Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith

by Joe Perry

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Steven?” I said. “That’s us.”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Hell yes, it is.”

  “Where was I?”

  “In the booth, singing.”

  When it came time to plan the actual tour for the summer of 1984, Collins went a little crazy. It was the one and only time we toured by bus—just the five guys and our women. We did sixty or seventy shows over the next few months. We did the entire tour by the seat of our pants. We didn’t fight the craziness because, well, we were crazy. Steven started snorting blow again—that is, if he ever stopped. My no-drinking policy lasted through the whole tour but was supplemented by occasional pills. In one way or another, we were all getting fucked up a little here and there, even as the music got better. But what else was new? Aerosmith was famous for playing fucked up and playing great. We called it the Back in the Saddle tour and that’s just where we were—back in the zone where our brand of rock and roll thrives.

  The tour was easygoing and fun. Along with our extended families, we were getting to know each other all over again. For the most part, everyone was getting along. Everyone went out of his or her way to make it work. All the good that originally created Aerosmith came to the surface.

  We also loved the loyalty of the Blue Army. They showed up everywhere—big cities, small towns—and cheered us on with passion and love. That made all the difference in the world to us. At the same time, there were tensions.

  One afternoon, cruising down the highway, the five of us were huddled in the back of the bus having a few laughs when Brad pulled out an expensive pocketknife he’d just bought. He passed it around for us to admire. When Steven got hold of it, he started stabbing huge holes into the top of a metal container of potato chips. Brad saw red. He grabbed the knife back, got Steven in a headlock, put the blade to his throat, and hissed, “If you ever do that again to any of my things, I’ll kill you.” Brad held Steven in that position for a full minute. The minute seemed like an hour. After he let him go, there was dead silence. The only sound was the rumbling of the tires. We were in shock—especially Steven, who didn’t apologize. Later on the tour, during one of the shows, Steven bit Brad on the head. The tension between the two of them was palpable. While I was out of the band, something heavy must have happened. I never learned what.

  There were, of course, endless interviews with endlessly similar questions:

  To Steven: “Why did the band break up?”

  Steven: “Love among brothers turned to hate among brothers.”

  To me: “And what brought you back?”

  Me: “Hate among brothers turned to love among brothers. Plus I believe our fans know that, no matter what Steven did without me or what I did without him, it was never quite as explosive as this Aerosmith thing.”

  “So you missed it?” I was asked.

  I stayed silent for several seconds before answering honestly.

  “I did miss it,” I finally said.

  “And you?” the reporter asked Steven.

  “I missed it real bad.”

  JOHN KALODNER JOHN KALODNER

  The renewal of the recording career of Aerosmith was realized on Geffen Records. We only met label owner David Geffen once, during a short get-together at his beach house in Malibu. This was the period in his career when he was signing big rock bands and I think by this time he was already looking to the day when he could sell his company and cash out of the business. In any event, he didn’t seem all that interested in us. But one of his A&R men was passionately interested. This was John Kalodner, whose only demand was that his name be listed on the album credits twice. We were happy to oblige.

  John became one of our chief musical counselors and a major figure in the history of the band. On our long and arduous journey back to the top, John was with us all the way. Because Collins was still a neophyte in the subject of the big-time record biz, he became John’s student.

  Before coming to Geffen, where he’d worked with Asia, Whitesnake, and Sammy Hagar, Kalodner had been an A&R guy at Atlantic, developing the careers of Yes, Foreigner, and AC/DC. A lover of arena rock, John was a hard-core fan who never professed to have technical knowledge of music. He couldn’t tap his feet to the beat. But he prided himself on having the ears of a fourteen-year-old girl. I respected his opinion immensely.

  John was strong-minded and a devoted believer in our resurrection. With his white suit, shoulder-length hair, and tiny John Lennon glasses, he was also a character with a style all his own.

