Aerosmith’s Joe Perry says 2012 album Music From Another Dimension is one of the best records the band ever recorded.
Last month, bandmate Tom Hamilton said “fans didn’t do their homework” on the album, the follow-up to 2004’s Honkin’ On Bobo, but Perry says circumstances were against them, which meant the record didn’t get the promotional push it deserved.
He tells Yahoo Music: “I thought Music From Another Dimension was one of the best records we’d done in years, because it was the record that fans seemed to have been asking for.
“Over the last 20 years, we’d get requests like, ‘Why don’t you make a record like the old ones?’ I think we got back to the real deal with the last record, but circumstances being what they were, it never got the push from the label.
“We had this whole promotion set up with the G.I. Joe movie, but I got a call from Paramount saying, ‘We’re pulling the movie for six months,’ so the whole promotion thing was pulled right from under us. At the same time, the president of Sony went to Universal two weeks before the album came out.
“If that isn’t a setup for a bad opening, I don’t know what is.”
The guitarist also feels music is approaching the end of a “golden era” saying there’s very few bands around now who have the same attitude as Aerosmith.
He continues: “We just saw a pretty amazing age of music go by, starting with the social unrest and the Vietnam war in the 60s. The music really was a lot more than it is today – more of a statement. It was more of an us-against-them thing, kind of the backdrop marching orders for the revolution, for the change that happened in the 50s and 60s.
“Bands would go out and play just for the joy of it, without this huge celebrity thing that comes with it now. Then we had the MTV era, which I think were the golden years of rock and roll.
“Now, there’s very few bands with that old ‘show must go on’ attitude, that built their reputations on playing live. That’s the core of our philosophy: You get out there and do whatever it takes to put on the show for the fans.”
Perry recently said he wasn’t sure if the band should go back into the studio, and instead keep playing live, but he now says a studio return could be on the cards.
He adds: “I have to think we’re going into the studio again, just to lay out some new songs. I don’t know how it’s going to go as far as sales, but as far as us as artists, I think we’re gonna have to go in.”
Perry is currently working on his new solo album, which he hopes to launch next year, while his book Rocks: My Life In And Out Of Aerosmith is set for an October release.
