AEROSMITH: Video Footage Of JOE PERRY's WHJY Interview Posted Online

AEROSMITH guitarist Joe Perry was the in-studio guest yesterday afternoon (Thursday, August 27) on the Providence, Rhode Island radio station WHJY (94 HJY). A snippet of the interview, which was conducted by 94 HJY on-air personality Geoff Charles, can now be viewed in the YouTube clip below.

Check out pictures of Perry's visit to the WHJY studios at this location.

Regarding the rumors that AEROSMITH was breaking up following the cancellation of the group's U.S. tour with ZZ TOP, Perry stated, "The band is on hiatus. I think that for the last couple of tours, Steven's [Tyler, vocals] been through a bunch of different physical things. He's always felt like we've gone out a little bit too early every time and that kind of thing... I really don't know for sure. We just want him to get completely healthy — from head to toe, whatever ailment it is — and then we'll talk about getting back together. So the band is by no means breaking up; we are just taking some time off. And we're gonna take a good bit of time off so that everybody can re-evaluate our original mandate, which was to go out there and entertain the fans, put the fans [at] number one — which I always do, and I constantly will, with the [JOE PERRY] PROJECT — but with AEROSMITH, we're all there on that. And make a great studio record and go out and get on the road and tour until we're finished."

When asked to clarify his statement that for the last couple of tours Steven's "felt like [AEROSMITH has] gone out a little bit too early," Perry said, "It takes a lot of planning, and the thing is, you've gotta know that you wanna go out on the road three months, four months, five months before you go out, 'cause it takes that long to build the tour — everything from finding the right guys and facilitating... structurally building the whole thing... getting the right PA, getting the right monitors, getting the right guys... A lot of them are people that we've had for a long time. There are new people that we'll bring in. And it just takes a long time to get it going. You look at the U2 thing; they were showing pictures of their stage a month ago. And that's when it's finally done, and you know they started planning that six months before that. So it takes a while to get a tour up and running, and you've gotta know... And that's why you can't put that off. It's one thing to take a little extra time on a release of a record, but you really can't mess around with that [tour] opening date, 'cause you're selling tickets three months in advance, and then you're ready to go. And that's when it's... The show must go on. That little bit of entertainment bylaws have never changed; that's never changed. And that's why we ended up not getting the this last studio record done. We were all set with Brendan [O'Brien, producer] to cut tracks, and we had the songs pretty much lined up, and Steven got a throat thing and then it got to pneumonia and he was out of the picture for six weeks. And Brendan said, 'Look, we just don't have time before the tour to finish this record, so we'll just do it after the tour is over.' And this was, obviously, before we had this whole business about cancelling and all that stuff. So that's when I flipped the switch and went in and started cutting a solo record; I just had too much music inside to let it sit there. I knew I was gonna do a solo record sometime again — another one — because I realized I could do solo things parallel to AEROSMITH without it hurting either one. So I was ready to do it some day, but 'some day' happened a lot quicker than I thought; I just wasn't gonna waste any time."

Tyler spoke with RollingStone.com on August 24 to refute rumors that he was drunk when he fell off the stage in Sturgis, South Dakota on August 5, leading to the cancellation of the band's summer tour and reports that the group was in turmoil. When asked how he's doing, Tyler responded, "I've been better. I've got my arm in a sling (from a broken shoulder). I'm on all the drugs I'm not supposed to be on. But I'm dealing with the pain pretty good."

Tyler said he was "as sober as you can be" when he fell, adding that he didn't know how it happened. He said, "It could have been my knee buckling or an ankle. The last thing I remember before I hit the ground was people grabbing for me . . . I stood up and couldn't raise my arm and knew I'd broken something."

As for the footage of Tyler in a liquor store viewed widely all over the web a short time after the Sturgis incident, the singer responded, "A good friend of mine and Joe's — the brother of the guy who works on my house, my housekeeper — passed away. I was at the funeral. And after the funeral, they're Italian and had a feast at the house, a wake, and I stopped at the liquor store and paid for the booze. I did not buy any for myself. It was never proven that I did. Some kid whipped out a phone and took a picture. Anything to sell papers. It was for the wake. I would do it over and over a million times."

Tyler also addressed reports, like the one posted last week at BostonHerald.com, that suggest that his alleged return to drinking and drugs is causing dissent in AEROSMITH. Tyler says, "Someone is leaking stuff, pretending to know, and you know, I don't even care. Has the band done things to me where I've wanted to quit? Positively. But I've stuck in there for the sake of a few sounds we got. I respect the power this band has in and of itself regardless of who says what."

He added that he last spoke with his bandmates "two days ago" and that "shit's good."

As for the seemingly cursed tour, which also saw medical problems befall guitarist Brad Whitford and bassist Tom Hamilton, Tyler said, "I'm just so pissed it was such a great tour. I had to ruin it all by falling and I'm sorry. I've said that to the fans and my band and everybody else. I fucked up . . . And I only hope they forgive me for having to cancel such a fucking awesome tour."