by Joe Perry
It was later that same summer when he took a turn for the worse. Mom called to say that this time the prognosis was alarming. And yet he was there, along with Mom, to witness one of the weirdest moments in my life. It was like a scene out of a movie.
MARRIAGE AT THE RITZ
August 5, 1975: In a city famous for snobbery, the Ritz hotel was the snobbiest of all. If I hadn’t been the one getting married, the Boston Brahmins who ran the place would have thrown me out. Come to think of it, they tried to do just that. As I made my way to the front door of the stately hotel overlooking the Public Garden and Boston Common, I reflected on what it had taken to get me here.
I’d gotten along famously with Nick Jerret, Elyssa’s dad. Besides being a teacher, he was a working musician, always rushing off to a gig. I respected his work ethic and he respected mine. So it made sense that Elyssa and her mom, Marsha, dispatched him to argue the case for our marriage.
“You’ve been living with Elyssa for a long time, Joe,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s time you made an honest woman of her?”
I didn’t have a good answer. Part of me wanted to say, No, I really think it’s time to get out of the relationship altogether. I wasn’t entirely happy with Elyssa for many reasons. I’d wanted a child—especially a son—only to be told that she wasn’t ready for children. I’d wanted her to make peace with the band, only to watch her make more trouble. I had tried leaving her before, but it created more distress than I could handle. I’d reconciled myself to thinking that our union was my fate. There was also the heartbreaking fact that my father was dying. Before he left this earth I needed to show him that I had settled into a stable relationship and had a somewhat normal life. The main reason I went along with the marriage was that I wanted to see my dad at my wedding.
If there were ever a time I needed a mentor to discuss my decision to marry, it was now. But Frank Connelly was gone and my dad was in no frame of mind to be objective. I was feeling alone in the world.
I left all the wedding plans to Elyssa and her mom. That’s how we wound up at the Ritz. My first dilemma was deciding who would be my best man—Tom Hamilton or Steven Tyler. Elyssa solved that problem when, as a result of an argument, she disinvited Terry Hamilton, meaning that her husband, Tom, would not be attending. That got me plenty upset, but at least Steven would be there. I regretted that because of Elyssa, my relationship with Tom had suffered.
I arrived in full rock-and-roll regalia—a flowing scarf and fancy fedora. No wonder the Ritz didn’t think I belonged. I managed to get through the front door, but security wouldn’t let me into the private suite where the ceremony was to take place.
“I’m the groom,” I explained.
The security guy was incredulous. “Wait here,” he said, and called his supervisor.
After getting the word, he shook his head. “You’re clear.”
I didn’t want to be clear. I wanted to be high and, while there was some heavy drinking before the ceremony, drinks weren’t what I had in mind. The ceremony itself was strange. The cultural divide could not have been sharper. Our rocker friends were dressed to the teeth in rock-and-roll finery; our families were dressed just the opposite, in Ritz-Carlton acceptability. When the minister asked Elyssa, “Do you take Anthony Joseph Perry to be your lawfully wedded husband?” her mom, feeling no pain, yelled out, “Who the hell is this Anthony guy anyway?”
The minute the ceremony was over, Steven turned to me with his let’s-go-to-another-room look. I nodded my head and, with Elyssa and Steven’s date in tow, we quickly escaped to an empty suite. Steven poured out a gram of light brown powder on the coffee table and split it into four lines.
“Your wedding present,” he said. “To a long life and lots of love and happiness.”
We snorted up the high-grade heroin and then gave hugs all around. For all the triangular Joe-Steven-Elyssa drama that had preceded this day, I felt that Steven was genuinely glad to be at our wedding.
We returned for the cake cutting. My mother embraced me and my dad shook my hand. I looked in his eyes and saw that he was in pain. In these few months since I had seen him in L.A., he had lost weight and looked extremely weak. I told him how much it meant that he had come to my wedding. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he said. “I know you’ll understand if we leave early, Joe, but I’ve gotta get a little rest.” He managed a smile and so did I. As Nick Jerret, my new father-in-law, played a medley of show tunes on a grand piano, I walked my parents to the door. My heart was heavy. I was losing my father.
There was no honeymoon, only another Aerosmith tour. In fact, we had changed our wedding date several times to accommodate the band schedule. And while I would face heavy criticism that my relationship to Elyssa was injurious to the band’s welfare, our marriage had been timed to make sure that I didn’t miss a single gig. My devotion to the band was as great as my devotion to Elyssa. In time, it would prove even greater.
When we were based out of Boston or not touring I would visit my dad, who was back at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Not once did Elyssa come along; she claimed she couldn’t handle hospitals. I brought along the gold album that we’d been awarded for our first album. I wanted him to have it on his wall to remind him of our success. He was medicated and his treatments had taken an awful toll. But he was still sharp enough to speak about me about practicalities.
“I know you’re making good money, Joe,” he said, “but are you saving any? Are you taking care of business?”
