by Joe Perry
Adding to the pressure was the great anticipation surrounding this new album. Fans considered Toys and Rocks masterpieces. They were counting on our next record to be even better. One die-hard fan said, “What the White Album was to the Beatles, the post-Rocks album will be to Aerosmith.” Instead of our White Album, though, we cut our Blackout Album.
On my end, only once did light break through—when Elyssa found the cookie tin that held my demos. I immediately felt vindicated. Among those tapes was not only the fully realized “Bright Light Fright,” but tracks that led to other songs like “I Wanna Know Why,” “Get It Up,” and “Draw the Line,” the title tune. Something I’d started with David Johansen became “Sight for Sore Eyes.” But the lyrics literally took months for Steven to write, and by then we were back at the Record Plant in New York.
Our recording setup at the Cenacle became a sad metaphor for everything that was wrong with the band. It was all about separation. Joey was drumming in the two-hundred-seat chapel. I was in the living room with my amps piled inside a stand-up-size fireplace. Somewhere else in the nunnery Steven was in an isolated booth. Brad and Tom were in other rooms, totally apart. The only eye contact came through crude black-and-white closed-circuit TV monitors. The sound was muddy. There was no connection, no togetherness.
Somehow we pulled the songs together. Steven, Joey, Tom, Brad, and Jack cut some tracks in the chapel, using the confessional as a sound chamber for a snare drum. That became “Kings and Queens.” They also did something called “The Hand That Feeds.” To fill out of the album, we had to pull out Kokomo Arnold’s old “Milk Cow Blues.” Elvis had sung it and so had the Kinks. I was doing it way back in the days of the Jam Band. For years Aerosmith had been using it as an encore song. It rocked, and now we were recording it because our creative well had gone dry.
While we were at the Cenacle, Raymond—the guitarist turned merchandiser—would run to New York City to cop blow for Steven. (By that time we all had separate dealers.) On one occasion when Raymond was spending the night at the Cenacle, Steven decided to have some fun. While Raymond was still upstairs, Steven came down to dinner with a smirk on his face.
“In about five minutes,” he said, “you’ll hear the loudest fuckin’ scream you’ve ever heard in your life. That’ll be Raymond. Just wait.”
Right on time, we heard this harrowing scream.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“I set out two thick lines of coke on my bed stand,” said Steven. “I knew Raymond couldn’t resist.”
“So why’s he screaming like somebody tore out his fingernails?”
“Because,” said Steven, “it wasn’t coke. It only looked like coke. It was plaster I scraped off the ceiling.”
Jack also couldn’t resist a practical joke. His most successful was perpetuated on Joey. Joey’s weakness was chocolate. Put a big chocolate cake in front of him and he’d devour it whole. Joey was also into crazy diets, purging himself of his excesses.
“The most effective diet,” Jack explained, “is simple. For a couple of weeks you eat nothing but green apples and drink nothing but water. On the last day you drink a cup of olive oil—and that’s it. You’ll lose a minimum of ten pounds.”
Not realizing that Jack was inventing this diet out of thin air, Joey bought the concept and carried out the plan. Aware of Jack’s mischief, Steven, Brad, Tom, and I struggled to keep straight faces. On the last day, after Joey downed the olive oil, the shit literally hit the fan. He spent at least twenty-four hours in the bathroom. When he emerged, realizing he was the brunt of Jack’s joke, he went looking for Jack. One of the hardest-hitting drummers in rock, Joey is built like a bull. And he was pissed. Jack had to disappear for a day until Joey calmed down.
The most lasting illustration of our time at the Cenacle can be seen on the cover of the album. We had decided early on to call it Draw the Line, and, following the advice of Tom—the only one of us conversant in fine art—we asked Al Hirschfeld, famous for his cartoon sketches of Broadway and showbiz celebrities, to draw us. We were elated when Hirschfeld agreed. When he came to the Cenacle we weren’t sure what to expect. This was, after all, our first experience working with an artist of his caliber. He was a friendly older gentleman in a frumpy suit. We discussed music and art. He told us how he liked to ride the New York subways and sketch people by putting his hand in his pocket and, without looking, drawing them on a small pad. After a half hour of fascinating conversation, we asked him what he needed us to do. Should we pose? Did he need to do a sketch?
