In a new interview on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry talked about the main reason behind writing classic songs.
He revealed how he established a “writing paradigm” with bandmate Steven Tyler in the early days, using 1974’s “S.O.S. (Too Bad)” as an example to explain the process.
He said:
“Steven and I shared an apartment for most of a year. Our basic paradigm for writing is him playing drums and me playing guitar.
“He’s a really inventive drummer – that’s why his singing is so percussive. It takes him that extra length of time to write lyrics because he likes to use words that sound almost like a percussive kinda thing.
“He would play the drums and I’d play guitar, and he’d throw some weird backbeat in there, and I’d find a note to go with it, and we’d play back and forth like that.
“We’d have a cassette player running and he would start singing along. That’s how that song [‘S.O.S.’] came together. We were set up in the living room with a little drum kit and a little amp, and definitely, the melody and the flow for the song came out of that, that afternoon.”