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The band Joe Perry said is the AC/DC of Blues Rock
The American guitarist Joe Perry helped to form Aerosmith back in 1970 alongside Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer. He was a member of the band until 1979, when he decided to leave, returning in 1984. They were already important and big but they were one of the few 70s Rock bands that continued to be very successful in the 80s and 90s, having released many acclaimed albums.
Although they continued to be a Blues rooted Rock band, their sound changed a little bit in the 80s and 90s, becoming a little bit more commercial, writing more ballads. Most bands naturally do that, since their sound and influences evolve with time, but other ones like AC/DC, for example, never change their style. Joe Perry is a big fan of the Australian group and once compared a Blues Rock band with them.
The band Joe Perry said is the AC/DC of Blues Rock
The band praised by Joe Perry as the “AC/DC of Blues Rock” was ZZ Top, the supergroup formed in Houston, Texas back in 1969. The group had the same line-up for 51 years until Dusty Hill (Bass) death in 2021. Perry always was a fan of Dusty, Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons, and even had the chance to tour with them in 2009 when ZZ Top’s was the opening act for Aerosmith in 2009.
To promote that tour, the musician talked with Music Radar and compared them to AC/DC. (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “Every tour we get a list of young bands and some bands that are on their way up. It’s hard to know which bands gonna be good live because we wanna give the audience the best show they can. It’s really a drag to have sit through an opening act that just doesn’t have anything going except for one song. We’re not from the school, the old Van Halen school, that has a shitty band on first (and then) more people spend more time at the t-shirt desk.”
“We just like to have the best band we can. (After some time) our manager called up and said ‘what about ZZ Top?’ I said, why you didn’t even had to call? (laughs) Are you kidding’? From the five bands I would want to tour with, AC/DC being one of them, ZZ Top would be one of them too. I’m still pinching myself”.
Joe Perry continued:
“One of the things that I like about them so much is the Blues Rock thing. They kind of went a different way than we did. In a lot of ways they are kind of the AC/DC of Blues Rock. Nobody does it better and they continue to do it. I think they’ve been around maybe two, three years longer than us.”
“So, of the three bands that are still together, putting out records, still touring and all the same members, I think they have got the crown. (They are a gig band), not from having hits, not from having videos, but for knocking audiences out every night. (…) Billy (Gibbons), ever since I heard his tone and his playing, I’ve always admired it. I’ve always wanted to hear him play,” Joe Perry said.
He said Billy Gibbons is amazing
They have been friends for decades already and Joe Perry really loves the ZZ Top guitarist and vocalist Billy Gibbons. He called him amazing and even said the musician was one of his favorite Texan guitar players of all time.
“Johnny Winter is probably my biggest influence as a contemporary slide guitar player. We’re talking technical hit-me-over-the-head ability. He’s so unique, because there’s such a mismatch of so many different talents. He sounds like an old soul. It was always, ‘Where’s that coming from?’ His playing is just so amazing. And his slide playing, stuff like Son House and Fred McDowell, he just took it electric. He did to slide playing what Jeff Beck did to that other kind of blues playing.”
“And then there’s Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stevie was one of the few that really captured it for me. A lot of people can imitate the blues, but very few lived it. And it came out in his playing. I’m still stunned that Stevie Ray Vaughan isn’t with us. I remember when I heard the news. I was in Barcelona, and it was just devastating. Really devastating.”
“There’s also ZZ Top. I still learn a lot from Billy Gibbons – every lick, old or new. They’re one of the few bands that managed to keep the distance between blues and rock very short. They do rock & roll, but you can hear the blues bubbling under. To me, it’s modern blues. Billy’s amazing,” Joe Perry told The Austin Chronicle in 2004.
ZZ Top were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 by Keith Richards, who said “these cats know their Blues and they know how to dress it up”. Aerosmith had already been inducted two years before, in 2001.
