The only solo albums Joe Perry was truly proud of: “Hit the mark”
There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and a band member overestimating their potential as a solo artist.
Over the course of rock and roll history, countless well-meaning but ultimately delusional performers have chosen to rid themselves of the shackles of their bandmates and go out on their own, but it rarely works out as they intended – something that Aerosmith’s Joe Perry can certainly attest to.
From Aerosmith’s initial emergence from Boston back in 1970, the guitar stylings of Joe Perry have formed an utterly essential part of their hard rock sound, drawing from his hero worship of outfits like The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, or The Who. You will notice, incidentally, that all of those aforementioned influences were bands, rather than solo acts. By and large, guitarists tend to work best in a group setting, with the power of a rhythm section and a lead singer like Steven Tyler to back up their unending penchant for rock and roll riffs.
Then again, Aerosmith weren’t without their difficulties, and the band’s decision-making skills have often left a lot to be desired. After all, the intense success witnessed by the outfit during their 1970s heyday brought with it all the trimmings of rock and roll excess, namely copious amounts of drugs, with cocaine being the preferred choice. As anybody who has ever had the misfortune of conversing with somebody on coke will be all too aware, that white powder doesn’t tend to mellow people out, instead inflating their arrogance and ego beyond belief.
Perhaps that powdered confidence is to blame for Perry’s solo exploits, the first of which came in 1980 with The Joe Perry Project’s Let the Music Do the Talking. Admittedly, that debut effort wasn’t all bad, and it sold pretty well all things considered. However, it is difficult to imagine anybody sitting down to listen to a Joe Perry solo album who wouldn’t rather be listening to an Aerosmith album, and those feelings only intensified as Perry’s solo career continued to be of diminishing returns.
Even the guitarist himself doesn’t hold a particularly favourable view of his solo material. “Well, some of them – I think I’ve got seven or eight of them now – I just needed to do,” he once revealed in a chat with Guitar World. “I felt like I had to get a record out. When I listen to some of them I kind of cringe. But there’s one with a couple of tunes I really loved.”
That elusive solo album, which still holds some fond memories for Perry, is his self-titled 2005 album, on which the guitarist was responsible for virtually every aspect of the release other than the percussion. “The red one hit the mark,” he declared, referencing the album’s red album cover.
“So for some of the solo records, I listen to one or two songs and go, ‘Man, I just wasn’t in the right space for that,’” the guitarist continued. “But the red album has the song ‘Mercy’ that got nominated for a Grammy. So that’s probably my second favourite solo album after the first one with [The Joe Perry] Project.”
While a Grammy nomination for the coveted ‘Best Rock Instrumental Performance’ is as good a reason as any for Perry to look back on an album with admiration, it is fair to say that ‘Mercy’ still did not eclipse any of his award-winning performances with Aerosmith – apart, maybe, from Joe Perry’s Merry Christmas, that is.
