Darren Hurst had just finished five years’ work with Peter Frampton when he got the call to tech for Aerosmith’s Las Vegas residency in 2019. Since then he’s become Joe Perry’s most trusted ally.
Joe enlisted Darren to catalogue his 600-strong guitar collection, rebuild his rig, and join him for tours with Aerosmith, the Hollywood Vampires, and The Joe Perry Project. These are Darren’s top tips for sounding like Joe Perry…
SPONTANEITY IS KING
It’s just like having a paint palette, but Joe never paints the song the same way twice. That is the thing I love most about working for him, but it’s also the most difficult. It’s cool, because it’s real, and it’s raw, and it’s alive. It centres around that edge of calamity. Sometimes it’s this beautiful, chaotic dance, where any minute it can fall off the rails, but it doesn’t. 95 times out of 100 it’s amazing. But you’ll get a night where something explodes and now you’re running around with your hair on fire, ten minutes into a two and a half-hour show!
The setlist doesn’t come out till 20 minutes before the show, right when I’m tuning everything. I’ve got 54 guitars in five vaults – 24 I consider main show guitars, and two vaults of other things he can call for, and every guitar’s got a backup. Some days, he’ll just decide that he wants to lean on hollow bodies, or he wants to play Les Pauls. He’s been on a Strat kick recently. You never know which way he’s going to go. He’ll lean is usually the silver Gretsch, although the last two shows, he wanted the burnt Strat. I’m also managing wireless for all these guitars. He could call for something that doesn’t have a pack on it, and then it’s a scramble.
