The one guitarist that blew Aerosmith away: “Somebody who was just kind of out of reach”
Aerosmith never shied away from turning their guitars up loud every time they played. Joe Perry and Brad Whitford were unapologetic with both of their lead licks whenever they hit the stage, but even for a band that was the American answer to The Rolling Stones, they could still be knocked on their ass when the right guy stormed into town.
Because for as many great licks as Perry put together, he never claimed to be the greatest guitarist in the world. He had his fair share of guitar hero moments that put him on the same level as Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton, but his greatest lines come more from laying back into the groove than trying to melt the audience’s face off. He wanted to serve the song above all else, but at the dawn of the 1970s, Perry’s brand of guitar hero was far from the only method a musician could use.
There was also the funk movement, where virtuosos relied on rhythmic chops, and let’s not forget that people like Robert Fripp and Steve Howe were challenging conventions when they started to make progressive rock’s first major releases. Right when Perry seemed to be on top of the world in 1978, everyone was thrown for a loop the minute that the first Van Halen album was released.
But as apocryphal as it sounds, saying this right now, Van Halen were one of the most unlikely bands to make it at the time. Rock had moved on to new wave acts like The Cars and artsy bands like The Police, but the minute that ‘Eruption’ came on, every guitarist was stopped in their tracks. There was a new musical vocabulary now, and Eddie was rewriting the rulebook every single time a new song came on.
Despite Perry being the consummate rockstar, Whitford already knew that there was a new guitar god in town, saying, “[Eddie] was on this [other] stratosphere. Like … the equivalent of Jeff Beck. You know, somebody who was just kind of out of reach. I mean, the more and more I listen to his stuff, it just blows my mind, because it’s so tasty… There was nothing schlocky ever in it.”
Perry had a style all his own whenever he took a solo, but he had to admit that Eddie was in another league compared to every other guitarist, adding, “That first album was fucking stunning. I remember when they were playing clubs that [Eddie] would turn around and do shit so people couldn’t see what he was doing. Though if people could see it, I don’t think they could do it anyway.”
While Eddie himself wouldn’t have claimed to have invented anything new, what he did with the guitar opened up doors for everyone else. He wasn’t the first person in the world to invent tapping licks, but once he turned it into pieces of music during his guitar solos, every single blues lick that came out of Aerosmith was bound to look a little bit tame by comparison.
But there was never any kind of animosity towards Van Halen from the Aerosmith camp, either. Both of them had their individual sets of skills whenever they hit the stage, but while ‘The Bad Boys From Boston’ could hold their own in a live setting, they knew better than to try and beat Van Halen at their own game. Because, really, how was anyone expected to follow a guitar solo like ‘Eruption’?
