(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Mon 15 December 2025 17:30, UK
The key to any Joe Perry guitar line was about making the guitar sound more unique than the average blues player.
There are certain traces of his sound that might reek of Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton in some spots, but when listening to a lot of his lead bread, you can hear that he was slowly trying to find the perfect blend between blues, soul music, and rock and roll whenever he locked in on a groove. A lot of his licks are so idiosyncratic to him, but that came from watching guitar players who were one of a kind.
Because when you look at all of the guitarists that Perry loves, a lot of them have their own unique style. He was the first one to talk about his love for Slash from Guns N’ Roses or Brian May of Queen, but you’d never mistake their playing for each other. May created symphonies with his guitar, and Slash was every bit the rock and roller that he looked whenever he put on that top hat. And it’s the same way with how Perry writes a lot of his riffs.
Granted, a lot of Aerosmith’s greatest songs are aided by Steven Tyler’s perfectionist tendencies behind the scenes a lot of the time, but what Perry does is give the band their sense of swagger. While the Rolling Stones comparisons have been chasing them for years, it’s not that far off to call Perry the Americanised Keith Richards, especially when he starts taking a solo and makes the kind of lead break that sounds somewhere between a James Brown horn section and a lead singer.
But if there was one thing that united every member of the band, it was the blues. Perry was a student of all those classic blues players before Aerosmith was even a thought, and when the Yardbirds came out, Perry got to see three of the greatest guitarists in the world come out of one band. All of them were trying to write the nastiest riffs they could, but over time, Jeff Beck was interested in much more than bluesy licks.
Clapton may have stayed with the blues throughout most of his career, but whereas Page went into some outlandish areas with Led Zeppelin, Beck wanted to deconstruct what the instrument could sound like half the time. He wanted to have his guitar do a lot of the singing for him, and when he actually laid down a solo, Perry knew that no other guitarist could manage to come anywhere near him.
Even with the lingering spirit of Jimi Hendrix in guitar history, Perry considered Beck a true one-of-a-kind, saying, “He was two steps ahead of everybody else. But he never could really work with a singer. He tried once in a while, and would play some one-off stuff as his career went on, but really, in the last 20 to 25 years of his career, he really started doing things with the guitar that no one had ever heard before.”
While that shouldn’t discount the excellent songs that Beck made with Rod Stewart on Truth, a lot of the best moments of his career were when he didn’t have to worry about singing. Most of Blow by Blow is nothing but rock and roll showmanship on full display, and while most people would be waiting for when the singing comes in, a tune like ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’ works perfectly well without any frontman at the front of the stage.
Because when you have someone this talented constructing one guitar masterpiece after the other, what was the point in trying to hide him? Beck was the main attraction from the moment that he started playing, and even if not everyone could get on board with instrumental work, any guitarist who did their homework knew that he deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as people like Hendrix.
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