When Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and singer Steven Tyler hooked up with British star Yungblud to create the recently released One More Time EP, the whole experience of recording this new music was a world away from the days when Aerosmith were starting out in the ’70s.
The EP features four new songs, including the hit My Only Angel, along with a cover of the 1976 Aerosmith classic Back In The Saddle.
In a new interview with MusicRadar, Perry describes how these tracks were written and recorded.
“Music has changed so much,” Perry says. “When we were working with Yungblud, there wasn’t a single song that we did where we actually all played together, you know?”
What Perry means is that this EP wasn’t done in the old school manner, where bands got in a room and jammed for hours.
“We wrote the songs in pieces,” Perry says. “We’d piece it together. Not that he [Yungblud] can’t do it the old way. I mean, his band kicks ass! But if you can’t get everybody together, live and in the studio, why let that get in the way of your creativity?”
As open-minded as Perry is, doing things the modern way is undoubtedly different than the way he and Tyler did things with Aerosmith.
“The experience of having to set up and play live in the studio, that’s the old way to do it,” Perry says. “Maybe that’s what Yungblud will do with his band. Maybe they’ll say, ‘If we wanna play like an old school rock ‘n’ roll band, that’s how we’re gonna record.’ But I don’t think he’s ever recorded on tape, but that’s okay because the creativity is so huge.”
To that end, Perry says that it’s not about how you do it, but what you bring to the table when you do it.
“The way you approach things, you can look at it by shaking your head, walking away and saying, ‘This isn’t real rock ‘n’ roll. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.’ Or you can look at it another way’”
“But with Yungblud they record everything on computers. It’s just how it is now. Everybody records like that now.”
These thoughts have led Perry to a final destination of sorts, one that merges his old-school sensibilities with modern tech.
“Now, unless you wanted to go to tape for old time’s sake, you just record right to the computer,” he says, “It wasn’t like that coming up, but we’ve done it the new way quite a bit now, so it was a lot of fun.”
