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Joe Perry says Aerosmith didn’t like their debut album for years: “God, I wish my guitar sounded better”

Joe Perry of Aerosmith has revealed that the band actually weren’t particularly keen on their self-titled debut album, revealing he thought “God, I wish my guitar sounded better,” for years. READ MORE: Steve Vai plans to unleash the triple-neck Hydra guitar live on upcoming US tour: “I use a strap that goes around my waist, […]

Joe Perry

Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty

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Joe Perry of Aerosmith has revealed that the band actually weren’t particularly keen on their self-titled debut album, revealing he thought “God, I wish my guitar sounded better,” for years.

In a new interview with VWMusic, Perry revealed that the band struggled with the sound heard on the breakthrough album at first as it didn’t live up to their expectations. “Well, I don’t think any of us liked it at the time,” he explained. “We thought that we had an idea in our heads about how we thought it was gonna sound but we were all pretty naive about everything, including working in the studio. We thought working in the studio was going to be different, where we would just come in and the studio would make it sound a certain way.”

“But really, it comes down to the microphone picks up what you play, and that’s what gets recorded. There’s no magic dust that makes your record sound like what you think it should, and that was the biggest lesson we learned.”

Perry explained that while the band became more comfortable with studio recordings as they released their second and third LPs, “When I listened to [Aerosmith] for years, it was like, ‘God, I wish my guitar sounded better. I wish we had played this differently.'”

Perry also shared that he recently found the same amp used to record Aerosmith, and is planning to try to recreate the sound when he returns to Las Vegas. At the end of the day, however, he says the memories associated with the album have become the important thing to him, explaining, “It’s important to remember what took us from playing in small spaces, rehearsing in the afternoon in some club, and then the next thing you know, we’re auditioning down in New York. It all happened fast for us after we got signed.”

Perry reminisces, “You know, we were just kids going in, and we didn’t grow up with parents that were in the business, you know? We had no idea, and we were very naive, so we just learned as we went along, and we stuck together and looked out for each other.”

Rare content from the band’s vaults and from the personal archives of individual Aerosmith members is set to become available in the future following a deal to move Aerosmith’s entire catalogue to Universal Music Group (UMG).

UMG has announced that the deal encompasses “future music projects” along with “new film, television and other audio-visual content projects” that celebrate the band’s history and cultural impact.

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