by Joe Perry
The amp line was a single row of 4 × 12” cabs powered by various Marshalls (JTM45, 1959, JCM800), and Bedrock (1200, 1400) amps. The “A” pedal board and rack were gone. In their place were amp signal splitters, to send Joe’s signal to as many as twelve amps.
Effects: Boss DSD-2 delay/sampler, Boss SD-1 overdrive.
The 1956 Fender Stratocaster was restored to original condition and brought out on tour.
New guitars:
An ESP Stratocaster-style guitar assembled by Nitebob, named “the Spoon,” started making an appearance. It had an ash body with flamed maple top, cream binding, and no finish, with three single-coil pickups and a Kahler tremolo. The pick guard was cut down to cover only the control cavity. I modified it to house a bridge humbucker and eventually installed a Floyd Rose tremolo. While I was changing pickups, I took the soldering iron and burned a small skull into the back of the headstock. Joe saw that and liked it, and requested I decorate the entire guitar in that style. It took a long time. This guitar was used in the “Angel” video.
Guild guitars also started showing up, and he used these models:
Aviator: Stratocaster shape but with symmetrical cutaways in black.
Blade Runner: Black. This is the guitar he used in the Run-DMC “Walk This Way” video.
Songbird: Electric/acoustic.
T-250: Black Telecaster style with EMG active pickups and Hipshot B-bender.
Permanent Vacation tour:
Amps were the usual variation of different Marshalls (JTM45, 1959, JCM800, 2550) and a couple of Bedrocks (1200, 1400). The amp line was three stacks of Bedrock 4 × 12”s.
Effects: TC Electronic TC 2290 for delays and chorus, a TC Electronic booster/line driver, and a Marshall Guv’nor overdrive.
New guitars:
1955 Les Paul: Gold finish.
Rickenbacker lap steel.
Fender Champion lap steel.
Gibson SG-1: White, used in the “Rag Doll” video.
Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion: Upgraded with DiMarzio pickups.
Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite: Black with DiMarzio DLX-1 pickups.
3 custom Spector guitars made by Chris Hofschneider: Joe’s Travis Bean was traced for the body shape of the first one. The guitar was blue with three Seymour Duncan Hot Rails. The next two guitars were shaped closely to a double-cut Les Paul Jr. with added contours; one is green and the other a dark-red rubbed finish. Each guitar was equipped with a bridge humbucker and two single coils. They arrived during the tour and the red one was used quite a bit.
“The Donkey.” It is kind of ugly.
I also put together a couple of Stratocaster-style rat rods. The first one was blue with left-handed maple neck, three Seymour Duncan Hot Rail pickups, and a pick guard, which covered only the control cavity. The second guitar was a natural wood Stratocaster body with three DiMarzio DLX-1 pickups and a Danelectro neck. Joe referred to this one as the “Donkey” and used it quite a bit (and I don’t know why, because I thought it was ugly and odd looking).
Gretsch Silver Jet: 100 percent stock. The guitar was bought from producer Bob Rock and used for the recording and video of “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”
Pump tour:
Amplifiers of various makes: Marshall (2555, JTM45, 1959, JCM800, Studio 20, & Lead 12), Bedrock (1200 and1400), Aero Music Man 130, Fender Twin, Roland JC-120H, Leslie 147.
Cabinets of various makes: Fender 2 × 12”s, Fender 2 × 15”s, Marshall 4 × 12”s, Bedrock 4 × 12”s.
Effects: TC Electronic booster and Marshall Guv’nor overdrive.
New guitars:
Gibson Les Paul Standard: Black, with Bill Lawrence pickups.
Gibson Les Paul Custom: Wine red, with DiMarzio pickups.
Steinberger TransTrem: Used on the song “Young Lust.”
Fender Stratocaster: Black, with Lace Sensor pickups.
Supro Ozark: I picked this up for Joe in Louisville, Kentucky, and sent it to him while they were writing for Pump. I knew he’d love this one!
Gibson Chet Atkins SST steel-string solid-body acoustic: Chris Hofschneider installed a Seymour Duncan humbucker wired to a switch to blast through Joe’s touring amps for the solo in “Janie’s Got a Gun.”
