In an interview with Haute Living, legendary Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler revealed how he met his longtime bandmate, guitarist Joe Perry.
Steven Tyler said:
“I’m mowing the lawn; in my driveway pulls in, in an MG sports car, Joe Perry – hair down to whihere, glasses broken with white tape. The nerd that you saw in all those nerd movies in the ’80s? Joe Perry.”
“And he goes, ‘Hey man, what are you doing up here?’ And I don’t remember if I knew him. [Perry continues,] ‘My band is playing at The Barn. I’ve seen your band playing there many times,’ ’cause we played from ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70.”
“Every summer I would go up there and play at The Barn. I had no more band, and then I saw him, and I thought, ‘If I can take my ear that my father gave me and add it to his jam band, then I can have what magic I know The Stones had, The Who had, The Kinks had, The Beatles had.”
“They all had some magic. What was that? The Beatles: Paul McCartney and John Lennon; the Stones: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Every one of those big bands had a magic element: two guys.”
Brothers
“I never had a brother, and nothing looked as cool as Joe Perry.”
“In fact, on the way down to Boston from New Hampshire I thought, ‘My God, we are going to be in a band. This is going to be a good one. And then I thought, ‘What am I going to write songs about? If I’m standing in front of a crowd, what would I sing?’”
“So I would probably say, ‘Good evening, people, welcome to the show. Got something here I want you all to know.’ And then I thought about a book I had just read that John Lennon was talking about…”
“He read a book written by Arthur Janov, ‘The Primal Scream,’ about just getting it out of your system. Mom died, Dad left, and you know – scream therapy.”
“So, ‘Good evening, people, welcome to the show. Got something here I want you all to know. When life and people bring on primal screams, you got to think of what it’s gonna take to make your dreams.’”
“So I wrote my first lyric, and then I grabbed my guitar, and I tuned it to an open cord. And one good thing my dad gave me as a gift ’cause he went to Juilliard – I grew up under the piano.”
“So I had an ear. Not only did I know scales, I knew not only the notes [but also] the sharps and the flats, and more importantly, what lives in between notes.”