The Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry grew up near Boston, Massachusetts and had the chance to see many incredible British bands live in concert in the late 60s and 70s in the capital of the state. Those experiences were crucial to inspire him to pursue a career as a professional musician and also influenced him in the way he played the guitar, which has a lot of elements from the music that came overseas at that time, mixing Blues and Rock and Roll.
Over the decades the praised musician talked about a lot of those groups and how important they were for him and even mentioned which is the British guitarist that is one of his favorites of all time.
The british guitarist Joe Perry said is one of his favorites of all time
The “British Invasion” that started his bands like The Beatles in the early 60s showed the groups from the United Kingdom that they could be extremely successful in a huge market that was the United States. So after gaining recognition in their own country, the British groups would go to the U.S.A. to promote their records and reach a new audience.
Joe Perry was lucky enough to have seen many of those bands when they still weren’t known in America. They played in small clubs that only held a few thousand fans. So he could be really close to the stage and see them performing. One of them was Fleetwood Mac that he saw when the group still had Peter Green as their vocalist and guitarist, whom Perry said that is one of his favorite guitarists of all time.
He was such a Fleetwood Mac fan at the time, that Perry revealed in an interview with Music Radar back in 2014, that he knew tracks like “Green Manalishi” and “Oh Well” before they were officially released. “Well, Peter Green is one of my all-time favourite guitarists. I went to see Fleetwood Mac a lot live when they played in Boston”.
He continued:
“And I even knew Green Manalishi, Oh Well, all those songs, before their release. They were a great band and that’s where I got a lot of my blues education,” Joe Perry said.
Peter Green was only four years older than Joe Perry. He was born in Bethnal Green, London, England in 1946 and first started his musicial career in 1961. Green was part of the first encarnation of Fleetwood Mac, from 1967 to 1970 and in 1971. He was part of their first three albums: “Fleetwood Mac” (1968), “Mr. Wonderful” (1968) and “Then Play On” (1969).
As a solo artist he released six studio albums, the last one being “Kolors” in 1983. He passed away back in 2020 at the age of 73.
He once declined to see The Rolling Stones to go to a Fleetwood Mac concert
As Perry told Glide Magazine back in 2014, Fleetwood Mac would even stay in town for a month and play shows almost every week, so he had the chance to see them performing multiple times. “I was fortunate enough to see him (Peter Green) play. I was lucky enough to see a lot of these guys play back when they were still playing the big clubs and the small theaters that only held like two-or three thousand people.”
“A lot of the English bands would go to Boston and sort of play some gigs there. Play at the Tea Party, which was our version of the Fox Theatre in Atlanta or the Fillmore or whatever. But they would go to Boston before they would go to New York. So they could kind of get a feel for their material.”
He continued:
“It was a great rock town because it had so many young people, it being such a huge college town. So a lot of the English kids would stop there first before they would go to New York, where the critics were and all that. Fleetwood Mac would sometimes stay there for a month. They would rehearse and play shows almost every week. I was able to see them play many times,” Joe Perry said.
Curiously, he once prefered to see Fleetwood Mac when he was invited to go to a Rolling Stones concert back in the early days. Perry recalled that his friends said that it could be their last concerts. Because Richards would reportedly leave the band at the time. “They told me ‘this could be the last tour.’ You know with Keith and everything. I said, I think I’m going to stay and watch Fleetwood Mac,” Joe Perry told Spin in 2022.
A few months before Peter Green’s passing, his ex-bandmate Mick Fleetwood prepared a tribute concert to honor the music that the singer and guitarist composed during his career. Many famous artists were invited and one of them was Perry’s bandmate Steven Tyler who performed with the all-star group.
Over the decades Aerosmith covered a few Fleetwood Mac songs during their live concerts. The most frequent ones were “Oh Well Pt. 1” and “Stop Messing Around”. The latest one became a track of their 2004 covers album “Honkin’ On Bobo”.