(Credit: KaddiSudhi)
Thu 22 January 2026 19:30, UK
It’s a special feeling when a musician gives you goosebumps, or that inexplicable emotional reaction that makes you want to scream about them from the rooftops, and for Joe Perry, there was only one other guitarist who made him feel that way.
When Perry first met Jeff Beck, he couldn’t believe his luck. The Aerosmith guitarist had already been following him for a while, an avid frequenter of his shows and another “kid in the audience” who truly believed he was in the presence of legendary talent.
Back then, Perry hadn’t known they’d form a close and personal bond, nor would he know that it was a relationship that would last right up until Beck’s unfortunate passing. Perry couldn’t believe how someone so explosive on stage could be so humble and kind behind the scenes, a realisation that dawned on him the first time he was lucky enough to actually meet him.
According to Perry, it was a defining moment because he’d been a fan for such a long time. He was just a teenager during the first Beck tour, and one time, he waited by the stage door for him to come out. Perry had heard mixed things about Beck’s reputation, some saying that he was a bit “moody” or standoffish, which is why the guitarist hadn’t really known what to expect as he waited for him to emerge from the mysterious back door.
He was also the only one there, waiting, so Beck could have easily dismissed him when he finally did emerge, but to Perry’s surprise, he was nothing but kind and gracious. As he recalled to Guitar World, “I told him he was the best in the world, and that was the first time I met him. I know he doesn’t remember it because I asked him about it many years later. I always think about that first time that I shook his hand, before Aerosmith, when I was just one more kid in the audience.”
This unpredictability is a big reason why Perry became drawn to him in the first place. On stage, he never knew what he was going to do, and one minute he’d be playing the most basic thing, before suddenly shifting elsewhere and baffling the entire audience. It’s a difficult thing to master as a guitar player – to constantly keep the audience on their toes – and it doesn’t always work in the way that guitarists want it to.
But with Beck, there was always that wow factor, where he thrived on these moments of pure surprise. Perry described this once, saying that Beck would lead you to believe he was going somewhere specific, only to play something completely different and head in another direction: “He would stand there, and every once in a while he’d do one little thing, and [it’s like] ‘how the fuck did he do that?’”
He went on, “He’d do something that would blow Eddie Van Halen away, just for a second, just so you’d know who’s the boss.”
On his character, he also praised his sense of humour, and that “to see him play, I still have trouble believing that what’s coming from this guy’s hands is in my ears.” Elsewhere, he even went so far as to say he was more unique than anyone else, and that’s saying a lot, considering that Perry also adored people like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
What especially stumped Perry was that there was nothing special about the instruments he chose – it all came from him. Whenever he played, whether on stage or in the studio, he picked up the most basic of instruments and tore them apart; it was all pure intuition. And it’s something that Perry picked up on in his teenage years when something about him made him want to follow in the same footsteps.
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