Once a Rocker Always a Rocker: A Diary

On the Road with The JOE PERRY PROJECT in the Big 80’s. The Untold Story, Unveiled in Amazing Detail.

I was 29 years old in February 1982 and living in my parents’ basement. I worked at my father’s stereo shop. A week later I unexpectedly became the lead singer of a famous hard rock band. Suddenly I was touring America and preparing to cut an album for a major label. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry needed a new singer for his Joe Perry Project and I got drafted.

For me it was like winning the lottery. Much better though, because lotteries only pay cash. For the next two years I would be experiencing things in life that money just can’t buy. Living on the road with a beloved rock star, playing adventurous, unbridled hard rock on big stages to young crowds, signing autographs, finding romance and partying with my idols. I was on top but…

Since quitting Aerosmith, Joe Perry was bottoming out. Health failing, marriage falling apart and deeply in debt. In order to stay one foot ahead of the tallyman, Joe jumped into a Dodge van and hit the road, taking me and a few other newbies along on a mad dash across North America and beyond. Taking any gig he could get.

I kept a daily diary of the entire journey. Beginning on February 23, 1982, the day I got the phone call asking me to audition for Joe. Twenty-eight months later on Saturday May 12, 1984, the final entry details my last day on tour with the Project.

The very next morning Aerosmith would reunite for the first time, and go on to become America’s most successful hard rock band.

Against a backdrop of early 80’s pop culture, the Project and I encounter groupies, Chicken McNuggets, the border patrol, VCRs, Bolivars, tv stars, ATMs and something called Buffalo Wings all for the very first time.

We tour three countries in three days, go to bizarre parties, get busted in Disneyland, hook up with Playboy Bunnies, get arrested in Florida, destroy hotels, watch ourselves on MTV, count our change for food, laugh our butts off and rock the house every night. This is a fast moving, authentic account written as it went down all around me. Inside scoops, weird stories, salacious scandals and hundreds of astounding tales. How they all fit together in the Project’s story of survival is a dramatic and virtually untold chapter in rock history.

Cowboy Mach Bell is the lead singer and co-writer (with Joe Perry) of the 1983 Joe Perry Project album Once a Rocker Always a Rocker (MCA/Geffen). The recording has been re-released 18 times (and counting) in North America, Japan, Europe, Australia and Russia. This is the author's personal diary, kept during his years singing and touring with the Joe Perry Project during the early eighties.