AEROSMITH Guitarist Talks Hot Sauce, The Blues And METALLICA

AEROSMITH guitarist Joe Perry recently spoke to Newsday.com about the latest flavor of his Rock Your World hot sauce, called Mango Peach Tango, the group's "Honkin' on Bobo" album and METALLICA's "Some Kind of Monster" documentary. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

Newsday.com: You know, using rock and roll to sell products used to be uncool. What happened to that antiestablishment attitude?

Joe Perry: "The whole thing with our blues connection — I love barbecue, I love the South. The whole thing makes sense to me. But using music to sell products, it's been done for years. If it's a really cheesy product and it's something that's totally obscure and wrong, then you take issue with it. But for an AEROSMITH song to be played during a cool car commercial — I mean, it's another place where AEROSMITH gets its music heard. Kids know 'Dream On' because of the Buick ad. How many times have you heard that LED ZEPPELIN song when you see this cool car, this Cadillac, screaming down the road? I think kids today don't see that as a downside, because they get their music in so many different places, in video games and commercials."

Newsday.com: You have the "Honkin' on Bobo" album, and you made an appearance in "Lightnin' in a Bottle" [the blues concert film]. Why is the blues so important to you?

Joe Perry: "It's in my subconscious, it gets under my skin. That's the music that makes me want to pick up a guitar and play. Jazz doesn't do it; no other kind of music does it. We're not real blues players, and we never will be. But you can learn from it and assimilate it and at least know the form. We can have fun playing the music — as we hear it — and morphing into our band of suburban white guys having fun and playing rock and roll. We pay our respects and pay homage and try not to offend anyone by putting our own spin on it."

Newsday.com: Have you seen METALLICA's movie ["Some Kind of Monster"]? It was the first time most people saw a band going through group therapy, but AEROSMITH did that years ago. What was that process like?

Joe Perry: "It's in the book [1999's 'Walk This Way', by Stephen Davis and AEROSMITH]. You have a choice: You can either break up your band, or you can deal with it. If more bands would do that, we'd have more great music on the planet. I haven't seen that movie, because I've seen our movie. But I do admire their courage, because it's really hard to do."

Read the rest of the interview at this location.