E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mr. Aerosmith goes it alone (continued)

Q: Most of the tunes on Joe Perry are love songs. After all these years of hard-knuckled rockin’, are you really a romantic at heart?

A: I’m a big believer in romance, and I’m lucky to be living it. Love is the topic of some of the heaviest rock and roll. Even if it’s head-ripping, it’s still often about love. I’m in love, so it works for me. And there are a couple songs that go down other paths. But my main inspiration is my muse and partner in life, my wife. When I started playing "Ten Years" for other people is when I started getting comfortable opening that side of myself. At the beginning, I was all straight-ahead rock and roll, but I learned to appreciate ballads — especially working with Steven, because he’s such a great ballad writer.

I don’t know if I would have been comfortable putting a song like "Pray for Me" out 10 years ago — either with my vocal performance or with letting that side of my emotions out. Maybe it’s all the therapy!

Q: It’s a challenge for most guitarists who decide to sing to get accustomed to their own voice. How were you able to make the transition from guitarist to singer/guitarist for Joe Perry?

A: I’ve come to consider myself a vocal stylist more than a singer per se. In my own head, for years, I’ve been trying to compete with Steven. I’m in a band with one of the best rock-and-roll singers in the world. If I only had that range, but my range is . . . I just can’t get up there.

Billie helped me with that, too. I was upstairs complaining that I couldn’t find inspiration and she suggested I go downstairs to the studio and just cover some songs. Some of them turned out pretty cool. "Crystal Ship," which is on the album, is one of them. I thought it was in a low enough key for my vocal range, and sure enough, I didn’t cringe every time my vocal went by on playback. Billie heard it and encouraged me to try to sing more in that more relaxed fashion. It just opened up a new world for me.

Q: The instrumental "Mercy" — it’s a really potent blend of guitar tones and textures. How many guitar tracks are on it?

A: So many! I’ve played that for Steven a bunch of times, because it’s really catchy. But it was almost like there was no space to sing over it, so it turned itself into an instrumental. It has a cool loping rock feel and would have been really interesting to sing over if there was room. The recording went about 10 minutes long, so we edited it down and really mixed it to get the best sounds in there to work.

Q: At the opposite end of the spectrum is "Vigilante Man," the Woody Guthrie song you turn into a stomping, spare roots rocker.

A: That’s one of the few songs Paul and I played drums and guitar on together. The lyrics are so strong. The way Woody sings it, there’s a lot of anger and angst in his voice, but the accompaniment is finger picking. My electric guitar really supports those lyrics, which are timeless — really applicable to what we’re seeing in our government and world today.

Q: That seems to be a track that continues in the spirit of Honkin’ on Bobo. Aerosmith had been talking about doing a blues album for more than a decade. Why was 2004 the year?

A: It was kind of on deck since we first signed with Sony [in 1991]. We said, "We’d really like the first record to be a blues record." But ultimately we felt we had too many of our own songs to do.

It was a combination of us having it on our to-do list for a long time and having four months off between tours that made us feel it was the right time for a blues album. We had a riot. That album was a lot of fun. I’m hoping we’ll carry over some of that rock-and-roll energy into our next studio album.

Q: What’s your relationship to Boston these days?

A: It’s funny because the rest of the world sees us as this band from Boston but we’re so seldom here. We love the community and we love Boston. We grew up here. We love Newbury Street. That’s where we recorded our first record. We rehearsed on Newbury Street. I wish I had more time to spend with my friends in Boston, but I think people understand.

When you’re on the road, where do you really live? If I see where I’ve mostly laid my head on a pillow over the last three years, it’s been on my tour bus. It just hit the news that we bought this place up in Vermont. It’s only another hour away from Boston, so what’s the difference? I don’t live in Boston now. We have a place in Florida and spend a lot of time there. We also spend a lot of time in New Hampshire. We’re going to stay here in Duxbury at least until the end of the next Aerosmith album. Maybe longer. We’re not leaving any time soon. But Aerosmith will always be a Boston band.

Joe Perry will sign copies of Joe Perry this Tuesday, May 3, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Newbury Comics, 332 Newbury Street in Boston; call (617) 236-4930.