Mr. Aerosmith goes it alone Joe Perry lets his voice do the talking BY TED DROZDOWSKI

To rock-and-roll fans, Joe Perry’s half the front line of Aerosmith, a position he’s held since founding the group with Steven Tyler in New Hampshire in 1970 and moving to Boston to achieve fame. To Aerosmith fans, Perry’s the group’s rock-and-roll soul — a strong, silent, guitar-slinging bad-ass who’s always let the music do the talking. All the same, Perry spoke to us about his debut solo album, a slide-fueled slam-and-soothe affair with the no-frills title Joe Perry that comes out this Tuesday on Columbia. Nobody’s going to call him the new Dylan after hearing the disc’s dozen numbers, which are dominated by love songs and instrumentals, but the power and the craftsmanship of his playing are transfixing.

Holding court in his well-appointed Massachusetts South Shore home studio, the Boneyard, the soft-spoken Perry talks about guitars, songwriting, romance, album making, Aerosmith, and his newly discovered true singing voice. He’s always sung harmony with Tyler, and he took the lead for a few vocal tracks on Aerosmith’s 2004 blues tribute, Honkin’ on Bobo (Columbia), but when he last stepped outside the group — from 1979 to 1984 with his Joe Perry Project — it was with vocalist Charlie Farren. This time, he not only sings all his lyrics, he plays everything on Joe Perry except drums and keyboards.

Q: Given Steven Tyler’s proclivity for writing smash ballads and being in the spotlight, many Aerosmith fans thought he’d be the first band member with a solo album.

A: He’s talked about it, but I’m always in the studio writing and recording. In fact, the song "Ten Years" I wrote 10 years ago for my wife Billie’s and my tenth anniversary. That’s how far back some of these songs go. A lot started as licks that were recorded and sitting on a shelf saying, "Finish me!" Sometimes those licks are run by the band and end up being the basis for an Aerosmith song, but out of 20 ideas, we might use three and the rest sit there.

I have favorite ideas and riffs that I’ll drop on a mini disc so I can take them with me. And when I get a spare minute, I’ll come down here and bring one of them up to the level of a song. Two or three years ago, I realized I had a big pile of instrumental music I’d written that never got used for songs. I thought, "If I run off the road on my Harley and I’m dead, Billie’s gonna have nothing to put out — just a bunch of guitar licks. I should finish some." Because they’re not really songs until you get a vocal on them.

When the band took a year off, it felt like the time to finish this stuff. And when I started mixing, what was written six months or a year ago felt more immediate to me. So I wrote "Shakin’ My Cage" and "Push Comes to Shove" and "Lonely." I put the last guitar tracks down in December.

Q: You’ve always been a band player — someone who feeds off the energy of other musicians to get inspired. What was it like playing all the tracks yourself?

A: Paul, the engineer, was also the drummer, and we brought a keyboard player in for some overdubs for about three hours, but otherwise it was me. It’s funny, because we have a "making of" video in the CD package as well as a Dolby 5.1 mix on the B-side and two U-Mix-It cuts, "Push Comes to Shove" and the instrumental "Mercy," that fans can remix on their computers. Paul and I worked together so long that it got kind of boring, so we had to do little things to liven the video up. We used home movies from the road, and I did a bit where I played both parts of a band fight.

For most of the songs, I’d have an idea for a riff and Paul and I would work up a drum loop I’d use as a springboard for working out the arrangement. Then I’d usually put bass down to flesh it out, then a vocal or a guitar. Once I figured out where the vocal would go and had the chorus worked up, Paul would play real drums and I’d get deeper into the guitars.

There’s a certain feel that happens when musicians do all their own tracks. I could hear it when McCartney did it or when Stevie Wonder played drums on his own songs. I noticed I played the bass with the same kind of attack I have on guitar. It’s like you’re in a band and have tremendous rapport. "Wow! I can read the other guy’s mind!" It sounds like I’ve been playing with him for nearly 45 years, since I started playing when I was 12.

Q: If there’s any sound that’s a signature on this album, it’s ripping slide guitar. How did you get into playing slide?

A: The first time I saw anybody play slide was Jeff Beck, who played in standard tuning. The guy I really saw rip it up in open tuning was Johnny Winter. He had his big Firebird going through four Fender Twin Reverb amps and it was great. He’s always been a big influence. I’ve studied Ry Cooder and Muddy Waters. Ron Wood is a great electric slide player. They’re all part of my vocabulary. I love to play slide and lap steel. I’ve had a few goes at pedal steel, but it’s a hard instrument. I’ve even had a pedal steel made with just six strings, but it’s a whole different animal.

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.