Peppered Personalities–A Continuing Series

Including an Exclusive Interview with Aerosmith’s Joe Perry

By Molly S. Wales

Celebrities of all sorts—musicians, actors, athletes—are stirring up the bland world of stardom by stoking the fires of Spiceland, putting out salsas and hot sauces of their own design. Most of them don’t do it to make money; rather they donate some if not all of the profits to charities. And even those who keep the profits seem much more excited about the products than they do about the cash flow. What is it about fiery-foods that attract so many famous people? Is it the passion and zeal of fiery-food fans that matches the mania of fame? Or is it the products themselves, the flavors, the heat, the thrill of a mouthful of chile? Wherever the inspiration comes from, the celebrities listed below are feeling it. And, with a good variety of products, they’re using their notoriety to set us all on fire.

Perhaps one of the most famous celebrities-turned-chilehead is Paul Newman, known for his starring roles in movies such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Cool Hand Luke," "The Color of Money" for which he won an Oscar for best actor in 1986, and, most recently, "The Road to Perdition." But some might argue that Newman’s biggest claim to fame is his line of high-quality salad dressings, pasta sauces, popcorn, lemonade, and salsas and steak sauces, known as Newman’s Own. The products are distributed in all major grocery chains in the U.S. and can also be found in countries around the world including Iceland, Israel and Japan. And, even more impressive than the line’s success, is the over $150 million (one hundred percent of profits after taxes) that Newman’s Own has donated to educational and charitable organizations worldwide since it’s beginning in 1982.

As Newman himself has said, "It started as a joke and got out of control." Newman and his friend A.E. Hotchner used to fill old wine bottles with his homemade salad dressing and give them away to friends and neighbors as Christmas gifts. The dressing was so popular that eventually they decided, "What was good enough for their pals was good enough for the public." And so it began. Starting with the famous Oil & Vinegar Salad Dressing, Newman’s Own gave away $1 million to charity in its first year. And from there, with a concentration on all-natural, top-quality products, the line has grown and flourished with Hollywood smash hit success.

Newman’s Own has a line of Bandito Salsas that, according to the slogan, is "So good it oughta be outlawed." The original salsa comes in mild, medium and hot, plus, as it says at www.newmansown.com, "In his continuing efforts to please the ever-sophisticated palettes of his legions of salsa fans, Mr. Newman developed three additional salsa varieties: Roasted Garlic, Pineapple, and Peach." (The peach salsa contains diced peaches, brown sugar and jalapeño peppers.) And for you meat lovers out there, Newman’s Own also has a Steak Sauce: "Preferred by 9 out of 10 cows. We steak our reputation on it." Considering how loyally loved and well-respected the Newman’s Own products are, that’s a reputation you can trust.

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"One morning in the early 70’s, the Sauce Boss walked out of his house and found a 1933 vintage National steel guitar in his front yard. Years later he combined his blues with his hot sauce in a big pot of gumbo, made right on stage. Singing the recipe, he mixed his music and cooking together into a new medium." So goes the legend of Florida’s Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton, who has fed over 97,000 concert-goers since 1990. Jimmy Buffet has sung about him. He’s been interviewed on NPR, and CNN, the Food Network and Extra have covered his extravaganzas. Fans all over the country are begging him to "play and a’ sway’ with the gumbo" at their events. It’s not a surprise. Good blues mixed with good hot sauce—can you really go wrong?

The Sauce Boss’ magic potion, known as Liquid Summer Hot Sauce, features the Datil chile pepper (a cousin of the Caribbean habanero, but not as hot), plus tomatoes, vinegar, onions, mustard, honey, garlic, olive oil, and salt. It’s so good, says the Sauce Boss, "You could marinate your mother-in-law in this stuff!" He also has a Liquid Summer Habanero Hot Sauce for, according to www.sauceboss.com, "those who push the envelope of sensation to the threshold of pain; for the endorphin seeker, for the person with a problem," and a new "Hot Q" BBQ sauce as well. So, whether you’re attending one of his concert/gumbo feasts or throwing a blues fest of your own, the Sauce Boss will get you fired up. Think of it as doing the world a favor: "If we could forget our differences for a moment," he says, "sit down to the table, share some dinner, and treat each other like neighbors, maybe we could work some of this stuff out." World politics aside, at least you’ll feel better thanks to a full stomach and a hot sauce high.

