One night at New York’s Record Plant in 1973, guitarist Steve Hunter stepped out into the lobby for a cigarette, taking a break from another session.

Across from him, the door to Studio C opened.

Out walked producer Jack Douglas.

“You feel like playing?” Douglas asked.

Within minutes, Hunter was inside the room with Aerosmith — cutting a solo that would end up on “Train Kept A Rollin’,” one of the breakout tracks from the band’s early career.

The moment was casual. The stakes, for the band, were not.

Douglas, who died May 11 at age 80, made one of his most consequential studio decisions that night. Although he had been hired as the engineer on Get Your Wings, he quickly established himself as its producer. The record helped define Aerosmith’s early identity, but it also exposed where they needed to improve.

At the center of it was guitarist Joe Perry.

Douglas later described Perry’s playing as raw, instinctive, and unpredictable — a strength in some contexts, a liability in others.

“Joe was a guy who played from the gut,” he recalled on The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan. ”All feel, and at that time, very little technique, but the greatest feel ever.

“And dangerous. Really, because he didn't care what key he went into, and sometimes that was great.”

But certain tracks demanded something tighter.

“A couple of those songs needed the discipline that they didn't have at that point,” he said.

Douglas’s solution was decisive — and controversial. He brought in outside guitarists to handle key solos.

He turned to two seasoned session players, Hunter and Dick Wagner, both known for their transformative electric guitar work with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed.

Before making the call, Douglas checked in with frontman Steven Tyler.

“When I approached Steven about it first, he was like, ‘Absolutely, I totally get it. You know, I totally get it. You sell it, but I get it.’”

For Perry, however, the decision landed hard.

“Joe took it really badly,” Douglas said. “It was hard for Joe, but it was only a couple of tunes: ‘Same Old Song and Dance’ and ‘Train Kept a Rollin.’”

Hunter’s involvement came almost by accident.

Speaking to Guitar Player, he recalled stepping away from another Record Plant session when Douglas appeared in the hallway.

“I went out into the lobby to have a cigarette,” Hunter said. “And right across from me is the door to Studio C, which is the smaller studio. The door opens and it’s Jack Douglas. He looks at me and says, ‘You feel like playing?’”

Hunter walked into the studio, met the band, and cut the solo in just a few takes.

“I never got any bad vibes off of anybody,” he recalled. “They all seemed kinda tired, like they had been working really hard to finish the album. But I never got any kind of vibe about whether they liked me being there or not.”

Behind the scenes, the decision created friction.

“Of course we were on the fence about bringing in sidemen to play some of the stuff, but we kind of made a deal with the devil because we wanted our shot at a second record,” Perry later told Total Guitar. “Brad [Whitford] and I weren’t happy about it, but that’s what it was going to take to keep us on the label and keep us going.”

“For better or worse, we opened that door, but that was certainly the last time.”

Whitford recalled to Guitar World that Douglas had the unenviable task of breaking the news to the band.

“And of course, that went down like a lead balloon.

“At first you fight, and you’re a little bit angry, and then you get sad to where you’re like really bummed out that you can’t do it. And the thing was that we’d done some good stuff and could play good stuff, but the tracks required some real finesse.”

In time, both guitarists came to see Douglas’s decision differently. What felt like a setback during the making of Get Your Wings ultimately became part of the learning curve that helped Aerosmith sharpen its identity.

“In this early phase, I faced great frustration,” Perry wrote in his autobiography, Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith. “I wanted to know more than I knew. I wanted to play more than I was capable of playing, and I wanted to realize a sound that eluded me.

“Jack Douglas helped enormously. He became a great teacher. But Jack can only work with what we gave him, and I wanted to give him more. We all did.”

After a shock collaboration with Yungblud saw Aerosmith releasing their first new music in 13 years, the Boston boys are back in the saddle (of sorts) as they treat their hit-and-miss debut album to a new remaster.

Speaking of the project, Joe Perry has taken a look back at the band that released the record, how its writing provided them with a steep learning curve, and why he wasn’t sold on its reissue at first.

Released in 1973, their self-titled debut was far from the roaring success they had hoped for. Sure, power ballad "Dream On" and gritty rocker "Mama Kin" have stood the test of time, but the rest have rarely found their way onto Aerosmith setlists over the intervening years. As the band’s success has grown, particularly since the breakthrough record Toys in the Attic, most of the LP has been largely forgotten. But Perry sees it as an important step in the band’s journey.

“We were trying to find our place, what our goals were, what our options were,” he tells Billboard. “We were learning how to write together and play together. We were listening to all of the incredible second-wave English bands; there wasn’t much going on in America at the time, for our ears. All the power was coming from the English bands, so we were drawing on that.”

Key influences included the Rolling Stones and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. But there were also lesser-known acts, like Mick Abrahams' post-Jethro Tull group, Blodwyn Pig, which was a particular reference point for "Mama Kin". He's openly admitted to stealing the opening lick from their song, "See My Way", with the track written on an acoustic guitar that drummer Joey Kramer allegedly found in the trash, beaten and without strings.

Their song origins reflected the band at that point: finding their feet and leaning heavily on the groups that got their blood pumping in the first place.

“Considering everything, I think that the record pretty much does what it’s supposed to do,” Perry says. “I can remember putting [headphones] on and listening to the first song, and I took ’em off, and I shook my head. When you’re in the middle of it, you do it piece by piece. Then, when you start to hear it finished, it’s like…‘Holy shit! I’m glad we did this.’”

The same can be said of “Dream On,” a ballad Tyler had been working on for a long time, with Perry initially deeming it second-rate. He only cared for songs with “energy and excitement.” But, as was the case with refreshing their debut (again), Perry had his arm twisted.

“I was like, ‘Do we need to do this?’ because we’d put out remastered [versions of the album] before, and I never really noticed all that much difference,” the guitarist quips. “But this was different; going in and actually getting to listen to the multi-tracks… it was great to hear it on modern equipment. When everything was translated down to the vinyl [in 1973] it didn’t sound the same as when you’re standing in the room with the band. But these remixes sound like that to me. It’s the same record, the same performances, but it opens it up.”

The drum sound, a point of derision for Perry, has also been given some extra magic, but the album set their career back.

Their second album, Get Your Wings (1974), which featured a guest solo from Steve Hunter, also disappointed commercially. Toys in the Attic (1975), which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, had to be the band’s saving grace, or they were facing being dropped by their label.

"People had heard of us, but we were still playing clubs,” Perry reflects. "We were these underdogs that still had to prove ourselves.”

Several generations of the rock and roll elite came together to pay homage to Ozzy Osbourne at the MTV Video Music Awards. While it was a heart-warming moment for many, not everyone was charmed.

The interchanging supergroup featured the fretboard-burning talents of Nuno Bettencourt and Joe Perry, alongside vocalists Yungblud, Steven Tyler and former Black Sabbath keyboardist Adam Wakeman, who performed a medley of Ozzy hits.

Bettencourt and Yungblud handled characterful takes of “Crazy Train” and “Changes” before the Aerosmith duo — making only their second appearance together since the band was forced to retire from touring in 2023 — took over for “Mama, I’m Coming Home”. The four musicians united for its closing stages, with Bettencourt playing a Takamine 12-string acoustic guitar as Perry — wielding a reverse headstock Stratocaster — delivered a third and final guitar solo.

It was inevitable that the awards would honor an icon like Ozzy. And it's just as unlikely such a display would happen without inviting a few detractors.

Enter Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins, who hit out at the ceremony with the Ozzy tribute in his crosshairs.

“Another nail in the coffin of rock n' roll,” he wrote in an Instagram post that shows Arianna Grande — who picked up three awards on the night — reacting to the performance's finale. While she was in awe at what was happening onstage, Hawkins called the affair “cynical, nauseating, and more importantly, shit.

“Makes me sick how people jump on this shit to further their own careers,” he added.

Certainly, no one will be calling Hawkins "the Prince of Darkness" any time soon.

Some believe his comments were a dig at Yungblud, whose popularity has had a shot in the arm following his appearance at Back to the Beginning. Impressed by his energy and musicianship at that show, Ozzy gave the singer a necklace, which he wore at the VMAs.

It could also be a scything attack against the awards, considering that heavy rock has rarely featured at the VMAs in previous years. Some have criticized the move as riding on the coattails of Ozzy’s passing and legacy.

Hawkins has turned commenting on his post off, shutting down room for further discourse. He has also hidden the post from the main page of his Instagram following his outburst, which was reported by a series of media outlets.

Speaking on the red carpet before the ceremony, Bettencourt revealed he auditioned to replace Randy Rhoads in Ozzy’s band at the age of 14, and would go on to turn the gig down 12 years later.

Perry, meanwhile, is out on the road touring as the Joe Perry Project with members of Stone Temple Pilots and Black Crowes. However, he isn’t ruling out more Aerosmith shows as he eyes at least one final hurrah.

Aerosmith’s career got off to a bumpy start. Even with a little impromptu help from Steve Hunter on their second album, “Get Your Wings”, the band was facing the axe from their label ahead of writing its follow-up. Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, and company found their stride on "Toys in the Attic" — but a year earlier, they’d been given a sharp reality check as to the status of the band.

Certain pockets of the American rock scene were more receptive to their twin-guitar, hard blues-rock shtick than others. By the time "Get Your Wings" was released, the Boston band had built a strong following in cities like Detroit. But New York remained a tough nut to crack — even when they found themselves headlining a festival.

“We played once with Rory Gallagher in Central Park,” Brad Whitford, flanked by Joe Perry, tells Rick Beato in a new interview. It was the Schaefer Music Festival, a series of gigs that took place that Summer, which saw Peter Frampton, B.B. King, and Bad Company also perform.

For Joe Perry the memory is still painful: “I don't wanna hear about that,” he says.

“It was before we were accepted in New York at all,” Whitford continues. “Rory Gallagher probably had one of the most stunning shows of his entire career.”

“He kicked our ass,” Perry agrees. “We headlined. He went on first, and he kicked our ass.”

There was a clear divide between how the Irishman, whom Joe Bonamassa has recently honored with a trio of dates in his hometown, was received, and how they treated Aerosmith.

“He went off stage. They made him come out for an encore,” Whitford goes on. “He did his encore. Went off. They made him come out again. Another encore. They wouldn't stop. He came out for three encores.

“And then we got on the stage, and I just remember watching people walk away before we even started playing. It was like the show's over, and who are these guys? They didn't care.”

According to Setlist.fm, Aerosmith soldiered through an 11-song set bookended by "Somebody", from their self-titled 1973 debut album, and their rough and tough cover of Tiny Bradshaw's "The Train Kept A-Rollin'". It sounds like a thankful night at the office. Afterwards, they retreated backstage to lick their wounds and console themselves that such a disparaging reaction was purely down to the fact that Rory Gallagher played out of his skin.

It’s not the first time Gallagher has shown a then-small, now-mammoth act a thing or two about live performances during his lifetime. Alex Lifeson says Rush’s first proper tour, under his wing, was a huge education for him, and he came away having learned a trick that is now all over the progger’s back catalog.

Elsewhere in their chat with Beato, the pair discussed the trouble of finding the right amplifier as they battled through their first records.

