See + Hear: "Music & Media" page at Joe's website
Aerosmith Rocker Busy with Break
With the future of Aerosmith a bit up in the air, it seems fitting that
guitarist Joe Perry has been travelling with his guitar close by.
Hours before the group officially cancelled their North American tour in
August with ZZ Top following singer Steven Tyler's fall during a concert,
Perry was seated in a Toronto hotel room as part of a mini-promotional
jaunt, listening to final mixes and trying to find the right running order
for his new solo album Have Guitar, Will Travel.
"I'd been planning on doing another one," Perry says. "I'm always in the
studio whether we're doing a record or not. So I have piles of songs and
ideas for songs. So as soon as I found out we weren't going to be doing the
Aerosmith record with Brendan (O'Brien) I just had everything ready."
The 10-track album -- out in stores Tuesday and the follow-up to his 2005
self-titled release -- was finished just before Aerosmith launched their
recent ill-fated trek.
"I had all these guitar tones in my head that I wanted to do," he says. "So
it was an easy step to just switch gears and put it in overdrive. I knew the
next solo record I was going to have a band so it would go faster and we had
time to do it."
Perhaps the biggest coup in Perry getting his own band together was finding
his lead singer, a German vocalist known as Hagen that Perry's wife Billie
spotted on YouTube.
"We're both conspiracy theorists and she was looking up UFO information and
somehow she stumbled on this guy singing on YouTube," Perry says. "We
finally got his phone number, called him, got him the plane ticket and it
worked."
And it's Hagen's dynamic pipes which fuel tracks like the punchy, buzzsaw
opener We've Got a Long Way to Go and the Southern-tinged, Black Crowes-ian
Do You Wonder.
"This (one) album definitely has a different vibe because I have a band
playing with me and a singer that can hit the notes that I can't," Perry
says. "I have a baritone blues voice and he's got the range to get up there.
I wouldn't be able to do justice to those songs."
The album also contains a cover of Fleetwood Mac's Somebody's Gonna Get
(Their Head Kicked In Tonite), a tune Perry's been wanting to cover for
quite a while.
"They used to do a couple of rockabilly songs and this is a really deep cut,
it's hard to find," he says. "It's not like it's one of their more popular
songs. It's like a tribute to Gene Vincent who epitomized a lot of the heart
and soul of what rock and roll was in the '50s. He was the one that people
should have been scared of, not Elvis.
"He was the Wild Turkey whereas Elvis was the Dom Perignon, so I have a lot
of respect for Gene Vincent, I'm a big fan. I thought that would be a great
tribute to him to play a song like that."
Perry says that he will be touring behind the solo album and already has
some dates lined up, but nothing yet in Canada. He also says that while a
live Aerosmith box set isn't out of the question, the next concrete item on
Aerosmith's agenda is a proper studio album, something they haven't done
since 2001's Just Push Play.
"I think we need a new studio record and make the best one we can make, but
then we say that about every record."
Jam! Music * October 8, 2009
by Jason MacNeil