New York – Aerosmith’s hard-rocking guitarist Joe Perry collapsed during a concert in New York and was said Monday to be in stable condition at a hospital.
Perry was performing Sunday night with his side project Hollywood Vampires, with features glam metal pioneer Alice Cooper on vocals and Hollywood star Johnny Depp as a fellow guitarist.
A video posted on social media by a fan showed Perry slow down and sit on the edge of the drum set as Cooper leads the band in a cover of Spirit’s 1969 song “I Got a Line on You.” Perry then exits behind an amplifier and stumbles as he disappears off-stage at the concert, which was one of the first at a new amphitheater on Coney Island, the historic beach entertainment complex on Brooklyn’s coast.
“Thanks to all of the fans reaching out and asking about Joe. He is stable right now, with family and is under the best care,” a statement on Perry’s social media accounts said.
Alice Cooper also said on Twitter that the Aerosmith guitarist was “stable.” The band kept playing, although without songs on which Perry would have taken a signature role.
Hollywood Vampires formed last year to play covers of songs by deceased rockers. After putting out an album, the supergroup performed a tribute to late Motorhead frontman Lemmy at this year’s Grammy Awards before embarking on the tour.
Perry, 65, raised in a small town in Massachusetts, made his name with his heavy guitar to complement the vocal cord-straining Steven Tyler on hits such as “Dream On,” “Sweet Emotion” and “Walk This Way.” Aerosmith was notorious for wild parties, although Perry in a 2014 interview with AFP said the rock life never appealed to him and he generally stayed in monogamous relationships with women.
“I was the odd man out because I wasn’t into that kind of lifestyle. But I was always a loner anyway, so it didn’t bother me much,” he said.
