by Joe Perry
I didn’t like the cover art that showed a female robot wearing a fifties dress, a chauvinistic rip-off of the famous photo of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate, her white dress billowing. You don’t fuck with perfection. When the publicists decided to have females dressed as robots parade around our press conferences, I hated the idea. I thought it was a waste of money. But the band outvoted me and the robots had their day. As a press event, it was a flop. To me, the whole event felt cheesy. It was symbolic of what I felt was the most disconnected album we put our name on.
In September 2000, Billie threw me the party of parties for my fiftieth birthday. She put it together at Mount Blue, a restaurant in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in which Steven and I were part owners. With the help of my first lieutenant, John Bionelli, Billie was able to recruit one of my favorite bands, Cheap Trick. I’d always wanted to play a full set with them and began woodshedding. As a bonus birthday gift, they let me pick out my favorite songs. Come the night of the party, I was ready.
Billie went all out. Outside the restaurant there was a small circus for the kids with a big rock-climbing wall. Inside was Laurie Cabot, the famous Salem witch, telling fortunes, as well as a palm reader and an astrologer. Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators walked around while a master barbecue chef served a huge smoked pig, apple and all. Family and friends came from everywhere—including musicians from my early bands and the Joe Perry Project.
I figured that the highlight of the evening would be my set with Cheap Trick. But at its conclusion there was something even better, a presentation that blew my mind. Here’s the backstory:
Back in 1980 when I needed money, I did something I came to regret: I sold my 1959 Gibson, one of my most cherished guitars. The 1959 Les Paul Gibson is to guitars what the 1957 Chevrolet is to cars—a classic of classics. In 1959, Gibson made only two in the color they called tobacco burst. Mine happened to be one of those two. In spite of their reputation, not all ’59s sound great, but this one was a true gem. I hated parting with it.
A few years later when the band got back together, I got a call from Eric Johnson, a blues guitarist from Austin. He said he had bought this legendary Gibson and that when he learned that it had been mine, it hadn’t set easy with him. He realized the sacredness of the instrument and was willing to sell it back to me. Given the value of the guitar, the price he was asking—eight thousand dollars—was not unreasonable, but because I was still struggling financially, I had to pass. That killed me all over again.
As the years went by, I lost track of the guitar. But with the rebirth of Aerosmith in the late eighties, I found myself with more than enough dough to buy it back—if only I could find it. Eric Johnson had sold it long before and lost track of the instrument. Brad Whitford, whose passion for guitars is as great as mine, knew the story of my lost ’59 Gibson as well as anyone. So when he happened to see a photo spread in Guitar Player magazine with Slash in front of all his guitars, he immediately spotted mine. He brought me the picture.
“That’s your ’59 Gibson, isn’t it?” Brad asked.
“Sure as hell is,” I said.
By then Slash had become a friend, so I immediately called him.
“I’d been hoping you’d never call,” he said when I asked about the guitar. Naturally he knew it was mine. “When it came up for sale, that’s what made it so special. That’s why I had to have it.”
“I appreciate that, brother,” I said, “so you can really understand why I want it back so badly.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, Joe.”
“I have to. It’s not about the money. You can name the price.”
“It’s never been about the money,” said Slash. “Just like the Mona Lisa isn’t about the money. It’s priceless.”
“So you’ll sell it back to me?”
“I gotta think about it, Joe. Give me a little time.”
I couldn’t argue. But in the course of time, Slash and I lost touch. He was out doing his thing while I was out doing mine. I tried to reach him a couple of times but didn’t hear back.
The next time I saw him was in 1992 at a huge venue outside Paris. Guns N’ Roses asked Steven, me, Lenny Kravitz, and Jeff Beck to perform with them as special guests. They sent us tickets to fly over on the Concorde.
This was Slash’s heavy drinking period. Both before and after the concert I tried to talk to him, but it wasn’t easy. Finally I sat him down and said, “Look, man, this ’59 Gibson is fucking up our friendship. I’m not going to ask you about it anymore. If you decide to sell it to me, fine. If not, that’s okay.”
