In April 2018, at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry was interviewed on camera by The Decade That Rocked photographer Mark Weiss. During their chat, which can be seen below, Joe remembers going to the family dinners as a child where his uncle would sing Portuguese folk songs on his homemade guitar.

As Joe got older his parents got him clarinet and piano lessons. After listening to Ike & Tina Turner, Roy Orbison, and Elvis on the radio in the late 1950s, he wanted to emulate the sounds he was hearing. Joe finally talked his parents into getting him a guitar that he played for a while and then put it away. When the Beatles came out in 1964 he pulled his guitar from the closet and started playing it again. The first time Joe saw a live Rock & Roll band was at his high school dance.

He soon got together with some friends and started playing some Beatles and Birds songs. But it was the hard rock that really captured him. When the first British Invasion died down, he gravitated to the new bands that were coming over. “This band called the Yardbirds had a sound like I’d never heard before, they had guitars that sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. The Stones were pushing the edge with distorted guitars. That was a big influence on me,” admits Joe Perry.

Joe got turned on to Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf and Buddy Guy records really early on in the mid to late 1960s. “I got a taste for the blues pretty quick on and saw the relationship between that and the hard rock that the English bands were bringing over. Which basically was like holding a mirror up to America going ‘This is your music, you want to hear what we can do with it?’.”

Joe Perry and Aerosmith are featured in Mark Weiss' new book, The Decade That Rocked: The Photography Of Mark "Weissguy" Weiss. First published in June 2020 by Insight Editions, The Decade That Rocked is a 378 page hardcover book, measuring 9.2 x 12.8 inches and weighing 6 pounds. Written by Richard Bienstock, The Decade That Rocked includes a foreword by Rob Halford of Judas Priest, an afterword by radio and tv personality Eddie Trunk, as well as contributions by Daniel Siwek.

Featuring the iconic and never-before-published photography of Mark Weiss, The Decade That Rocked covers the biggest names from the ’80s hard rock scene—including Jon Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, and more—in an illustrated homage to the music and mayhem of rock’s most colorful decade.

The 1980s were an era of musical excess, filled with spandex, makeup, big hair, groupies, and loud, guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll. Photographer Mark Weiss lived at the heart of it all, documenting the biggest and most dangerous bands of the time—legends ranging from Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, and Mötley Crüe to Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, KISS, and many more. The Decade That Rocked showcases onstage and backstage moments and never-before-seen images from the period’s most historic concerts, events, and album covers—all captured through the lens of Mark “Weissguy” Weiss.

Growing up in Matawan, New Jersey, Mark filled his teenage nights sneaking into concerts to shoot the biggest acts of the ’70s. After being arrested for selling photographs outside a KISS concert in 1977, he walked into the offices of Circus with his portfolio and soon landed his first centerfold spread—a photo of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. Soon after, he became the publication’s staff photographer. Throughout the ’80s, his photos were seen by millions, appearing in countless magazines around the world and on the covers of the most iconic albums of the decade.

Dig into Mark’s archives and take a tour through never-before-seen photos of a teenage Jon Bon Jovi, and behind-the-scenes and unreleased images from the album shoot for Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and the band’s decade-ending historic performance at the Moscow Music Peace Festival. Travel to Washington, DC, as Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider sits before Congress to combat censorship at the infamous PMRC hearings.

Captured from the unique vantage point of a photographer who lived and breathed the ’80s in all its grit and glory, The Decade That Rocked brings to life the no-holds-barred sounds and sights that changed the world of hard rock and metal forever.

Order your copy now via Amazon.com or TheDecadeThatRocked.com.