“Oh, no,” he said. “I have everything I need. Give me a week and I’ll send you the drawing.”
We were amazed. He didn’t make a single note or sketch a single line. We were even more amazed when the drawing arrived. Al Hirschfeld caught the essence of each of us. He did exactly what we’d hoped for—he drew the line. The cover was brilliant.
When most of the music for Draw the Line was complete, we got tired of waiting for Steven to write the lyrics and decided to split. Before the morning of our departure, we’d been up all night shooting a long promotional video. At daybreak I was having trouble standing up straight. I was nonetheless determined to ride my motorcycle up the ramp into the truck that was hauling my stuff back to Newton. I gunned the bike hard and wound up flying off the ramp into the bushes. The crew ran over, expecting the worst. Other than a slight bruise, I was fine. I gathered my composure and, in my best Frank Connelly voice, said, “I might need to practice that a bit more. But I’m fine, boys. Why don’t you take over?” After a good long nap, my head was finally clear enough for me to get in my Porsche to head home. Not far outside Boston, I saw something that hit me in the gut: a black Ferrari mangled in the center guardrail. I immediately recognized it as Joey’s. No one was around. There was just the wrecked car with blood all over the seats. My heart hammering, I sped to a pay phone and was finally able to reach Tom.
“The car’s totaled,” said Tom, “but Joey walked away with just a few stitches.”
Relieved, all I could think was that this was a day when our guardian angel had been working overtime.
Even though the album wasn’t finished, that summer we were doing gigs here and abroad. Steven and I were running in and out of the Record Plant in New York. He was still writing lyrics and I was still recording overdubs. Back home in Newton, I was speeding in my Corvette when, in passing a car, I crashed into the guardrail and nearly flipped over before the car came to a stop. While waiting for the cops, I had to endure dirty looks from the people I’d zoomed past in the last half mile. I felt pretty damn stupid and vowed to tone down my driving.
“You hurt?” asked the officer who arrived on the scene.
“I think I’m fine.”
“Your car’s a mess. Sure you’re okay?”
I got out of the car, stretched, and felt for broken bones. There were none. I wasn’t even sore.
I looked at the cop and said, “I’m okay.”
“Given how you fucked up your car, that’s amazing.”
I agreed. But now what?
“Hey,” he said. “Aren’t you Joe Perry?”
“I am.”
“Well, look, I better call an ambulance for you, just to make sure.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m okay.”
“At least let me drop you off. Where do you want to go?”
“Dunkin’ Donuts would be good.”
That’s where we went for a cup of coffee. I called a towing service to haul off the car, and that was it. Thankfully, I didn’t get a ticket and avoided injuring myself or anyone else.
But I didn’t get off scot-free. The episode drove me deeper into the illusion of being invulnerable. I didn’t know it at the time—I wasn’t thinking that way; I wasn’t thinking at all—but the more invulnerable you think you are, the more vulnerable you really are.
This was the same demented period when Elyssa and I took a private plane, piloted by Zunk Buker’s dad, from Logan to New Y
ork, where I had work to do at the Record Plant. I’d been up for three days—no eating, no sleeping—at my home studio in a rush to complete material for the still-incomplete Draw the Line. Before takeoff, my body checked out, I went blank, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on an EMT gurney surrounded by state police. Elyssa had taken the drugs out of my pocket and put them out of sight. An ambulance rushed me to a hospital, where the doctor said he had never examined a human being with a lower amount of blood sugar. He told me to go home and eat steak. He said that I gave undernourishment a bad name.
Even with the decay of our artistry—as evidenced by Draw the Line, an album that didn’t hold a candle to Toys or Rocks—there seemed to be no commercial consequences. In Baltimore we sold out the Civic Center, but the stage monitors crapped out. That’s when I enacted my own version of a flip-out. I started pushing monitors into the crowd, pleasing the fans to no end.