“All that shit was pretty much handmade,” says Perry. “So, you might get a great Marshall and another one not so great. They were also kind of like Harley Davidson's; you had to travel with a toolkit 'cause when they sounded the best, was right before they blew up.

“People didn’t realize that when they're glowing hot, it's a sign that they're getting pummelled, so we just went from amp to amp. I remember taking amps apart to solder something on there to try and get a bit more gain out of them.”

Last month, Perry hinted that Aerosmith are not quite done touring yet. The band was forced into retirement last year due to Steven Tyler’s ongoing health issues, but says there have been discussions about doing at least one more show.

It’s been a little under a year since Steven Tyler’s ongoing health issues forced Aerosmith to retire from touring, but it seems that not all embers of the all-American rockers are out yet.

Bass player Tom Hamilton has already refused to rule out any future activity from the band, be that in the studio or on the stage, and now linchpin Joe Perry has hinted that at least one more live show could still happen.

Perry is set to embark on his first major tour since Aerosmith’s Peace Out tour was brought to a halt next month after tapping up members of the Stone Temple Pilots and Black Crowes for a new-look Joe Perry Project. Beyond that, he’s eying a return to Aerosmith, but accepts the odds of that happening are stacked against them.

“I'm always hoping,” he tells Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk. “But going on the road, it's a big deal pulling that together. There's so much planning, and what it takes out of you physically is a lot more than people realize. It's one thing when you're doing it when you're 25 or 30, but it's another when you're starting to get up there, like us. It's a really physical thing, going out on stage.”

It was such a realization that forced Aerosmith off the stage in the first place. Tyler had suffered a vocal injury in 2023 during the Peace Out tour, and he was unable to bounce back from it the same way a “Toys in the Attic”-era Tyler would have.

“All that energy that you're putting out,” he continues, “you're transferring to the audience. It takes something out of you in a physical and emotional way.”

But that doesn’t mean the band has shelved the possibility of getting back out in front of their fans. As he reveals, it’s a regular dialogue amongst the group. But, he adds that, if there last show was already behind them, he wouldn’t have any regrets.

“We talk probably a couple of times a week,” he says. “I mean, except for anything on the calendar, we're all alive and well. So, we'll just have to see.

“I know there's gotta be at least another Aerosmith gig, and I'm not looking forward to putting the setlist together for that one. I've always played like every show's the last one. I hate to sound like it's a downer, but I give it up every night.”

Perry and Tyler returned, briefly, to the stage for a charity show on May 1. It was organized to raise money to support the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and the Widows, Orphans, and Disabled Firefighters Fund in the wake of the L.A. wildfires.

The pair played “Janie’s Got a Gun”, having also played the song at their last show-proper, at the UBS Arena in Elmont, NY on September 9, 2023. The guitarist doesn’t want that to be the last time they perform together, but understands there are difficult factors at play.

“I think it's just a matter of getting there,” he replied when asked if Tyler would be open to the idea of more shows. “We're up there [in age], man. With COVID and everybody being home for that length of time, it was, like, ‘Oh, so this is how other people live,’ sleeping in your own bed every night. In the beginning, it was pretty bad, but it really opens your eyes. I don't think I've gone a year without something on the calendar and having to be somewhere.

“We'll see what happens.”

The band’s third album, “Toys in the Attic,” turned 50 years old earlier this year, and it was a record that had to succeed with the band fearing the axe from their label. At the time, the band was running on empty.

“After the first two records, which had songs that we basically played in clubs, we used up all of them,” Perry told Guitar Player last year, who says the band found their mojo after trusting their instincts to craft their new, change-making tracks.

Though Perry confesses to being a “stone-cold Gibson man,” he's also revealed that Fender guitars played a huge role in the band's early studio sessions, shaping the sound of the band in a way that wasn't possible solely on a Les Paul.

While telling Guitar Player about his favorite new amp, Perry let slip that work on a new solo album is underway. At the time of writing, no music has yet been released, but with a new tour on the horizon, things may change.

Aerosmith’s Joe Perry may have surprised readers when he picked 1975’s Toys in the Attic as one of the 10 records that changed his life. There it was, taking its place alongside classic cuts from electric guitar pioneers like the Yardbirds, Chuck Berry, and Jeff Beck.

But Perry had good reason for choosing it. After all, Aerosmith's career rested on the album's success. It was, in the most literal sense, life changing.

Released on April 8, 1975, Toys in the Attic is the album that brought Aerosmith to the forefront of rock radio. A year on the road touring behind its predecessor, Get Your Wings, had helped the group improve their performance and brought new energy into their songs and riffs. Toys in the Attic would prove to be nothing less than their coming-of-age record.

“It took us a while to get rolling,” Perry acknowledges. “We had to be on the road all the time. We’d pound the pavement and be out on the boards. Then we’d get six weeks off, maybe two weeks to write new music, three weeks to cut a record, and then we’d get back on the road. That’s what it was like for Aerosmith.”

The grind could take its toll on occasion, as it did during Get Your Wings, when session guitarist Steve Hunter was called on to provide some six-string assistance. While that album performed better than the group's 1973 self-titled debut, both fell short of Columbia Records' expectations. They feared Columbia Records was sharpening its axe. Album three had to be a hit.

Unfortunately, when it came to songs, the group was starting over from scratch.

“After the first two records, which had songs that we basically played in clubs, we used up all of them,” Perry told Guitar Player last year.

They needed inspiration, and it was going to have to come from somewhere. Perry found it by trusting his instincts.

"You have to let the thinking part of your brain loose and let your subconscious take over," he says. "It's an exercise in getting a connection to your heart and soul, and, sometimes, these riffs just come out."

It was in that mindset that he forged one of the most successful songs on Toys in the Attic: “Walk This Way.” As Perry recalls, the tune came together spontaneously with some assistance from drummer Joey Kramer.

“I was thinking of some of the funk that I really liked and thought, Let's see if we can get something that's got that kind of groove,” he says. “We were in soundcheck in Hawaii, and I asked Joey to just play straight, funky twos and fours while I started working on a riff.

"The first part was basically the verse, and then, you need a place to go, and I changed from down to the E chord from a C. Every chord change needed a little signature to it, like a little bit of a riff. By the time I finished the soundcheck, I pretty much had all the parts.”

All it was missing was a vocal hook, which, unusually, came from the silver screen. Needing a break from the studio the band — minus Perry, who remained at the studio — went to see Young Frankenstein. The Mel Brooks comedy features a scene based on an old vaudeville visual gag, in which comedian Marty Feldman, as Igor, instructs Gene Wilder, as Dr. Frankenstein, to "walk this way." Frankenstein assumes he means "follow me," but Igor demonstrates that he wants him to walk as he does, with a limp and assisted by a stubby cane.

Perry says the group was still laughing about the line when they returned. "Steven said, 'Okay… walk this way. I think that's what I needed.'”

The genesis of the record's title track, meanwhile, proved that inspiration can strike at any time.

“We finished rehearsing up in Boston [before heading to the studio], and the guys were pulling some gear out, you know, Marshalls and stuff,” Perry remembers. “I sat on one of the 4x12s and just started jamming a little bit. After a couple of minutes, I had that beginning riff from 'Toys in the Attic.'

"I said, ‘I kind of like that,’ and again, you need a place to go. That's when I came up with the riff for the vocal, so I had those two parts. The next time the band got together, we worked it out. Everybody threw down.”

The record's success wasn't just down to Perry's creativity and ear for hooky riffs. As demonstrated by "Sweet Emotion," the opener to the record's second side, bass player Tom Hamilton had plenty to contribute as well.

“The smallest element can be the basis of a cool riff, and that can be the basis of a whole song," Hamilton explained to Bass Player. "That was pretty much how I wrote 'Sweet Emotion' — the bass intro was the first thing that came along.

“That middle riff that comes between the verses was actually inspired by Jeff Beck's Rough and Ready,” he continues. “We had this crude sound system in our apartment; everyone would latch onto a particular record and play it for days, and Rough and Ready was one of those. I’d get the basic feeling of a record in my head and then I’d want to spit it back out. I wrote pretty much all of the bass and guitar parts for ‘Sweet Emotion.’”

And while Perry and co-guitarist Brad Whitford were devoted Gibson Les Paul players onstage, they often preferred to mix it up with a Fender Stratocaster in the studio. On Toys in the Attic, the two six-string heavyweights worked in perfect harmony.

"I would say with a fair amount of confidence I used a Les Paul on 'Toys in the Attic.' I would bet that at least one of my tracks on 'Walk This Way' is a Les Paul, and then everything I did after that was with the Strat," Perry revealed to Total Guitar.

"I was definitely a stone-cold Gibson man, but I seemed to gravitate more toward Strats and that variety of tones. Plus you had the vibrato… I always felt like it was one more color on your paint palette.”

With their backs against the wall, Aerosmith saved their career, learned some crucial lessons and came out the other end swinging.

“We were just fucking kids,” Perry reflects. “It took us a couple of albums to figure things out." Despite a couple of early hits with "Dream On" and "Train Kept A Rollin'," he says Aerosmith were struggling to break out.

"People had heard of us, but we were still playing clubs. We were these underdogs that still had to prove ourselves. On this record, we were rolling in the big time."

When asked to compile his list of the 10 records that changed his life, Joe Perry immediately seized on the exact meaning of that phrase.

“The operative words are ‘changed my life,’ so right there that’s different from a top 10 records kind of thing,” he says. “It doesn’t mean the 10 records that you enjoy listening to. We’re talking about records that actually influenced me in a meaningful way. Anybody, especially somebody my age, is going to have trouble getting it down to just 10 records.”

Along with discs by the Yardbirds, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and the Kinks, Perry included two records from his own career — one solo album and the other a seminal set by Aerosmith.

“Again, I’m keeping with the topic of records that are true life changers,” he says. “At a certain point in time, making those albums made all the difference in my career.”

He notes the impact of Aerosmith’s music on fans.

“That’s something very interesting,” he says. “People come up and say, ‘Aerosmith was the first rock and roll I ever heard.’ Or they tell me that they got married to ‘Dream On’ or ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.’

“I was in New York City last month, and some young people came up to me and talked about our music. Somebody said he picked up the guitar because of ‘Walk This Way.’

“It’s just the natural order of things, like when I first heard the Yardbirds and was like, ‘Holy shit. I want my guitar to sound like that.’”

Having a Rave Up With the Yardbirds — The Yardbirds (1965)

“I used to hang out with one of my pals from school. We’d sit around in the basement and strum acoustic guitars, just fooling around. His older brother was in college at UMass Amherst, and he’d come home on breaks with an armful of albums. A lot of the time I’d never heard these records or the artists before.

“Having a Rave Up was one of them. Often what happened was, certain records became gateway albums that turn you on to an artist, and you want to go out and hear everything else they did.

“Having a Rave Up was that kind of gateway record. The Beatles had come along, and there were certainly guitar albums, but this record was my first real exposure to the Yardbirds. I remembered seeing the cover of their first record, For Your Love, and there was a picture of Jeff Beck sitting at a piano — typical Jeff sense of humor.

“Rave Up had a lot of great versions of old blues classics, but what really struck me was Jeff’s playing. What an eye opener! That fuzz sound of his… I became an immediate fan.”

