You would think that when someone has enough money (or a stinkin pile of cash) to make Joe Perry's Rock Your World Boneyard Brew Hot Sauce" they might not be able to pull off a solo album but all that money has been put to good use. I got sent a promo copy of Joe Perrys latest self titled solo album and boy was I surprised when I popped it in and heard Joe Perrys voice. That was a big surprise and an even bigger surprise was when I realized that the vocals were just as good as the guitar riffs.
Sometimes when a one of the main creative forces behind a very successful rock band, like an Aerosmith, does a solo album they try their best to make it sound like garage rock. Usually they think that pushing the slider marked Make it sound like it was recorded in a room with a tin roof will do it for them. But Perry has pulled it off and created a gritty, balls out rock and roll album that is obviously very intimate.
Check out the official site for Joe Perry
Daniel Robert Epstein: This is the first time youve sang on one of your solo albums. Why this time?
Joe Perry: Its the old thing. I had all this material that we hadn't used with Aerosmith that was begging to have a song wrapped around them, so many licks, so many rhythms and things like that. I just started to accumulate material and I just felt like the best thing to do was to try and finish them off so that I'd have a body of work if, God forbid, there was an early demise with a tree and a motorcycle. Then I would have something that my wife could put out, my basement tapes. So that's kind of where I started. This was last year then it started to feel like it might be cool to put another solo record out and the band had this past year off so it kind of worked out.
DRE: Youre the co-writer on all the Aerosmith songs so what is it about these songs that made them work for Joe Perry and not Aerosmith?
JP: That's hard to say because if you heard them in their really rough form you may recognize a couple of the things. But a lot of the work that I did on them was kind of an open palette. Sometimes it's something that works for the band and sometimes it isn't. There are some songs that are just a couple of chord changes and for whatever reason they just don't resonate with everyone else and we'd go on to do something else. Then I'd take a couple of songs that actually did work with the band, but they never made it on the records and rearranged it and rewrote the stuff until it worked for me. Also I've been working in the kind of vocal register that I'm most comfortable in which I was kind of a little hesitant to do in the last few years. But I kind of felt really comfortable getting down there and singing in a lower register. So it just opened up a whole box of tools to get these songs to work. But I still couldn't have made this record 15 years ago. I think that is a big part of why I was able to do this was because of all the experience that I've gained in the last 15 or 20 years and just learning more about production.
DRE: In the cover of The Doors The Crystal Ship it sounds like you are trying to pull off Jim Morrison-like vocals.
JP: Well, it's funny, but when you are doing a classic song like that you just have to kind of be careful. You don't want to stray too far away from it, but you don't want to totally just rip the song off either. I mean, it's got to have a reason to live. I think that I kind of took the approach of, Well, I really like this piece of poetry that he wrote and I'm just going to kind of put my thing there, reinterpret it with some guitars under it. That was also one of the first songs that I cut a few years ago. It kind of led the way to experiment in that vocal range. Actually my wife was really instrumental in saying, Look, everyone really gets off on you singing the blues in that kind of style. So just try it and stay in there. The Crystal Ship was one of the songs that when I played it back and listened to the replay, I was going, Well, she's right. That isn't so bad. I'm going to keep going that way. Then as I started working on other songs, writing the melodies and then coming up with the lyrics I kind of stayed right in that vocal range and started having a lot of fun with it.
DRE: I rarely get to talk to someone from such a huge and iconic band like Aerosmith. I imagine you having a stinkin huge pile of cash. How does something like that influence your solo record?
JP: Its funny because its not that far from what everyone else is doing. Everyone else just goes down in the basement and makes music. At one point when we were doing Honkin' On Bobo my band was on one side of the basement recording our record and my son had his band in the garage playing his music. So depending on which door you opened it was a different generation you were listening to. Then the irony of us having everything that we've done and here we are still down in my basement, jammed elbow to elbow, and just rocking out.
Also I think that we've made peace with the fact that it's really about how much you love the music and the success or non-success is gauged by how much fun you're having while doing it and not so much about how much money you're going to make.
DRE: You produced this album, have you produced all of Aerosmith records as well?
