There are few partnerships in rock ’n’ roll that have been as fruitful or combustible as that of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. Tyler and Perry – aka The Toxic Twins – have led the Boston band to huge commercial success over the past 50 years on albums such as Toys In The Attic, Rocks, Permanent Vacation and Pump.
But their relationship has sometimes been dysfunctional and explosive. Perry famously quit Aerosmith in 1979, before returning five years later.
“He’s probably my best friend through all of it,” Perry told Classic Rock magazine. “We just know we’re different people. Even through the 1970s, we were the ones that would go off on a scuba diving trip together.”
When Joe Perry worked as a waiter at a fast food bar, he first met Steven Tyler as a rowdy customer. Perry “did everything from making the French fries to sweeping the floor and taking out the trash.” Steven’s family had a place near the lake in New Hampshire and he’d come up every summer with one of his bands.
“The first time I met him, I didn’t really meet him, so to speak,” Perry recalled encountering Tyler for the first time, months before they became bandmates. “His family had a place up there, a bed and breakfast kind of thing, and every summer he’d come up from New York with one of his bands. I remember them rolling in and basically behaving like what they thought rock stars should do, which was throw food at each other. So they left and I had to clean up after them.”
The next summer, Perry’s band which included future Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton was playing at a local club and Tyler was in the crowd. He said that’s when he officially met him, because Tyler was looking for a backup band, so that he could audition with a demo for The Jeff Beck Group.
Perry said that when the three of them got together, and ended up jamming for hours, that’s when Tyler realized they could be a band. At the time, Steven Tyler was a drummer/singer, but he didn’t want to drum anymore. That’s when Joey Kramer was invited into the band.
The song that they got together to record was “I’m Down” by The Beatles.
0 comments:
Post a Comment