  Before Kalodner signed us to Geffen, we’d tried working with Rick Rubin, who had begun Def Jam records and made it big in the rap game. Rick was another long-bearded, hard rock–loving genius who loved our records from the seventies and wanted to help bring us back. We had met him at a Boston studio where I walked in with Xanax in one pocket and blow in another. I didn’t play worth a shit that day and the Rubin connection, at least then, didn’t work. That’s when I knew that the old ways weren’t working. I knew we had to change, but I still couldn’t picture what that would look like.

  Kalodner did make a complete commitment to the band. Geffen gave John tremendous freedom and ample funds to engineer our comeback. The first stage, though, was tentative. It involved an album called Done with Mirrors. I don’t consider it among our greatest. That may be due to the fact that we were still engaged in mighty battles with our habits—and losing.

  Nonetheless, we started work on this new record, first tooling up in a rehearsal space in Somerville before heading out to Berkeley, California, and Fantasy Studios, where Kalodner had arranged for Ted Templeman to produce. Known for working with Van Halen, the Doobie Brothers, Van Morrison, and Little Feat, Templeman was seen as our great savior. But in fact, his contribution was minimal. He showed up and watched us rehearse before watching us record. Unlike Jack Douglas, he had little input. The whole thing felt haphazard.

  Steven and I had not yet returned to a good songwriting groove. In fact, the first song off the record was a redo of the title cut from the first Joe Perry album, “Let the Music Do the Talking.” Steven felt obligated to change some of the lyrics, but the music was exactly what I had originally written. The other songs on the record just didn’t realize their potential. When Done with Mirrors was released, sales were not spectacular. We still had a long way to go.

  Billie and I had long wanted to marry. In 1985, soon after my divorce from Elyssa became final, that became possible. We had in-depth discussions about the kind of life we envisioned for ourselves, our boys, and our future family. Billie didn’t want to raise children alone. She wanted a co-parent.

  My own position was clear. “I’m not marrying you to be alone,” I said. “I expect you to go on the road with me. I know the tours are long and tedious, but I’ll try and make it as comfortable as possible. I want to be there to help raise the kids.”

  We both had made mistakes in the past that we did not want to repeat. With that in mind, we made certain we were on the same page morally, spiritually, and financially.

  We also thought long and hard about a wedding ceremony that would mean the most to us. A small wedding? A big one with all the families together? Since neither of us had much regard for tradition, we leaned toward something intimate.

  The big day came in September. When the band stopped in Hawaii on our way back from Japan for a ten-day vacation and checked into a hotel in Maui, I woke Billie early one morning and said, “We’re getting married today.” I grabbed the yellow pages and found a minister who would officiate at the Iao Needle, a spiritual location for Hawaiian natives. After calling our mothers on the mainland to relay the good news, I felt relieved. No agonizing decisions about who to invite, no worry about fancy preparations. We headed straight to the sacred spot, stopping only to pick up leis of fresh flowers for the bride and groom. I wore jeans and Billie wore gauzy beach pants and a flower-printed bandeau top. She looked tanned and gorgeous. Tim Collins and his friend Nick LaHage were
witnesses.

  The mountainside setting was awash with lush greenery. The sky was overcast. The vows were simple but moved us to tears of happiness. The music was Bryan Ferry’s “Take a Chance with Me” on the boom box I had brought along. In the midst of the ceremony, the sun broke through, revealing the shimmering blue ocean in the distance—a good omen.

  Later that week Collins threw a big wedding party on a catamaran sunset sail, inviting the band and the whole crew. Steven and Teresa gave us an underwater scooter, an extravagant gift. Given the fact that we were still struggling financially, I didn’t feel comfortable accepting it. I thanked Steven but urged him to return it. He wouldn’t hear of it, but I still didn’t take it out of the box. I was going to return it and give Steven his money back. Weighing some fifty pounds, the boxed-up scooter stood in the hallway of our bungalow for days.

  Meanwhile, the jeweler who had made my wedding band gave us some incredible Maui Wowie that we put on the shelf. A few days later, we heard Tom and Brad and their wives laughing and partying in their bungalow. They’d eaten mushrooms and were having a blast.

