Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith

by Joe Perry

  Walking on Gucci, wearin’ Yves Saint Laurent

  Barely stay on, ’cause I’m so goddamn gaunt

  When I wrote the music for the kickoff song on Rocks—“Back in the Saddle”— I was in my bedroom, flat on my back, fucked up on heroin, playing my six-string bass. The music flew out of me—all the parts, all the riffs. It came in one special-delivery package. I was still in the stage when the drugs were opening doors to my imagination. And I was lucky enough to have a connection that got me heroin as close to pure as I would ever see.

  Rocks represented not only the first time that Aerosmith was listed as coproducer (along with Jack Douglas), but the first time the Perry/Tyler team wrote as many as four songs on the record. As usual, Steven went through his agonizingly long gestation period before he found the words to “Back in the Saddle,” “Rats in the Cellar,” “Get the Lead Out,” and “Lick and a Promise.” In some sense all these songs were about movement. “Saddle” has us riding back out there on the rock-and-roll range. “Rats in the Cellar,” of course, is Steven’s witty contrast to “Toys in the Attic.” Both he and I were intent on getting down to the grit and grime of the basement. “Get the Lead Out” is a straight-up exhortation to get up and dance.

  At the Record Plant in New York, Tom wrote the riff on guitar for “Sick as a Dog.” We recorded him on guitar, me on bass, and everyone else in their usual places. Then, with the tape still rolling, at the breakdown I gave the bass to Steven and picked up my guitar to play the solo. Looking like the Keystone Cops, we did this three or four times before we figured out who was going to run where and through which door. It took a while, but we ended up with a great live take. Brad also wrote some strong songs with Steven—“Last Child” and “Nobody’s Fault.”

  Looking back at Rocks, I see its one-word theme as party. Its one driving purpose was to reidentify us as America’s ultimate garage band, with blistering guitars, blistering vocals, balls-to-the-wall smash-your-eardrums production. When it came out in May 1976, the cover showed five diamonds, one for each of us. We saw the record as a jewel, the culmination of all our angst and anger and excitement and joy as go-for-broke rock and rollers. Rocks was the ultimate sound track to the party we were throwing for our fans at every one of our live shows.

  In 1976, the reality of the music business was somewhat unreal. On the soft rock side of the fence, Elton John, Frampton, and the Eagles were flying high. On the hard side, Aerosmith, Kiss, and ZZ Top were setting the world on fire. Sales were so unprecedented that the industry even invented a new category—platinum—to recognize a million-plus units sold. It didn’t take long for Rocks to reach that mark.

  We started the Rocks tour big—and it only got bigger from there. Detroit had always been ground zero for us, but no one was sure we could sell eighty thousand seats at the Pontiac Silverdome. We did. We had a couple of days off before the next gig—Madison Square Garden, our first time in that venue. Elyssa and I went back to Boston for a little R&R. On the day we were to fly on the band plane to New York, we snorted up a fresh crop of cocaine and downed a fistful of Tuinals. We crashed in bed. Because I had mentioned that Elyssa and I might fly out to New York earlier to do some shopping, the band left without us. But when they got to New York and we were nowhere to be found, the alarm went off, along with my alarm clock, which we slept through. Elyssa’s mom was alerted. She came over but even her shouts didn’t rouse us. We were sleeping the sleep of the dead. She got some guys to break down the locked door to our bedroom. Only then did I realize what was happening. I caught the last shuttle out of Logan Airport and miraculously walked onto the stage of Madison Square Garden on time. The after-party was at Rick Derringer’s. That’s where I met John Belushi, who had just started out on Saturday Night Live. He jammed with us till dawn. If there was ever a true rock and roller, it was John.

  It was a summer to remember. I could never forget jamming with Jeff Beck on September 10, my twenty-sixth birthday. Elyssa had convinced Jeff, whom she’d met years before in England, to join us onstage doing “Train Kept a-Rollin’.” There could be no better gift. Jeff had been opening for us, but it was—and remains—impossible for me to think of Jeff as an opening act. We were merely the band that followed him. As I watched him onstage each night, he gave me a lesson in the fine art of rock guitar.

