Joe Perry Quotes

I have always been fascinated with guns. I grew up in America so granted, it is part of our heritage and it is written into the laws of how this country is run.

I love Indian food - it's my favourite cuisine. I love the mixture of spices and the subtle flavours. It's really erotic; the spices are so sensuous.

Take life on life's terms - one day at a time. And have fun while you're doing it.

When I plug in my guitar and play it really loud, loud enough to deafen most people, that's my shot of adrenaline, and there's nothing like it. That's what it's always been for me - to be the flame the tribe dances around.

Get good live and get a following because that's what people notice.

The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They weren't afraid to try things and to experiment with a lot of sounds. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock and roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it.

I guess we all have a bad night now and then and really screw up. I listened to our earlier stuff and we screwed up a lot. But at least now that we are sober, when we screw up it's for real.

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

Five years after Aerosmith got back together, I realized how fragile we are as humans. There was a time I thought we were bulletproof, but then things happened and I came to the realization that I had to play every gig as if it was my last show. You have to start thinking that way, because you never know what's going to happen next.

Rhythm and sex go together and that's where I come from as far as the music goes. Rag Doll and Love In An Elevator are such sexual songs that you put them on & the strippers go NUTS!

I love to listen to the music that first inspired me - I get that fresh feeling back.

I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.

I don't see anyone avoiding the Stones because DJs make jokes about them being a part of the Geritol set. All it does is make the DJs look stupid.

A band isn't a band unless they're playing together. Otherwise it's just five guys that are living off their royalty checks.

There was a time I thought I couldn't enjoy rock 'n' roll unless I had heroin in me

I've come to realize that you live on through recordings; they're like a musical diary, a window into somebody's soul.

My chosen instrument is guitar and, fortunately, I'm able to muddle through that. I can play guitar to the point where I can express myself artistically.

You think it's all written, but it's not. There's always another way to twist those three chords around.

I'm glad that I never ended up killing myself, though I came close more times than I would like to admit.

Aerosmith is such a powerful band; I mean, it's like a steam locomotive.

If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!

Hopefully I'm bringing to rock n' roll the kind of spontaneity that I love, and always believed rock and roll stands for.

India brings out so many different feelings in me. I've been fascinated with India and Indian culture as long as I can remember - ever since the '60s with the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

When I got sober and started working out, I fell into that trap of working out too much. I know a lot of guys can relate to that - if you don't get that runner's high every day, you feel like, 'Oh my God, I'm losing it.'

I think that's really important, that kids get exposed to music as soon as they can - not necessarily to become musicians, but at least have an outlet. It's an art form that's easily accessible to young ears.

I don't need to speak...I play the guitar!

I know that some of the great painters and some of the great artists didn't even start to 'peak', as you say, till they were in their fifties and sixties. And God knows, history is full of artistic people that weren't even recognized till they were dead and gone.

I think people have to be more aware of what the repercussions are of their actions.

Steven and I stood on the stage at the Boston Garden after the Stones had just played there and the stage was still up. We had been playing cards, maybe a high-school dance, to 400 or 500, maybe a thousand. We just stood on the stage and thought, 'Well,man,maybe someday.' In 4 years that was OUR stage.

I didn't think I could go onstage and play unless I had a beer to loosen up. Well, if it was only one beer to loosen up, I'd probably still be drinking today.

There are definitely things about 'Legendary Child' that echo the music we did earlier in our career. It's got the right stuff.

I don't want fans to think we're clean, upstanding American boys, but we are Americans, and we do stand up.

Over the years, when you're in a band with a catalog like Aerosmith's, you accumulate a lot of instruments to duplicate those songs.

I think that... the age of just slapping songs into movies, that's done.

I think one of the most valuable things Aerosmith has is the energy we produce when we all play together.

Describing certain sounds, there's a common language that guitar players have.

I think we're just a garage band that got lucky. It's the enthusiasm from the audience that keeps it going.

The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n roll thing going on.

The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity

For me, L.A. was, and is, a very creative place to be.

I was very fascinated by the time when firearms went from being fire sticks to being something people could use to hunt and to survive.

The media plays up celebrity a lot, but it doesn't hold a candle to being a scientist. There's a lot to be said for what they all do, and are trying to accomplish.

You don't throw clothes away, because you know it's going to come back in fashion!

I don't think there's anything anybody's doing that the Beatles didn't at least try at some point.

Berry's On Top is probably my favorite record of all time; it defines rock and roll. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing-the push-pull and the rhythm of it.

I have seen more bad songs make it because of MTV than good ones that haven't.

You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.

The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers' fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.

A lot of people don't listen to the albums. They just listen to the singles.

It's probably listening to country music that got me to start playing a lot cleaner, not as distorted.