More than five decades ago, the guitarist Joe Perry helped to form Aerosmith in Boston, Massachusetts, which would be one of the most important American bands of all time. They have released 15 studio albums and have sold more than 150 million records worldwide, which makes them one of the best-selling bands in history.
Although Perry was very influenced by the music produced in the United Kingdom in the 60s, he kept being interested in new bands over the decades and even revealed which one from the 90s that he loves. According to him, he takes their debut album everywhere with him.
The album that Joe Perry said he takes with him everywhere
In 1992, Joe Perry celebrated his 43 birthday and Aerosmith was working on their successful 1993 album “Get A Grip”. At the time Rock and Roll music was going through a revolution with Grunge and many new bands were appearing.
One of them was Rage Against The Machine that released their praised debut album in 1992. As Perry said in an interview with Guitar World in 2013, he loves the group and doesn’t go anywhere without their debut record.
He chose the famous track “Killing In The Name” as one of the songs “that’s closest to his heart”. “I don’t go anywhere without this record because it rocks and has got so much funk on it. I’ve seen them play live a few times, and they really put it across — they make you believe.”
He continued:
“When Tom Morello picks up the guitar, I’m sure what he sees is totally different from what I do, but I love the way he plays. I’ve only heard him play two traditional solos with notes strung together.”
“Mostly he creates these amazing sounds that totally support the music. They’re nice guys, but on stage they put on a seething show. If they’d been around in 1968, they’d have caused a lot of riots,” Joe Perry said.
Rage Against The Machine was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1991 and their first album really showed the world what they were capable of. Besides the track mentioned by Perry, that record also had songs like “Know Your Enemy”, “Bombtrack” and “Wake Up”. At the time of its release, the album appeared at number 1 on the United States Billboard Heatseekers chart and number 45 on the Billboard 200.
Until now the band released only four albums but they sold an estimated amount of more than 16 million records worldwide. Their line-up always had Zack De La Rocha (Vocals), Tom Morello (Guitar), Brad Wilk (Drums) and Tim Commerford (Bass).
They were active until 2000, reuniting from 2007 to 2011 and are together again since 2019. Curiously, most of the band members continued to work together over the years, since Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford were together in two other bands.
They were very successful in Audioslave, a band they formed with the late Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell and also recorded and toured with the supergroup Prophets of Rage, that had names like Chuck D, B-Real and DJ Lord.
The guitarist Tom Morello is a huge Aerosmith fan
Rage Against the Machine’s co-founder and guitarist Tom Morello always shared his love for bands that were part of Rock and Roll history. He loves groups like Black Sabbath, The Clash and Kiss (Which he even inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014). Aerosmith is also another group that he is a big fan of and already praised Joe Perry, saying that when he was at school when he was a teenager he used to daydream about which side of the album “Rocks” he would play the minute he got home from school.
Decades later he was a famous Rock star and had the chance to become a friend of Perry and even jam with the guitarist.