  There were sold-out stadium shows in Chicago; Anaheim, California; and Seattle. The ever-growing Blue Army was as crazy loyal as they were crazy aggressive. They took to throwing explosives onstage. We were dodging firecrackers. We hated that. How the hell did we become targets? Well, one mad fan said that they were lovingly giving back to us what we were giving to them—the fire they felt in our music. Our music was geared to stimulate them beyond reason. Unreasonably, they were expressing their appreciation by bombing us with pyrotechnics. I didn’t buy that explanation, but what could I do? Who were we to demand civilized behavior from our fans when our own behavior defied civility at every turn?

  Steven was busted for uncivilized banter during our show in Memphis. The police claimed he violated an anti-profanity ordinance by using the word fuck. Obviously Steven had grown more comfortable talking to the audience, especially in the parlance that he and they loved best. The cops roughed him up and threw him into a cell, where he stayed for a few hours until our lawyers bailed him out. When he arrived at the hotel a free man, the band celebrated by flinging TVs into the pool. Such were the activities expected from rock stars.

  Our exploding popularity got to the point where even Rolling Stone had to put us on the cover—except they didn’t. They put Steven on the cover with a sorry photo. The accompanying story was just as sorry. They wrote that “guitarist Joe Perry plugs in his guitar like a grease monkey getting ready to tune a carburetor.” They said that Steven Tyler had a voice “that makes Alice Cooper sound like Vic Damone” and that we made “brain damage music.” Not then, not now, not ever would we win over the hearts of the New York critical elite. I thought at the time, Fuck ’em. The fans were coming in droves. The pact between the Blue Army and us was sacrosanct and growing stronger with every show. In the aftermath of Toys and Rocks, that shrill chorus of critics calling us a poor man’s version of the Stones was being been drowned out by our impassioned supporters. We had accomplished the seemingly impossible. Ignoring the warning signs that come with too many shows, too much success, and too many drugs, we picked up the pace.

  I couldn’t wait to get to England. I wanted to prove to British fans that we were more than an Americanized version of English rock bands who were themselves Anglicized versions of American blues bands. I wanted to prove that we had our own voice and style. That drive was greater than the drugs I was consuming or the melodramas surrounding me. That drive got me out there onstage every night. I wanted to win over the world. In spite of the petty dramas, we all stood together. It was us against the world.

  Ironically, we had to first win over our management. They didn’t like the idea of booking us abroad. I personally had been pressuring them for years to introduce us to European audiences, and for years they’d been resisting. Everyone with a modicum of sense understood that rock and roll had become a global business. I wanted Aerosmith in that business. It made no sense that, five years after signing with the biggest label in the world, we had not even started to establish a worldwide presence. Leber-Krebs argued that we had no market over there. I counterargued that we needed to establish a market. Maybe we couldn’t get booked into stadiums or arenas, but surely there were prestigious clubs that would have us. Later I’d learn that management was reluctant because, though they enjoyed cozy relationships with U.S. promoters, they lacked those connections in Europe. In other words, they couldn’t earn enough money off us in foreign markets to make it worth their while.

  Reluctantly, they booked us and we were off. Our first English gig was an outdoor festival in the middle of nowhere. It’d been raining for days. When we met up with my guitar tech Rabbit I asked, “How is it?” He handed me two new
pairs of wellies—knee-high rubber boots—one for me and the other for Elyssa. “You’re gonna need these,” was all he said.

  Old-timers on the crew were comparing it to Woodstock. An opportunistic farmer who had placed a wooden board from the band trucks to the stage was charging ten dollars a load to carry the equipment. Given the fact that there were ten bands with enormous piles of equipment, he must have made a fortune that day. In my dressing room, I asked for milk, only to have a stagehand take me outside and point to a goat tied to a fence. They did, however, provide an ample supply of Newcastle Brown Ale, the potent beer we’d heard about from the English cats in America.

