Joe Perry has said that he isn’t sure if Aerosmith will ever make a new studio album.
Speaking in the new issue of Classic Rock, Perry is asked if he he has any plans to record a follow-up to his 2018 solo record Sweetzerland Manifesto.
“Not right at the moment,” he says. “I just don’t see the time for it. I would put everything I have into doing another Aerosmith album, if that’s even on the cards.”
Pushed as to whether if the Boston band are planning a follow-up to 2012’s Music From Another Dimension!, Perry replies. “I don’t know. At this point, I want to tour as much as we can. I want to get out and play to the fans. That’s really the focus right now, to get out and play live.
“If we get time to work on some new music, that would be great, but knowing Steven [Tyler] and knowing our age and what it takes to do an album… I don’t know. I’m always playing, I’m always writing stuff, but at this stage, I can’t say. I just want to get through this next tour and play live and give something back to the fans.
Perry continues: “We’ve never been the kind of band that you can sit back and go, ‘Well, this is what the next three years are gonna be like, this is what our next five years are going to be like.’ Especially now, at our age. The air is getting thin up here, man. So many people are passing on into the next step, so to speak.”
In the same interview, Perry also reveals that is was his second wife, Billie, who persuaded him to rejoin Aerosmith in 1984, five years after he quit the band following a backstage bust-up between the guitarist’s first wife, Elissa, and bassist Tom Hamilton’s spouse, Terry.
“I was in this band in the 70s that was fucking huge, but when [Billie] met me, she had no idea,” the guitarist tells Classic Rock. “She didn’t know what an ‘Aerosmith’ was, and that’s the truth. She was into the underground punk scene in Boston, she didn’t have any use for a band with a logo. The first time I took her out to dinner, my credit card came back cut in pieces and she had to pay for it. So it wasn’t about money.
“Billie said, ‘This band [Aerosmith] are so good, why aren’t you guys together?’ And I went down the list of reasons and I realised it was just a lot of fucking bullshit. Billie was the one who said, ‘Why don’t you give Steven a call, I don’t know why you guys aren’t playing together.’ So I picked up the phone and called Steven. Billie called it as she saw it, and she still does. I lean on her incredibly.”
Perry is currently on the road with the Alice Cooper-fronted supergroup Hollywood Vampires. Aerosmith’s farewell Peace Out tour begins on September 2, 2023 in Philadelphia.
You can read the full, career-spanning interview with Joe Perry in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, featuring Guns N’ Roses on the cover. Order it online now and have it delivered straight to your door.
