Classic Rock Revisited recently caught up with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry to discuss his new memoir, 

Rocks: My Life In And Out Of Aerosmith. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

CRR:  Your longevity is astonishing in this day and age.

Perry: "Now that I think back at other artists of other eras and there was a point where a lot of us never got the rewards of their work because the technology wasn’t there.  Some of them were able to get their paintings recognized, but the majority never got the fruits of their work. 

We live in a time now when an artist can; he’s got the talent to entertain people.  In two days it’s up on the internet and all of the sudden he’s the newest, biggest thing! You know, and he’s 17 years old.  It’s an amazing time.  I mean, so given that, I thought it would be a very good time to get the book out there where there’s the whole story.

Achievements, adventures, things falling apart, and then putting it together as a story.  You know you can’t invent this stuff.  I’m talking about small stuff.  Like, to reference the book, the time when we got a manager’s contract and nothing really happened.  I mean, I remember sitting there on the couch with the other guys talking it over.  In my mind I’m thinking this is some sort of B-movie.  You know, it’s too like, you can’t write this stuff. The synchronicity of it is too right on.  There are so many things that happened like that during the course of our career.  It seemed planned out; I’m thinking there’s something big going on here, something is happening here.

I could never look forward past the next day because I could never count on anything.  Like looking at the whole picture, the whole book, it’s like God-damnit it was like a screenplay or something."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Perry released Rocks: My Life In And Out Of Aerosmith on October 7th via Simon & Schuster. He worked with author David Ritz on the memoir.

In the tradition of the mega-bestseller Life by Keith Richards, Joe Perry opens up for the first time about the wild, inside story of his life in the legendary band he cofounded in 1970 - which is still going strong 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

10 - Boston, MA - Guitar Center - Boylston Street
11 - Boston, MA - The Paper Store @ 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 @ The Grove
16 - San Francisco, CA - Guitar Center - San Francisco Proper
17 - San Francisco, CA - Book Passage @ The San Francisco Ferry Building
18 - Phoenix, AZ- Changing Hands Bookstore
19 - Scottsdale, AZ - Guitar Center - Scottsdale
20 - Los Angeles, CA - Book Soup