Joe Perry was born on September 10, 1950 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was interested in music from a young age, forming The Jam Band with his friend Tom Hamilton in the mid 1960s. In 1969, Perry met singer Steven Tyler, and invited him to join the duo; the three musicians formed the core of the band that would later be known as Aerosmith. Although at first compared negatively to the Rolling Stones, the band took off in the early 1970s.
Much like Steven Tyler, Perry found himself a victim of the band's success - he and Tyler earned the nickname "The Toxic Twins" for their drug habits. Stresses rose within the band, until things came to a head in 1979. A fight between Perry's wife and Hamilton's wife backstage at a show in Cleveland turned out to be the final sign that things weren't working, and Perry left the band, taking a considerable amount of unreleased songs with him.
For the next five years, Perry worked on The Joe Perry Project, a band he formed (and frequently reformed) with a number of different artists. A chance encounter with an Aerosmith show in 1984 led to an invitation to rejoin, and the original lineup took to stage and studio once more. As the band got their act together musically, the artists took steps to become clean and sober, and have remained so ever since.
Perry has remained with the band since its comeback, and has continued to perform guitar, vocal, and songwriting duties. In 2005, he released his first bonafide solo record, which was self-titled. His latest non-Aerosmith project is a personal line of hot sauces, entitled Joe Perry's Rock Your World.
