In an exclusive interview with Guitar World, Aerosmith guitarist, Joe Perry, looks back at every era of the rock institution: how their rapid rise ultimately took its toll, why Van Halen caused him to quit in the ’80s, how he and Steven Tyler reconciled their differences, and why he finds himself playing Strats more than Gibsons. An excerpt follows...

Guitar World: You mentioned before that you didn’t feel Aerosmith was ready for the ’80s. Did you change your mind after you returned?

Joe Perry: “When we went in to do Done with Mirrors [1985], the whole West Coast hair band thing started, and we were trying to find our place. I remember writing those songs and feeling tentative about the whole thing because we didn’t know how it would be received. The whole guitar style had changed from British blues to a sound that was very different, very clean sounding and just different from what we were. We had no idea if we would fit in, and it’s not like any of us were ever going to be called ‘shredders'." [Laughs]

Guitar World: So there was never a thought of changing who you were?

Perry: “No; we had no interest in trying to be like the other bands. We were more about dipping our toes in the water, so to speak. And thankfully, [producer] Ted Templeman, who we found out later was in awe of the whole thing, came along. We loved what he did with Van Halen and thought he would be a good fit. So with Done With Mirrors, he basically just turned the machines on and let us go. And looking back, I kinda wish Ted had more input because I feel that Done With Mirrors lacks a layer of production. There was a level of communication that hadn’t been established yet, and more spice could have been added to it.”

Guitar World: Done With Mirrors wasn’t a hit, but the Back In The Saddle Tour most certainly was.

Perry: “Oh, yeah, we toured in the summer of ’84 before we did Done With Mirrors. We had been broken up for a few years, were in a new era and went on the road without a record deal. We had to buy our way out of the Columbia Records deal; if you can believe it, we owed them, like, $300,000. After all those records we sold, we owed them money. It was crazy.

“And we had to get out of the management contract the guys had signed before me and Brad returned. So we had made all this fucking money for all these people, and now we’re back together, and we’re already in the red. There were no more chartered planes; we were touring on buses with our wives and girlfriends.

“I can’t tell you how thankful we were that the fans came out to support us on that summer tour. We started again in ’84 with no album or single; they showed up for us just because they wanted to see us play together again. I’ll never forget that, and I don’t think we’d be here if they hadn’t.”

Read the complete feature at Guitar World.