I assured him that I was. I wanted to say much more to him. I wanted to say that I needed his guidance and support. I wanted to say that my life was complicated, that I had this difficult wife, that I had this difficult relationship with the band, that I was taking a lot of drugs and that the drugs were making me feel great—maybe too great. But I said nothing. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was worry him in his condition.
“Thanks for coming by, Joe,” said Dad. “Next time you’ll see me I should be back home.”
“Great, Dad,” I said, but I knew that he would never leave the hospital. I visited him there three or four more times, watching his steady decline. Then came the day when, with my hand on his shoulder, he passed away. I thought I was prepared but I wasn’t. I don’t think a son can ever be prepared for the loss of his father. When it happened, I could feel my heart break in two. A sadness washed over me unlike any I had ever experienced. It wasn’t that my father and I had enjoyed the closest of relationships. For a good portion of my life we struggled to communicate. For years we had lived in different worlds. But the unspoken love between us was powerful. And maybe because it was unspoken, it carried an even greater weight.
He was honored with a military burial and seven-gun salute in his hometown of Lowell. I was presented with the flag that had been draped over the coffin. Steven was a pillar of strength and support for me. He rode with my family and me in the limo; he stood beside me and helped me carry the casket. That day, like many others, he was the brother I never had. My mother, stoic throughout, gave me Dad’s college ring from Northeastern University. I put it on a gold chain, and as I write these words, it still hangs around my neck.
Mom’s strength never wavered. Her life continued, her intellectual curiosity grew, but I felt the loneliness she endured. She told me how proud my dad had been of my success, how he spoke of that success to all his relatives and friends, how he’d boast about me. That was the first time I heard about his boasting. That made me miss him more.
I look back and think of my father, Tony Perry, as an honest man. He cared for his children. He learned a profession. He served the people he worked for and the larger community as well. He rose from the working class to the upper rungs of the middle class, no mean feat in America. And though I moved into a rock-and-roll culture that was foreign to him, he, along with Mom, supported me at every key turning point. I was blessed to have such a good dad.
My new marriage to Elyssa suffered even
more when she refused to attend my father’s funeral. She had never made the effort to bond with either of my parents. Now, with dad gone, there was no love lost between Elyssa and Mom. My mother had her number, and Elyssa knew it.
It also didn’t help our marriage that we got lost in possessions. Elyssa’s interest was in improving our lifestyle, and I went along with the upgrade. It was Elyssa who taught me about Rolex watches and fine china. It wouldn’t be long before we moved from our apartment to a Tudor-styled house on Waban Hill Road in Newton, a mini Italian villa built in the twenties by heirs of the Sears fortune and then owned by a woman who called herself a countess. It was elegant, even aristocratic, with intricate woodwork and a huge stained-glass window in the two-story living room. It suited Elyssa so well that our roadies called it Villa Elyssa. To me it was the perfect party house, with a stereo the size of a small PA system and a suit of armor in the front hall.
I gladly turned over the decoration of our house to Elyssa and her mom. My thing was music—and as soon as we moved into the house I built a small demo studio in the basement. Dick “Rabbit” Hansen, my guitar tech, and Nick Spiegel, one of Aerosmith’s longtime techs, and I covered the walls with scraps of carpets and the windows with packing materials. Once we soundproofed the space, I put in a Scully eight-track tape machine and an Audiotronics mixing board. I wanted real drums, but it was Saturday night when we were finished wiring it up and the stores were closed. So impatience got the best of me: I made a drum kit out of empty boxes. Steven came over and showed me some basic drum licks. I was soon laying tracks. The first of those tracks—“Get It Up”—wound up on a future Aerosmith album.
I liked my new home and studio, and there were a lot of good times and parties. David Johansen and his wife, Cyrinda Foxe, would come up to Boston to visit us. David and I started writing together and discussed the idea of my producing his first solo record.
My home was comfortable, but, in truth, I saw my real home as the road. The road had a momentum and excitement of its own. The road was where we kept our music razor sharp. The road was where we encountered our colleagues who inspired us to perform at even higher levels. The road was where we got to gig and make friends with all the great bands of the day.
As we continued touring behind Toys, we started hearing “Sweet Emotion” on the radio—our first Top 40 pop hit—and then in early 1976 “Dream On” was rereleased for the second time and became our first Top Ten hit. We were firing on all cylinders. But Steven and I were also firing at each other. There were always the fights over volume. He never stopped complaining that we played too loudly, but we never got any complaints from the fans. Steven’s volatility, an ongoing issue, was turning into rage-aholism. One minute he’d be patiently signing autographs and posing for pictures with every last fan; the next he’d be screaming bloody murder on the phone. You could (and still can) hear him through the hotel room walls.
Adding to the neurotic mix, Raymond Tabano, our former guitarist and former leather clothier, was back on the scene. He’d remained tight with Tyler and convinced us he that could increase our income by taking over the merchandise. Tabano became the T-shirt man. He signed a deal with Leber-Krebs and then reinforced his position by finding us a warehouse—a big, long corrugated steel building so large that we could park all our cars inside—just outside Boston in Waltham. For years this was our playpen. We built a makeshift stage downstairs and used it for rehearsals. Upstairs there were game rooms and offices. We named it the Wherehouse and kicked off our residency with a Halloween party where we hired hostesses dressed up as French maids. We invited a gang of friends, mainly from the Boston music scene, and jammed the night away—playing, singing, smoking, and coking.
