No More No More

We Now Return Your Perception of Reality to You - Until Next Time...

I cuddled in closer to Joe, burying my face deeper into his neck.  I didn't care that it was late in the morning in the middle of February.  I was comfortable.  I had finally gotten used to the largeness of the house and the small town-ness of Duxbury, Massachusetts.  It was quiet and peaceful and I loved it.

        It was July of nineteen-eighty four and things could not be happier.  Of course for things to be so great, there had to be hardships:

After the wedding, Aerosmith went to Japan, which also served as a kind of honeymoon for Joe and me.  Things started to go downhill from there, though.  The guys were snorting––or shooting, depending on what they had––half of Peru each night, it seemed, and for the next album, their manager actually had them all isolated in some building way out on the middle of nowhere so that they couldn't get any drugs whatsoever.  It was so depressing there, so I didn't stay there a whole lot.  I was there at night and sometimes when they were recording, but otherwise I was off working back at the old digs: Chessa.

        Other than that, Joe and I were happy.  Admittedly, I snuck in a few grams every week for the guys because I felt horrible at how awful they all looked.  Steven and I were still friends; we hadn't fought once, which was awesome.

        I got pregnant around April of nineteen seventy-seven.  I was nervous out of my mind until February of seventy-eight.

        In February (the boys moved out of the sad little building in November), I was holding the cutest damn baby the world had ever seen.  He had the brightest blue eyes one could imagine, and little tufts of black hair.  I loved him.

        Little Anthony absolutely adored his uncles.  Seriously.  I couldn't get him away from Brad or Steven or any of them!

        Because she caught the bouquet, Julia was next to get married.  Joey proposed sometime in December (after they moved out of the awful place where Draw the Line was cut), and Julia said yes yes yes!.  They were married one month after Anthony was born.  Jessica and Michael (who were now two, about) were fascinated with Anthony.

        After Night in the Ruts was cut and toured, Joe and Steven had a disagreement over God knows what, but Steven fired Joe and life seemed over.  I was devastated.

        The following years weren't good for any of us.  Steven replaced Joe (and Brad too, after he quit in nineteen eighty) and for the first time ever, Aerosmith didn't release an album for two years.

        We were all in quite a hard place, like the album says.  Joe formed the Joe Perry Project, but nothing really came of that.  I mean, they got their publicity because Joe was famous and all, but... Yeah.  They rehearsed all summer in the basement in seventy-nine.  They played probably ten tiny shows before Columbia signed them.

        And then things got really bad.  I went on the road with them, we took a bus.  We were gone for about six months, but I left.  Yeah, that's how bad it was.  You know why it was bad?  He blew six thousand dollars on heroin and brought it with him.  I kind of refuse to do that shit because it's horrible, and I tried to get him not to do it either.  Well, that didn't work.  So I left.

        The first three years of the new decade were terrible.  Joe was pissed that I was still friends with Steven, which resulted in many yelling matches that didn't end well.  The drugs were everywhere, even though we shouldn't be doing them––especially with a baby.  And Joe was doing more than ever.  That, and in eighty-one, Steven got in a motorcycle accident.

        They released three albums in that time period, the Joe Perry Project did.  The last one, Once A Rocker, Always a Rocker had, well, bombed.  Joe's little solo career was done for.  We spent a lot of time apart during those three years, nearly splitting several times.