Elwood saw Aerosmith rise up and take back their position as the baddest band in the land back between 1984 and 1990, flying high off the success of the Permanent Vacation and Pump albums.
The next two years, 1991–92, saw Joe and the band take a hiatus from touring. The guys entered the studio in Vancouver to finish Get a Grip, Aerosmith’s most successful studio album to date and the last album they recorded for Geffen Records.
In need of a guitar tech for the project, Joe tapped Jim Survis, who lives in Vancouver and had just finished work for Jimmy Page. Jim proved to be Joe’s longest-tenured guitar tech, staying until 2009.
Jim Survis:
One of the guitars that that really stood out for me at that time was a Supro Ozark guitar on which he played slide with an open tuning. It was the same make guitar that Jimi Hendrix’s father bought him as his first guitar. Elwood told me he used it for “Monkey on My Back” from the Pump album. He used it in open-A tuning. Joe is also into vintage amps and one of his favorites is a 1970 50-watt Marshall. He has many vintage amps, including Marshall, Supro, and Magnatone. He’s got all kinds of gear and I learned a lot from him. Joe has a great pedal selection, too, including a whammy pedal that I brought over from my time spent working with Jimmy Page; Joe ended up using that whammy pedal on “Livin’ on the Edge.”
That first tour in 1993 was very difficult. We worked many days a week and Joe had a very complex rig. The brain of the rig was a Bob Bradshaw–designed switching system, and that was the crux of it. We had multiple amplifiers; these included a 1962 Vox AC30, an old Matchless head and cabinet, and an old Fender. We also had some Marshalls, and we would switch amps and pedals all night long.
Joe was interested in trying to build a replica of his Tele-Rat guitar from the late seventies, so I found a cheap used left-handed tobacco-burst Strat from Mexico and bought it. Then I went out shopping for a neck and found one with a reverse headstock and I bought that too. I ordered custom-wound pickups from Joe Barden and took all the pieces up to Long View Farm in western Massachusetts, where the guys were recording. After the sessions—I thought we were done for the day and Joe had split—I retreated to my room in the loft and sparked up a bowl of Mother Nature’s finest and got baked. Joe ended up staying and we just started putting the guitar together, but we fucked it up good before we did. Joe threw it in the fire and I put it in the deep freezer for a night and really made it look mean. That guitar turned out really good. It’s still one of Joe’s favorite guitars. He uses it mainly on “Sweet Emotion.” It had a whammy bar on it and stayed in tune even with Joe torturing it.
With Jim Survis in the Boneyard, trying to decide on which guitar to use.
Some of the pedals I used for recording Honkin’ on Bobo.
Another more recent amp line, around 2006.
Jim also took Joe’s vision of having a guitar with his wife, Billie, on the front of it.
Jim Survis’s workstation.
First, I asked him what kind of guitar and pickups he wanted. Then I told him I knew the perfect guy to draw Billie. His name was John Douglas and he was a great artist and also a drum tech. The guitar itself is a Gibson 335 B. B. King Lucille with no f-holes. It’s basically a modified Lucille. He hasn’t put it down since he got it. He mainly uses it on “Cryin’,” but sometimes uses it on other songs in the set.
After Jim left in 2009, Joe hired Trace Foster. He came in at the tail end of the first leg of Joe’s Have Guitar Will Travel tour. Trace was hired to help Joe’s interim guitar tech, who was in a little over his head. Joe and Trace immediately hit it off, and Trace has been with Joe ever since. Trace grew up idolizing Joe, so getting to tune his guitars and setting up his amp line was a dream come true. It also proved to be the hardest job he ever had in his life but he’s always been mor
e than up for a challenge. Trace had just come off a Melissa Etheridge tour, where he’d tune three or four guitars a night. With Aerosmith, he was thrown into the fire, tuning upward of thirty guitars a night.
Trace
The hardest part of coming in is inheriting somebody’s gig. You don’t have three or four days in the middle of the week to rebuild a whole rig in the middle of a tour.