Berry Is on Top — Chuck Berry (1959)

“This is another record that my friend’s brother brought home with him. We’d sit around the living room and listen to it. It’s not a ‘best of’ package, but there’s a lot of great singles on it, and it sure had enough of the kind of guitar playing that I wanted to hear.

“It’s like, if you want to know what rock and roll is, this is it. At its very essence, it’s got that swing against the straight beat, which is what it’s all about. A lot of bands never understood that — they just sort of pounded away. The Stones were a band that could really nail it. They always had that feel because they analyzed Johnnie Johnson’s piano playing and how it went up against Chuck’s guitar. It’s something that’s hard to define, but it’s all about feel – a sexual kind of rhythm that not a lot of bands could capture.

“A lot of artists covered songs like ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ but they did these lukewarm versions. It made people happy, and hopefully some of them were turned on to Chuck. To me, Berry Is on Top is what it was all about.”

Live at Kelvin Hall — The Kinks (1967)

“It was probably the first live album I ever heard. You really got a sense of what a concert could be on this record. Anybody who thought, ‘Okay, just another British pop band’ would have a different sense of things after hearing this. The kids in the audience were wild — so much frenetic screaming. It was like, ‘Holy shit!’ This was real excitement.

“It’s a great selection of music, too. The band played their hits, but they also did a medley of ‘Milk Cow Blues,’ the Batman theme, and then they play ‘Tired of Waiting for You.’ That medley has echoed in my head for years. In fact, when Aerosmith played ‘Milk Cow Blues,’ I would play the riff from the Kinks’ record. It’s a very exciting album, and for me, it was part of my musical education and a life changer.”

The Best of Muddy Waters (1958)

“Some records really make a difference in your life. This album is where I got my Muddy Waters education. And, of course, Willie Dixon is on here, too.

“There are so many reasons why this was a seminal album for me, but something that really stands out is how the guitar playing was very approachable for an amateur or beginner. When you’re just starting out, that’s pretty important.”

Let the Music Do the Talking — The Joe Perry Project (1980)

“My first solo album. I was away from the whole Aerosmith umbrella and went swimming against the stream. This was the last thing the band’s managers wanted. In fact, I found out years later that, even though Columbia gave me a budget for the record and I got to produce it with Jack Douglas, they were told, ‘Don't promote this album. We're going to starve him back to Aerosmith.’ The band was the cash cow. I had left the group and was pretty pissed off at management. You can tell by the lyrics to the song ‘Conflict of Interest.’

“Years earlier, I’d heard David Hall play bass. After Jimi Hendrix died, David played with Buddy Miles in the Buddy Miles Express. He was all of 19 years old at the time, and he had a feel that was just unstoppable. Ralph Morman was the singer in a band called Daddy Warbux. I just loved the way he sang. He was like Paul Rodgers meets Rod Stewart — that kind of voice.

“I remember hearing both of them, and I told Jack Douglas, ‘If I ever do an album of my own, I want those guys in my band.’ Sure enough, those are the guys I called.

“To this day, whenever I put a solo band together, I always play three or four songs from this record. It was definitely a life changer for me.”

Infidels — Bob Dylan (1983)

“When I met Billie, who would become my wife, this was one of the records in her collection. I remember it was on top of a stack of records. I hadn’t heard it before, and pretty soon I couldn't stop listening to it. The guitar work was fucking brilliant, and the songs were amazing. It made me become a Dylan fan all over again, and I definitely tried to cop some of the guitar licks on the record. As a songwriter, I thought, ‘Holy shit – it just doesn’t stop.’

“It’s interesting when somebody new comes into your life; one of the first things you do is look at their record collection, and you’re like, ‘I don’t have that… I never heard that…’

“What’s funny is, Billie didn’t even own an Aerosmith record. She knew some of the songs when they came on the radio, but she didn’t know the name of the band. She was into the whole underground punk scene in Boston. She had some really good records that she listened to, and Infidels really stood out to me.

“Oh, as an addendum, I have to say that Highway 51 Revisited is my other favorite Dylan record.”

Nothin’ but the Blues — Johnny Winter (1977)

“This record was a big influence on me in terms of my slide playing. The way Johnny Winter played the blues was always fucking great, and this album is one of his best recorded works – just unbelievable.

“Before there was Stevie Ray Vaughan, there was Johnny Winter. I loved this record and listened to it a lot. I’m grateful that I finally got to meet Johnny before he passed away.”

Bone Machine — Tom Waits (1992)

“I love Tom Waits. His music and his lyrics – it’s all so different and fucking dark. We were working in Vancouver when this record came out, and we listened to it almost every day. I would listen to it on the way to the studio. It was a big influence on us in terms of bringing in other instruments and featuring them on our records. I can’t speak for Steven [Tyler], but for me it was a huge record.”

Loud Hailer — Jeff Beck (2016)

“Jeff had been going to clubs to listen to new music, and he heard this band with two girls in it [guitarist Carmen Vandenberg and singer Rosie Bones], both of whom are on this record. He touches on almost every kind of guitar style here. Sometimes he tears it up, then he gets really mellow and sensuous. His tone, particularly his clean tone, is simply unbelievable.

“Try playing along with the guitar on this record — he’s all over the place. It’s as if all of Jeff Beck’s genius is right here on one album. There’s a taste of everything. When it came out, I listened to it forward and backward and upside-down, and I still do. It’s fucking brilliant.

“I’ve followed Jeff Beck’s career album by album and tour by tour. We did a gig together in Tokyo at the Classic Rock Awards. Jimmy Page was there. so were the guys in Def Leppard and the band Tesla.

“One of my favorite pictures of all time is of me and Jimmy Page sitting in the 10th row at soundcheck watching Jeff. I remember we would elbow each other at some of the things he was playing.The sounds that came out of his guitar. I was like, ‘How does he do that?’ Jimmy said to me, ‘He works at it. He just works at it.’”

Toys in the Attic — Aerosmith (1975)

“It took us a while to get rolling. We had to be on the road all the time. We’d pound the pavement and be out on the boards. Then we’d get six weeks off, maybe two weeks to write new music, three weeks to cut a record, and then we’d get back on the road. That’s what it was like for Aerosmith.

“On our first two albums, we were kind of figuring out the studio. The first record [1973’s Aerosmith] was basically us playing what we did in the clubs. They pressed the ‘record’ button and we played live. Steven and I wrote one song together [‘Movin’ Out’]. We were like a garage band, and we weren’t an overnight hit.

“I wrote a lot of the songs with Steven on the second record [1974’s Get Your Wings], and we played some more songs that we did live.

“But it wasn’t till the third record that we were out of songs and had to write shit on the spot. Because of that, it was a life changer. We finally took control of the studio and came into our own.

“Before Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was one of the most sought-after session players in London. When he formed the band, he knew exactly what he wanted. That’s why he was able to produce those records and make them sound the way they did.

“We were just fucking kids, though. It took us a couple of albums to figure things out. We were just starting to get a following in different parts of the country. The second record came out and ‘Dream On’ became a hit. People had heard of us, but we were still playing clubs. We were these underdogs that still had to prove ourselves.

“On this record, we were rolling in the big time. There are some heavy hitters on Toys in the Attic. A lot of the songs became standards.”

Steve Hunter says he was halfway through a cigarette when he was pulled into the studio with Aerosmith to spontaneously track his solo on Train Kept a Rollin’.

The hard-working session player, best known for his stints with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, adds that he was only just getting warmed up when the session was wrapped: “The next thing you know, it’s getting airplay all over the world.”

It was December 1973, and Hunter was working alongside longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin in Studio A at the Record Plant.

“He was editing the two-inch tape, which is very tedious,” Hunter relays. “So I left him alone and went out into the lobby to have a cigarette. And right across from me is the door to Studio C, which is the smaller studio. The door opens and it’s [producer] Jack Douglas. He looks at me and says, ‘You feel like playing?’”

Douglas was trying to mastermind the recording of what would be Aerosmith’s second album, Get Your Wings. The band’s self-titled debut, released earlier that year, had received little fanfare and the band was desperate for its follow-up not to face the same fate. So, cigarette in hand and with boredom to kill, Hunter agreed.

“I said, ‘I’d rather play than sit here,’” he continues. After Douglas had gotten permission from Ezrin to borrow his talent, Hunter “grabbed our favorite amp, which was an old Fender tweed, and brought it into Studio C.

“I walked in, and there was the whole band. So I said hi, and we all shook hands – no big to-do or anything. I remember distinctly meeting Brad [Whitford], because he was a really nice fella. Joe [Perry] was very quiet, and Steve Tyler was kinda crazy and full of energy. But they were really cool guys. I liked them.

“I really didn’t know how to act,” he goes on. “I never got any bad vibes off of anybody. They all seemed kinda tired, like they had been working really hard to finish the album. But I never got any kind of vibe about whether they liked me being there or not.”

Pleasantries exchanged, they got to work, but Hunter was surprised with how quickly the wrap was called.

“Jack set me up in the studio, plugged me in, and got this great guitar sound. I put the headphones on and asked him just to play the track so I could get used to it.

“I was noodling, just to find my way around, when Jack said, ‘This is gonna be great, man, but, you’re stepping on the vocals.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t have vocals in my headphones.’

“So he fixed that and we did one or two passes, and Jack says, ‘Okay, that sounds great!’ I thought I was just getting warmed up, but they were very happy, and that was it. We took the amp back to Studio A and I went and finished my cigarette. The next thing you know, it’s getting airplay all over the world. I thought, Wow, that’s good!”

As GP has previously reported, who tracked the solos on Train Kept a Rollin’ had been a secret until 2020, when Hunter’s wife, Karen, let the cat out of the bag. Another sneaky nugget of info is that Joe Perry, despite playing Gibson Les Pauls on stage, recorded much of the band’s early material on Stratocasters.

Earlier this year, Aerosmith was forced to retire from touring amid Steven Tyler’s ongoing health issues.

It’s been another bumper year for gear releases , but for Joe Bonamassa and Joe Perry, only two releases truly stand out.

In the retro corner, Gibson has reissued Jimmy Page's iconic EDS-1275 "Stairway to Heaven" double-neck and revived a forgotten '80s relic.

More forward-thinking releases have seen Fender offer trailblazing new designs for a number of its flagship electric guitars via the American Ultra II series. In addition, PRS has released its first-ever semihollow guitar, and John Mayer and Ernie Ball have teamed up for an unusual string set.

But for the two Joes, the latter camp holds the greater appeal.

Bonamassa says he’s kept returning to his Crazy Tube Circuits White Whale reverb pedal. In addition to emulating the spring reverb and tremolo effects of ‘60s Fender combo amps , the pedal re-creates the tube and output transformer saturation of those builds.

“It does a great job in front of any amp,” Bonamassa tells Guitar World. “It adds a killer authentic spring — there’s spring inside it — and a believable brown-amp circa ’62 Fender-style vibrato.”

The “hypnotic and mesmerizing” all-analog, real-spring reverb and tremolo pedal is actually a reprised version of a pedal the Greek pedal company first released several years beforehand. Key tweaks to its circuit have helped it shine second time around.

For Bonasmassa, it’s become a go-to pedal in the studio. “I’ve used it on many sessions and it has become a quiet MVP in the studio,” says Bonamassa.

