Joe Perry And Johnny Depp On Aerosmith Vocals

Groups that have spent one to three decades branding their mainstay with the use of "one" lead vocalist usually have a difficult time convincing fans to punch into the CD cuts featuring Billy the bass player or Jacinda from percussions. Bon Jovi will forever be Jon. Foreigner was once spelled Lou Graham. I can't imagine anybody but Robert Plant stretching notes from the Atlantic ocean to the Red Sea then calling it Led Zeppelin. Having been blessed or tortured by being a band of "one" doesn't steal from the other music maker's whose vocal harmonies can easily switched out for the lead spot: The Eagles, Three Dog Night, ZZ Top, KISS with Gene and Paul with an occasional salt and peppering from Ace and Peter. Would you tap into an Aerosmith cut if Joe Perry was given the opportunity to sing? That's like asking for an Eddie Van Halen reaction. What if Rob Thomas offered the microphone to a different member of Match Box 20? Do groups instantly lose that signature sound? Let me set you even more. RollingStone Magazine updates us on Joe Perry's appearance up front. But first you've got to understand where the song comes from... Politics doesn't come up a lot in Aerosmith songs, and that's just as Joe Perry likes it. But the guitarist has been outraged by the story of African warlord Joseph Kony, whose Lord's Resistance Army has been widely condemned for abducting thousands of children as soldiers and sex slaves in and around Uganda. Perry learned of the atrocity as a result of documentary footage that has gone viral (Jason Russell's Kony 2012), and found himself deeply inspired by the documentary filmmakers behind it. Perry sings "Freedom Fighter" himself, growling across jagged layers of rock guitar of the documentarians he calls "freedom fighters." Kony has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. In the song, Perry attacks the warriors behind him who are kidnapping children and spreading death: "The guns you carry and the bombs you make / Cause too many tears, too many hearts to break." It's one of two songs on Music From Another Dimension! to feature Perry on lead vocals. Actor Johnny Depp and producerJack Douglas are on background vocals. Bassist Tom Hamilton calls the track "a blazing rock song." "We don't really get into politics and stuff," says Perry, "but I felt so strongly about this guy [Kony], and the freedom fighters that are out there who do so much good by going to the front lines with cameras and tape recorders. They're freedom fighters, and it was a tip of the hat to those kind of people. I was really so moved." The final song is stripped down hard rock, with ricocheting guitars and keyboards."The hardest thing was picking the lyrics because I wrote so many verses for it," says Perry. "The music came as an afterthought because it had to have the drive and the power. I didn't really care if it sounded like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith or what – it had to have the drive to capture the freedom fighter thing." Check out the song