Gibson Joe Perry Les Paul Guitar

Anthony Joseph "Joe" Perry (born September 10, 1950) is the lead guitarist, backing and occasional lead vocalist, and contributing songwriter for the rock band Aerosmith. He was ranked 48th in the Rolling Stone's list - The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

The paternal side of Perry's family are Portuguese, originally from Madeira. His grandfather changed the family's name from Pereira to Perry upon arriving in the United States of America. His maternal side is Italian, more specifically Neapolitan.

Perry was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts and grew up in the small town of Canton, Massachusetts. There, his father was an accountant and his mother a high school gym teacher and later an aerobics instructor. She later retired to Arizona when Perry's father died in 1975. Perry also attended the prep school Vermont Academy, a boarding school of about 230 students in Saxtons River, Vermont.

During Joe Perry's early years he formed a band with Tom Hamilton called The Jam Band. After meeting with Steven Tyler, Joe, Tom, Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer eventually joined and the band became Aerosmith. While initially dismissed as Rolling Stones knock-offs, the band came into its own during the mid-1970s with a string of hit records. Chief among these successes were Toys in the Attic (1975) and Rocks (1976), thanks largely to the prevalence of free-form, album-oriented FM radio. The group also managed hit singles on the AM dial with songs like "Dream On," "Same Old Song and Dance," "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way."

During this time, Perry and vocalist Steven Tyler became known as the "Toxic Twins" for their notorious hard-partying and drug use. Hard core drug dealers made a cash grab following Aerosmith around the country knowing there would be an unlimited supply of customers. Aerosmith's crowd in these days earned the nickname "The Blue Army", so called by the band after the seemingly endless amount of teenagers in the audience wearing blue denim jackets and blue jeans. The audience was abundantly male with extremely long hair.

Following Rocks, the group began to stumble - drug use escalated and the creative process became hampered by strained relationships within the band. They managed another hit record in 1977 with Draw the Line, on which Perry sang lead vocals on the track "Bright Light Fright," considered by some to be one of the album's highlights. A fall of '77 tour was scheduled, but as the crowds got more dangerous, violence followed. A cherry bomb was thrown onstage in Philadelphia at The Spectrum in October 1977, injuring both Perry and Tyler.

Summer of 1979 saw the band headline over Van Halen, Ted Nugent, AC/DC and Foreigner during the world music festival concerts. An argument backstage in Cleveland resulted in Joe Perry's wife throwing a glass of milk at Tom Hamilton's wife. This would prove to be the turning point that saw Perry quit Aerosmith, taking a collection of unrecorded material with him, which would later become the basis of his Let the Music Do the Talking album.

By the end of the year, Perry had formed his own band - The Joe Perry Project. Their debut record, Let the Music Do the Talking, reached #47 on the Billboard album charts, selling 250,000 copies domestically. While sales and reviews were respectable the group mainly thrived as a live act. It managed to do so even after its second album, I've Got the Rock'n'Rolls Again, went largely ignored.

In the end, the Project never solidified a lineup; all three studio releases would feature a different lead vocalist and the entire roster was replaced before their final effort (1983's Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker.) Even a brief stint with fellow Aerosmith exile, rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford, failed to ignite things again and the group found themselves with minimal label support by 1984.

A compilation album, The Music Still Does the Talking: The Best of the Joe Perry Project, was released by an Australian Indie Record label in 1999.

From 2001 to present, Aerosmith has been heavily active in the music scene, and has toured every year.

In 2006, Perry performed alongside Steven Tyler for a three-song medley ("Dream On", "Walk This Way", "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing") with the Boston Pops Orchestra as part of a nationally-televised event to celebrate the Fourth of July in Boston, Massachusetts.