  “What the fuck,” I said to Billie. “Let’s light up some of this.”

  The smoke tasted more like hash than weed.

  Five minutes later, we took the scooter out of the box and carried it down to the beach together with our masks, fins, and snorkels. We played like porpoises in the warm water of the bay till dusk, laughing so hard we nearly drowned.

  In 1986 a seismic shift happened without warning. In fact, I didn’t know it was happening until after it was over. It began with a simple phone call from producer Rick Rubin.

  “Do you like rap, Joe?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “What I know of it.”

  Aaron, our son, was a rap fan and played it around the house all the time. For my part, I’d picked up the sounds on the street and liked what I heard. In fact, I saw rap as a new form of blues. Just like old blues, hip-hop can be in-your-face macho. The country bluesman might sing, “I’m a crawlin’ kingsnake, baby,” the same way the urban rapper might boast, “I’m the baddest motherfucker.”

  “I consider ‘Walk This Way’ proto-rap,” Rick told me.

  When I asked Rick what he meant by that, he explained, “It’s half spoken, half sung and has the swagger of rap. I’m telling you this because I’ve been producing the new Run-DMC record. When I played them ‘Walk This Way,’ they loved it. My first idea was to have them rap over samples of the song with a drum machine, but now I’m thinking that it’d be better to cut a brand-new cover, with Steven doing new vocals and you adding guitar parts. What do you think?”

  I didn’t have to think for long. It sounded like a cool musical adventure and I said so.

  “You think Steven would do it?”

  I did, and he did. Steven and I saw it as a double blessing—a chance to revisit one of our favorite songs and, at the same time, bring it to a new market.

  A week later we showed up at a New York studio. The guys from Run-DMC arrived a little after us and immediately huddled up around their road manager, obviously preoccupied. From the bits of conversation we could overhear, it sounded like a rental car they had loaned to one of their roadies had gone missing. They were trying to figure out what to do next. This went on for half an hour or so. Meanwhile, they hadn’t even acknowledged that we were in the studio. Finally, Rick intervened and introduced us all around, saying, “Later for the car, guys. Let’s concentrate on the song.”

  But the concentration didn’t come quickly. They were understandably obsessed with getting their car back.

  “We can get into a lot of trouble,” said Run.

  “More trouble if we don’t cut this track,” said Rick. “Don’t forget—Joe and Steve are here.”

  It took another few hours for things to settle down, but when the attention finally turned to music we were all surprised by how well things meshed.

  “How ’bout putting on a new bass part?” Rubin suggested.

  “Didn’t bring a bass,” I said.

  “I’ll run home and get you one,” said one of the guys who had been watching the sessions. He and his friends turned out to be the Beastie Boys, another group that Rick was producing, who happened to be hanging out during the session.

  When it was over, everyone seemed pleased. But there were no reassurances from Rick that the cut would even make it onto the final album. We all left as friends, with much respect all around.

  I forgot about the session until a couple of weeks later when another call came in from Rubin. We were out on the road with Aerosmith.

  “The cut is on the record,” said Rick. “In fact, we wanna shoot a video with you guys in it. Are you game?”

  We were. We flew to New York. I was with Billie, then pregnant with our first child, and Steven was with Teresa. The soundstage was in a sketchy part of Union City, New Jersey. When it was time to start filming, Steven and I were pretty buzzed. As soon as we’d arrived in New York, we had run off to separate dealers to cop the stimulants of our choice. The shoot itself took a while. Once we saw the concept, though, we knew the video would be special. Making it even more special was the presence of our women, who made fleeting appearances. Billie and Teresa are the two beauties seated in the background while Steven and I carry on out front.