The first guitar I pulled out of the rack was the Billie guitar. I had heard all the stories about it and knew it was Joe’s most photographed guitar and thought, Wow, this is great but the nut is worn down—I gotta put a new one on it. Also, he had the ’59 Les Paul on the road with him. I thought, Geez, I gotta keep my eye on this thing especially in a club, someone could just walk away with it. Thank God Joe usually kept it with him on the bus and brought it out for the sound check. The 1959 Les Paul is the Holy Grail of guitars. With only six hundred made that year, there aren’t a whole lot of them around. I had been familiar with those guitars because I was on the road with Cheap Trick, and Rick Nielsen used one. That’s the kind of guitar where you don’t fix anything on it. You let it go as is, because if you fix something or change something you could knock twenty or thirty thousand dollars off the value of the guitar.
The real ’59 after a few takes for my last solo CD, Have Guitar, Will Travel.
This is the infamous ’59 Tobacco Burst Les Paul.
Reproduction of the ’59 Tobacco Burst. You can tell by the smile on my face they did a great job.
Custom Shop–built Tele with Parsons/White B-Bender.
Plexi B.C. Rich, custom made. Sounds great, looks great.
“The White Rose” that Echopark Guitars made for me in 2012.
A small part of my pedal collection in the Boneyard.
Thanks to Pat Foley at Gibson’s custom shop, there is a 1959 reissue model of the exact guitar. Pat took the ’59, measured it, and weighed it, so the new one is exactly like the original. Pat and I brought the guitar out to Joe several times and he would say, “The color is off or it doesn’t feel quite right; it needs to sound more like this or that.” It was a lot of work, but with the finished product you’re getting something as close to the ’59 as humanly possible.
Joe also uses a thin-line Gibson Les Paul that is a one-off. It was a guitar that Joe had an idea for. It’s way thinner and lighter than a normal guitar, and there’s only one of them. It has all the extra wood shaved off and only has one volume knob and one pickup. It also has a whammy bar on it, which is also very, very rare. It’s black and may be one of my favorite guitars that he plays.
Every night after the set list is approved, I go into Joe’s dressing room and run down the set and find out what guitars he feels like playing that night. I’ll give him some input and tell him the Strats are sounding really good in this venue. He usually takes my word for it. For some songs he changes guitars, but for “Cryin’ ” and “Dream On” he always uses the Billie. For “Sweet Emotion” Joe always uses the guitar he and Jim Survis made.
For “Back in the Saddle” he uses a six-string baritone bass guitar. Joe originally used a Fender six-string bass in the seventies, which was stolen. He now uses a Music Man and he has two of them. On the song “Draw the Line” he uses a Dan Armstrong Plexi model.
I used to bring fifty guitars out on the road but I’m now down to thirty; I’m trying to keep our footprint a little smaller.
He has been getting into these new Echopark guitars handmade by Gabriel Currie in L.A. Gabriel came down while they were recording the new album and he and Joe hit it off. Joe gives him input on what needs to be changed, and he has been really happy with the results.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that Joe is hands-on with the way his guitars are built and sound and he’s not afraid to get in the trenches when it comes to getting the sound and feel he wants.
I have worked for guitar players who are completely clueless when it comes to what they are using. With Joe I wouldn’t doubt him if I were you.
Pedal-wise I inherited his pedal board and with his help I completely overhauled it. Every pedal board is made for a specific tour, with specific lengths and cables for specific stage specs. The one I inherited was perfect for the 2010 tour, but for the next tour we redesigned it with the help of a company called Trailer Trash. It’s a Plexi see-through pedal board and I also made it a little smaller. There are eight to ten pedals on at any given minute. There’s also a siren pedal made by Rob Lohr from Allstonamps for “Livin’ on the Edge.” His Klon distortion pedal is a mainstay. They’re really hard to find now and are worth thousands of dollars. That’s his main pedal. Also there is a Duesenberg, which is a 30-db clean-boost pedal, and that one has been regularly used for a few years.
Joe also has two delay pedals. One is a TC Electronic delay pedal, which he programs himself before the tour. We have a TC flanger that he uses on “Sweet Emotion.” Another mainstay is an Electro-Harmonix POG. The POG is a guitar synthesizer effect that was upgraded by Rob Lohr. There’s a DigiTech whammy pedal for his lower octaves, and a custom-built wah pedal by Dunlop, which is perfect and one of a kind. He has a Pigtronix distortion pedal and when he hits that one, all hell breaks loose. If he walks away from it I have to run out there and shut it off. We pretty much have doubles for all the pedals but some of them are getting harder and harder to find. I’m always looking for backups.
