by Joe Perry
I followed my fellow students through the door of the history classroom and sat down.
“Mr. Perry,” he said, looking directly at me, “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“That’s good. But I notice that you have not cut your hair.”
“No, sir.”
“I don’t have to remind you of the rules. You either cut your hair or you leave my classroom.”
This script had been playing inside my head ever since I left the infirmary. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.
After several long seconds of dead silence, I gathered my books and walked out. Back in my dorm room, a couple of my friends came by.
“What are you going to do?” asked one.
“I guess I’ll be leaving Vermont Academy,” I said.
At the end of the day I called my mother.
“Would you mind picking me up and bringing me home?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Joe, something is obviously wrong if you’re leaving school.”
“They won’t let me in class if I won’t cut my hair.”
“And you aren’t going to cut it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Graduation is just around the corner, Joe. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
“Then wait it out.”
“They won’t let me.”
“They will if you get a haircut.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I won’t.”
The next day Mom drove up. I packed my stuff, told a few friends goodbye, and left.
Thus began a difficult period that cast a shadow over my future and my soul. Much to their credit, my parents didn’t give me a hard time. They realized that I was suffering and, lacking a remedy, left me alone. I fell into a loneliness I had never felt before. It wasn’t a physical loneliness, because I was back in my boyhood bedroom with my mother and father and sister, Anne, around. It was a spiritual loneliness.
I missed Vermont Academy—missed my friends, missed the Just Us band, missed the photography, missed walking in the woods with Betsy. The reality of having left school sank in. And even though I felt uncertainty about the future, I also felt free. My destiny was now in my own hands. I was excited to see what would happen next.
Determined to get my degree, I planned to finish out my senior year at Hopedale High. My dad set up a meeting with the principal.
“No worries,” said the man. “Your credits from Vermont Academy are transferable. As soon as you pass all your final semester courses here, you’ll graduate on time.”
“Thank you,” I said with great relief.
“No need to thank me, son,” he said. “The only thing you need to do is run out and get a haircut.”
“And if I don’t?”
The half smile on his face gave me his answer. I walked out of his office and never saw the man again.
Just like that, I literally walked a half a mile from the principal’s office through town to the employment office of Draper Corporation. I’d had jobs since I was a kid, from shoveling snow to working in a restaurant. So at this point I was ready for anything.
“Anything” meant any job that I could get at Draper, the only major employer in town. Draper Corporation, a manufacturer of textile looms, had been bought out by Rockwell, the huge firm that now ran the factory—a million square feet worth of machinery. The factory was the town’s lifeblood. Since I was in need of a transfusion, I went to work at the factory. But when I applied for a job, I made it clear to the employment office that I didn’t want my dad to know. I didn’t want to use his executive influence to get me a better position. I wanted to take whatever job they would give to any other high school dropout. That meant working on the assembly line.
When my parents found out, they had to adjust to the idea. After all, children of Hopedale’s upper middle class usually did not take several steps down to work in the factory. The idea was to step up. My question, though, was—step up to what? Once I realized that my undiagnosed ADHD would keep me from going to college and becoming a marine biologist, music and music alone became my focus. My plan was to form a band that could support me, but until then I’d have to find some plausible source of income. And since I had no skills other than the guitar, the factory looked like my best bet.
I tell you now that the factory did me good. I tell you now that it made me stronger and put me in touch with a side of life I needed to know about. I tell you now that it gave me a tougher skin. At the time, though, I would have told you none of that. I would have said that the experience was maddening. It was brutal and dirty. I was down there in the pits. I told the foreman that I could read and write, hoping it might lead to better job and pay, but it didn’t. Sometimes I thought of my friends at prep school who were on their way to Dartmouth and Harvard. But it was my choice to be here and it was where I stayed. I punched the clock. I did what I was told to do. I worked with hot metal parts coming off a conveyor belt. My coworkers weren’t any more tolerant of my long hair than the headmaster or principal. They called me a hippie and a faggot. At the end of the day my hands were scarred and my hair filthy with the sand from the blast furnace. It wasn’t fun. The other guys had ethnic backgrounds similar to mine—there were Portuguese and Italian workers—but we were in different worlds culturally. I was listening to the Doors singing “Strange Days.” They were listening to Glen Campbell singing “Wichita Lineman.” And after being there for a while, when I talked about how I wanted to trade in my mom’s Chevy Nova station wagon for an MGB, you wouldn’t believe the grief I got from the other workers. Foreign cars were looked on as un-American.
There was also the question of the draft. My high school deferment was no longer applicable, and I was suddenly 1-A. At the same time, my parents were concerned about my mental condition. They couldn’t understand why, so close to graduation, I had dropped out. They sent me to a psychologist for a short period of time. Without my asking, the psychologist apparently wrote my draft board. Just like that, I was reclassified 4-F.
I’d make my musical escapes on the weekends. Going to the Boston Tea Party in the city’s South End, I got the only schooling that mattered to me. This was a blessed time for music lovers. Because there were few sold-out shows, you could get close to the band and drink it all in.
