Joe Perry

“It seems ridiculous that you can be in one state with your driver's license and buy a firearm, and then in the next state it is totally illegal. There are real problems to that, but as soon as you bring up the subject and say 'gun control,' it sets a red flag.”

“I don't think there's anything anybody's doing that the Beatles didn't at least try at some point.”

“Describing certain sounds, there's a common language that guitar players have.”

“It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.”

“I really didn't like 'Done With Mirrors.' I really didn't like 'Just Push Play.' Then there are other records I really think were good for their time, like 'Toys and Rocks.'”

“For years I've wanted to find some guys that I could work with, because I realized a long time ago that I can do a lot of things other than Aerosmith.”

“After a while, no matter how much you love any pop song, you're going to get tired of it. That's the way it is with any entertainment. It's good when you first hear it or see it, you like it for a while, then it gets old. It gets chewed up and spit out and it's done.”

“'Back In The Saddle' - I never realised what a good riff that was, or at least how much it satisfied me. And when we play it live, it comes across much better than I ever expected it to.”

“Whenever I hear somebody cover a song, I don't like to hear it stray too far from the original. I like to hear some of the new energy that a band will put into it, but you kind of want to hear some of the basic parts of the song. I mean, that's what makes it the song that you like.”

“I love Indian food - it's my favourite cuisine. I love the mixture of spices and the subtle flavours. It's really erotic; the spices are so sensuous.”

“I'm turned off by the groupie thing. I'm a romantic; I like finding the right woman, and if it works, it works.”

“If you get satisfaction out of playing music and entertaining people and it makes you feel right, then go for it.”

“It's so important for people to pay attention to history and learn from it, because it's the only thing we've got that's going to help us figure out where we are going. Especially the way things are manipulated in the press today. You have to sort through so much stuff to figure out what is real and what is not. It gets harder every day.”

“For me, L.A. was, and is, a very creative place to be.”

“Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.”

“The bottom line is fans just want to hear a good song. Some people will look underneath to see who wrote it, but they just want to hear a good song. And if they don't hear it, they're not going to buy it just because you wrote it.”

“I'm a Republican, but I'm a Republican from the old school. I was taught that you get what you put into it. You can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough at it, and you can earn your place. That's the old way.”

“I've been into guns ever since I was a little kid, and the ones that fascinate me most are the black powder guns that people used back in the 17 and 1800s.”

“The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers' fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.”

“That's what I love about music. It's immediate. There's a connection whether you are playing at Hyde Park or Chicago, and it's been happening since the beginning of time and the troubadours.”