“He didn’t fit”: The one band Joe Perry wanted to join before Aerosmith
It’s impossible to separate Joe Perry from what he has done throughout Aerosmith’s career.
There are certain tandems that can’t exist without the other, and while Perry did have a sting where he left ‘The Bad Boys From Boston’, the entire appeal of him and Steven Tyler working together was about as important as Keith Richards and Mick Jagger or Robert Plant and Jimmy Page working together. The entire appeal came from them pinging off each other, and Perry felt that he wanted to be in the kind of band that was able to feed off the music they were making every time they walked into the room.
He already had a vision when he was starting work with The Jam Band on the East Coast, but it was clear that he needed a lot more work before he was ready for the big time. He was happy to turn his guitar up loud and play to as many people as he could, but it took Tyler to help refine his music into actual songs. Their blues covers were great, but they needed a little more polish to get to where they were.
This is probably why Tyler earned the reputation of being the perfectionist of the group. Nothing was going to get past him in the studio, and he would have gladly started working on something that was technically perfect rather than relying on whether or not he had the right feel. But as with all great blues music, sometimes the beauty comes from the imperfections that are left in the mix from time to time.
Perry wasn’t always the flashiest guitarist, either, but that didn’t seem to matter. He was relying on the way he felt whenever he played a solo, and when riffs fell out of him, you could feel the raw swagger in every one of the tunes he played. ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Movin’ Out’ were the perfect blend of hard rock, blues, and a little bit of funk thrown in for good measure, but that bluesy foundation was what kept a roof over his head.
After all, the first thing that Tyler heard Perry play was ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ by Fleetwood Mac, and when you look at the Peter Green iteration of the group, you can tell what Perry was after. Green was one of the most unique guitarists of his time, and while his playing didn’t need to be flashy all the time, the mood that he created every time he played tunes like ‘Black Magic Woman’ is what drove Perry crazy.
He felt like he found his calling when he first heard them, and had he not joined Aerosmith, Perry was entertaining the idea of jamming with Green in the days before he hit the big time, saying, “Though Peter wrote and sang most of the Mac’s songs, he didn’t fit into the classic ‘front man’ slot – they were a true jam band and you definitely got the ‘all for one, one for all’ vibe watching them live. And I was thinking to myself, ‘That’s the kind of band I want to be in.’”
While it’s anyone’s guess what Perry would have sounded like if he had worked with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham later down the line, hearing him play off of Green would have been a lot more interesting to hear. You have to remember that guitarists treated their instrument as an extension of their soul, and getting the chance to play with Green would have been like having a conversation with only a few guitar licks going on throughout an entire song.
In reality, time worked out for the best with Perry turning in some of the greatest licks that Aerosmith ever made, but there was always that allure of ‘The Mac’ that was never going to go away. The Stones and Led Zeppelin may have been the true models for what Aerosmith would become, but Perry’s affinity for Green’s playing was like finding a musical true love for the first time.