“Just give me some more time, Joe. I need some more time.”
“Take all the time you need.”
I forgot about it, but other guitarists didn’t. The story of my ’59 Les Paul took on a life of its own. I heard that Jimmy Page had given Slash a hard time about selling it back to its rightful owner. Other guitarists weighed in as well. But I considered it a lost cause. I understood how Slash felt. It was a beauty, it was history, and it felt so fuckin’ good to hold and play.
So you can imagine my surprise when in the middle of the set with Cheap Trick, my guitar tech walked up to me and handed me my sacred Les Paul ’59 tobacco-burst Gibson. With no price tag attached, with nothing but love and respect, Slash was giving it back—an amazing end to the most amazing birthday party I’d ever had.
The Just Push Play tour began that summer. On many of those gigs, Run-DMC opened. This was also the summer when we tried something new—working with two stages. The first—stage A—was the regular huge setup used for large outdoor venues. But the second—stage B—was set up with small amps, as if we were playing in a club, and placed out on the lawn to give the fans an up-close and personal feeling. Our manager Howard Kaufman didn’t like the additional expense of a second stage, but I argued that word would spread and ticket sales would increase. Fortunately that proved to be the case. It paid for itself.
Logistically, though, we had to work out a problem: How to get from stage A to stage B? And how to utilize the time it took to make the journey? I suggested that we make the three-minute trip part of the show. Walk right through the crowd, with cameras following us to capture the trip on the giant screens. It would be a few minutes of chaos but I thought the crowd would love it. Steven thought otherwise. Justifiably, he was a little worried about being manhandled by the fans. Finally, though, I prevailed and the experiment was on. I prayed no one would be hurt.
After a good hour on stage A, we put on black satin robes and started the march to stage B. We were surrounded by security but were still able to return the fans’ high-fives and avoid most of the zealots looking to pull our hair and grab our clothes. The trek took what seemed like an eternity, but when we got to the club-like Stage B and played that second set, it was magic. It was great playing face-to-face for fans who were used to watching the video screen.
On the way back to the main stage, we took a shorter route but were not able to avoid more mayhem. When it was all over, I thought the guys would kill me for coming up with this potentially dangerous walk from A to B and B to A. But they actually loved it. They got as big a kick out of it as the fans and voted to keep it a permanent part of the tour. The stage transition turned into a highlight of every concert. When we brought the show indoors, we entered from the back of the building and opened on the B stage, a big surprise for the fans.
All in all, the Push tour was going great. Dual stages added to the excitement. The band was playing as a solid unit and, show by show, the crowds were growing larger and larger.
But then came that morning when the world seemed to stop turning, the morning that threw our country into a state of tragedy, panic, and fear.
9/11
September 10, 2001, was my fifty-first birthday. This was the first summer that our family had rented a bus to accommodate us on tour. We had a gig in Virginia Beach and happened to notice a startling number of naval ships leaving port. For reasons Billie can’t
explain, she felt it best for our family to sleep on the bus that night. It made us feel more secure. We were having breakfast the next morning with our boys when John Bionelli knocked on the bus door. We could tell by the look on his face something was wrong. He took us aside and quietly explained that the twin towers in New York had just been brought down by two planes flown by terrorists. Like the rest of the country, we went into shock.
Obviously our show that night was canceled and all gigs postponed until further notice. Being on a naval base, the whole area was on lockdown. The Perry family had transportation out of Virginia Beach—our bus—and we were ready to give the guys a ride. Fortunately, our crew was able to secure a takeoff time for the band’s plane. We stayed until we knew everyone was safely on the way home before heading to our condo on a key in Sarasota, Florida. We were unable to tear ourselves from the television news. We awoke on the morning of the twelfth to the sounds of a thundering hurricane, something that the newscasts, preoccupied with the catastrophe at the World Trade Center, had not reported. Someone suggested that the storm was the perfect symbol—nature reflecting the emotional turmoil of our souls.
