“I said, 'We don't do that. We don't steal stuff.' I always felt bad about it”: How Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry acquired Jeff Beck's fuzz pedal - and what he did to pay him back

Back in the early ’70s, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry got a nasty surprise after seeing one of his biggest heroes, Jeff Beck, in concert. On his way home after the gig, Joe realised that a new fuzz pedal he’d been given that night had just been stolen from Beck!

But as Joe tells tells MusicRadar, he did make it up to Jeff many years later…

The theft of Beck’s pedal happened around the time that Aerosmith signed to Columbia Records in 1972.

As Joe recalls now: “We had a little bit of cash to get tickets to see Jeff play, which would have been after Rod Stewart left his band. And as we were driving home from the gig, our new road manager pulled out this Colorsound [Tone Bender Fuzz] that he’d snatched from Jeff’s road box.

“I said, 'Where did you get that?’ He said, 'Well, there were like four or five of them in this box. I thought I'd give it to you.'

“I said, 'We don't do that. We don't steal stuff.' I was pretty pissed off about it, you know?

“But before I had a chance to try and send it back to Jeff, it got stolen from me. I shouldn't have had it anyway, and the bottom line is that I always felt bad about it.”

It was many years later, after Joe had become friends with Jeff, that he was able to pay him back by giving him an original Klon Centaur - known as the holy grail of overdrive pedals.

“I saw Jeff playing one time and he was using a Klon,” he says. “It was the one with the brushed aluminium case.

“Being from Boston, near where the guy who makes them is from, I had a couple of Klons. Brad [Whitford, Aerosmith co-guitarist] and I were some of the first guys to get our hands on those. I had three or four original ones.

“So, at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, when Jeff was inducted, we played Train Kept A-Rollin' and it was a lot of fun. I took one of my original Klons, told Jeff the story, and gave him one of my Klons, an original one.”

Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page & Metallica - Train Kept A-Rollin (Live at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2009) [HD] - YouTube

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Joe now believes that this pedal may be included in the forthcoming auction of Beck’s guitars, amps and other items of gear.

Billed by auctioneers Christie’s as simply Jeff Beck: The Guitar Collection, the event is staged in London on 22 January.

Joe says that this pedal can be easily identified. “It probably has an Aerosmith sticker on the bottom of it because anything in the Aerosmith inventory gets a sticker with a serial number,” he explains. “So if one of those comes up for sale, that's the story! And there's a little bit of mojo in that particular one.”