AEROSMITH Guitarist Says ROLLING STONES Comparisons 'Used To Annoy Us'

Natalie Nichols of Los Angeles CityBeat recently conducted an interview with AEROSMITH guitarist Joe Perry. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Los Angeles CityBeat: AEROSMITH began in the classic rock era, but you have also found popularity in more recent years. Do those audiences mix easily?

Perry: Not too many fistfights. Clearly, drinking is one of the things they have in common. There is a commonality all through it. We noticed this a lot in the '90s, but back then it wasn't hip to like bands like ours that were big in the '80s. When alternative came in, it was hip to not like those MTV bands, and that gave them a place to move away from. That happens every two or three years: out with the old, in with the new.

Los Angeles CityBeat: The blues seemed to be at the core of the classic rock generation.

Perry: There is the famous quote from MUDDY WATERS: "The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll." The birthing was right around the '50s, with CHUCK BERRY and LITTLE RICHARD. The list is pretty long, but those few people just played blues faster, and the vernacular just expanded from there. All of the pop music that we hear now has its roots in the blues — it's just farther from the birth, that's all. Even hip-hop is an absolute direct descendent of the blues. It's urban street-corner, tell-it-like-it-is, "I'm a man" kind of music. And it's danceable. That's what blues was.

Los Angeles CityBeat: Aside from the music itself, classic rock continues to influence the fashion and attitude of a lot of contemporary musicians.

Perry: People get into rock and roll for different reasons. There are some bands that just like the trappings of being in a rock band. And those are the ones that come and go, because they don't have real depth. For me, the big part of it was playing music. I just love the way it makes me feel. On top of that, there is the camaraderie of having a band around you, guys you can rely on. It's your small gang. Our primary cause was to make music as well as we could, but also we wanted some adventure. So along with that is being able to dress how you want and emulate some of the people that have gone before us and then gather your own thing. It's all part of that rock and roll tradition to make yourself stand out a little bit.

Los Angeles CityBeat: People used compare AEROSMITH a lot to THE ROLLING STONES. Was that fair?

Perry: It used to annoy us because we really didn't sound much like the STONES. We certainly admired and were inspired by the STONES, no doubt about it. After that, I felt it was a shallow comparison because that whole guitar player/lead singer stereotype was really starting to form. But I was prouder when people said we reminded them of THE YARDBIRDS. Their music was lot more like where we were coming from.

Read the entire interview at this location.