“The misconception”: The genre Joe Perry never identified with
It’s difficult to believe now, but rock music used to be pop and rock bands used to be the biggest pop hitmakers on the planet. Today, it’s almost the other way around. Any rock music on the charts comes from the biggest pop acts of the day putting a bit of distortion on their guitars buried deep in the mix. Any actual rock bands are cult concerns and nothing more. Few bands sum this phenomenon up better than Boston rock icons Aerosmith.
For the past two decades, Steven Tyler’s blues rock Godheads have been a mainstay of the touring circuit, doing what they arguably do best. However, Aerosmith have still spent more time being genuine, bona-fide hitmakers than not. The mid-1990s were a banner period for them, same as the late-1980s. Which is to say nothing of the entire 1970s, when their commercial clout was second only to the Eagles in the world of American rock.
All this to say that Aerosmith weren’t a cult concern, they were a big, glossy pop group at their peak, not in spite of their gleefully heavy riffs or Tyler’s shrieking vocals, but because of them. They weren’t the only example of this, either. The only thing holding Led Zeppelin back from being an even bigger example of a dyed-in-the-wool rock ‘n’ roll hitmaker was their steadfast refusal to release singles. The entire hair metal boom of the 1980s was essentially the record industry putting into practice lessons that they’d learned from Aerosmith.
So it makes sense that Aerosmith tend to bristle when put in any genre box that sounds more like a subculture. Sure, they may have stood for freedom of expression and living life your own way, but they did that on the biggest stages possible in front of the biggest crowds possible. This is nothing new either, in fact, one of the earliest examples of the band pushing back against the boxes they were being put in came from an interview lead guitarist Joe Perry gave in 1988.
How did Joe Perry view Aerosmith?
In context, this was while promoting the Permanent Vacation record. A pretty spectacular comeback record after an early 1980s spent in the commercial wilderness being lapped countless times by bands like Def Leppard and Poison. Another way of saying bands that absolutely wouldn’t have existed without Aerosmith to guide them. Off the back of hits like ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady)’, ‘Angel’ and ‘Rag Doll’, the bad boys from Boston wanted to show these whippersnappers how it was done.
The problem was that all they were getting for their troubles was the label of “heavy metal band”, something which Perry rejects wholeheartedly in the interview. He says, “We’ve always used horns and we’ve always used keyboards; we used mellotron on ‘Dream On’. I think the misconception about Aerosmith is that we’re just a heavy-metal guitar band. When I think of heavy metal, I think of Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne. We’re a rock ‘n’ roll band. And I’ll tell ya, since this record’s come out, no one’s called us a heavy metal band.”
They’re not the only one not to like the label either. AC/DC and Motörhead also rejected the label of “heavy metal” in favour of rock band and all three of them, AC/DC and Aerosmith in particular, were right to. Heavy metal is an outsider subculture and proudly so. Whereas, Aerosmith were a good time band par excellence and had hit after hit after hit to prove it.