Away from the studio, the bluesman has unveiled what he believes to be “the world’s most expensive three-channel live rig”. While it includes several of his recently purchased Dumble amps, he's left Lowell George’s Dumble Overdrive Special, which he bought back in the summer, at home.

Perry, meanwhile, has fallen in love with his Silktone Micronaut. The company, which started off producing guitar cables, is a relative newcomer to amp-building and introduced its eponymous debut model in 2019.

“They’re great amps to use with pedals," Perry says of his Micronaut, "meaning you can get them relatively clean to get the most out of your pedals. You can get it to crunch just by putting it to 10. I run mine at 2 o’clock."

Perry is so pleased he's recommending Silktone amps to other guitarists. “If you can get your hands on a Silktone, it’s a great piece for your arsenal," he says. "I did some recording with mine, and for what I was going for, it worked great.”

Perry, who is back in the studio after Aerosmith retired from touring, professes to be a stone-cold Gibson man but says the guitar that got away from him was a Fender Stratocaster, having revealed that much of Aerosmith's early recordings saw him playing Strats in the studio, preferring the variety it gave against Brad Whitford's Les Paul.

In the theme of lifting the lid on some of the band's best-kept recording secrets, he's also discussed the unusual technique that he used on 1980’s Let The Music Do The Talking, which essentially saw him concocting a make-shift seven-string guitar.

It’s currently unclear as to what guise Perry’s new recordings will take if/when they are released, but it's a safe bet another Bonamassa solo record is just around the corner. Either way, both guitarists have benefitted from giving new gear a chance – and it has paid them dividends.

Having authored some of the finest and sleaziest riffs in rock history, Joe Perry knows a thing or two about what it takes to make those riffs stick.

Be it "Walk This Way," "Combination," "Fever" or his solo riffs, like "Mercy" or "Let the Music Do the Talking," which Aerosmith later re-recorded, Perry has his riff-writing process dialed in, with step one centering around letting go.

"You have to cut your thinking," Perry tells GP. "You have to let the thinking part of your brain loose and let your subconscious take over. It's an exercise in getting a connection to your heart and soul, and sometimes, these riffs just come out."

Perry has written the riffs you know and love at soundchecks in Hawaii and while sitting on a 4x12 amp as it was about to be loaded into a truck. It all goes to prove that you have to be ready when inspiration strikes.

"You don't really know where they come from," Perry admits. "Sometimes, you sit down to write a song, and you don't feel like playing. You're not particularly inspir, but you never know what's going to inspire you. You're fired up some days, and sometimes, you're not feeling it. That's the creative process.

"It's a puzzle," he continues. "You're always trying to figure out what makes one song sound like magic and another one not so much. But you've just gotta do it. You can't sit around and wait for inspiration. You've got to make your own luck."

Judging by Perry's body of work, it really doesn't matter where the riff for, say, "Same Old Song and Dance" came from, just that it did. It's the same with all of his iconic work, and so it shall be until he writes his last riff.

"With riffs," Perry says. "They're little bits of magic. There was nothing, and then there was something. Those little bits of magic… I don't know where they come from, man. Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to figure that out."

"Same Old Song and Dance" (1974)

Steven and I were really starting to learn how to write together. A lot of the songs from the first album were songs he had with his other bands. He had a notebook full of stuff, and some of the songs didn't have music to them but had some chord charges, like "S.O.S. (Too Bad)." That song already had lyrics, and Steven had the changes.

But a lot of the music from those first couple of records, like "Same Old Song and Dance" — like how we wrote in those days was Steven would be playing drums, his main instrument, and he'd have the microphone sitting there. We would jam along, and I tended to write riffs that were kind of melodic, and "Same Old Song and Dance" was like that.

We were jamming along, I played a riff, and Steven said, "Play that again." We hit "record" on the tape player for a second, played it a few more times, and it became the melody for the song. That's one of a bunch of songs that came about that way.

Basically, it was the foundation for how we were going to work together as songwriters. That song really jumps out at me. It's not a complicated riff by any means, but it's got a kind of hooky thing. That's what it's all about.

"Walk This Way" (1975)

In the '70s, we were either on the road or in the studio — and we were on the road. Once in a while, we'd take a week or two off, but most of the time, we were working. We were in Hawaii and knew we were going into the studio and gathering songs.

We were well into the part of our career where we wrote songs and some stuff in the studio. After the first two records, which had songs that we basically played in clubs, we used up all of them. So, I was thinking of some of the funk that I really liked and thought, "Let's see if we can get something that's got that kind of groove."

We were in soundcheck in Hawaii, and I asked Joey [Kramer] to just play straight, funky twos and fours while I started working on a riff. The first part was basically the verse, and then, you need a place to go, and I changed from down to the E chord from a C. Every chord change needed a little signature to it, like a little bit of a riff.

By the time I finished the soundcheck, I pretty much had all the parts. Then, Steven [Tyler] heard what I was playing as he came in and asked Joey if he could sit down and play the drums. I don't really remember who came up with the [opening drum] riff; that's between them, but I got what I needed, and that's all I was looking for.

When we recorded it, Steven was still looking for the hook. We were upstairs at the Record Plant and needed a break. It was in the evening; the guys went to see Young Frankenstein. I didn't feel like going, but when they came back, they were laughing and joking about the old Groucho Marx line, "Walk this way," like an old vaudeville thing, and Steven said, "Okay… walk this way. I think that's what I needed."

They took it and left for about two hours, and when he came back, he had pretty much all the lyrics. And then, we pretty much laid the song own. I remember using a Strat, and I would bet it was a 50-watt Marshall 4x 12, just straight in.

"Toys in the Attic" (1975)

We were getting ready to go to New York to record at The Record Plant, and we had a good bunch of songs and enough to go in. We finished rehearsing up in Boston, and the guys were pulling some gear out, you know, Marshalls and stuff. We were sitting around, talking, and they were breaking the gear down, and [producer] Jack Douglas said, "We need one more rocker. We need a barnburner."

So, I said on one of the 4x12s, and just started jamming a little bit. And after a couple of minutes, I had that beginning riff from "Toys in the Attic." I said, "I kind of like that," and again, you need a place to go, and that's when I came up with the riff for the vocal, so I had those two parts. The next time the band got together, we worked it out. Everybody threw down, and it became "Toys in the Attic."

I might have been playing a [Gibson Les Paul] Junior at that point. I don't think it was a Les Paul. It might have been a Junior with a P90. That's the one I was playing a lot when the riff came about. But a lot of these riffs, on a lot of these guitars, you know, anybody that writes music will tell you that stuff just comes out, and you don't know where it came from. I've had that feeling a lot.

"Back in the Saddle” (1976)

I've mentioned a thousand times that one of the biggest influences on me has been Peter Green with Fleetwood Mac. We used to cover some of those songs; I must have seen him eight or nine times when they played in Boston. I'd seen them every time they'd come through; I'd see him every chance I got.

One of the things I know that Peter would do during their jams — and they did a fair amount of jamming — is he would give his roadie his Les Paul, and he would pick up a six-string bass. I'd never seen a six-string bass before, and at that point, I didn't know that Jack Bruce used one in Cream sometimes. I'd never seen or heard one.

But Peter Green used to jam with one, and it was a cool sound. So, when I started making a little money, I went out and bought one and started fooling around with it. I said, "I gotta play this, man. I need an excuse to play this." [laughs] I started fooling around with these riffs that sounded cool on the six-string bass, and you could get some nice vibrato out of it.

So, I worked up this riff and was lying on my back in my rehearsal room, just jamming on it. And once you get a riff, you need a place to go, so I recorded it with a cassette player, brought it to the band, and we jammed on it. That's "Back in the Saddle." I believe that almost every guitar you pick has a song in there, even if it's one I've never used.

I've used that six-string bass a lot, but that's the only song I've ever written around it. And I'd like to think it was the inspiration for that song in Spinal Tap when they had three guys playing bass. I think the song is called "Big Bottom, and they had a bass player, a middle bass, and a lead bass, or whatever. I saw the movie and it was like, "Well, yeah, I can relate to that." [laughs]

"Let the Music Do the Talking" (1980)

I have to include this one because I like to talk about the open tuning, you know, the classic Robert Johnson G or A tuning. I wrote a lot of songs using that tuning, but I didn't want to sound like Keith Richards, so I had to work around that, though it's pretty easy to hit some chords… I mean, so many Stones songs are written around that tuning; it's genius.

Anyway, I really like that tuning. I heard here that Keith liked to take the low E string off, so he had just five strings, which made it easier to play bar chords up and down the neck and not have to worry about the E string getting in the way. But I was thinking, "Well, that's kind of a waste of a good tuning peg," so I took a bass string, put it on the guitar, and tuned it in unison, only an octave lower on the A string, so I'd still be able to play with all six strings.

It really sounds pretty amazing; I sat down and wrote some riffs and a lot of songs around that, like "Let the Music Do the Talking," I had that riff for Aerosmith, but by the time I'd left [in 1979], it had never gotten on the list. When I left, we were working on Night in the Ruts, and I left before it was done, but we had most of the music recorded.

So, "Let the Music Do the Talking" was one of the riffs I had lying around, and it was one of the first ones I worked on for my first solo album. I used that open tuning, and the name of the song says a lot about how I feel about letting the business overtake us and why I left the band. There was too much politics, and I just wanted to get away from it and take a break.

But when I got back to Aerosmith [in 1984], and we were talking about doing a new record [Done with Mirrors], Steven liked the riff enough, and the rest of the guys were like, "Let's go with that one." Steven rewrote the lyrics, and when we played it… it was a little funkier on my solo record. I had a different grind and groove, but it's the same riff. I love playing that one.

I probably used my clear-body [Ampeg] Damn Armstrong with that bass string added to it. And I would bet that I was using a Marshall Plexi, but it's hard to say because I had two Hi-Watts, some Fender combos, and a blackface Twin going at that same time.

"Nine Lives" (1997)

When we first cut the song "Nine Lives" down in Florida, we worked with Glenn Ballard, who had just done that Alanis Morissette record [Jagged Little Pill], which was climbing the charts. The way we recorded was really different than usual, and when the record company heard it, they felt that it didn't sound like us, you know?

The point is that the songs weren't working. It just didn't sound right. So, we switched producers and worked with Kevin Shirley. His nickname is ‘The Caveman.’ He's Australian, tough, and old-school analog. Everything was played live, and we had the songs down really solid. We weren't too excited to recut everything, but we understood because the record didn't sound like it should have.

We had all the amps in a row and set up to play live. We had enough separation so we could play live, but we still overdubbed. It was a 180-degree difference in how we were recording, and the song "Nine Live" didn't really have a beginning worked out; it was just kind of a count-off at that point.

So, one of my favorite rock songs ever, which still gives me goosebumps when I hear it, is "Stroll On" by The Yardbirds. It's one of the few recordings that has Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on it, and at the beginning, Jimmy and Jeff are both getting feedback… I could listen to that 10 times in a row, and it still sounds like the first time I heard it.

I was thinking about that, so rather than count "Nine Lives" off, I didn't say anything; I just hit that first note while standing in front of the amp and let it feedback. Brad [Whitford] did the same thing, and that's the beginning of that song.