JP: Steven [Tyler] and I have always been there from the time we started the preproduction with the songwriting and then in overseeing the production. With those records that we did in the '80's, I felt that we should've been down as co-producers but there were certain political things going on there. If we had it to do over again we probably would've been put down as co-producers because we've always been there for every bit of it. For the last batch of Aerosmith records we've finally gotten some credit for it. But being a producer of a record is a very kind of broad job definition. But mostly we're standing behind the board with whoever is engineering it and we take control. So yeah, we've done a lot of production.
DRE: How was producing something so personal to you and doing it on a lower level than you do with the Aerosmith records?
JP: I don't have anyone else to bounce it off of. It's not Steven and I this time. For Aerosmith we're just usually the ones that are there, but everyone is throwing in their opinions so you kind of have that luxury when you're working in a band situation. For a solo record and doing it yourself it's kind of like you really have to kind of step back a little bit and get a little feedback from the people that you trust. Then I'd just come upstairs and play the stuff for my wife and if she gives me the thumbs up then I know I'm on the right track. If she gives me the thumb down I leave it on the cutting room floor. I know that there's one song that I brought upstairs and played it for her where I thought that the lyrics were pretty clever and the whole song kind of hung together. She said, If I didn't know you and I heard this song I'd never go out with you. I said, Okay, that's one that we'll just put on the B list. So I just kind of left that one by the wayside and moved on.
DRE: Are you going to be playing any of this live?
JP: Were going to be doing a couple of showcase shows in New York with some friends of mine like Johnny Colt who was the first bass player for The Black Crowes and Paul Caruso who co-produced and played drums on the album.
DRE: A lot of people call Aerosmith sellouts, a word that is indefinable in many ways. Since you were a music fan growing up, if you saw a band doing all the commercial things that Aerosmith does, what would you have thought of them?
JP: Oh probably just that. The thought of using your songs in a commercial would've been abhorrent back in 1968 or '72. Back then I thought that even playing a ballad was almost sacrilege, but over the years and the way that media has changed I hear some of the best music in some of the newest TV commercials. It's amazing because its just another avenue for your music to get out there.
We took a chance and did The Gap commercial a few years ago and just kind of threw caution to the wind. The fact that we wrote the song on the spot and did that little bit with Steven playing drums and me playing guitar made so most people thought that it was really cool. It was fun to do and the money went to a good cause. So it didn't seem to wreck anything. In fact because it was so down to earth I think that it kind of helped some of the downsides of having commercial hits in terms of credibility.
DRE: When is it all enough?
JP: That's hard to say. I dont know because it's changing all the time. It's tough for a band like mine to even get their songs on the radio. I mean, we get played on classic rock but it's hard to get our new material played on the radio especially when we get down and dirty. Everyone wants the newest, latest thing as far as the pop world goes and it's been a long time since we've been the newest thing. So sometimes getting a song in a movie or getting it in a commercial or a videogame is a good way to get your music out there. With the times changing and the trends, all everyone wants to hear is hip-hop these days which isn't a bad thing for hip-hop, but it is for hard rock.
DRE: Back to that stinkin pile of cash again, you created your own hot sauce?
JP: Yeah and again that's a labor of love. I love spicy food. It's a kind of hobby thing which has now turned into a business. My oldest son is actually running the company now with a couple of different products on the line and we're going to develop a few more.
DRE: Tabasco Sauce is hot right away. Whats your sauce like?
JP: I get asked how hot it is a lot and I can only say what I think. But it's all relative to what people think is too hot and what some people think isn't hot enough. I was on the Emeril Live show last year and I asked him because he's got what we'd call an educated palate. He said it was about a 60 percent out of a 100. So whatever that means.
I don't like stuff that blows the back of your head off and this is a sauce that I could eat everyday. I always think of it as a kind of everyday sauce.
DRE: Have you heard of SuicideGirls?
JP: Yeah. I've heard that it was a very hip site and that it's on the internet [laughs]
DRE: Do you get on the internet very much?
JP: Yeah, I shop for Crate and Barrel stuff on the internet.
DRE: Theres that credibility thing again Joe.
