“I brought my guitar, there was Rick, an engineer and the guys from Run DMC. One was late because they towed his rental car!”: Joe Perry on the recording of Walk This Way
Joe Perry has opened up about the now-legendary collaboration between Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. that turned Walk This Way into one of the most important crossover hits in rock history.
Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Perry shares how the unlikely team-up came together at a pivotal moment for both artists. By the mid-’80s, Aerosmith’s career had stalled, while Run-D.M.C. were rising stars in hip-hop. With some convincing from producer Rick Rubin, the two camps ended up in the studio together.
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“It was a lot of fun and definitely a high point of our career,” Perry says of the 1986 remake, which not only reignited Aerosmith’s commercial fortunes but also helped introduced rap to a wider audience.
At the time, the guitarist was already getting an education in hip-hop at home: “My son, who was 11 or 12, was blasting it in his room. I dug the groove. It was really basic music; it’s all about rhythm and guys standing on a street corner with a boombox,” says Perry.
So when Rubin proposed linking up with Run-D.M.C., Aerosmith were game.
“Aerosmith was up for anything. That’s why our music goes from hard rock to almost heavy metal to blues to ballads. We thought, ‘Let’s try it!’”
The recording session itself, however, started off a little more chaotic than one would expect.
“We were, I think, in North Carolina,” Perry recalls. “They sent us plane tickets, and me and Steven [Tyler] went to Queens. I brought my guitar, and there was Rick, an engineer and the guys from Run-D.M.C., and one was late because they had towed his rental car. [Laughs] He was flipping out because he didn’t know what he was gonna do about it, but Rick kept saying, ‘Listen, you’ve got Aerosmith here. Focus. We’ll take care of the car later. Don’t worry about it.’ After that, everybody settled down.”
From there, the track quickly took shape: “We got the drum beat down, which was the common ground for the song – from our version and theirs. I think Rick said, ‘You’re using the drums to rap to anyway; you might as well take it all the way. Let’s try it.”
The guitarist also reveals how he ended up playing bass on the track, thanks to a surprise assist from some future hip-hop royalty.
“There were these three kids in the studio sitting on the couch… I didn’t know who they were, but they were cool guys and a little younger. We were listening to the mixdown, and Rick said, ‘I think we need to put a bass on it.’ We looked around the studio, and there were no basses, but one of the kids said, ‘My apartment ain’t too far, I got a bass there.’”
Those “kids” turned out to be the Beastie Boys: “He went to his apartment and was back in 15 minutes with a P-Bass or a Jazz. Anyway, I played the bass,” says Perry.
The post “I brought my guitar, there was Rick, an engineer and the guys from Run DMC. One was late because they towed his rental car!”: Joe Perry on the recording of Walk This Way appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