  Would the Brits dig us? We had some doubts, but not for long. The audience knew our lyrics and sang along. They’d been waiting for us. They fuckin’ loved us. During our stay in England we also got to hang out with Queen, one of my favorite groups. Because we’d started out around the same time, admired each other’s music, and were about the same age, there was a natural bond between us. They were a great band. I’d gotten to know the guys when they had played Boston, and it was a treat being with them on their home turf. Of all the members, Freddie Mercury, like most lead singers, was aloof. He was the only Queen cat I never got to know. Other than that, Queen shared none of the anti-American band bias prevalent among other British rockers. England was a blast.

  Germany was different. Our first three gigs were, by coincidence, close to U.S. Army bases. The fourth, in Cologne, was canceled due to poor ticket sales. We had committed to a live interview in Cologne and went there anyway. Because no one at the radio station knew English, we were at the mercy of our interpreter. Little mercy was shown when the DJ interviewing us kept hollering accusations in German, allowing the interpreter no time to translate and us no chance to reply. When we finally got him to slow down, we learned he was telling the live audience that we’d come to his country not to entertain Germans but only U.S. troops. That was a lie. Through our hassled interpreter, we heatedly argued back, pointing out that the majority of the audience in our shows had been German. But the DJ cut us off. Pissed as hell, I stormed out and Steven followed. Sweet revenge came the next time we came to Germany. Our Cologne show was sold out. German fans turned out to be among our most devoted.

  I was wiped out from nonstop traveling, and yet when I learned that in early 1977 we were booked in Japan for a seven-show tour, I was excited. Asia was a huge rock-and-roll market. I couldn’t wait to get there.

  Before leaving, between the European and Japanese tours, I managed to squeeze in a five-day vacation in Barbados with Elyssa and my techs Nick and Rabbit. No drugs, but copious amounts of Mount Gay rum. When Elyssa turned in early, my guys and I played chess until we became restless and jumped on one of those jitneys, a golf cart on steroids, and raced through the cane fields, stalks whipping by and snapping back at us at forty miles an hour. We powered up the side of a mountain, where, at midnight, an all-night restaurant and bar served caviar and iced vodka. During the day, an old islander, his dive knife tied around his waist with a rope, took us diving with equipment left from World War II. The snorkeling was sensational. As soon as I hit the water, my hangover was gone. If only I could have lingered longer in Barbados.

  But it was on to Tokyo, where the legendary Mr. Udo, the man who brought the Beatles to Japan, treated us like we were the Second Coming. There were no drugs, but there was endless sake. There were unexpectedly enormous crowds who, quite formally, applauded for ten seconds after each song and then abruptly stopped. You could hear a pin drop. We asked our translator if we were doing something wrong. “No,” he said. “They stay silent because they don’t want to miss anything you say or do between songs.” Knowing they were listening that intensely gave us an extra boost.

  Money was pouring in. If I wanted anything, I called management and the cash was there—but not so much the accounting. I should have demanded to see the books. Tom, Brad, and Joey bought Ferraris. Among other cars, I bought a couple of Porsches and an old Bentley convertible. We were all putting the pedal to the metal. We’d become a cash cow, selling out major venues around the world. But even as we made it to the top, our management never failed to remind us that there was always another band right behind us, ready to take our place.

  Management was cagey. They saw us as their perfect vehicle to break the new baby bands, mostly from Europe, that they had signed and booked as our opening acts. Management was driving us harder than we were driving ourselves. It was like running a race where, the second before we crossed the finish line, management stepped in and pushed the line farther ahead.

  After years of nonstop touring and recording, wouldn’t common sense demand that the band take off six months or even a year? Wasn’t it time to come down to earth and chill? But we were simply too high—high on fame, high on drugs, high on stimulants of every variety. We needed to stop and figure out what was happening. A break would give us a chance to find perspective on our borderline-crazy lives. A break would give us a desperately needed rest.

  And yet, instead of resting, we cranked up the engine and drove full-speed into still another all-consuming project that, despite its enormous promise, proved to be the beginning of the end.

  ALL TOGETHER AND TOTALLY APART

  Management: You gotta get started on a new record right away. And to ensure your privacy, how’d you like to record in a former nunnery, complete with its own chapel, situated on a hundred acres in the middle of the woods?

