Alice Cooper On Joe Perry Collapse: “I Think He Was Exhausted.”
40cg.com
One Scary Moment
It was a huge shock to all of us when we found out that Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry collapsed backstage during his July 10 show with the Hollywood Vampires in Coney Island, New York. He was immediately brought to Coney Island Hospital before he was transferred to the Columbia Presbytarian. Days later, it was found out that the health scare was due to ‘a combination of dehydration and exhaustion.’
Bandmate Alice Cooper shared his thoughts on that scary moment when he sat down with the Rolling Stone magazine for an interview.
“It scared the hell out of me. The lyrics to [‘Raise the Dead’], the first song we played that night, go, ‘Cardiac, heart attack … they never feared the reaper,’ and I look around the stage and he’s gone. He was lying behind an amp on his back, and I went, ‘Oh, my God.’ We didn’t know what happened until after the show.”
He further added:
“Aerosmith does two shows a week, but we were on our eighth show in nine days, and I’m used to working like that. I’m used to working an hour and 40 minutes or two hours, five nights a week. I was in shape and so was Johnny and everybody else. I think Joe was not ready for that kind of pace. We were doing 25 to 30 songs with no break. You’re in fourth gear, and there’s no 24-hour resting period. I think it just caught up with him. He finally got up there onstage, dehydrated. And I think he was exhausted. He told me the night before he hadn’t eaten in two days. I said, ‘Man, you’ve got to know when to sleep. You’ve got to know when to eat on a tour.’ I think it just finally got to him. It was not a heart attack; it was pure exhaustion. They checked his heart and said his heart was actually very strong.”
We’re glad Joe Perry is now back on stage with The Hollywood Vampires and rockin’ out once more.