On these musical sojourns I was sometimes accompanied by Elyssa Jerret. She was working at a boutique in Boston, where concert promoters gave her free tickets and backstage passes. It was Elyssa who got me close to the dressing room to catch a glimpse of the performers. One night it was Peter Green, the Fleetwood Mac founder and guitarist, whose blues chops equaled or surpassed Clapton or Page. His instrument, I noted, was a 1959 Gibson Les Paul. His “Rattlesnake Shake” had me out of my mind. When it wasn’t Fleetwood Mac, it was Spirit or the Who or Ten Years After. Then Monday morning it was back to the factory.
At night I still sought out musicians and sometimes found myself in Milford, the town that sat on Hopedale’s northern border. It was through one of my musician friends that I met a girl described as a “free spirit.” I took that to mean that she might sleep with me. She did. I was grateful to finally lose the label of virgin. After all, I was eighteen. It was high time. But the experience was hardly transformational. We did it—that’s about all I can say. It was rote. She was somewhat more familiar with the exercise than me. She offered neither compliments nor complaints. We had a few more dates and that was it. Romance was not even remotely present. The pleasure was limited, not only by a hurry-up tension but by my own lingering Catholic guilt. The discovery of sexual ecstasy was still some years away. At this point ecstasy had more to do with music. Yet I also realized that my mother’s Chevy Nova station wagon, which I’d bought from her for two hundre
d dollars, had its advantages, especially when it came to fitting a sleeping bag in the back.
In my late teens, the notion that I could actually make a living from music was still more dream than reality. I had been raised on the premise of practicality. You do what’s possible, achieve what’s possible, and discipline yourself accordingly. Working in the factory was my way of endorsing this ethos. I hated it, but what the fuck: I did the best I could. I didn’t like it when I saw guys cutting corners and slacking off. My parents had taught me better. But in working the assembly line day in and day out, the monotony got to me. The grit and the grime, the grind and heat and endless boredom had me down. I definitely got the blues.
My only cure for the blues was to play the blues. I became a factory worker by day and a blues rocker by night. I reconnected with my friends from Hopedale High and formed a band that I called Flash. Dave Meade was my bass buddy and on drums was either John Alden or Dave Carchio, depending on who was free.
Dave Meade’s big brother went to Amherst and asked us to play at a party his frat was throwing. This was our first real gig, and the first time we’d be performing for more than five people who weren’t our friends. When I learned that we’d be paid five dollars each, I couldn’t believe it. Up until this point I had never seriously connected rock and roll with money—just pure joy. I never dreamed of playing on the same stages as my idols, much less living their lifestyles.
At 8 P.M. sharp, when the keg was cracked and the beer started flowing, we hit it hard. Earlier I was a little nervous, but after a few beers we got the groove grinding with a blues. When the dance floor filled up, my anxiety eased. I felt like I was one with the audience. And because the blues seemed to facilitate their grinding on the girls, the boys kept requesting that same blues. This went on for hours.
After our last set a few of the frat boys came up to me. Because they were drunk, I worried that they might get belligerent. Did they think we had been flirting with their girls? Was this gonna get ugly? But I was surprised to learn that, instead of being confrontational, they were simply inquisitive. They wanted to know all about the music.
What was the name of the blues we’d been playing?
Had we written the songs?
What were the names of the records we listened to?
Which bands did we like?
Would we come back and play their next dance and be sure and play that same blues?
In short, they were into everything we were doing. They had never heard the magic before. Like us, they were looking for knowledge about the magic. They were, in fact, my earliest fans and an indication of the keen interest shared by a whole generation of college kids. We left that gig feeling that we were not alone in our passion for rock blues. Though I was only at the very start of my own path of discovery—a path I still follow today—it felt great to be carrying on the tradition, and also to get paid. I’d moved from playing acoustic with Chimes of Freedom to lead guitar for Vermont Academy’s Just Us to playing lead in a decent band that could knock out basic blues. Slowly but surely, I was finding my voice.
We had our share of beer that night, but beer wasn’t all that interesting to me. On the other hand, when listening to the Yardbirds do “Smokestack Lightning” and hearing someone say, “Man, those guys are stoned on fucking speed,” I began to develop a romantic view of the relationship between drugs and music. I hadn’t quite entered that relationship, but it wouldn’t be long. The interest was already there.
My biggest desire was to keep playing. On a semi-regular basis we found work. Dave went down to the Hopedale Town Hall and, for two hundred dollars, rented a large room in the old building that included a wooden dance floor. I imagined big bands from the swing era playing there. I drew up posters that we plastered around town. We hired a friend to work the door, where tickets were $1.50. We actually wound up making a little money.