  The video is a visual metaphor for the meeting of two worlds—rock and hip-hop. In it, the wall that separates Steven and Joe rocking in one room while Run-DMC rap in the other is literally torn down. The rappers sport their laceless Adidas, black hats, and gold rope chains, while we’re in our glitter scarves, fringed leather, and white boots. Ultimately the two styles mesh and match. The video is a raucous celebration, a happy marriage of two genres; in a twist of double irony, it represented a crossover moment for Run-DMC into the white pop world even as Aerosmith experienced a grand and unexpected entrance into the world of MTV videos. It was a big, big moment for the bad boys from Boston. First Run-DMC’s version of “Walk This Way” became a hip-hop hit; then it became an even bigger hit on the pop chart. The video went into heavy rotation and soon earned iconic status. It turned out that, after Michael Jackson, Run-DMC were among the first black artists to appear on MTV.

  And yet we were still fucked up on drugs. Our motives were always clear—to get back as a world-class rock band. But times had changed. We needed clearer heads to make things work.

  Collins met with me to discuss the drug situation. He had stopped using and was attending twelve-step meetings. He thought it critical that Steven and I get sober. At this point I had quit snorting heroin and coke and, aside from social drinking, had given up booze, but I was strung out on Xanax. Tim wanted me to go into rehab at the same time as Steven. But Billie was within two weeks of giving birth to our first child. So I made a deal with Tim that I’d go in a week after Billie gave birth.

  After the dismal results of the Rick Rubin sessions, I knew that something had to change. This twelve-step thing sounded a bit creepy, but doing the Back in the Saddle tour relatively straight had given me a window into what clearheaded creativity could be.

  In conjunction with a high-priced New York therapist, Collins talked us into doing an intervention on Steven, who resented the fact that I wouldn’t go with him. He was the front man who had fallen out onstage more than anyone wanted to recall. But no, he wasn’t the only one who was fucked up. We all were. I told Steven that I’d be going into rehab shortly, but he wouldn’t accept my explanation of wanting to be with Billie during the birth. I had a hard time accepting his lack of understanding. I couldn’t believe this guy was literally asking me to miss the birth of my child and was pissed off about it. I was hoping that he’d see this opportunity to get clean as a blessing and proof that we cared for him; we were trying to save his life. But Steven didn’t see it that way. His reasoning was, how could we urge him into rehab when we were still using? Nonetheless, he went.

  As promised, I went in to deal with my Xanax habit in October 1986, after the b
irth of our son Tony. In their own time, the other guys also got sober. We realized that the only way this would work was for all of us to be sober.

  In rehab I heard talk among the staff about Bon Jovi. Slippery When Wet had just come out with hit after hit. I heard snippets of the record—songs like “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “You Give Love a Bad Name”—but they weren’t exactly to my taste. Bon Jovi was being hailed as the new big thing. I didn’t know it then, but, ironically, the team that had produced and helped Bon Jovi write their breakthrough record would soon be working with us.

  Even though I took occasional note of what was happening in the wider world of rock, rehab really wasn’t about music for me. It was more about quieting my mind and purging Xanax from my system. I just wanted to get clean.

  I went to twelve-step meetings that, for several years, were helpful. But because I’m not much of a joiner and tend to resist the group mentality, I lacked Steven’s enthusiasm for recovery gatherings. I shared reluctantly and tended to keep to myself. Having also stopped snorting cocaine, smoking grass, and drinking liquor, Collins cast himself in the role of both manager and sobriety supervisor. He kept track of the number of meetings we attended. He assigned people to check up on us to make sure we were doing the twelve-step work he considered mandatory. This felt invasive and like an accusation of irresponsibility—and also went against the tenets of the twelve-step paradigm. But I knew we had to get straight and was willing to put up with whatever methodology worked.

  For years we had used the excuse that, because we were America’s party band, sobriety didn’t go with our image. In fact, sobriety might ruin our image. Of course this argument was bullshit. But when you don’t want to give up the stuff that has been feeding your head for many years, you rely on bullshit. You rationalize any way you can.

  We also felt that we had to make our sobriety public. The band had burned so many bridges with half-played shows and no-shows that we had to let the business community know that this time we were serious. We had to prove we could gather our forces to make records that didn’t cost millions and take years to complete.