Legendary Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has had a couple of health scares in recent years, being rushed to the hospital in 2016 after he collapsed onstage during a Hollywood Vampires performance in Brooklyn, and then again last year when he had shortness of breath following a performance with Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in New York. Perry was “treated backstage by paramedics who gave the guitarist oxygen and used a tracheal tube to clear his airway before taking him to a hospital,” a statement said at the time, adding that he was now “alert and responsive.”
Perry discussed Aerosmith’s ‘Deuces Are Wild’ Las Vegas residency in a new Guitar Player interview, and said he has no plans to hang up his guitar any time soon.
“The challenge is to keep the grit and the excitement level of an Aerosmith show while at the same putting up a big flash-bang production,” Perry says about Deuces Are Wild, which runs on and off at the Park Theater (with some East Coast dates sprinkled in) through the end of 2019. “That’s a different kind of a challenge than, ‘Well, it’s time to make another record. It’s time to do another tour.’ I have to say, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve been this excited about something that involves Aerosmith.”
In the following interview, Perry and Whitford give Guitar Player an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of Deuces Are Wild. They also talk gear, their guitar partnership, the state of rock in 2019, and what lies ahead, both onstage and in the studio, for Aerosmith. “One thing that’s for sure,” Perry says, “I don’t see us putting the guitars away anytime soon.”
