Vancouver tunesmith Jim Vallance informs the Newt that Aerosmith’s Joe Perry is “not a liar”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 11, 2012

By Steve Newton

Yesterday I wrote a blog complaining that I couldn’t stand the new Aerosmith song, “Legendary Child”, which had just been released as a crappy video. The song was cowritten by Vancouver’s Jim Vallance, so I took guitarist Joe Perry to task for previously telling the world that Aerosmith’s next batch of material would be written by the band members themselves–like most of their classic tunes from the ’70s.

Then about an hour ago Vallance left a comment on the original blog which offers his side of the story. Check it out:

I’m not here to defend myself, but I would like to defend Joe Perry.

When Joe said there were no co-writers he believed that to be true. “Legendary Child” was written so long ago (1991-92) that Steven and Joe had completely forgotten about my contribution. They considered it a Tyler-Perry song.

I got an email from an Aerosmith fan a week before the song was released. That’s how I heard about it. So I contacted Aerosmith’s manager, Trudy Green. At first she didn’t believe me and gave me a rough ride on the phone. I emailed her the “basement tape” of the song as proof … me, Steven and Joe in my home studio, 20 years ago. That jogged some memories and everything got sorted out.

All of this to say, Joe Perry may have a terrible memory, but he’s not a liar.

I think it’s cool that Vallance stuck up for Perry, who in my opinion is a great guy and a helluva guitarist. And he didn’t even complain about me slagging “Legendary Child”.

In celebration of hugely successful tunesmiths doing the right thing, here’s a song Vallance cowrote with the Boston Bad Boys that does not suck in the least.

To hear the full audio of my interviews with Aerosmith’s Joe Perry from 1988, 1993, and 2010 subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with the legends of rock since 1982.