AEROSMITH's PERRY And WHITFORD Talk About Two Of The Band's Most Famous Guitar Riffs

October 5, 2010

AEROSMITH's Joe Perry and Brad Whitford recently spoke to U.K.'s Total Guitar about two of the band's most famous guitar riffs, "Love In An Elevator" and "Walk This Way". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Total Guitar: How did you come up with the riff for "Love In An Elevator"?

Joe: "That particular riff kind of floated my way during one of mine and Steven [Tyler]'s writing sessions. I was probably listening to Jimi Hendrix on the ride up. I was talking to Rick Rubin once about writer's block and he said, 'Make a CD of all the songs that you fell in love with and made you love rock 'n' roll. Listen to that over and over again and it'll start the wheels going'. So I was listening to a lot of Hendrix, and it was one of those riffs that just played itself. I picked up the guitar and it just started coming out."

Total Guitar: At what point did you realize you had a killer riff on your hands?

Joe: "I don't know if you ever do. Sometimes when a record's done I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cos I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record. Even now I'll listen to a record and go, 'I kind of forgot about that riff, it's actually pretty good!'"

Total Guitar: How do you keep your guitars sounding distinct from each other when you're playing the same riff?

Brad: "A lot of the time I make sure that we're not using the same guitars to broaden the scope of the guitar sound, and a lot of times we'll play very similar or exactly the same riff — sort of old-school power with two players playing the same thing, and the bass. And then we'll do very different parts together, so a lot of the time it's about getting a sound that complements each other but also will really stand out on its own. I guess just playing it properly is what's required of me sometimes!"

Read the entire interview from Total Guitar.

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