On this tour for amps we have two Marshall JCM100 amps, a Morris head from Canada that Jack Douglas turned me on to called an Egnater. It’s a small 12-watt amp that’s great for grit and growl. A couple of late-sixties Marshall Plexis that are the Holy Grail of amplifiers. Joe has a great relationship with Marshall. They’re awesome and will help Joe get any Marshall amps from any year he wants. One of the highlights of my career was getting to tour the Marshall plant with Joe and Paul Marshall. There are tons of other amps, but none can really compare with the Marshall amp. From Hendrix on down, they can’t be beat.
A different line-up of amps, around 2010, with the Wandre’ guitar.
One of my more recent amp lines.
We just finished a South American tour, and Joe continues to amaze audiences in every country the band visits. Joe Perry is always at the top of the lists when guitar and music magazines have their yearly polls, and he will continue to have that high ranking until the day he decides to keep his axes in their cases, which I don’t see happening anytime soon.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
by John Bionelli
Aerosmith Studio Albums (with release dates)
Columbia Records:
Aerosmith (January 5, 1973)
Get Your Wings (March 1, 1974)
Toys in the Attic (April 8, 1975)
Rocks (May 3, 1976)
Draw the Line (December 1, 1977)
Night in the Ruts (November 1, 1979)
Rock in a Hard Place (August 1, 1982)
Geffen Records:
Done with Mirrors (October 21, 1985)
Permanent Vacation (August 18, 1987)
Pump (September 12, 1989)
Get a Grip (April 20, 1993)
Columbia Records:
Nine Lives (March 18, 1997)
Just Push Play (March 6, 2001)
Honkin’ on Bobo (March 30, 2004)
Music from Another Dimension! (November 6, 2012)
Aerosmith Live Albums (with release dates)
Columbia Records:
Live! Bootleg (October 1978)
Classics Live I (April 1986)
Classics Live II (June 1987)
Geffen Records:
A Little South of Sanity (October 20, 1998)
Columbia Records:
Rockin’ the Joint (October 25, 2005)
Aerosmith Compilation Albums/Box Sets
Columbia Records:
Greatest Hits (October 1980)
Gems (November 1988)
Pandora’s Box (November 1991)
Geffen Records:
Big Ones (November 1, 1994
)
Columbia Records:
Box of Fire (November 22, 1994)
Geffen Records:
Young Lust (November 20, 2001)
Columbia/Geffen:
Oh Yeah (July 2, 2002)
Columbia/Sony:
Devils’s Got a New Disguise (October 17, 2006)
Geffen Records:
Tough Love Ballads (May 10, 2011)
Columbia/Legacy
The Essential Aerosmith (September 13, 2011)
Aerosmith Videography (with release dates)
Aerosmith Video Scrapbook (1987)
Permanent Vacation 3x5 (1988)
Live Texas Jam ’78 (April 25, 1989)
Things That Go “Pump” in the Night (1989)
The Making of “Pump” (1990)
Big Ones You Can Look At (1994)
You Gotta Move (November 23, 2004)
Rock for the Rising Sun (July 23, 2013)
Joe Perry Solo Albums (with release dates)
Columbia Records:
The Joe Perry Project, Let the Music Do the Talking (March 1980)
The Joe Perry Project, I’ve Got the Rock and Rolls Again (1981)
MCA Records:
The Joe Perry Project, Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker (September 1983)
Sony/BMG:
Joe Perry (May 3, 2005)
Roman Records:
Joe Perry, Have Guitar, Will Travel (October 6, 2009)
Notable Aerosmith Bootlegs
New York City, 1975 (Central Park) (http://aerosmithsetlists.com/setlist.php?d=197508290)
Houston, 1977 (http://aerosmithsetlists.com/setlist.php?d=197706240)
Landover, MD, 1980 (http://aerosmithsetlists.com/setlist.php?d=198001250)
Boston, 1984 (http://aerosmithsetlists.com/setlist.php?d=198412310)
