other members of the
band, and dealing with the strain of increas-
ing drug dependency, left Aerosmith to start
The Joe Perry Project, a group with a rotating
lineup that recorded three albums and toured
almost constantly. With his personal and pro-
fessional life a shambles, Perry and his friends
in Aerosmith patched things up in 1984, got
into rehab, cleaned up, and enjoyed 25 years
of unprecedented success with a series of
hit singles, MTV videos, critically-acclaimed
albums and sold-out tours. Aerosmith have
sold an astounding 150 million albums world-
wide, and are members of The Rock ‘n’ Roll
Hall of Fame.
But flash forward to Autumn 2009, and
Aerosmith was once again in a state of
confusion and turmoil. Lead singer Steven
Tyler, eager to establish himself as a solo
artist at age 61, decided to take an indefinite hiatus after falling off a stage this past
summer. While rumors of the band’s demise
abounded, Perry went on record saying that
Aerosmith was still together, and might look
for a replacement for Tyler. In the meantime,
Perry, never one to sit still, and with a backlog of new material, quickly recorded and
released an album in October called Have
Guitar, Will Travel, featuring a newly handpicked group of musicians. Billed again as
The Joe Perry Project, the band has just completed a short US tour, and is poised to take
their act overseas within weeks of this writing,
opening for Mötley Crüe and Bad Company.
A self-confessed ‘60s rock fan, guitar col-
lector, horse enthusiast and gearhead, Joe
spent time discussing his love of funky Supro
guitars, and how he surprisingly plans to
unload a significant portion of his vast collec-
tion in the coming year.
What was the spark that ignited your desire
to play guitar?
It was a series of things, really. I had an uncle
who owned a homemade four-string instrument that looked like a ukulele. He would
probably get mad if I called it a ukulele, but
that’s what it looked like. During the holidays,
he would play Portuguese folk songs and then
let me play with it. I must have been five or six
at the time. I used to go to school and listen to
the orchestra, and I didn’t like any of the wind
instruments, but I did like the guitar. I begged
my parents for an acoustic guitar, which they
bought for me. It came with a 45-rpm record
that taught you how to tune, how to strum,
and all that. This must have been around 1961
or 1962—definitely before The Beatles came
out. I bought a fake book and learned chords
from that. I never took lessons.
Once I discovered The Beatles, their music
and movies, and all the other British bands
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