Aerosmith’s Joe Perry Says COVID-19 Pandemic “Is As Close To World War As You Could Get”
With World War II ending in the mid 1940s, someone would have to be in their mid 80s at this point to be old enough to have any recollection of living through it.
But in a recent interview, Aerosmith guitarist, Joe Perry, compared the state of the world today during the coronavirus pandemic to conditions during a world war.
“I would say this is as close to a world war as you could get, in a lot of ways,” he said. “If you tick off the boxes, it is a world war. Basically, it has shut down the touring business for an indefinite period of time.”
Aerosmith’s Las Vegas residency was scheduled to resume May 20th but has been postponed along with everything else in the concert industry.
“If they somehow wanted to open the shows — and I doubt they would do it — we wouldn’t push our luck,” Perry said. “We also feel like we don’t want to be the ones responsible, the ones to say to people, ‘It’s okay to come in. Take your chances. Wear masks. Come in and rock out!’
“I don’t see 5,000 people in an arena or theater,” he continued. “It’s too contagious. It doesn’t take much to pass it from one place to another. It would take a lot to get me on a plane to Vegas at this point.”
“There’s a real lot they don’t know, even now,” Perry said. “Which really makes you scratch your head if they start opening certain things. It doesn’t make any sense to close everything down, but people have to do that social distancing and wearing gloves and masks. That’s the only thing we know we can do to fight it. I think that, really, people gotta use their common sense.”
