Joe Perry flying solo for a UK debut

The last time guitarist Joe Perry played in Britain was when Aerosmith headlined Hyde Park in front of 40,000 adoring fans.

In April he'll be playing second fiddle when his solo band, the Joe Perry Project, makes its UK debut opening for the reformed Bad Company in Birmingham.

But with his main band in disarray, more of which below, Perry says he is thrilled just to be able to see Bad Company in action again and is looking forward to the concert at the LG Arena at Birmingham NEC on Thursday April 1.

Calling from Canada where the Project are on tour to promote his new album Have Guitar, Will Travel, Perry's Boston drawl is pronounced as he enthuses: "I'm really, really excited about it.

"I'm excited about playing some new venues and I'm sure they'll be some pretty hot shows.

"People are going to be really interested in seeing Bad Company; as I am . . . I mean I'm probably going over just as much to watch Bad Company play as I am to play myself.

"I've been a huge Bad Company fan since I first heard Paul Rodgers sing. I just met Paul and a couple of guys in the band at the Classic Rock awards in London a couple of months ago.

"I saw them play a couple of times in the States back in the 70s. We're all big fans and it was a great honour to meet him. And then to get a call a couple of weeks later that there was an opening for me to be on the show for some of those UK dates, it's like 'Are you kiddin' me?'!"

"I know it's going to be tough because people will be there to see Bad Company, but it will be the first time in the UK with my band so we'll try to warm the audience up and make the show as good as it can be.

"I'm just really excited to see them live. I'm really up for it. Hopefully the fans will listen with at least half an ear to us but I think they're going to be as excited as I am to hear Bad Company."

Perry cites two English groups in particular as major influences on his playing - Bad Company and the original Fleetwood Mac, whose song Somebody's Gonna Get (Their Head Kicked In Tonite) he covers on Have Guitar, Will Travel.

"That's a song I can remember them playing that when they would come to Boston in the States in the late 60s," he says.

"Fleetwood Mac has always been an influence on me, and Peter Green's stuff, that approach to the blues roots but playing rock and roll. All of the people with the English bands were interpreting the American blues and it was so exciting for us suburban kids, we'd never heard anything like that . It was a whole new genre.

"Same with Bad Company. They were very sparse and mean . . . a mean fighting machine. They rocked, you know, they just did it for me."

About a third to a half of the Joe Perry Project set will be from the new album (given away free with Classic Rock magazine in February) with rest a select choice of "Aerosmith and a couple of songs from the old Project".

"Rock 'n' roll is all pretty basic," says Perry, "We're all working with the same tools. There are just so many ways you can twist those three chords around. It's exciting to see what you can do with it and on this particular record I wrote songs that I thought would go down really well live as opposed to songs that would just be good for throwing the headphones on.

"At least people will see what I bring to Aerosmith. It's kind of hard to tell when people listen to the band. You don't know who does what in the band and who contributes what, so people can kind of tell what my part in it is. It's just fun to be able to get out and throw down all these songs that I've had kind of stashed away.

"You get out there and you play your own stuff and when I get back with Aerosmith which I'm hoping is going to be sooner than later, I'll have some new tales to tell, so to speak.

"You learn new stuff about playing live, you learn new stuff about the fans and when the band gets back together on stage and in the studio I'll be that much better as a player and a performer so that's another benefit of going out and doing the solo thing."

Ah yes, Aerosmith. A band which has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with recording of a new album cancelled, singer Steven Tyler going into rehab, a bizarre incident when he fell off a stage and broke a shoulder and Aerosmith considering going on tour with another singer (rumours have included names such as Lenny Kravitz, Billy Idol and Sammy Hagar) while he records a solo album.

What's going on? Is Aerosmith still a band?

"I never thought the band was broken up," Perry replies. "It's hard because with the internet now there are so many different people who will say something. They'll take a guess at something and somebody's taken that as gospel.

"We've always said the band has never broken up, Steven's never left the band. He wanted to take off and do a solo thing and take some time off. I think that the shocker was that he never talked to anybody in the band about it, so we were kind of taken aback by that.

"We figured if he wants to take time off then we'll find somebody to sit in and sing until he does come back and that's pretty much it. We're still friends, we're still planning on getting back together and playing and touring and doing another record, I just don't know when.

"We're talking to some different people and right and I'm not sure which way it's going to go. All I know is if Aerosmith doesn't go out soon and sing with Steven we'll probably go out and have somebody else sing."

(Stop press: On Fenruary 15, 2010, it was announced that Aerosmith, with Steven Tyler, will be among the headliners at this year's Download Festival).

So for Joe Perry it's have guitar, will travel and next stop Britain.

"It's going to be a riot," he says. "I can't tell you how excited I am and what an honour it is to be on the same bill as Bad Company. They just seem like great guys and I'm going to give the shows everything I've got. It's going to be a lot of fun."

By Ian Harvey

* Bad Company and the Joe Perry Project play at the LG Arena, Birmingham NEC on Thursday April 1. Tickets are priced £34.50 plus booking and transaction fee.