JOE PERRY
Joe Perry (born Anthony Joseph Pereira; September 10, 1950) is the lead guitarist, backing and occasional lead vocalist, and contributing songwriter for the American rock band Aerosmith. He was ranked 84th in Rolling Stone’s list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Aerosmith; and in 2013, Perry and his songwriting partner Steven Tyler were recipients of the ASCAP Founders Award and were also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In October 2014, Simon & Schuster released Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith, written by Joe Perry with David Ritz. (More from Wikipedia)
Probably the best known version of the song is by Aerosmith; “Train Kept A-Rollin’” is included on their second album, Get Your Wings (1974), but the band’s connection with the song dates back much further than that. As quoted in Wikipedia, Joe Perry recalls of this song: “‘Train Kept A-Rollin’’ was the only song we had in common when we first got together. Steven [Tyler]’s band had played ‘Train’, and Tom [Hamilton] and I played it in our band. . . . It’s a blues song, if you follow its roots all the way back. . . . I always thought if I could just play one song, it would be that one because of what it does to me.”
(June 2015)
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An early example is one of the first big hits by Aerosmith, “Walk This Way”, where most of the vocals are sung much faster than the beat of the music; it is taken from their third album, Toys in the Attic (1975). A decade later, Run-D.M.C. included a remake of “Walk This Way” on their album Raising Hell (1986), with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith sitting in on vocals and guitar, respectively. The two groups also collaborated on a video that was in heavy rotation on MTV. This was one of the first times that rock music and rap music were melded together.
(September 2016)
