Joseph Anthony Pereira (born September 10, 1950),[2] professionally known as Joe Perry, is an American musician best known as a founding member, guitarist, backing and occasional lead vocalist of the rock band Aerosmith.

At one point, his parents even tried enticing him with a promise that if he worked to get his grades up, he might be able to intern for a summer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.

However, Joe's academic struggles continued, and in his junior year, his parents made the decision to withdraw him from Hopedale and enroll him at an all-boys preparatory school, Vermont Academy.

It was his parents' hope that, with their son actually living at the school and being embedded in such an educational environment, he would be able to focus more on learning and bring his grades up to an acceptable college entry level.

"[13] The time Perry spent at Vermont Academy was vastly different from what his parents had envisioned for him, and it turned out to be an experience that would forever alter the trajectory of his life.

Many of them lived in major metropolitan cities like Los Angeles and New York, and unlike Perry, they had been living right in the middle of the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" culture of the late 1960s: "After vacations, guys would come back with bits and pieces of different cultures", Perry was quoted as saying in an interview with the Burlington Free Press.

"[14] His classmates introduced him to a whole new world, and he soon started discovering things like The Village Voice, the first underground newspaper to extensively cover American culture.

[18] Chief among these successes were their first hit single, "Dream On",[19] and early albums such as Toys in the Attic (1975) and Rocks (1976), thanks largely to the prevalence of free-form, album-oriented FM radio.

The band, hampered by heavy drug use and distracted by hobbies such as driving fast cars on the nearby parkways and shooting high-powered firearms in the building's attic, struggled to come up with material.

However, it was not as successful as their prior efforts, with the singles "Draw the Line" and "Kings and Queens" both charting in the Hot 100, but failing to crack the Top 40.

The album featured vocalist Ralph Morman, bassist David Hull and drummer Ronnie Stewart and went on to sell 250,000 copies.

Despite the poor sales, The Project went out on a final tour in support of the album, adding former Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford to the lineup.

[28] The following year, the band released their first album since re-uniting, Done with Mirrors, which was received favorably by critics but did not fare as well commercially, only going gold and failing to generate a hit single, aside from the rock radio cut "Let the Music Do the Talking", a remake of Perry's 1980 solo song.

After completing drug rehabilitation, Aerosmith went on to collaborate with various big-name songwriters (such as Desmond Child and Jim Vallance), producers (Bruce Fairbairn), A&R men (John Kalodner), and music video directors (Marty Callner and David Fincher) to launch their true comeback, with the successful multi-platinum albums Permanent Vacation (1987), Pump (1989), and Get a Grip (1993),[33] which were backed by many hit singles ("Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Angel", "Rag Doll", "Love in an Elevator", "Janie's Got a Gun", "What it Takes", "The Other Side", "Livin' on the Edge", "Cryin'", "Amazing", and "Crazy"),[34] popular music videos, and worldwide concert tours.

[38] Perry and Tyler resumed their friendship, again co-writing songs and performing very close together on stage, as well as vacationing together with their families after the conclusion of the Get a Grip Tour.

In 1998, Perry helped conceive the group's first number one single, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", with pop songwriter Diane Warren.

[42] In 2001, Aerosmith performed at the Super Bowl XXXV half-time show and released the platinum-certified album, Just Push Play, which included the Top 10 single "Jaded".

Critics also responded favorably; Rolling Stone magazine crowned it with three-and-a-half (out of five) stars, declaring "A Joe Perry solo joint?

On November 10, 2009, at a Joe Perry Project concert in New York City, Tyler made a surprise appearance, assuring the crowd he was not quitting Aerosmith and performed "Walk This Way" with the band.

The band supported the album with the Global Warming Tour, which lasted for much of summer and fall of 2012 and appearances on national television programs.

In January 2013, the single "Can't Stop Lovin' You" (a duet with country star Carrie Underwood) was released, and in February, it was announced that Perry and his songwriting partner Steven Tyler would be recipients of the ASCAP Founders Award at the society's 30th Annual Pop Music Awards on April 17[7] and that the duo would be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at a ceremony to be held on June 13.

[50][51][52] In the fall of 2013, Aerosmith extended their tour to Central and South America, including their first-ever performances in Guatemala, El Salvador and Uruguay.

This was followed by the Let Rock Rule Tour (featuring Slash with Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators as the opening act), which sent Aerosmith to 19 locations across North America from July 10 to September 12.

[60] Since 2015, Joe Perry has worked with Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp on the side project Hollywood Vampires, which released their eponymous debut album in September 2015 and performed at the 58th Grammy Awards on February 15, 2016.

The album comprised ten tracks of new material and included guest musicians Johnny Depp, Robin Zander, David Johansen, and others.

[71] In November 2018, Perry released the first single off Sweetzerland Manifesto, entitled "Quake", with Aerosmith bandmate Brad Whitford and Gary Cherone of Extreme on board.

Interspersed in the middle of the residency in July and August 2019, the band performed at a festival in Minnesota and played a total of nine shows spread across three MGM venues in Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

[83] He is a huge fan of the early Fleetwood Mac, particularly their first lead guitarist, Peter Green, which explains the occasional inclusion of the FM classics "Stop Messin' Round" and "Rattlesnake Shake" in Aerosmith's sets.

He and Steven Tyler had the honor of inducting Led Zeppelin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and specifically stated that Aerosmith would not exist in its current form without them.

Perry immediately called Slash and bugged him for years, offering to pay more than the guitar's worth which had nearly tripled since Joe sold it.