Maybe it's not what you call a "riff," but for me, it's one of the best ways to start a song, and it's one of my favorite guitar things that I've done. It was right off the top, the tape was rolling, and we didn't rehearse it. That's what Aerosmith is about, you know?

Through iconic gigs with Aerosmith, as a solo artist and with the Hollywood Vampires, Joe Perry has been known for playing his red 10-string B.C. Rich Bich, his oft-favored and ever-changing Frankensteined Burned Strat and his Gibson "Billie" semi-hollowbody guitars, to name a few.

However, one electric guitar from Perry's 600-plus-strong collection stands out: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard 'Burst. While the guitar has meaning, if you've seen Perry perform live, you'll know he's not one to stagnate on one guitar for more than a song or two. "I always buy stuff that I know I'm going to use or that looks interesting," he says.

That checks out, as dozens of oddballs reside within his collection. "Some of those guitars might not be the hippest guitars in the world, or whatever, but it's always inspiring to pick up something that's got a different sound to it," he says. "You tend to play differently. That's where the ideas come from."

Returning to the 'Burst in question, Perry first came upon the guitar in the early ’70s after trading a '60s Guild Starfire, for it. The guitar stuck with him throughout the decade, during which time he wrote He was thick as thieves with the ’Burst until the early ‘80s, when he sold the beloved axe to a music shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

That's not surprising, as Perry admits to clearing proverbial decks when he left Aerosmith in '79 and after divorced his first wife in the early ’80s. The ’59 'Burst was just another casualty. What's more, Perry was searching for new sounds and wanted to avoid being chained to a guitar so closely related to his image onstage and in the studio with Aerosmith.

But it didn't take long for regret to set in. "There's a fair amount of guitars I don't have anymore that I wish I did," Perry says.

When looking back at the story of Joe Perry's '59 Les Paul, one has to understand that when Perry sold it, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence. Ace Frehley admits to doing the same thing around the same time, although the former Kiss six-stringer was funding a gambling trip, not rebuilding his life.

So there are stark differences. And who could blame Perry for wanting a change and some extra cash in his pocket as he embarked on a solo career?

Another point to consider is that while 'Bursts were going for decent dollars in the early ’80s, they sure weren't going for the six-figure numbers that late-1950s Les Paul Standards command these days, let alone one played by the guitarist of a legendary band.

As a result, Joe’s guitar was long gone by the time regret set in. When Aerosmith regrouped and rolled into the '90s on a wave of success via Permanent Vacation, Pump and Get a Grip, he had no idea where his favored 'Burst was.

Little could did he imagine that his guitar had made an appearance on MTV in a music video for Guns N' Roses' "November Rain.”

By then, Perry was deep into his search for the guitar. "We were starting to make some money after the band got rolling again," Perry says. "I thought It would be great to track down a couple of guitars that I'm missing. I started making phone calls around Boston and looking around.”

Remarkably, it was his bandmate Brad Whitford who hipped Perry to the news that his ’Burst had landed with another famous owner.

"I remember being in the studio, telling my guitar tech, 'I'm trying to track down my Les Paul,’ when Brad walked over,” Perry explains. “Brad said, ’Your Les Paul? I know where it is.’ He pulled out a guitar magazine with Slash's collection.

“And there it was. That's when I found out Slash had it."

Ironically, Aerosmith had shared the stage with Guns N' Roses in '92. In fact, Perry and Slash were pals. As a result, the guitarist felt emboldened to ask his friend for his guitar back. "I called him," Perry says. "I told him, 'Hey, I'll pay whatever you paid for it.'"

Slash wasn't having it. "He begged me not to ask. He said, 'Please don't ask me that.' But I'd call him every once in a while, just to see how he was, and I'd ask him, just as a joke.” Perry says, "I understood. If I had one of Jeff [Beck]'s guitars, I wouldn't wanna give it up. I definitely understood how he felt about it."

While most of Perry's pleas were joking in nature, the pressure of owning the iconic ’Burst was too much for Slash and had caused an unspoken rift between the two guitarists. "He wasn't around," Perry says. "I tried getting in touch with him, and I realized he didn't want to be asked anymore. It was getting in the way of our friendship."

So Perry mended things with Slash. "I said, 'I'm not going to ask you anymore — not even in kidding,’” he explains.

The 'Burst remained with Slash into 2000. By then, the guitarist was four years out of Guns N’ Roses and deep into his solo career, with his ’59 ’Burst in hand.

But while Perry had stopped asking Slash about the guitar, little did he know his wife, Billie, had taken up the cause. Slash and Perry shared the same lawyer, and she’d been communicating through him to Slash, trying to get the ’59 ’Burst back in Joe’s hands.

By then, after years of owning the guitar and building a collection, Slash was ready to part with the guitar. Joe’s 50th birthday bash was coming up and it seemed the perfect time to reunite him with his instrument.

And Slash had a plan.

Perry had hired Cheap Trick to perform at the bash. “They asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said, 'I want to play a set with you guys. I want to play your songs,’” Joe recalls. “I love those guys.

“So I got up to play a short set with Cheap Trick. And that's when they handed me the guitar."

Just like that, for the first time in nearly two decades, Perry was reunited with his long-lost '59 Les Paul ‘Burst. "I played the set with that guitar," he says. "It was an amazing night, I'll tell you. But I mean… I got my guitar back. I couldn't thank Slash enough. And I got to play with Cheap Trick!"

In the years since, Perry hasn't let the infamous ‘Burst go. The odds are that the guitar will be with him until the end, which is fair. Even though it's not his main guitar, the ‘Burst’s legend will be forever tied to Perry's towering legacy, and vice versa.

At 74, Perry remains a guitar junkie. His collection continues to grow, ebb and flow, and it is always functional. But no matter the space between plug and plays, the iconic ’59 Aerosmith 'Burst remains. Over the years, its legend has grown, with Gibson's Custom Shop even producing faithful recreations of Perry's prized Les Paul.

Though nothing compares to the original, which reminds Perry that there are other guitars he let get away. "I wish I had a few of the pieces I lost at the end of the '70s," he admits. "But I still have some stuff, like custom Aerosmith amps and a lot of old foot pedals.

"There's a fair amount of guitars that were sold or stolen. I don't have the guitar, the [early-70s Fender] Strat, that I played 'Walk This Way' on; I wish I did. But I've got my Les Paul back, thanks to my wife, Billie, and thanks to Slash."

When Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry stepped away from the band in 1979, he wanted to draw a line in the sand. That meant severing ties with many of the guitars he’d created history with.  

“I wanted to clear the decks and clear my head,” Perry says in the latest issue of Total Guitar. “I took most of my Aerosmith guitars, put them in road boxes, and left them there.”

That decision saw the guitarist, who would release three albums with the Joe Perry Project before returning to the band in 1984, lose access to many of those guitars. Amongst them was a prized Fender Stratocaster – the only guitar he regrets getting rid of. 

“I really wasn’t into collecting guitars. At that point, I had a few Les Pauls, a few Juniors or Strats, but that was it,” he recalls. “Honestly, the guitar I miss the most from that era is the Strat I recorded Walk This Way with, which went the way of the wind when I left the band.” 

Perry may call himself a “stone-cold Gibson man,” but Strats proved vital ingredients in shaping the band’s sound, especially in the studio.  

“We liked the idea of having two different guitar sounds,” he says. “I always felt like we should sound like one of us was playing a Fender Stratocaster and the other was playing a Gibson Les Paul.

“I think a lot of people, when they think of us in those years, [think we're] playing Les Pauls,” he adds of the band’s ‘70s heyday, which began with 1975’s name-making Toys in the Attic and concluded with ‘77s Draw The Line. 

“But,” he adds, “I recorded a lot with Strats. I was definitely a stone-cold Gibson man, but I seemed to gravitate more toward Strats and that variety of tones. Plus you had the vibrato…I always felt like it was one more color on your paint palette.” 

His Les Paul of choice was a ‘59 Burst with a chunky neck he “loved the thickness” of. It was a guitar that Slash said was “the coolest guitar I had ever seen,” and one he helped return to Perry after the latter reluctantly sold it in 1980 when money was tight. 

Despite his long-term association with Les Pauls, it was a ‘50s Strat – the one that ultimately got away from him – paired with a Les Paul Junior that helped catapult the band to success with Walk This Way. 

Writing for Guitar World in 2019, Chris Gill detailed the tonal magic of Perry’s Walk This Way guitars as a combination of a Les Paul Junior, his long-lost Strat, and a 60-watt Ampeg V-2 tube head.  

His main rhythm track – hard-panned left, with Brad Whitford occupying the other end of the spectrum – featured a P-90 loaded double-cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior. 

The Les Paul Junior starred during the first of Perry’s two solos on the track, with the Strat stealing the show with the second. 

Gill details how Perry “begins the second solo on the Strat’s bridge pickup, but starting at the outro’s fat, sustained note bends (around 2:45) switches to the Strat’s neck pickup.” At that moment he also “engages a ’70s Maestro FZ-1S Fuzz-Tone to further thicken the midrange and make the guitar ‘sound like an electric razor.’”  

To read the full interview with Perry, which charts the gear and conversations that dictated his entire Aerosmith career, pick up issue 385 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct. 

Fourteen years ago, a group of super-serious musicians – guitarist Guthrie Govan, bassist Bryan Beller, and drummer Marco Minnemann – formed a band after an impromptu NAMM show jam. Ever since then, they’ve been doing everything they can not to take themselves so seriously.

“Boring fusion is pretty much the antithesis of what we’re going for,” Govan attests. “We’ve always wanted to create something a little more fun and subversive. Our foremost priority was never to showcase ourselves doing things on our instruments that the audience might not be able to do on theirs. We feel like a genuine sense of joy emerges whenever we play together, so that’s really the foremost thing that we want to share with the listeners.”

Govan is right about one thing: The Aristocrats are a good time. They have released four albums of rowdy, wildly unpredictable and irreverent instrumentals – everything from crushing metal, psycho funk, spacey jazz, and mad dashes of swing – with song titles like Sweaty Knockers, Blues Fuckers, and The Kentucky Meat Shower. But the idea that mere mortals could replicate the dizzying chops of this highly pedigreed trio is somewhat fanciful. 

After all, Beller has recorded and toured with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, Minnemann’s résumé boasts names like Tony Levin and Steve Hackett, and Govan has worked with Hans Zimmer and Steven Wilson, among others. 

“Of course, it would be disingenuous of me to play down the importance of us being able to operate our instruments at a relatively high level,” Govan admits. “That stuff is essentially the foundation for everything else. 

“If we couldn’t play well enough to perform our music with the required degree of technical proficiency while maintaining enough headroom to accommodate our more chaotic and improvisational side, then the whole thing would fall apart. That’s why I said that showcasing the musicianship element was never our foremost priority.”

Following a five-year hiatus, the trio has reconvened for its latest album, Duck. From the ferocious metal-swing gem “Hey – Where’s MY Drink Package?” to the feisty riff-banger Sgt. Rockhopper and the grandiose musical theater conceit of This Is Not Scrotum (get past the title and you’ll be imagining Cabaret mixed with Fiddler on the Roof), it’s an orgy for fans of virtuosic rock, full of wicked grooves and bravura soloing.