JP: [laughs] Well when I need a new muffler for my 442 or something I go online. But I've spent very little time online. I've learned what I do know about it from my sons who are online all the time. They usually have three screens going at once and I hear a lot of cool music coming from that so I keep appraised of what's going on that way.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Sometimes when a one of the main creative forces behind a very successful rock band, like an Aerosmith, does a solo album they try their best to make it sound like garage rock. Usually they think that pushing the slider marked Make it sound like it was recorded in a room with a tin roof will do it for them. But Perry has pulled it off and created a gritty, balls out rock and roll album that is obviously very intimate.
Check out the official site for Joe Perry
Daniel Robert Epstein: This is the first time youve sang on one of your solo albums. Why this time?
Joe Perry: Its the old thing. I had all this material that we hadn't used with Aerosmith that was begging to have a song wrapped around them, so many licks, so many rhythms and things like that. I just started to accumulate material and I just felt like the best thing to do was to try and finish them off so that I'd have a body of work if, God forbid, there was an early demise with a tree and a motorcycle. Then I would have something that my wife could put out, my basement tapes. So that's kind of where I started. This was last year then it started to feel like it might be cool to put another solo record out and the band had this past year off so it kind of worked out.
DRE: Youre the co-writer on all the Aerosmith songs so what is it about these songs that made them work for Joe Perry and not Aerosmith?
JP: That's hard to say because if you heard them in their really rough form you may recognize a couple of the things. But a lot of the work that I did on them was kind of an open palette. Sometimes it's something that works for the band and sometimes it isn't. There are some songs that are just a couple of chord changes and for whatever reason they just don't resonate with everyone else and we'd go on to do something else. Then I'd take a couple of songs that actually did work with the band, but they never made it on the records and rearranged it and rewrote the stuff until it worked for me. Also I've been working in the kind of vocal register that I'm most comfortable in which I was kind of a little hesitant to do in the last few years. But I kind of felt really comfortable getting down there and singing in a lower register. So it just opened up a whole box of tools to get these songs to work. But I still couldn't have made this record 15 years ago. I think that is a big part of why I was able to do this was because of all the experience that I've gained in the last 15 or 20 years and just learning more about production.
DRE: In the cover of The Doors The Crystal Ship it sounds like you are trying to pull off Jim Morrison-like vocals.
JP: Well, it's funny, but when you are doing a classic song like that you just have to kind of be careful. You don't want to stray too far away from it, but you don't want to totally just rip the song off either. I mean, it's got to have a reason to live. I think that I kind of took the approach of, Well, I really like this piece of poetry that he wrote and I'm just going to kind of put my thing there, reinterpret it with some guitars under it. That was also one of the first songs that I cut a few years ago. It kind of led the way to experiment in that vocal range. Actually my wife was really instrumental in saying, Look, everyone really gets off on you singing the blues in that kind of style. So just try it and stay in there. The Crystal Ship was one of the songs that when I played it back and listened to the replay, I was going, Well, she's right. That isn't so bad. I'm going to keep going that way. Then as I started working on other songs, writing the melodies and then coming up with the lyrics I kind of stayed right in that vocal range and started having a lot of fun with it.
DRE: I rarely get to talk to someone from such a huge and iconic band like Aerosmith. I imagine you having a stinkin huge pile of cash. How does something like that influence your solo record?
JP: Its funny because its not that far from what everyone else is doing. Everyone else just goes down in the basement and makes music. At one point when we were doing Honkin' On Bobo my band was on one side of the basement recording our record and my son had his band in the garage playing his music. So depending on which door you opened it was a different generation you were listening to. Then the irony of us having everything that we've done and here we are still down in my basement, jammed elbow to elbow, and just rocking out.
Also I think that we've made peace with the fact that it's really about how much you love the music and the success or non-success is gauged by how much fun you're having while doing it and not so much about how much money you're going to make.
DRE: You produced this album, have you produced all of Aerosmith records as well?
JP: Steven [Tyler] and I have always been there from the time we started the preproduction with the songwriting and then in overseeing the production. With those records that we did in the '80's, I felt that we should've been down as co-producers but there were certain political things going on there. If we had it to do over again we probably would've been put down as co-producers because we've always been there for every bit of it. For the last batch of Aerosmith records we've finally gotten some credit for it. But being a producer of a record is a very kind of broad job definition. But mostly we're standing behind the board with whoever is engineering it and we take control. So yeah, we've done a lot of production.
