Joe Cool

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.

Not Your Average Joe

the coveted Christmas prezzie

He’s on my radar once more—Aerosmith’s inimitable lead guitarist, known predominantly throughout the rock world as “Mister Joe Perry.” After 15 years of radio silence, I saw his autobiography on a shelf at the bookstore and stopped so abruptly that, had I been on the highway, I’d have caused a multi-vehicle pileup.

My heart did that crazy swoopy thing that hearts do when something too deep to reach is touched.

I dropped a five-ton hint on Ter, and if the book wasn’t beneath the tree on Christmas morning, I’d have gone out on Boxing Day to get it myself. (Sneaky Ter—she fooled my nosy fingers with a copy of Prince Lestat and disguised Rocks as a big square something wrapped in Nutcracker-themed paper. She knows.)

There was a time when I owned an extensive collection of Aerosmith albums. I even persuaded Ter to accompany me to a live show during the Get a Grip tour—the scariest crowd I’ve ever been a part of, but seeing the man himself made the risk worthwhile. He was in his prime at the time, when I believed that a man is at his best in his mid-to-late-30s. Mr. Perry was actually in his early 40s, challenging my parameters with flowing black hair and those long, smooth muscles. And he has aged in typically uncompromising style: he turned 64 on September 10 and still commands a third look.

So, what gives? I no longer have my Aerosmith albums, nor did I hang onto the band bio I devoured in the 1990s. I thought that he and I were done, that the affair was over. Gods are irreplaceable, of course, but even the vampire he sired has lain silent for almost two decades.

At one time, I considered him a strictly hormonal crush. Now I am unsure. Now I suspect a connection on some other level, a memory from another life in another world. It’s possible. It’s actually probable, given what I’m learning about how souls are but satellites of the mothership. I suppose it could be as simple as biological hardwiring, but if the appeal was purely physical, I doubt I’d care to do anything more than mate with him. This is not so. Not purely, anyway.

Rocks has jumped the queue to next in line after I finish my annual holiday wallow in The Night Circus. I am certain that it will be a fascinating read and reveal no common ground between him and me (except that we’re both Virgos). I am unlikely to buy any more Aerosmith albums, and when he played Victoria with his spinoff band a couple of years ago, I wasn’t the least bit tempted to get tickets … though I did get some cool pics of the tour bus.

What mystifies me is the crazy swoopy heart thing caused by someone I have not and will not meet. I may not know him, but I recognize him. Was he a lord in a previous life? Definitely. Was he my lord? I doubt it. All I can say is that he was on my radar before radar existed and he’s come around again.

It’s a deliciously, creatively compelling mystery, one that has borne fruit in the past and may signal something that I, as a writer, have been avoiding for more than a year. If Joe Perry is back, then Marcel de Chauvigny is sure to follow … and his is a story I don’t want to write.