There’s even a loose narrative element to the whole thing, something about
a web-footed water bird fleeing a penguin cop in New York City. As Govan explains, “One of Marco’s song submissions was called Sittin’ With a Duck on the Bay, and that somehow led to us to make an entire concept album in which the central protagonist is a duck. It’s funny how these things can happen.”

All of your albums, including this one, have nine songs each. Looks like you still adhere to that “three songs per guy” rule.

“We still adhere to that principle. It’s served us well over the years, so why change it? When we’re working on a new album, all three of us make a real effort to write material that we think would complement the band’s component musical personalities. Hopefully, that leads to stronger and more suitable material overall.”

A few years ago, you told me that you write with two aspects in mind: a tight focus on composed sections, and an eye toward open sections that leave room for jamming. Has that changed?

“Not at all. That’s been the most flexible aspect of every demo I’ve ever sent to Marco and Bryan. Amid the detail in the more heavily composed sections, there will typically be a solo section or fade-out jam accompanied by the note: ‘This section could be stretched much further if we’re feeling it.’ 

“I like the idea of having live material that offers the scope for playing the songs differently every night. A typical album touring cycle for us will last 100 shows, so having some extra flexibility baked into the arrangements can really help to preserve everyone’s enthusiasm and sanity.”

Can you point to any songs or passages on which any new guitar influences were in your head?

“There were certainly some moments where I channeled influences in a way that people might not have heard from me before. Subconsciously, for instance, I was almost certainly thinking of Steve Reich when I came up with the tapping loop that runs throughout much of Slideshow. And there’s a riff in Here Come the Builders that represents my twisted idea of how Aerosmith might sound in 5/4. 

“I guess the main guitar character in Sittin’ With a Duck on the Bay was me trying to adopt a kind of ’60s–’70s mindset, in my own weird way.”

You do seem to emulate Steve Cropper in places on that one.

“I think Marco’s intention was to pay tribute to a whole genre or period of music rather than that Otis song in particular. But I suppose being aware of the song title may have steered me slightly closer to Cropper territory. 

“I wasn’t actively trying to sound like anyone in particular, but I did make a conscious decision to use an ES-335 straight into an old Fender Deluxe for the main guitar voice on that track. Somehow, the 335–Fender combination just looked the way I thought the guitar should sound on that track.”

Overall, was your main guitar your signature Charvel model?

“For the most part, yes. The studio in Ojai, where we did most of the tracking, is full of vintage guitars, and I can never resist the temptation to try out unusual alternative instruments. However, my main takeaway, almost every time, was a renewed appreciation for just how stable and reliable those Charvels are.

“Having said that, you’ll hear plenty of 335 on Sitting With a Duck. In the middle of Muddle Through I used my Nik Huber Orca ’59. 

“After realizing that the studio’s Danelectro 12-string was a bit too jangly to work convincingly as a lead instrument, I used a Reverend Airwave 12 on This Is Not Scrotum. I ordered it online, something I’ve never done before. Oh, and the clean solo interlude in And Then There Were Just Us was done on a Gretsch G100CE – not the fanciest of jazz archtops, but that particular model has no center block in the body, and that allows the top to vibrate more freely.”

When you’re not playing with the Aristocrats, you regularly perform with Hans Zimmer. Do you need time to decompress from such a radically different gig before playing with this band?

“In an ideal world there would always be time to decompress when switching musical gears, but in the real world, needless to say, this luxury isn’t always available. Earlier this year, I encountered a particularly messy calendar clash where my Aristocrats and Hans Zimmer duties actually overlapped.

“At any rate, I’ve discovered that I can indeed switch from one mode to the other pretty quickly when I need to. I think the simple act of moving into the surroundings of a known touring environment will instantly activate certain mental triggers, so everything tends to come flooding back pretty quickly. On the other hand, if I’m trying to record something remotely for one band while I‘m on tour with the other, that’s a different story. My brain definitely struggles with that.” 

• The Aristocrats' Duck is available now.

Growing up in classic rock’s golden years shouldn’t negate the possibility that you enjoy music made today. I may have an extensive vinyl collection of favorites dating back to my childhood, but I stream music everyday and constantly discover great songs by inspiring artists across the genres.

Yet, there are some who believe the modern music scene is a wasteland.

If you think that, you probably aren’t listening. But if one thing has suffered in the past two decades, it is the long-player. There are fewer epic albums being made today, and there is less reason to invest one’s time and ears in 40 minutes or more of an artist’s music.

Of course, I say this with the benefit – and certainly blessing – of having grown up at a time when the album was king.

Take 1973. A half century ago, we experienced one of the greatest years in rock and roll. It was a year that saw debuts from potent acts like Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, as well as from guitar heroes like Tony Rice and Lindsey Buckingham, making his nod with Buckingham Nicks.

From my youthful vantage point, 1973 was lived as 52 weeks of breathless Saturday trips to the record store, where we were tempted by such epic albums as Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the Who’s Quadrophenia, not to mention prog monsters like Yes’s live three-album set Yessongs, Manfred Mann Earth Band’s Solar Fire, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard/A True Star, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery and, the behemoth of them all, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

In 1973, we saw the last flashes of glam rock with Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups, Rick Derringer’s All American Boy, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and the debut from the New York Dolls.

But it was a great year for art rock, with Fripp and Eno’s experimental tour de force (No Pussyfooting), John Cale’s orchestral pop masterpiece Paris 1919, Lou Reed’s dramatic Berlin, Camel’s brilliant self-titled debut, and a pair of landmark Roxy Music albums: For Your Pleasure and Stranded.

That was all but the tip of that year’s multi-genre, stylistically freewheeling musical iceberg.

For any album to stand out among this pack, it would have to be pretty freaking great. Which is the least you can say about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, a compilation of eight wildly inventive songs that together serve as a cross-section of that year’s dizzying musical styles, including prog, reggae, glam, folk, funk and art-rock.

It was the first Zeppelin album I bought and the first – perhaps only – album they made that kept their bombast in check, served up an ear-catching range of styles and delivered with economical arrangements.

As Jimmy Page said: “You can hear the fun we were having.”

Indeed, we can, to this day. Here’s to singing in the sunshine and laughing in the rain.

Though he doesn't necessarily play them onstage exclusively, Aerosmith electric guitar legend Joe Perry has long been associated with the Gibson Les Paul.

In a recent interview with Total Guitar though, Perry revealed that Stratocasters, not Les Pauls, served as his primary studio tool during Aerosmith's formative early period.

“I played Les Pauls pretty much throughout the ’70s,” Perry said. “But I recorded most of my stuff with Strats. I always loved having the vibrato arm, and it seemed easier to get different tones out of a Strat.” 

Emphasizing that, in the moment, he was "more concerned about writing songs than I was about the particulars of which amp I used or whatever,” Perry added that there there were some notable exceptions to his Strat studio use rule.

"I would say with a fair amount of confidence I used a Les Paul on 'Eat The Rich', 'Toys In The Attic' [the song], 'Pandora’s Box', and 'Nine Lives'," Perry told Total Guitar. "I would bet that at least one of my [guitar] tracks on 'Walk This Way' is a Les Paul, and then everything I did after that was with the Strat.”  

From that explanation, one can reasonably conclude that it's a Strat you're hearing on early Aerosmith smashes like "Dream On."

However, if the Strat was Perry's axe of choice in the studio, why did he typically go for a Les Paul onstage?

“The tone you could get out of a Les Paul was heavier,” Perry explained. “And it was easier to get to get distortion with less noise. I think a lot of the reason that guitar plays so well in general is because it has its roots in Spanish guitar.”

To read the full Total Guitar interview with Perry – which also covers, among other topics, his (somewhat surprising) thoughts on '59 Les Pauls – pick up the latest issue of the mag at magazinesdirect.com.

It's not often you get two of the world's biggest bands on stage at the same time. But at the 1995 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, members of Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith joined forces for a spectacular live performance of six songs including "Train Kept a Rollin'," "For Your Love," "Bring It On Home," "Reefer Headed Woman," "Boogie Chillen" and "Baby Please Don't Go."

That year, Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry had the honor of inducting fellow hard rock veterans Led Zeppelin into the esteemed ranks of the Rock Hall.

During the ceremony, the pair shared some thoughts on the group Rolling Stone called "the biggest band of the Seventies."

“I love this band because they had no limits,” said Perry. “They weren't musical snobs and never held on to any one style. Zeppelin would change gear six times on one album; they played blues, funk, rock, reggae and ballads with equal ease.

“I think it’s laughable that some people still consider them just a heavy metal band, since at least half of their best songs are acoustic. They were doing Unplugged long before it was a hip thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Tyler recalled some poignant memories of the early days.

“In 1969, I saw Led Zeppelin perform at the Boston Tea Party,” said the Aerosmith frontman. “They ran out of songs after they played their whole first album, so they had to do a bunch of Elvis tunes because they wouldn’t let them get off stage.

“I just sat cross-legged in the back of the room while they played the middle section of 'Dazed and Confused,’ and it was so fucking heavy that it made me cry.

“Another time I cried over Led Zeppelin was an hour later when Jimmy Page emerged from the dressing room with a beautiful girl on his arm. I would have been very impressed except it was the girl I’d been living with (up until that moment.)”

Interestingly, Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones recounted his own memories of performing at the Boston Tea Party in 1969 to NME .

“As far as I’m concerned, the key Zeppelin gig, the one that put everything into focus, was one that we played on our first American tour at the Boston Tea Party,” said the legendary bassist.

“We’d played our usual one-hour set, using all the material for the first album and Page’s ‘White Summer’ guitar piece and by the end, the audience just wouldn’t let us off stage…

“I’ve never seen that at a gig before or since, and when we finally left the stage, we’d played for four plus hours.

“Peter [Grant, Led Zeppelin’s manager] was absolutely ecstatic. He was crying, if you can imagine that, and hugging us all.”

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

Browse the Aerosmith catalog here.

Visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame online here.

While the talk box achieved its greatest popularity in the early part of the ‘70s thanks to Bob Heil, the concept existed in a variety of forms long before he brought his device to market.

It was Alvino Rey who first popularized, if not invented, the effect in the late 1930s, using a throat contact mic to make his steel guitar speak. Rey had the mic wired in reverse to act as a speaker and fed his amplified signal into it. As he performed, his wife, Luise, stood offstage, wearing the device and mouthing the words to the song as Rey’s steel guitar tones emerged from her lips.

The same concept was behind the Sonovox, developed by Gilbert Wright in 1939 and demonstrated by a young Lucille Ball in a newsreel.

Rey’s bit of ventriloquism was put to use as the voice of Stringy the Talking Steel Guitar, a freakish-looking puppet that sang “St. Louis Blues” in the 1944 film Jam Session.

The talk box as we know it today was created by Nashville steel guitarist Bill West by sealing an eight-inch speaker in a box, from which extended a length of tubing for the player’s mouth. Steel guitarist Pete Drake put West’s device to use on his 1964 cut “Forever,” and the novelty quickly caught on.