  All five of us agreed to go. Our work ethic prevailed. Our mantra hadn’t changed—plow ahead and keep working. Yet as Elyssa and I drove to Armonk, New York, in my Porsche Turbo Carrera, I was burnt-out like never before. I was beaten down by five years on the road followed by many weeks down in the basement eight-track studio of our house in Newton, where I’d worked up a bunch of tracks highly influenced by the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. I felt the raw energy that punk was bringing to rock. I loved their attitude. It reminded me of what the proto-punk New York Dolls had expressed years earlier. In response, I wrote “Bright Light Fright,” lyrics and all.

  As much as I was influenced by the present, I also continued to be inspired by the past. Much of the material I had worked up in my basement eight-track was born out of playing old-school open tuning. I never stopped paying homage to the old blues guys. By then I had a sizable inventory of guitars and never tired of experimenting with them: double-necks, Gibson Les Pauls, Stratocasters, and custom models by master craftsmen Bernado Rico (B.C. Rich) and Bill Lawrence. These were the instruments I used to make the music I was bringing to the nunnery. I put my dozens of ideas on cassette tapes and threw them into a big cookie tin. These demos weren’t finished, but they were listenable.

  On paper, the plan sounded ideal. Jack Douglas, our trusty producer, had arranged to bring in a battery of the latest and greatest recording equipment. Today it would merely be a matter of a few computers and mics. But back then it was a massive science project. To create a studio meant hauling in thousands of pounds of equipment.

  “Get the guys whatever they need,” management told Jack, who did just that.

  Beyond bringing the best machinery to capture our music on tape, we were given a full staff to cater to our every need—a twenty-four-hour gourmet cook, servers to bring us food, housekeepers to clean up after us. With so much help at our fingertips, what could possibly go wrong?

  Try everything.

  The truth is that we were all together yet totally apart. We were separated from one another, both physically and emotionally. We were scattered. Our rooms were in distant sections of the estate. Overall, the vibe was mellow. When it came to writing, though, it felt like we were trying to squeeze toothpaste out of an empty tube. Everyone was exhausted from constant touring and recording. I was in a marriage I wanted out of. Adding to the madness of the moment was the fact that we were being fueled by a medicine chest of high-quality drugs. With Manhattan only forty-five miles away, there was a continuous flow of dealer friends fr
om the city.

  I woke up each morning to a double black Russian. Right off our room was a huge attic used for storage, where I’d have target practice with my .22 while sipping my morning pick-me-up. Since I was usually the last one up, the popping of the .22 echoed through the halls and let everyone know I was awake. In the afternoons, Joey, who lived for fast cars, would jump into his Ferrari and tear up the back roads. One afternoon when he returned to the Cenacle, as the nunnery was called, he borrowed my .22. He and Steven stretched out on the ground and shot at cymbals they had set up as targets. They took turns, passing the rifle back and forth, until at one point, Joey passed out, the gun resting in his hands.

  Joey wasn’t the only one knocked out from overdoing everything. We were all in the same condition. We were more into our diversions than our music. Artistically, we were less prepared for this record than we had been for any other. Steven had been hanging in his newly built house in New Hampshire. He had invited us a bunch of times to hang out and write, and I had invited him to Newton for the same reasons—but, in truth, we were living very separate lives. We had separate friends, separate dealers. Our drug-buddy relationship would wax and wane over the years, but at this point, we were off in separate universes.

  Jack Douglas also liked getting high, although that never got in the way of his work. When he saw that I was coming to the sessions too loaded to perform at my best, he got pissed. “You look like shit warmed over,” he said. He got even angrier when I wasn’t able to give him the new music he’d been expecting. That’s because I couldn’t find the cookie tin where I’d stashed my demos.

  Jack’s opinion meant a lot to me, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. Since Rocks, he’d produced Cheap Trick—his discovery—and Patti Smith. Well, I loved Cheap Trick and I loved Patti. I also loved Jack, but at this point I loved drugs more. A year or two ago we had been musicians fooling around with drugs. Now we were druggies fooling around with music.