December 2014 update: Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry recently released a special four-song E.P. called Joe Perry’s Merry Christmas, and he’s now premiered a music video for one of its tracks. Joe's rendition of Run Run Rudolph debuted at Billboard.
--- end of update ---

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry sings lead vocals on Freedom Fighter from the Aerosmith 2012 album Music From Another Dimension! at The Forum concert in Inglewood, CA July 30, 2014. Johnny Depp sang background vocals on the album track.

Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith, the name of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry’s new book is a play on the band’s classic ‘70s album which spawned such classic tracks as Back in the Saddle, Last Child and Combination. But it also serves to express how the musical community views this seasoned rock and roll star. Quite simply, Joe Perry epitomizes the word rocks.

Along with Steven Tyler, as one half of Aerosmith’s celebrated “toxic twins,” Perry, tracing the footprints of mighty musical brethren Keith Richards and Jimmy Page, personifies the blazin’ six-string renegade, firing off incendiary riffs heard ‘round the world while looking the part of perennial rock and roll badass.

Rocks, his new autobiography, penned with renowned author David Ritz, allows the Beantown axe meister to share his story on his own terms, pulling the curtain back to reveal the hard fought tales of Perry, rock and roll survivor, cocked and loaded.

Rock Cellar Magazine: There’s been a band bio, Walk This Way and autobiographies written by both Steven Tyler and Joey Kramer. What was the impetus behind you doing a book?

Joe Perry: Let me see…there’s a number of things. First of all, I had my own questions I wanted to answer about how we ended here. I get asked, as you can imagine, so many times, “How did you manage to keep the band together?” People also ask me a lot, “How did you manage to have a marriage that’s lasted this long in that business?” Then there’s a list of questions that people ask and then there are things that people just don’t know about like the Collins years (Tim Collins, Aerosmith’s former manager).

People see the little bits and pieces and the press kind of wants to just put the juicy stuff out there about Seven and I. Recently, somebody actually asked me if the band was still together (laughs) or how do I deal with Steven?

The perceptions about this band that are out there are so confused. A lot of stuff that was in that book, Walk this Way, was so wrong.

Our manager at the time (Tim) Collins edited the book before we saw it and we didn’t know that.

At the end of it all there were a lot of things going on when that book was going on so it wasn’t like we were completely focused on it. So with my new book, Rocks, I wanted to set the record straight from my perspective on everything that went down.

The public thinks, “Yeah, they’re a bunch of drug addicts that cleaned up and got it all back together again and it was just amazing.” There’s much more to it than that. If anybody’s interested, the story behind all that went down even fascinates me…how we managed to get 40 years under our belt and are still going strong.
- See more at: http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2014/11/07/joe-perry-rocks-the-interview-aerosmith-memoir/#sthash.SNYgNHp1.JM4U0p7l.dpuf