Perry: Page Wouldn’t Dish Tone Secrets, Chord

Guitar magazines are strange. Honestly, every month I prepare to be disappointed and once in a while I’m surprised – in a good way. That was the case with this month’s (April 2010) Guitar Player magazine, with Joe Perry on the cover. Good interviews with Joe and also Frank Gambali and Pete Anderson.

I mention that because today’s post involves the cover interview with Joe, specifically the last question of the interview which was: “There’s a video on YouTube of Aerosmith jamming on ‘The Immigrant Song’ with Jimmy Page. What did you take away from that?”

Huh? Aerosmith jamming with Jimmy Page on “The Immigrant Song?” Never heard of it, had to check it out.

The vids are below, but first here’s the first part of Joe’s response to the question (edited for brevity) – which I found funny and revealing:

“I remember when we first started rubbing elbows with…the English guys back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I always asked them about their tone or I’d say, ‘How did you play that?’ They kept that stuff very close to the vest. They keep their tone secrets to themselves.”

I found that funny because it’s Joe Perry and they wouldn’t even tell him what they were using? It’s not like they had a million gear choices back then – which I guess might have been why they were so coy, like getting an extra 5 mph out of a race car.

It’s interesting because it’s possible that just like rock ‘n roll started with “the English guys,” I guess the rockstar secretiveness about tone started with them too.

Next in his answer, Joe talks about that “weird” chord in “The Immigrant Song:”

“For me, that chord has the kind of mystique that the first chord on a ‘Hard Day’s Night’ has, where you go, ‘How the hell – what chord is that?’ You can get close, but I don’t know anybody who really has it down. So I asked him. Jimmy was very much like, ‘You should play it the way you want to play it.’ On the one hand you could go, ‘Wow, that’s great. He wants me to play it my way.’ And on the other hand I thought, Well, he’s really not going to give that chord away.”

I include that part of Joe’s response here because it shows Jimmy’s secretiveness even with a fellow rockstar, and because you can see it happening in the first video below. Joe is clearly asking Jimmy, Jimmy seems to be showing him something and saying something, and also seems like Joe never really nails the chord – though Brad may be a different story….

Below are the videos but before getting into them I want to say this: Spend enough time on Internet forums, and you’ll run across people who say tone-chasing is a waste of time, it’s all in the player’s hands, etc. Bull. Yes, the player’s hands are a large part of the next. But if the rest of the tone chain – that hard-won gear knowledge – wasn’t important, don’t you think Jimmy and his fellow guitar gods would’ve had no problem spilling the complete and truthful details decades ago?

Take 1
> Joe, Brad at 3:45 learning chord from Jimmy.

Take 2
> Best take of the whole tune.

Take 3
> Working on the ending, shows Steven’s control of the band.

Category: Brad Whitford, Jimmy Page/Zep, Joe Perry