For Joe Perry, quitting Aerosmith in 1979 was something that would’ve happened even if his then-wife Elyssa Jerret hadn’t poured a glass of milk over bassist Tom Hamilton’s wife, Terry Cohen, backstage at the World Series Of Rock in Cleveland. Elyssa had already proven unpopular within the Aerosmith camp, and with Steven Tyler in particular, whose dislike was spelled out within a few particularly scathing lines in the band's 1975 hit Sweet Emotion. But it was when Cohen threw a barb at Jerret backstage that hell really broke loose. Culminating in Tyler telling Perry to "control his woman", the row caused a furore between the band members so severe that it led directly to Perry’s departure, but the way the guitarist sees it, it had been a long time coming.
“If I’d stayed in the band, the same thing would have happened,” Perry told Classic Rock’s Dave Everley. “There would have had to be a dose of reality [for things to change]. I would had to have woken up sober and gone: “I need to take some time off.” We were playing stadiums, headlining all these huge shows. We could have taken a vacation, then reassembled and come back together. But we were so used to doing this tour-album-tour-album thing, it drove us into the ground.”