We also found a friend who played organ. With that came a bigger sound, and it wouldn’t be long before we were playing songs like “Hush” and “Gimme Some Lovin’.” I hooked up a trailer to my station wagon, which allowed me to load up the Hammond B-3, the Leslie tone cabinet, and a mash-up of amps, PAs, and electronic odds and ends. At the gigs we’d concentrate on the blues and keep the tempo right on the edge. We could take a four-minute song and extend it for twenty minutes. Our hormone-crazed ears heard the sexual drive of the music we were making—and we kept driving ’em home. If the people giving the parties had let us, we would have played all night long.
I was a serious introvert, but the formula of booze-before-music broke down the barrier, especially when I knew we’d be playing a song like “Happy Jack,” which I’d just learned off the new Who album. The fraternity crowd probably didn’t know it, because it wasn’t a Top Ten tune, but I didn’t care. I’d slip it into our repertoire anyway. I paid close attention to records by Blue Cheer and Ten Years After, listening for songs that not only moved me but challenged me. I was always working on my chops.
In the fall of 1969, something happened that I thought might change my life and jump-start my musical career. I met some guys who invited me to Block Island, where they were putting together a band and renting a house. Their plan was to get together a repertoire, rehearse, and aggressively go after gigs.
Block Island is Rhode Island’s version of Martha’s Vineyard. It sits in the Atlantic some thirteen miles offshore. No more than a thousand people live on ten square miles. It’s a small paradise, certainly a more attractive destination than the assembly line. I decided to take a chance and go.
I took the hour-long ferry ride and arrived on a picture-perfect afternoon. The weather was mild, the flowers in bloom, the pastures a deep and lush green. With my guitar, suitcase, and amps in tow, I hitched from the pier to the country road where my friends had rented a rambling old house with four or five bedrooms. They were glad to see me. I didn’t know them all that well, but because they had heard of me and my playing, they made me feel at home. There was a bass player, a drummer, and a lead singer/guitarist who acted like a quasi leader. More or less, though, the band ran like a democracy.
“Hey, man,” said the drummer as we shook hands. “Hope you don’t mind sharing a room.”
“Not at all.”
When he took me upstairs and introduced me to my roommate, I was taken aback. My roommate was a cute little brunette, a hippie chick with long hair and tinted granny glasses and bib overalls that were tight enough to reveal a beautiful body.
“I’m Joe,” was all I could manage to say,
“I’m Sally.”
I looked around the room and saw that there was only one place to sleep—a double mattress that sat on the floor.
“Well, while you guys get acquainted, I’m gonna do some errands,” said the drummer.
I stood there for a while feeling awkward before Sally finally broke the silence.
“I’ll help you unpack,” she said. “I took the bottom two drawers in the dresser and saved the top two for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, “but I don’t mind unpacking.” I did so quickly. Then the awkwardness returned.
“Wanna go for a walk?” asked Sally. “The island’s really outta sight.”
“Sure.”
I was grateful that, like me, Sally didn’t do a lot of talking. She knew a nature path—actually, the whole island was one big nature path—that led to an expansive meadow covered with yellow daisies.
“I like to lie down and just watch the clouds,” she said.
I lay next to her. I was excited by her presence and, for that matter, this new chapter in my life. The big puffy clouds were pushed along by a gentle breeze. My imagination was pushed along by the joint we shared. There was no hurry, no problems, no factory job, no parental pressures. Just me and Sally in a field of daisies on Block Island. What could be better?
Back at the house, both the bassist and the drummer had girlfriends who, along with Sally, did the cooking. There was hot soup and homemade bread and a f
resh-baked cherry pie. After dinner the guys brought out four huge bricks of tightly wrapped hash.
“It’s enough to last us all winter,” said the drummer.
The dope was strong and, when Sally and I went to our room, so was the lovemaking. It was my first real lovemaking, the first time I was with a woman who was truly free with her body. She had no inhibitions. She enjoyed it as much as I did. She acted like a blow job was the most natural thing in the world—and with Sally, it was.
The next day I awoke with a slight hash hangover. I looked for the drummer and the bassist but they were walking the nature paths with their girlfriends. When they got back, I suggested we break out our instruments and play.
“After dinner,” they said.
After dinner the hash came out again, and we got high again, and the high led me and Sally back to our bedroom, where the sex was even better than the night before.
The next day I told the guys, “Hey, we need to rehearse.”
We did. We worked our way through the standard fare, from Chuck Berry to the Stones. I could see that, with practice, we could get good enough to gig.
“Are there any gigs on the island?” I asked.
“No, but there are gigs in Providence.”
“How are we gonna get those gigs?” I wanted to know.
“No problem, man. We have friends. And the ferry runs to the mainland four times a day. Let’s get high.”
When I got high, I wanted to play even more. When these guys got high, they stopped playing. So a pattern set in. Sally and I went to the field of daisies every afternoon, the girls cooked for us every night, after dinner the hash mellowed us out, and then Sally and I fucked ourselves to sleep. This might sound like a pretty good definition of paradise, but for me it wasn’t.
I wanted to rehearse more. The guys didn’t. I wanted to know more about their contact in Providence who could get us gigs. But I couldn’t get any answers. Work wasn’t their top priority.
“You stress too much, Joe,” they said. “Just be cool.”