AEROSMITH - Excerpt Of JOHNNY DEPP's Foreword To JOE PERRY's Memoir
October 6, 2014, 9 years ago
Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry will release his memoir, Rocks: My Life In And Out Of Aerosmith, on October 7th via Simon & Schuster. Perry worked with author David Ritz on the memoir.
Legendary actor Johnny Depp (Blow, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Alice In Wonderland) penned the foreword; a portion can be read below:
As I sit here before a most cacophonous piece of blank onion skin, which I ever so delicately stuffed into my sturdy Olympia typewriter, and which surely deserves a more appreciative and well-balanced operator, but alas, such is its lamentable fate to be clubbed by my inept and clumsy digits, the paper screams for me to make the first move.
My thoughts are charged with the challenge of writing a few words on a man. An artist. A significant, nay, eminent artist, not only for me but for many others. A guitarist extraordinaire. A hero whose immeasurable ability has sent him high onto every Greatest Guitar Player list going ever since he sliced through some of the most tasteful and raging notes to be unleashed on an unwitting world. A hero who I've been given the honor to call both friend and brother.
Pondering him — the man, the mentor — the flood of imagery is astounding. I am swarmed by visions, swept away, almost, happily catapulted backward into fond memories of a (expletive)-up youth, with everything and nothing to look forward to. Did I delve into all those clichéd Things That I Shouldn't Have as a kid? Indeed, (expletive) did. With great passion, pure ignorance, and (expletive) gusto. For a good while there, life for me was an endless, rickety, and dangerous train wreck just waiting to happen. But no self-medication, no booze or chemical what-have-you, has ever done what a solitary sliver of music could do. Not even close.
Read more at USA Today.
Joe will embark on a 14-stop book tour beginning Tuesday, October 7th in New York, in conjunction with the release of his new memoir. After New York, the book tour continues with stops throughout the US, including a mid-tour stop at The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. Full list of dates are below.
In Rocks, Joe Perry exposes his unrepentant, unbridled life as the lead guitarist of Aerosmith. He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock-gods on stage. The nearly five-decade saga of Aerosmith is epic, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll.
With record-making hits and colossal album sales, Aerosmith has earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But theirs is ultimately a story of endurance, and it starts almost half a century ago with young Perry, the rebel whose loving parents wanted him to assimilate, but who quits school because he doesn’t want to cut his hair. He meets Tyler in a restaurant in New Hampshire, sways him from pop music to rock-and-roll, and it doesn’t take long for the “Toxic Twins” to skyrocket into a world of fame and utter excess.
From the mega-successful song and music video with Run DMC, “Walk This Way”, to the realization that he can’t pay his room service bill, Perry takes a personal look into the human stories behind Aerosmith, the people who enabled them, the ones who controlled them, and the ones who changed them. In his own words, Rocks is 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, the post-destructive rebirth story.”
Joe Perry has announced the following signing sessions:
October
8 - Ridgewood, NJ - Bookends
9 - Brookline, MA - Brookline Booksmith at The Coolidge Corner Theatre
10 - Boston, MA - Guitar Center - Boylston Street
11 - Boston, MA - The Paper Store at Framingham
13 - Chicago, IL - The Standard Club Of Chicago
13 - Arlington Heights, IL - Guitar Center - Arlington Heights
14 - Cleveland, OH - The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
15 - Los Angeles, CA - Barnes & Noble at The Grove
16 - San Francisco, CA - Guitar Center - San Francisco Proper
17 - San Francisco, CA - Book Passage at The San Francisco Ferry Building
18 - Phoenix, AZ- Changing Hands Bookstore
19 - Scottsdale, AZ - Guitar Center - Scottsdale
20 - Los Angeles, CA - Book Soup