In the aftermath of the triumph of Toys, our next job was to come up with something better. Steven had bought a house on Lake Sunapee, where we started working on new material. Elyssa and I went up there in the dead of freezing winter and stayed in his guesthouse. The small town had only one gas station and one restaurant, run by our friend John Andrews, who also tended bar in this establishment.
One snowy night we were sitting at a secluded table at John’s place, where, over the course of the evening, Steven and I slowly got plastered. Except for us, the place was empty. John was happy to hear stories of our successful tour behind Toys. He said that New Englanders were proud that the Bad Boys of Boston had made good.
Interrupting the serenity of a quiet evening, a couple of guys walked into the bar like cowboys swaggering into a saloon. Except these cowboys were really English roadies. They spoke in thick cockney accents.
“Hey, mate, you have any British ale, not that bloody fuckin’ piss that passes for beer here in the States?”
John couldn’t oblige the guy. The second roadie was even coarser, furious that John’s inventory of scotch didn’t include the brand he was looking for.
From complaining about America’s bad booze, they began trumpeting the wonders of America’s greatest band—the E Street. Turned out they were roadies for Springsteen taking off a few days to go skiing.
“None of the bloody fuckin’ rock and rollers around here can hold a candle to Bruce,” said the first one.
“They can all kiss my ass,” said the second. “The only thing worse than the music around here is your pissy beer.”
“I gotta tell you gentlemen,” said John, looking at us out of the corner of his eye, “you’ve wandered into Aerosmith territory. They’re our local heroes.”
“Did you say Aerosmith?” said the louder of the roadies, laughing. “Is that the shit that passes for music around here? Well, I give ’em another year and they’ll be sitting on top of the rock-and-roll trash heap with the rest of the forgotten bands. Aerosmith’s a bloody fuckin’ joke.”
In a rare moment of restraint, Steven kept quiet. Neither of us was inclined to tell the bloats who we were. Just let them rave on. After finishing off a couple of inferior American brews, one asked John for the location of the nearest gas station. They were nearly out of fuel and some thirty miles from their hotel. There was one such station around the corner that stayed open late.
Without missing a beat, John said, “Nearest station is forty miles down the road.” He gave them precise directions, careful to steer them clear of the station less than an eighth of a mile away.
“Hope you guys make it,” Steven shouted out as the roadies took their leave. “If you get stuck, you can always call Bruce to tow your ass in.”
ROCKS
Finally off the road from Toys, Steven and I had started writing songs for the album that would be issued in the spring of 1976 under a title I had thought of—Rocks. Diamonds are called rocks, and nothing is harder than a diamond. I wanted the hardest-rocking record imaginable.
For Rocks, we did much of our preproduction experimentation at the Wherehouse, which provided us a great sound. The room had a warm, alive feel. That gave Jack Douglas the brilliant idea of parking the Record Plant mobile truck inside the Wherehouse. Thus the creation of Record Plant North. We could seamlessly move from rehearsal to recording without breaking stride. There had always been an element of tension in our previous recording sessions. Getting used to a rented studio with all its quirks was never easy or quick. But this time was different. This time we could simply cut loose and relax. This time we were home. That sense of comfort and confidence is why, to my ears, Rocks became our best-sounding and hardest-hitting record.
I’d written a bunch of riffs that were fun to play, but that’s all they were—riffs. So, in one instance, I started writing some lyrics and was toying with singing the song myself. This was touchy because singing was Steven’s jealously guarded territory. Being in a band with one of the best singers in the world set up an inevitable comparison. In that comparison, I ain’t gonna look too good. But what the fuck. I couldn’t let that stop me. As the great blues prophet John Lee Hooker once said, “If it’s in him, it’s gotta come out.”
Beyond that, anytime the spotlight shon
e on me I detected a bit of jealousy from the other guys. After a while, though, the band came around and supported me, as long as I sang the song as a semi-duet with Steven. I called it “Combination” and, to this day, remain surprised how often I’m asked to play it live.
The words to “Combination” are:
The street is cold, the dawn is gray
My heart says no but my head says stay
My work is finished, or so I’ve been told
Can’t part the three of us, once we got a hold
I forgot the name
I took a shot on the chin
I’m rearranging my game
Tell by the shape I’m in
In the line of fire, you know what to say
They gave us no choices, just one shade of gray
My legs keep moving, I don’t seem to stray
But I know each step we take, they’re one step away
I found the secret, the key to the vault
We walked in darkness, kept hittin’ the walls
I took the time, to feel for the door
I found the secret, the key to it all
I got the nouveau riche
And dragged it home to bed
I traded you for me
I took it all and said
I find my own fun, sometimes for free
I got to pay it to come looking for me