Drake began selling the device himself, marketing it as the Talking Music Actuator. West’s talk box eventually found its way into the rig of Joe Walsh, who would go on to use it on his 1973 hit, “Rocky Mountain Way,” the first record on which most people in the classic-rock era heard the effect.

By then, Kustom Electronics had gotten into the act with the Bag, a shoulder-slung device introduced in 1969 and used by Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” in 1975 and by Jeff Beck that same year on “She’s a Woman” from Blow by Blow.

But all those devices were relatively low wattage. It took Heil’s high-powered Talk Box to make the effect viable for use on stadium and arena stages. He and Walsh made their prototype together on a Sunday afternoon.

“We grabbed a 250-watt JBL, built a low-pass filter, got all the plumbing together, and voilà – the Talk Box,” Heil recalled.

Enter Peter Frampton, who had first heard the effect when Drake played on sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, on which Frampton also performed.

Frampton – who knew Heil from his days as soundman for Humble Pie – used his Talk Box on 1975’s “Show Me the Way” but made his biggest impression with it on “Do You Feel Like We Do,” from his 1976 smash live album, Frampton Comes Alive!

“People went nuts when I went to use the talk box,” he told Guitar Player. “Hey, everybody needs a gimmick, and this was mine.”

Since then it’s become a useful tool in the mouths of guitarists ranging from Richie Sambora to Jerry Cantrell.

Check out the MXR M222 Talk Box here.

Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, Aerosmith formed in the early ‘70s before releasing their eponymous debut long-player in 1973. The Aerosmith album spawned the band's first hit single “Dream On” – a song penned by vocalist Steven Tyler when he was still a teenager.

By the time Aerosmith appeared on NBC’s late-night music show The Midnight Special in ‘74 the “Dream On” lead single had come and gone. And while the band had become well-known in the Boston area as a result they were yet to break nationwide. However, following the single’s rerelease in '75, “Dream On” eventually became a top-ten Billboard Hot 100 hit in '76 – several years after Aerosmith's formation.

Dream on indeed!

This historical clip from '74 captures the young band performing “Dream On” live as they stand poised to make the leap from local starlets to national hard rock heroes. The following year would see Aerosmith release what would become their most successful album to date: Toys in the Attic.

Guitar players will appreciate the P-90 classic rock tones emanating from both guitarist’s amps. While Brad Whitford is playing a single-pickup sunburst Gibson Les Paul Junior, Joe Perry has opted for a dual-pickup Les Paul Special.

Ubiquitous across Gibson’s range of electric guitars when they recommenced production just after the war, the P-90 is an incredibly versatile pickup and is still proving popular today. 

P-90s were somewhat eclipsed by the PAF humbucker from the late ‘50s onwards, although they appear to be making a huge comeback in recent years as people are rediscovering their charms.

With a cooking tube amp, P-90s are able to produce a huge range of very musical tones – from chiming cleans to singing leads – via the guitar’s onboard controls, as demonstrated during Whitford and Perry’s amazing performances here.

Browse Aerosmith's back catalog here.

Aerosmith's most recent live performances came at the band's Las Vegas residency at the Park Theater in early 2020.

Though the band had further Las Vegas performances scheduled for spring 2020, in addition to a European tour that summer, these were all – of course – cancelled due to COVID-19.

The European tour was first moved to the summer of 2021, but has now been pushed back to 2022. However, longtime Aerosmith guitar-slinger Brad Whitford has cast doubt on whether the shows will happen at all. 

"They tried to plan one [a tour] last year, and they're talking about next year," Whitford told Joe Bonamassa during an appearance on the latter's Live from Nerdville podcast. "It's a pipe dream right now. Nothing's gonna happen for a long time. Sometimes I'm not sure what my partners are thinking when they think that's gonna happen."

Adding that Brexit has made it harder for bands to get work visas for European dates, Whitford said "I mean, I have my doubts about Aerosmith ever really performing again at this stage, because age is becoming a real factor. It is what it is."

In addition to the European dates, Aerosmith seemed to confirm – upon their announcement of the most recent rescheduling of the European tour – that they'd be performing at the 2022 Glastonbury festival, though they swiftly removed from the show from their website. 

You can listen to Whitford's full chat with Bonamassa – during which the Aerosmith guitarist also discussed the band's blue-collar appeal, and the anxieties of touring with a '59 Strat – above.

When Slash first saw Joe Perry’s 1959 Les Paul in the gatefold of Aerosmith’s 1978 Live! Bootleg album, it was lust at first sight.

“That was the coolest guitar I had ever seen,” Slash says.

Years later, after finding success with Guns N’ Roses, Slash was able to fulfill his boyhood dreams by purchasing the guitar. As Perry himself relates in his 2014 autobiography, Rocks, he had parted ways with the Les Paul in 1980 when money became tight. 

Over the following years, it ended up with Eric Johnson, who recognized it as Perry’s guitar and offered to sell it back to him for a mere $8,000. Unfortunately, that was more than Perry could afford. Johnson eventually sold the guitar, and its whereabouts were unknown.

One day, Perry’s bandmate Brad Whitford saw Slash posing with the guitar in Guitar Player magazine and brought the photo to Perry’s attention. Thus began Perry’s all-out effort to get the guitar back.

Slash (with Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains riding shotgun) tells the tale behind the guitar in the guitar documentary, Turn It Up!, and we’ve provided the relevant clip above. Take a look.

(As some of you may know, Joe related this story on Conan O’Brien’s show a few years back. We’ve included that clip below as well.)

It's not exactly a controversy on the level of Brian Williams' fibbing he was shot down in a helicopter over Iraq, but for some guitarists, the giddy thrill of determining exactly who played the solos on Aerosmith's 1974 version of "Train Kept A Rollin’" has kept band, bar and tour-bus arguments rocking for some time.

Hopefully, you did not have your money on Aerosmith guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford.

Awhile back, Karen Ann Hunter let the riffs out of the bag once and for all in a Detroitrocknrollmagazine.com article that revealed that the "usual suspects" - session greats Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner - took those incredible solos on the track. Karen should know, as she is Steve's wife.

The story goes that Jack Douglas - co-producer of Get Your Wings, the Aerosmith album on which the track appeared - found Hunter outside the Record Plant Studios taking a break from another session, and dragged him into Aerosmith's room.

"Aerosmith was in Studio C, and I was doing work with [producer] Bob Ezrin in Studio A," recalled Steve Hunter. "I had a long wait between dubs, and I was waiting in the lobby. Jack popped his head out of Studio C, and asked 'Hey, do you feel like playing?' I said, 'Sure,' and I grabbed my guitar and went in. 

"I had two run-throughs, and then Jack said, 'Great - that's it!' That turned out to be the opening solo on 'Train Kept A Rollin'.'" 

Steve believes he used his 1959 Les Paul Special for the track. "I got paid about $750 for doing it," he said.

At the time, Steve Hunter was unaware that Douglas had also brought in his session mate Dick Wagner to solo over the song's "simulated" live section that occurs later on.

As was the case back in the days when session musicians often "ghosted" parts thought to be played by band members, neither Hunter nor Wagner were given credit on the Get Your Wings album.

But now, if you want to challenge a fervent Joe Perry or Brad Whitford fan to a "bar bet" about who played the solos on "Train Kept A Rollin'", you can use Hunter's statement here to win yourself a few beers. Go get 'em!

It’s not often that a band pushing toward its 50th year together can still manage to scale new heights — or even exist, for that matter.

But that’s what Aerosmith have done with Deuces Are Wild, their current show at the Park Theater in Las Vegas. The production — from the stage set to the sound quality to the performance itself — is wholly unlike anything the group has ever attempted in its long career. It is, as guitarist Brad Whitford says, “A completely new experience for this band.”

Which is true, although with one small caveat. As co-guitarist Joe Perry points out, while Deuces Are Wild is indeed Aerosmith’s first extended run in Vegas, it is not actually their first time embarking on a residency.

“We did a residency back when we were first trying to get signed,” Perry tells Guitar Player. “After we went to Max’s Kansas City [in New York] and all the record companies passed on us, our manager said, ‘Well, you’re going to go up to the Sheraton Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire. We’re booking you in there for two or three weeks, and you can rehearse during the day and play two shows a night.’ That was really our first and, until now, only residency.

“But in some ways it’s the same as this one,” Perry continues. “Because when you do a residency, you get to focus on the music in a different way than you would on a tour. It’s almost like you’re rehearsing or jamming, but with an audience in the room. It’s a really cool thing.”

But Deuces Are Wild is more than a nightly gig — it’s a full-on, sensory-overloading immersive experience. The career-spanning, 90-minute set reaches back to Aerosmith’s 1973 self-titled debut for tracks like “Dream On” and “Mama Kin,” and barrels through classic hits like “Walk This Way,” “Sweet Emotion,” “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and “Cryin’,” all while sprinkling in fan-favorite album cuts like “Seasons of Wither” “Hangman Jury” and “Kings and Queens.” All of that music is presented through a state-of-the-art THX and L-Acoustics system that pumps out close to 300,000 watts of multidimensional sound.

Visually, the show dazzles with lights, lasers, fire, dancers, flying toys, a catwalk that extends to the venue’s uppermost seats, a 30-minute intro film that offers a deep dive into the band’s origins, and never-before-seen visuals from the group’s archives presented on 12 massive hi-def screens.

And then, of course, there are the five band members themselves: Perry, Whitford, frontman Steven Tyler, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer. Accompanied at times by a string section and horns, they rip through their hot-wired, riff-tasic rock and roll with the energy and vigor of hungry 20-somethings destroying a New Hampshire Sheraton stage in 1972.

“The challenge is to keep the grit and the excitement level of an Aerosmith show while at the same putting up a big flash-bang production,” Perry says about Deuces Are Wild, which runs on and off at the Park Theater (with some East Coast dates sprinkled in) through the end of 2019. “That’s a different kind of a challenge than, ‘Well, it’s time to make another record. It’s time to do another tour.’ I have to say, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve been this excited about something that involves Aerosmith.”

In the following interview, Perry and Whitford give Guitar Player an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of Deuces Are Wild. They also talk gear, their guitar partnership, the state of rock in 2019, and what lies ahead, both onstage and in the studio, for Aerosmith. “One thing that’s for sure,” Perry says, “I don’t see us putting the guitars away anytime soon.”

What led the band to do a Las Vegas residency at this point in its history?

Joe Perry: A couple of things. For the last few years, we’ve been on the road off and on, and it was getting a little monotonous just going out and playing some of the same places we’ve played so many times. So we’d been talking about doing a residency, and how to do it and where to do it. There are different ways to do it. A lot of bands go in and just strip down their show, do eight gigs, and that’s it. But I don’t think a rock band like ours has ever gone in with a full-on production like this.

Back in the ’70s when Aerosmith were on the road constantly, I’m sure it would never have crossed your mind to think, Maybe one day we can just stay in the same place and have the audience come to us.

Brad Whitford: Well, you know, we didn’t really mind the travel in those days. Being in your 20s and stuff, that’s a piece of cake. [laughs] You get older and it becomes a little more wear and tear.

Perry: And there are a lot of benefits beyond that, like not having to worry about different sound every night, the monitor mix in this building or that building, whether there’s an echo in the room. You can just focus on the music. And because of that, we’re able to do things here we wouldn’t normally do onstage, like have a horn section and strings.