Another time, I got carried away again at the climax of a show when I threw an old Les Paul Jr. straight up in the air. This was before I had a wireless rig. It went sailing upward until it reached the end of the patch cord that, acting like an elastic band, whipped it back down. As it hit the floor, the headstock broke off. Fortunately, the repair geniuses at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville did an amazing job. They crafted a mother-of-pearl inlay and had it sounding better than ever.
These incidents became an apt metaphor for my conflicted psyche. I was both arrogant and impulsive. It didn’t take much to ignite my anger. At uneven and unpredictable intervals, chemicals were popping off in my brain. At times I acted crazy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there was a method to my madness, but I never once entertained the notion of cracking up completely. In my out-of-control behavior I was convinced that I could maintain some degree of control. I always felt there was a line that I’d never cross. In fact, I never did. Now, though, I know that much of that was due to good luck.
I have clear images of what had to be the most unclear summer of my life. In fact, management thought it’d be a good idea if two of our security guards spent the summer in a guest room at our home to keep an eye on me. I remember receiving a large shipment of opium that had us swinging on the distant stars for a month or more. I remember being introduced to rare vintage wine and buying it by the case. We drank it like Sprite. I remember my friend from Morocco who made leather suits in whatever color I named. We had the same skinny build so they always fit like a glove, right out of the box. Fresh off the plane, the package would be waiting for me in the backseat of the limo, where I’d slip it on. Knowing that my leather maker liked to include special treats, I’d find a gram or two of premium blow stuffed into one of the secret pockets.
I remember Eurofest ’77. Munich in August. It never stopped raining. That’s where Steven collapsed onstage. Soon he was spitting up blood. But then, so was I. It was the poor-quality coke. It acts like sandpaper on your throat. I was singing backup and only one song. I can only imagine what it was doing to Steven, singing full-throttle every show. Afterward, we didn’t discuss it. It simply happened. He needed some rest. I needed some rest. He needed to take fewer drugs. I needed to take fewer drugs. He took more drugs—and so did I.
Munich was also where I ran out of coke, out of Tuinals, out of everything except the mini-bottles of booze in my room. I turned on the TV and saw a picture of Elvis. It was framed in black. I didn’t need to know German to understand that the King was dead. The entire nation of Germany, where he was considered a god, went into mourning. I went into mourning. When we got to Hamburg, the scene of our next show, we came out after the Doobie Brothers. The emcee asked for a moment of silence in honor of Elvis. I looked out into the crowd and couldn’t see a dry eye. Grown men were weeping openly. I thought about hearing “Hound Dog” when I was a kid. I wondered about the journey that had led Elvis to such an early death. I didn’t want to think about death. I remember thinking, That’s never gonna happen to me. I’ve never known any drug addict—including me—to straighten out because of another addict’s death. Though I was well past my teen years, I still clung to that foolish sense of teen invincibility. I was a bullfighter putting on a blindfold and charging into a ring while screaming, “Bring it on.”
In our determination to complete Draw the Line, we booked time in English studios to redo a vocal or add a guitar part. Jack Douglas, who came along on the tour to make sure this album got finished, arranged for us to record at George Martin’s famous AIR Studios, where Martin had experimented with sounds for the Beatles.
When Draw the Line came out that fall, the album set a Columbia sales record—well over a million copies sold in fewer than six weeks.
Zunk Buker’s dad, an air force pilot, was another angel on our shoulder. Not only did he expertly fly Steven’s twin-engine Cessna, but he wouldn’t let the band charter a plane until he had a chance to painstakingly check it out. Many were the times I heard him tell Leber-Krebs, “I don’t care what kind of deal you made, the boys are not getting on this plane.” In one such encounter, he saved our lives. He looked at a Convair and firmly put his foot down. “No way,” was all he said. A week later, on October 20, 1977, that Convair crashed with Lynyrd Skynyrd on board, one of the worst tragedies in rock history.
