You might think of Aerosmith as the ultimate rock and roll bad boys, but when it comes to politics, at least one of the legendary Boston-based rockers is a bit more conservative. In a new interview, guitarist Joe Perry expresses his frustration with the current political climate, describing his beliefs as a throwback to an earlier Republican doctrine.
"I was taught that you get what you put into it," Perry tells
Noisecreep.
"You can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough at it, and you can earn your place. That’s the old way. Now, it’s all meshed together and you can barely figure out one side from the other".
Perry isn’t dogmatic about his Republican point of view, naming Democrat John F. Kennedy as his favorite president. "Look, I didn’t believe in everything Kennedy said or did, but you believed in your heart that he was really there and he was going to stand up for what he believed in," he observes. "That’s what is most important. Today they say one thing one day, and another thing another day. You can’t figure these guys out".
The guitarist says politics has become more about branding than ideas. "The bottom line is I’m a definite old school Republican and you can put that in there," Perry states adamantly. "I was one of the few people that came out for McCain and got a lot of sh-t for it. There’s an awful lot of people out there in L.A. that were jumping up and down for Obama that aren’t right now. It’s just what it is".
"So much of this stuff is politicizing, what the media does is so much about selling a product. It makes me kind of nuts. This band has always has had a policy we’re all pretty much on the same page when new start talking politics. We all came up in that era when you were taught that can do anything you set your minds to and by God we walked on the moon, just like JFK said we would".
Aerosmith are slated to release "Music From Another Dimension" on Nov. 6.
Thanks to UltimateClassicRock for the report.