A few days later, we began discussing when to reconvene the tour. After juggling our feelings of sorrow, grief, and anger over the terrorist attacks, we had no choice but to face reality. The America we grew up in would never be the same. Our kids would grow up in an entirely different world.
We wanted to get out and play, knowing that we might be able to lift some spirits. But on the other hand, how wise would it be to gather ten or twenty thousand people in one arena? The word terror was on everyone’s mind. Where and when would we be safe? This was when our manager Howard Kaufman suggested that we follow baseball, a sport that had been the backbone of American culture through two world wars. When the baseball games started up again, so would our tour.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Billie and I went into full-on survival mode. There was talk everywhere about other attacks, including assaults using anthrax. Because we were traveling as a family with our boys, we felt obligated to provide as much protection as possible. We bought our own custom bus and hired a driver, Mark Langley. A former police officer and military man who had his finger on the button of the Pershing missile during the Cold War, Mark became our constant companion for the next twelve years.
Our bus became a survival camp on wheels. We had everything from gas masks to cases of dried foods to a supply of antibiotics. Even before 9/11, Billie and I had strong feelings about the precarious nature of life in America in this new century—and how to prepare for the worst.
When the tour got under way again, the other guys were blasé about new security precautions, but I insisted. I interviewed security consultants who were quick to point out the vulnerabilities of the major venues we were playing. In one arena, for example, the ventilation air intake could easily be accessed by grills right along the street. All you’d have to do is park a chlorine truck next to the grills, blow it up, and some twenty thousand people would be dead. Knowing this, I followed the advice of the consultant who said, “Station an engineer in the machine room. That way he can cut off the air-conditioning system in the case of an emergency.” We also reconfigured our backstage operation. The location of the dressing rooms, catering rooms, and tour manager rooms in relation to the exits is always a maze. I had directional tape with clear arrows put on the floor so, if need be, we could all find our way out in an orderly fashion—and in a hurry. We also made sure that our vehicles parked in the back-of-venue bays were all aimed out in the direction of the nearest exit.
In some ways, the threats posed by an unpredictable and violent world brought us closer together. This was certainly true of my family. The bus became our cocoon and comfort. In a fundamental way, our kids were educated on the road. We traveled with a private tutor. We closely supervised their schooling and made certain that their lessons were never ignored. But beyond the books, we also made time to stop at points of interest all over the world—museums, art galleries, battlefields, monuments, and historic sites of every stripe. We went down to caves in Georgia and out to the UFO crash site in Roswell, New Mexico; we toured Monet’s garden in France, the Tower of London, and temples all over Japan. On those rare occasions when my family wasn’t with me, the bus also allowed me to make a quick escape from the stage to the road. In the past, I’d have to hang around for hours and wait for the other guys.
The bus also afforded me a privacy that I cherished. I’d often ask Mark to go off the interstate and roll onto the blue highways where the America I grew up in was preserved. I loved seeing the farms and funky antique shops, the little stores selling homemade jam or jewelry made of old copper wires.
John Bionelli, who traveled with us on the bus and was by now practically a family member and virtual co–road manager of the band, did everything from assembling our set lists to running the teleprompters with our song lyrics. John also helped me discover out-of-the-way barbecue joints. Barbecue and hot sauce became a passion. I loved meeting the characters who ran these establishments. Every barbecue pit boss has his own little secret, and it was great using the A-word to get back to where the action was: the kitchen. I was also inspired to start my own food company, Joe Perry’s Rock Your World, run by our son Aaron.
We once stopped in a farming community, a one-horse town, that had a shop set up in a converted 1880s train station/hotel. They sold everything from crystals to scarves to dream catchers made by Native Americans. The elderly woman who owned the store did the canning herself. When I asked about the process, she went to great lengths to describe everything she did. Patience, she said, was the key. Listening to her, I had the feeling she could have been living in the nineteenth rather than the twenty-first century. I liked that feeling.
“Before you leave,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my husband. Let me fetch him. He’s right upstairs.”