The additional instrumentation is one of the particularly cool aspects of the Deuces Are Wild show.

Whitford: We’re trying to be fairly faithful to how the songs were originally recorded. And we do have a number of songs that have horn parts in them. Most of those songs are probably some of the more popular tracks, like “Rag Doll,” “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and “Same Old Song and Dance.” Even going back to the first album, there’s a saxophone on “Mama Kin.” As for strings, I don’t know that we actually used real strings on the first record, but we’re using them onstage for “Dream On,” and then also for songs like “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

Perry: We wanted to give the fans a glimpse of what it would have been like to be in the studio when we recorded some of these songs. And like Brad said, there are a lot of horns on Aerosmith songs. But we’ve never brought horns on the road. So we were thinking, Let’s play the songs as close to “just right” as we can get them. We said, “That’ll be something!” We didn’t know what! [laughs] But we’re finding out.

After almost 50 years together, what is it you most enjoy about playing with each other onstage?

Perry: Just the natural way that we play together. I listen to what Brad’s playing, and he listens to what I’m playing, and then we just try and mix it up, right down to — especially in the earlier days — saying, “Who’s gonna play the Strat? Who’s gonna play the Les Paul?” That kind of thing. And when we come up with new riffs and new songs, we each come at it from different angles, and then we settle into our thing. I’ve always felt like we have two lead players and two different flavors in this band, and that’s really important.

Do you guys feel the partnership has changed at all from the early days to now?

Whitford: In some ways it has, because we’ve both grown as players. But in other ways it’s stayed like it was in the early days. I think we learn a lot from each other. You know, it’s very hard to play some of what Joe does, because it’s so different from what I do. And some of these songs that he’s come up with, it’s just brilliant stuff. I’m not sure where it comes from, because we come from two different places. He’s not schooled at all, so it’s totally a “feel” thing for him, whereas I did a lot more studying of the guitar. So you’re seeing two different approaches, but they work really well together. Ultimately, you want to have both sides. I mean, there’s lots of guys out there that could never read music, but you hear them play and you just say, “Damn!” It’s like if Stevie Ray Vaughan came up and said, “I’m gonna learn how to read music.” You’d say, “Don’t bother! You’ll be fine!” [laughs]

Both of you are also known gear heads, to a certain extent. What are some of the guitars you’re using for these shows?

Perry: I’ve rifled through my collection of really old stuff and have been breaking some of it out for these shows. And in general I just have a lot of guitars with me. Part of it is just out of necessity. For instance, a song like “No More No More” is in an altered open-E tuning, and “Draw the Line” and “Let the Music Do the Talking” are in open G. And then for “Back in the Saddle,” I use a six-string bass. Then for all of those you have to have a spare, too. So it adds up pretty quickly. [laughs]

But one thing I’ve been using a lot onstage is this mongrel guitar. We put it together back in 2000, and it has a left-handed Fender body and a Warmoth neck, I believe. And I had fat frets put on it, and Joe Barden pickups, custom wound, which I don’t know if you can still get or not. That guitar has pretty much become my number one. It’s pretty beat up by now, but that’s an instrument I can always count on and go to.

Also, Gibson just made another signature guitar for me that’s a single-pickup Les Paul goldtop called the Gold Rush, with a Wilkinson whammy-bar setup. It’s got a coil cutter on the tone control and a volume knob and that’s it. And that guitar is a great live guitar. I mean, I don’t dial in that many different sounds with a Les Paul. So I figured, Why not just go for the one-pickup thing?

How about you, Brad?

Whitford: I’ve always been a huge fan of the Les Paul and the Strat. To me it’s like having a screwdriver and a hammer in a toolbox: They’re essentials. And over the years I’ve gathered together a little group of favorites of each. So those are always with me. But I probably use more Stratocaster here in Vegas because it’s a little more versatile for me. I can get it to do all the sounds that I need, and I think I’m just enjoying playing it a little more. I have this one Strat, it’s a ’65 reissue from a few years back when Fender did a series of reissues — a ’59, a ’65 and a ’56, I think. And the guys over there were nice enough to give me one of the ’65s. It’s just a great guitar. You know, when those Strats come together in the right way, whatever that synergy is, it’s just perfect. So I’m using that one a lot. And then I have another Strat that was built for a NAMM show many years ago and is made out of pine. And being made out of pine, it’s light as a feather. And it’s loud! Played acoustically, sitting on the couch without it plugged in, it just rings like crazy. So I love playing that one. And then I have a new Gretsch that I’ve been using a little bit, and of course I’m bringing out a couple of Les Pauls as well.

As guys who have been playing rock and roll for almost half a century now, what do you think of the state of rock in 2019?

Perry: Rock definitely has its place alongside pop and dance and hip-hop and country and all of that. And to me, there’s this feeling of a resurgence, or at least of finding its level again. One thing we’re seeing is there are a lot of younger kids who want to see the real thing — the guys that played the music that they grew up listening to. And there are also a lot of talented younger bands that are coming up with good stuff. Whether they can take it to the next level, that remains to be seen. But I don’t think there will ever be another earth-shaking event like the Beatles. I mean, there could be, but I don’t know.

Whitford: This genre that we’re a part of, it seems like it’s pretty much been overfished. Like, how many great riffs are left? What can you do that sounds new or different? But then there’s a lot of young guys waving the rock flag, and they’re doing a great job at it. I like Rival Sons. They’re not new anymore, but they’re still new-ish. And I like Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown, Blackberry Smoke…guys like that. I feel like they’re doing it the way we did it, and with the same kind of spirit. So I hear a lot of stuff that’s really encouraging.

Perry: The way I see it, it might not be like the days when rock really ruled the roost, but, you know, if 20 percent of the people love rock and roll, 20 percent of the people now might mean 20 times as many people as it did 50 years ago, because there’s just that many more people in the world. And hell, half the good rock and roll I hear these days is in TV commercials! So it’s amazing to me how much the music has become part of the mainstream.

Aerosmith have been touring pretty consistently over the past few years, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard new music from the band. Any chance a studio record is on the horizon?

Whitford: There’s been talk, but it’s just talk. It’s not like we’re sitting there and we’ve got 40 songs to cut. There’s not a lot of material on the table. But we could go in the studio and do something — do some covers, whatever. The key would be to keep it light and keep it fun. That’s what it’s supposed to be about, right?

Perry: I think by playing together in this sort of situation, where we don’t have to get to a different city every night and be in a different venue, it’s going to open up some doors to us getting into a creative mode again, just by changing the paradigm a little bit. So I actually think there’s a good chance something like a new record could come out of this experience.

In 2017, you guys launched a tour called Aero-Verderci Baby!, which many speculated was a farewell outing. But clearly you’re still going strong. Is retirement something the band ever talks about?

Perry: We were thinking about it with that tour. We figured we’d just keep going until we got tired of it. But at one point, we were in South America for some shows, and the five of us were doing press, and none of us could say, “This will be the last tour.” We were all just looking at each other. When the reality of it hit, I was like, Wait a second — I can’t say those words. And I looked over at Steven, and he couldn’t say them either. And we kind of started laughing, because we were gearing this thing up to be the final tour and — well, it wasn’t. So I don’t know. I think after this run we’ll see what we want to do. Maybe we’ll want to more of this kind of stuff.

Whitford: Being players, the only thing that’s really going to stop us is some kind of physical ailment, where maybe we can’t perform the way we used to or can’t perform at all. We’re not there. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason to pack it up if people still would like to come out and see it. So I think we’re just going to keep playing until we can’t anymore. Why not? We all love doing it, so…

I would imagine that even after all these years it’s still a charge going onstage and playing something like “Walk This Way” or “Sweet Emotion” to a roomful of fans.

Perry: It still is, yeah. And what we’re doing with these Vegas shows, it’s a whole other level of that. It’s exciting, and in a new way.

Whitford: Well, a song like “Walk This Way,” it’s one of those classic riffs. It’s always great to play. It goes by way too quickly! But yeah, it’s great to do these songs. You hear them on the radio and stuff and you go, “That’s our band! And we get to play that live!”

It’s like, “I did that!”

Whitford: [laughs] Yup. It’s still a rush.

Player's Choice

JOE PERRY

GUITARS

• Gibson Les Paul Joe Perry Gold Rush

• Gibson Custom “Billie Perry”

• Nelson Admiralcaster

• Gibson Les Paul 1959 Joe Perry signature series

• Guild Blade Runner

• Danelectro electric 12-string

• Dobro electric six-string

• Chandler lap steel

• Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette six-string bass

• TV Jones Maestro with onboard Wampler Faux Tape Echo

• Fender Stratocaster Burn Guitar

• Fender Telecaster with B-Bender

• Echopark Geisha

• Gibson Songwriter 12-string acoustic

AMPS

• Supro Super

• Supro Black Magick

• Fender Dual Showman Reverb

• Marshall Super PA (vintage)

• Marshall JCM800

• Voodoo Amplification V-Plex

EFFECTS

• DigiTech Whammy

• DryBell Vibe Machine

• King Tone Fuzz

• Klon Centaur

• Klon KTR

• Diamond Tremolo

• Danelectro The Breakdown

• Dunlop Echoplex

• Wampler Tape Delay

• Catalinbread Topanga Reverb

• Electro-Harmonix POG (vintage)

BRAD WHITFORD

GUITARS

• Gibson Les Paul C9 Cloud 9 ’59 Custom Shop, Sunburst

• Charvel Pro Mod SD1, White with Japanese Graphics

• 2019 Gretsch G6228 Players Edition Jet BT with V-Stoptail, Bourbon Stain

• Gibson SG Standard, Cherry

• Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul R7 Goldtop

• Gibson Les Paul Collector’s Choice #28 STP Burst “Ronnie Montrose”

• 1997 Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul, Sweet Cherry, with Bigsby

• Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Custom ’72 reissue of ’54/’55 Les Paul, Black

• Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul three-pickup Black Beauty with f-holes

• Fender Custom Shop NAMM Pine Strat, Blonde with stop tailpiece

• Fender American Vintage ’65 Reissue, Dakota Red

• Fender Custom Shop Heavy Relic, Black

• Fender Eric Clapton Strat, 7UP Green

• Melancon Pro Artist Strat-style, Gold

• Green Guitar Project BW Tele-style

• J Triggs Tele-style

AMPS

• 3 Monkeys Orangutan head with 6L6 power tubes

• Magnatone Super Fifty-Nine M-80

• 1966 Marshall JTM45 (spare)

• 3 Monkeys 2x12 with Celestion Greenbacks (x2)

• Marshall 4x12 1960BX with Celestion Greenbacks functioning as a 2x12 (x2)

EFFECTS

• Xotic Wah

• Klon Centaur

• Mojo Hand FX Rook

• Strymon Deco

• TC Electronic Quintessence

• King Tone The Duellist

• Vick Audio 73 Ram’s Head

• TC Electronic Corona Chorus

• Eventide H9 Max

• Daredevil Pedals Atomic Cock

• 3 Monkeys Pedalboard

Special thanks to Joe Perry’s guitar tech, Marco Moir, and Brad Whitford’s guitar tech, Greg Howard, for their assistance.