Rocks
My Life in and Out of Aerosmith
eBook
- 2014
"An insightful and harrowing roller coaster ride through the career of one of rock and roll's greatest guitarists. Strap yourself in. "--Slash "Rocking Joe Perry rocks' again! "--Jimmy Page Before the platinum records or the Super Bowl half-time show or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Joe Perry was a boy growing up in small-town Massachusetts. He idolized Jacques Cousteau and built his own diving rig that he used to explore a local lake. He dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. But Perry's neighbors had teenage sons, and those sons had electric guitars, and the noise he heard when they started playing would change his life. The guitar became his passion, an object of lust, an outlet for his restlessness and his rebellious soul. That passion quickly blossomed into an obsession, and he got a band together. One night after a performance he met a brash young musician named Steven Tyler; before long, Aerosmith was born. What happened over the next forty-five years has become the stuff of legend: the knockdown, drag-out, band-splintering fights; the drugs, the booze, the rehab; the packed arenas and timeless hits; the reconciliations and the comebacks. -- Rocks is the ultimate rock-and-roll epic. In Perry's own words, it tells the whole story: "the loner's story, the band's story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, and the post-destructive rebirth story."
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Add a CommentOf all the rock bios out right now, and there are a lot to pick from, Rocks: My Life In And Out of Aerosmith is the best-written and most absorbing. David Ritz, Perry's co-author, has an impressive list of credits and started out by co-writing Sexual Healing with Marvin Gaye. This book is not a catalog of the exploits of the Toxic Twins, or a re-living of glory days. Perry has always been a musicians' musician, the real deal, and the book is about how a boy in love with music became a man in love with music, and the pitfalls and successes that were part of that evolution. Apart from a sense that Perry and Steven Tyler will never settle their differences, and that Perry blames Tyler for this, there is not much said about Tyler, or about what was one of rock's most dynamic song writing teams for many years. Perry's account of the Aerosmith years seems somewhat disingenuous. Overall, though, Rocks is a very good read, but more interesting for people who love music and musicians than those who are looking for sordid tales of groupies and hotel room wrecking.