Joe Perry on new Aerosmith LP, Idol appearance

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: Joe Perry provided some details on Aerosmith’s nearly completed studio album in an interview posted on rollingstone.com. Confirming his enthusiasm about once again working with producer Jack Douglas, who helmed the band’s rough & ready early classics, Perry said, “This was supposed to be the record that we did with him five years ago, but we ran out of time so we did the Honkin' on Bobo blues record instead. We did that record kind of the same way we did this one, which is we all got in a room with Jack, as we used to back in the 1970s, and just hammered stuff out.” Describing the new LP as the “polar opposite” of the slick, overloaded Just Push Play, Aerosmith’s last proper studio album, the guitarist revealed that he’d come up with some of the riffs he plays on the album 20 years ago—“they've been kind of bubbling under. Steven and I would look at each other and go, ‘We gotta use that one,’ and they'd always end up somewhere. A lot of these riffs that we love, that are really part of our inner Aerosmith lexicon, are now songs, finally. So the whole process was different. The record's gonna sound modern and hi-fi. We're not sitting around going, ‘We're gonna do Night in the Ruts again or Rocks again.’ We want to make a modern sounding record, but the main thing is the energy that the early records had.” Perry also said Aerosmith would perform their new single on the May 23 season finale of American Idol. (5/11a)