A lot of women would probably like to say they’ve
spent the past few weeks in bed with Joe Perry—and I’ve done it … with his
autobiography, that is.
What a cool dude. It’s less a tell-all bio than it is
a tell-all-like-it-is bio. He doesn’t exaggerate for effect, neither does he
pass judgment on his bandmates (particularly, the wild and crazy Steven Tyler),
but he does say what he thinks. It’s more than he’s said in forty years; he’s
as famous for his silence as he is for shooting lightning from his guitar, so
reading about Aerosmith’s volatile history from his point of view was a gift of
no small value. He’s honest, too, about his relationship with drugs, with his
family, and with the music biz. A smart, smart man. Truly, you’d never know
from interviews how deeply he runs; he’s not the most articulate guy on the
planet, but as with most introverts, he’s much more eloquent in writing. It
helps that he had a coach in David Ritz, but his voice is definitely present
and he gets his point across in straight-shooter fashion.
Now more than ever, I like to read about my heroes.
How they were as kids, what they dreamed and how they fit—or didn’t fit—in. Mr.
Perry’s story had me shaking my head: young Joe wanted to be a marine biologist
except that he came with a learning disability that messed up his grades and
drove him to quit school two weeks before graduation because he knew he
couldn’t survive college. Music, however, had been his passion practically from
the cradle, though he was born to accountant and gym teacher parents. So where
did he come from? Clearly he was meant to walk a particular path, hard as it
has been; he’s as surprised as anyone that he lived to tell the tale, but his
life turned out so vastly different from the way he envisioned it through a
diving mask that it just makes me wonder …
We walk the path we have come here to walk. Markers
are put in place to guide us, and we do have a say in how we get where we end
up, but even if we’re not all following our bliss, we are working to plan. That
plan is to experience what we agreed to experience before we stepped into this
dimension. Joseph Anthony Perry did not set out to become “Mister Joe-fuckin’-Perry”
of Toxic Twin notoriety and global rock star fame, but it’s obvious to me that
marine science was going to distract him from the lessons he came to learn, the
people he was meant to meet, and the fans he was meant to inspire
Twists and turns are universal to us all. Dark matter
carries us between the stars, through the asteroid fields and into orbit around
our individual suns; though we can’t see it, we are nonetheless moved by it,
some to stellar status and some to humbler, but no less powerful, effect.
Maintaining your cool throughout the journey takes monumental effort, but man,
the lead guitarist from the most dysfunctional rock band in history has done
it.
Rock on, Joe.
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