I waited a few minutes. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and when I looked up I saw a man who, like his wife, was in his seventies. Unlike his wife, though, he was wearing a vintage Aerosmith Toys in the Attic T-shirt. When he saw me, he turned around and went back upstairs, only to reappear with a complete set of vintage vinyl Aerosmith LPs.
With a sweet smile, he said to me, “We’re fans.”
The bus also gave me time to read. A few years earlier I had begun to read the classics, from Homer to Faulkner—stuff I had missed by not going to college. I developed a deep appreciation for Hemingway, whose clipped, muscular prose affected me deeply. His troubled notions of manhood were riveting: what it meant to hunt and gather, what it meant to love and lose and face one’s fears. I also read Twain and Steinbeck. Rolling through America reading American authors was a beautiful thing. The sixty-mile-an-hour rhythm of the road was exactly right for me. It was also a joy to avoid airports.
I had flown over the Grand Canyon a thousand times but had never walked to its edge. The bus freed me from the band’s unwieldy travel schedule, giving me time to walk the cities and towns and talk to fans. It got me feeling like an ancient troubadour, wandering the back roads of a lost America.
In this post-9/11 period, through a friend of the band’s who worked for the Secret Service, the Joe Perry and Brad Whitford families were allowed to go to the Pentagon and view some of the damage. It was an opportunity for us to thank the workers.
We appreciated the incredible devotion of the men and women who were sweating profusely in their hazmat suits as they followed dogs through the rubble, never knowing what they might find. Dump trucks were hauling off debris. The air stank of jet fuel. Workers were still pulling plane parts out of the building. We shook every hand we could. It was a sad and sobering sight.
We had long made a habit of visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in D.C. to visit wounded soldiers, just to say thanks and help lift their spirits. When the war started in Afghanistan—and then Iraq—we redoubled our efforts. These were inspiring human beings, and it was an honor t
o be able to hear their stories. Being a rock-and-roll warrior is one thing; being a real warrior quite another.
On the rock-and-roll front, I got an idea from the nose art on the fighter planes from World War II. I loved how they put sexy drawings of their wives or girlfriends or pinup girls like Betty Grable on the noses of their planes. The images took a little sting out of the danger they faced, while adding to the energy that drove them to fight. Sexy women give men energy. Billie, the pinup girl of my dreams, was also the love of my life, and I wanted to see her in a Vargas-style painting on the body of a Gibson guitar. Without telling her why, I took photos of her in an alluring red dress and then sent them to John Douglas, the drum tech for ZZ Top who had done a series of similar paintings for sets of drums. He did a great job and my Billie guitar, with my wife looking especially voluptuous, came to life.
After the artwork was done, the guitar went to Gibson in Nashville for final production. As luck would have it, we had a gig there, giving us an excuse to take the kids on a tour of the Gibson factory. At the end of the afternoon, they brought out the just-completed Billie guitar. Billie’s face turned as red as the dress she wore on the body of the guitar. She was embarrassed for months but finally got over it. I loved the instrument, not only because it bore an image of my woman, but because it turned out to be one of my best-sounding guitars, no doubt due to Billie’s mystical mojo.
When the band saw it, Brad thought it was cool, but the others gave me some shit. Considering my bandmates’ attitudes toward wives and girlfriends, though, their reaction wasn’t unexpected. I figured that Steven would complain. He got used to it, however, to the point where he would occasionally bend over and kiss her face during a show. Sometimes women in the audience would point to the guitar and scream out, “Who is it?” I’d point to my wedding ring and the girls would cheer.
In 2002, Sony and Geffen got together and decided to issue a two-CD ultimate Aerosmith hits collection called O, Yeah! To increase the set’s value, they asked us to write a couple of new original songs. Steven and I thought it was a good idea. Our plan was to go to Maui after some dates in Japan and work there. That was a dream Steven and I had shared for years. But Steven changed his plans without telling me. He was about to leave early and write with Marti Frederiksen, leaving me in the lurch. It reminded me of what happened with “Jaded.” This time, though, I caught him.