DRE: How was producing something so personal to you and doing it on a lower level than you do with the Aerosmith records?
JP: I don't have anyone else to bounce it off of. It's not Steven and I this time. For Aerosmith we're just usually the ones that are there, but everyone is throwing in their opinions so you kind of have that luxury when you're working in a band situation. For a solo record and doing it yourself it's kind of like you really have to kind of step back a little bit and get a little feedback from the people that you trust. Then I'd just come upstairs and play the stuff for my wife and if she gives me the thumbs up then I know I'm on the right track. If she gives me the thumb down I leave it on the cutting room floor. I know that there's one song that I brought upstairs and played it for her where I thought that the lyrics were pretty clever and the whole song kind of hung together. She said, If I didn't know you and I heard this song I'd never go out with you. I said, Okay, that's one that we'll just put on the B list. So I just kind of left that one by the wayside and moved on.
DRE: Are you going to be playing any of this live?
JP: Were going to be doing a couple of showcase shows in New York with some friends of mine like Johnny Colt who was the first bass player for The Black Crowes and Paul Caruso who co-produced and played drums on the album.
DRE: A lot of people call Aerosmith sellouts, a word that is indefinable in many ways. Since you were a music fan growing up, if you saw a band doing all the commercial things that Aerosmith does, what would you have thought of them?
JP: Oh probably just that. The thought of using your songs in a commercial would've been abhorrent back in 1968 or '72. Back then I thought that even playing a ballad was almost sacrilege, but over the years and the way that media has changed I hear some of the best music in some of the newest TV commercials. It's amazing because its just another avenue for your music to get out there.
We took a chance and did The Gap commercial a few years ago and just kind of threw caution to the wind. The fact that we wrote the song on the spot and did that little bit with Steven playing drums and me playing guitar made so most people thought that it was really cool. It was fun to do and the money went to a good cause. So it didn't seem to wreck anything. In fact because it was so down to earth I think that it kind of helped some of the downsides of having commercial hits in terms of credibility.
DRE: When is it all enough?
JP: That's hard to say. I dont know because it's changing all the time. It's tough for a band like mine to even get their songs on the radio. I mean, we get played on classic rock but it's hard to get our new material played on the radio especially when we get down and dirty. Everyone wants the newest, latest thing as far as the pop world goes and it's been a long time since we've been the newest thing. So sometimes getting a song in a movie or getting it in a commercial or a videogame is a good way to get your music out there. With the times changing and the trends, all everyone wants to hear is hip-hop these days which isn't a bad thing for hip-hop, but it is for hard rock.
DRE: Back to that stinkin pile of cash again, you created your own hot sauce?
JP: Yeah and again that's a labor of love. I love spicy food. It's a kind of hobby thing which has now turned into a business. My oldest son is actually running the company now with a couple of different products on the line and we're going to develop a few more.
DRE: Tabasco Sauce is hot right away. Whats your sauce like?
JP: I get asked how hot it is a lot and I can only say what I think. But it's all relative to what people think is too hot and what some people think isn't hot enough. I was on the Emeril Live show last year and I asked him because he's got what we'd call an educated palate. He said it was about a 60 percent out of a 100. So whatever that means.
I don't like stuff that blows the back of your head off and this is a sauce that I could eat everyday. I always think of it as a kind of everyday sauce.
DRE: Have you heard of SuicideGirls?
JP: Yeah. I've heard that it was a very hip site and that it's on the internet [laughs]
DRE: Do you get on the internet very much?
JP: Yeah, I shop for Crate and Barrel stuff on the internet.
DRE: Theres that credibility thing again Joe.
JP: [laughs] Well when I need a new muffler for my 442 or something I go online. But I've spent very little time online. I've learned what I do know about it from my sons who are online all the time. They usually have three screens going at once and I hear a lot of cool music coming from that so I keep appraised of what's going on that way.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 14 of 14 COMMENTS
gunsnroses:
Aerosmith ruled the 70's and set the style and sound
leonmate:
Great interview. I'm a massive fan of Aerosmith, and of Joe Perry- he's had a major influence on me as a guitarist.