Aerosmith star Joe Perry says it’s still a thrill for him to make records the old-fashioned way – which is how it happened when another of his bands, the supergroup Hollywood Vampires, cut their version of a David Bowie classic.
It was in 2012 that Perry formed Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper on vocals and Johnny Depp on rhythm guitar.
Their second album Rise was released in 2019, featuring a cover of Bowie’s anthem ‘Heroes’. They cut the track at the very same Berlin facility where Bowie had recorded the original in 1977, Hansa Tonstudio.
Perry tells MusicRadar that this was Johnny Depp’s idea.
“We did a cover of Heroes when we were in Berlin,” Perry says. “Johnny wanted to go into the studio where Bowie recorded his version.
“It turned out that we had a day off, and the studio was open. So we went in, set up, and it was one of those older studios, which had a huge room.
“The whole band could set up and play. We got plenty of isolation, everyone could see each other, and we could play like a real band.
“We’d been playing ‘Heroes’ live, so it sounded pretty good. And rhe engineer said, ‘How would you guys like to record? Directly to the cutting machine?’”
This was music to Perry’s ears.
“We looked at each other, and we knew what the engineer meant, and we said, ‘Holy shit! That means that we’ve gotta play it perfect because there’s no overdubbing here.’”
This was a challenge that Perry and his cohorts were willing to accept. “That’s how people used to do it,” he shrugs. “Miles Davis and all those guys, they’d just record right to the vinyl. And I was fascinated by that. So I got that feeling in my stomach – butterflies for a few minutes.
“It was a little bit of a shocker, but we had some good takes already, so we went in and cut it directly to the acetate. It sounded about as good as anything can in Analog Land.”
It was an experience that reminded Perry of recording the first Aerosmith album back in 1972.
“We used to call it ‘red light blues’,” he laughs. “Aerosmith’s first album was on a 16-track, and we had to play it so the song sounded right and get a good take.
“You could go in and do some overdubs. You could fiddle with the song a little bit. But it was really about getting a take that had what you were looking for.
“But still, we had 16-track tape. It wasn’t like The Beatles, who had 4-track and actually had to mix stuff as they went so that they could overdub.
“Back then, they had to mix things and think about how they wanted it to sound at the end,” he says. “They did that while they were still in the middle of cutting tracks!”
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