More frightening than the precarious planes, though, were the crowds in Philadelphia. We were playing the Spectrum when some asshole lobbed an M-80 onstage. It went off like a bomb right in our faces, searing Steven’s cornea and tearing an artery in my right hand. I was bleeding profusely. Another quarter inch in the wrong direction and Steven could have been blinded. We were rushed to the ER, where absolutely no one paid us any immediate attention, so Elyssa started screaming and pushed everything off the nurse’s desk. Not a great way to make friends, but it got results. We were hurried back to the examination rooms. As rude as she might have been, Elyssa rose to the occasion, displaying an impassioned loyalty to me, Steven, and the band.
As a result of our injuries, we had to cancel a month’s worth of shows.
I had a nasty night in Newton when I ran out of coke and had to go out and score. This was unusual. The best dealers in town gladly made house calls, but for some reason no one was responding to my requests. Elyssa was tired and wanted to stay home. So a friend of mine and I went down to the Paradise, a club where I found a connection. By the time we got back home, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A fire had destroyed our house. The second floor was a smoldering ruin. Cops and firemen were everywhere. Elyssa was nowhere to be found. Someone said that, unharmed, she had gone to her mom’s. The cause was a faulty electrical outlet.
The important thing was that Elyssa had not been injured. In another piece of good fortune, my guitars remained untouched. Thanks to the Newton Fire Department, the blaze was contained to the master bedroom and second floor.
Of all that I lost in the fire, what I missed most was the gun I had inherited from my dad. I kept it close to my bed and it was gone. Unlike me, my dad wasn’t a hunter—he was a golfer—and this one gun, a .22 Saturday night special that was given to him by his father, was his only weapon. It meant a lot to me, and I still regret the loss.
My reaction to the fire was typical. I went on a three-day binge. After hiring armed guards to protect our house, I went to a friend’s, where I slept on the kitchen floor. When I woke up, I plied myself with whatever get-high substances he had. I vaguely remember calling Elyssa and talking about what we would do next, but there was no movement on her part or mine to get together. Under normal circumstances I would have gone back to console her. But subconsciously I was feeling that when the house burned down, so did our marriage. Before the fire there had been billboards every two feet, staring me right in the face with words that screamed YOU ARE IN THE WRONG RELATIONSHIP. Yet it took the blazing heat to bring that message home.
One night I got a call about a shoot-out at the house. A burglar had tried to break in. One of my armed guards had opened fire. No one was killed but the story made the papers. Then came another c
all: Two women, who were an alluring combination of movie producers and groupies, wanted me to meet them at a bar in Logan Airport to discuss featuring me in a film. I went, I drank heavily, I half-listened to their plans. Some guy, probably drunk himself, overheard my name and approached the women. “I heard you talking about Joe Perry,” he said. “You want to stay away from that guy. They have shoot-outs at his house.” The women flew off into the night. I never heard from them again.
I moved into a hotel and Elyssa eventually joined me. We rented a house in Brookline. You’d think we’d have discussed the trauma we had just endured, but practically nothing was said. We made arrangements to have our home repaired, with Elyssa’s mother overseeing the project. We went back on the road. Business as usual.
The continual presence of Cyrinda Foxe—Elyssa’s friend and David Johansen’s wife—only added to our overall estrangement. Sometime earlier, Elyssa had invited Cyrinda on several Aerosmith road trips. Cyrinda was happy to accept and often showed up with an ample supply of drugs to complement our own stash. Of course David knew about these trips and would ask me to keep an eye on his wife. Like most couples, they were having their problems but were still together. The bond between Elyssa and Cyrinda was strong.
That dynamic changed radically, though, when one night at the Beverly Hills Hotel Cyrinda wound up in Steven’s bed. I was shocked and dismayed. When the affair turned into a rock-and-roll soap opera, culminating with Cyrinda leaving David for Steven, I felt partially responsible. Elyssa was also pissed. She felt that Cyrinda had used her to get to Steven. I wound up apologizing to David, but there was nothing I could say that really mattered. I felt terrible for my friend.
Rumors floated around insinuating that I had designs on Cyrinda. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only was she not my type, she was my friend David’s wife. Regardless of hearsay, nothing even remotely inappropriate ever transpired between us.