Joe Perry explains why shows featuring albums in their entirety didn't work for Aerosmith

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Aerosmith's recorded their share of legendary albums that are packed with classic tracks, but unlike many of their peers, the band never really did one of those tours where they played one of their famous albums in its entirety. The reason? According to guitarist Joe Perry, it was just too boring.

Speaking to Kerrang, Perry says, "The closest we ever got to that was doing a version of Toys [In The Attic] front-to-back, but after we tried it a couple of times live, we realized that to maintain the energy of the show, we’d have to drop a couple of songs out. It wasn’t exciting enough, for me."

"There are other songs that people would rather get to hear than being able to say they saw that album played in full," he adds. "Any time you perform, you’ve got to treat it as the one time you get to play in front of that audience. You don’t know when you’re going to be back.”

And considering that Aerosmith's upcoming Peace Out tour is billed as their farewell trek, it seems unlikely the band will ever attempt that again.

Perry also tells Kerrang that, having been rocking for 50 years, he feels the ultimate era of rock music was — big surprise — the '60s and '70s.

"You lived and died by how you played onstage. You could go out there and have a great single that was on top of the charts, but if you couldn’t deliver a great show live, you’d be gone, because there were all these other bands that could," Perry say.

"It was about having your feet on the ground, standing in front of the fans, delivering."

Aerosmith’s Peace Out tour kicks off September 2 in Philadelphia.

Tuesday, May 23, 2023 at 1:00PM by Andrea Dresdale Permalink