Walk This Way by Geoff Edgers

Author:Geoff Edgers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

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Enter Leon Tsilis, national director for artists and repertoire at MCA Records. The label had just been taken over by former Eagles manager Irving Azoff, whose merciless approach—and his height (five-three)—had earned him the nickname “the poisoned dwarf.” Azoff had been shedding artists he had inherited and spending big money on new signings, including Joan Jett and Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb.

Tsilis accepted Collins’s invitation to Boston to meet Perry and to see the third version of the Joe Perry Project.

“I liked Joe Perry, believe me,” said Tsilis. “And I loved Aerosmith. Now, the thing was, they fucked themselves up on drugs. And nobody, no record label, wanted to have something to do with them.”

But Collins had good news. Perry, he told Tsilis, was cleaned up, not doing drugs anymore, and Tyler was going through the same program.

“And they’re both free agents,” said Tsilis. “So my eyes start lighting up.”

Was Perry clean? That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, depends on your definition of “clean.”

“Clean to us was not doing heroin, and to be honest, as I look back, it was a bit of a con, but not meant to be,” said Collins. “We kind of conned ourselves. I wasn’t a heroin addict, and you’ve got to remember, when I met Joe, I was a drinker. I was an Irish kid from Waltham who loved to drink, and I didn’t do cocaine until right around that time, and I never did opiates. So I thought that was clean.”

Collins left nothing to chance. Perry wasn’t just off drugs. He was on a health kick and working out at the gym. Longtime Aerosmith photographer Ron Pownall was brought in to snap shots of Perry pumping iron. Never mind that in the photos, the shirtless Perry is wearing jeans and a watch. Or that another picture—not released then, but put in Perry’s autobiography years later—shows the guitarist at a recording session with his trusty bottle of Jack Daniel’s next to him. Pownall’s photos were just the start.

What came next was a visit as choreographed as Swan Lake.

It started as soon as Tsilis got off the plane at Logan Airport.

Collins knew he could call on Mark Parenteau, the popular afternoon DJ on the only radio station that mattered, WBCN-FM, 104.1. “The Rock of Boston” was one of the country’s most influential stations, with programmers everywhere following its lead. WBCN was also intensely local. Peter Wolf, billing himself as the Woofa Goofa, did the overnight shift at the station in the late 1960s before breaking out as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band. And the station had done a live broadcast of Aerosmith’s 1973 gig at Paul’s Mall. Parenteau was particularly tight with Collins and Perry. They did drugs together, crashed at one another’s places. And now, Collins enlisted Parenteau to help Perry get a record deal.

When Collins picked Tsilis up at the airport, his assistant called Parenteau. By the time they got the record exec’s luggage and hopped in the limo, the plan had kicked into play.

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