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Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez once struck out seventeen Yankees in one game. Whether that fact makes you furious or overjoyed, you’ve got to admit that the guy is good. And for those of you who love spice as much as you love sports, he gets even better. With the help of Woolf Associates and PLB Sports, Inc., Pedro recently released Pedro Salsa, a Southwestern black bean and corn salsa carrying his name and likeness. Available in mild, medium and hot at www.plbsports.com and Boston area stores, the salsa helps raise funds for the Pedro J. Martinez & Brothers Foundation that provides financial grants to non-profit organizations in Boston and the Dominican Republic. Both PLB Sports and the all-star pitcher donate portions of the profits, with the hope of raising over $1 million for children, health care and education. Black bean and corn salsa on Fenway Park boiled peanuts? Anything’s possible in Bean Town.

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He’s an actor, director, musician, writer, art collector, humanitarian...and chilehead. Cheech Marin, best known as one half of the "Cheech and Chong" duo famous for their hilarious, counter-culture movies such as "Up in Smoke" and "Half Baked," has a food line with three gourmet hot sauces. The sauces are the products of a collaboration between Cheech and Figueroa Brothers, Inc., the masterminds behind Melinda’s Original Habanero Pepper Sauce and all the goodies that followed. Says president David O. Figueroa, Jr., "Making the Cheech a household name is no problem; making hot sauces for a true hot sauce lover and gourmand like Cheech is more difficult, but certainly not out of our reach. Cheech has exquisite taste and pushed our development team to new heights of flavors and textures. I can honestly say this is some of our best work."

The results are three gourmet sauces (available at www.thecheech.com) that are, to quote Cheech, "Waatsappenin!" Gnarly Garlic Habanero combines the hottest chile in the world with fresh carrots, onions, garlic and lime juice, perfect for spicing up Mexican and Italian meals. The unique Smokin’ Chipotle is made by mashing together jalapeño, cayenne, habanero and tabasco chiles, and then adding molasses, sugar cane vinegar and rum. According to the Melinda’s people, this sauce must be treated "like a fine wine—the older it gets the better it tastes." The last sauce, Cheech’s favorite, is the magical, medium-hot Mojo Mango, containing hand-picked mangoes which are pureed and then blended with habaneros. Whether he’s making movies, writing books or creating hot sauces, whatever Cheech graces with his attention comes out smokin’!

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Kinky Friedman is the author of seventeen mystery novels and the front man for the musical group the Texas Jewboys. He also dabbles in salsa, giving insatiable chileheads and helpless animals a good reason to celebrate. In an August, 2003 interview with editor Dave DeWitt, Friedman explained: "My new career as a salsa magnate began with a three-legged kitten named Lucky who needed rescuing." That one rescue led to the eventual establishment of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch near Medina, Texas. In order to fund the ranch, Kinky followed Paul Newman’s lead and, wrote DeWitt, "launched his third career with Kinky Friedman’s Private Stock salsas." Texans love salsa, after all, and with options like Politically Correct, Black Hat Edition, Lucky’s Lone Star Caviar, and Pickin’ and Grinnin’ Peach Salsa, the salsas are sure to raise enough money (Kinky donates all of his profits) to help out a lot of critters in need. For more on Kinky, the ranch and the salsas, see this Peppered Personalities story.

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After the photo shoot resulting in the candid shot on the cover, assistant editor Molly Wales interviewed Joe in his dressing room at Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque while KISS was performing on stage.

Molly Wales: I never would have thought that working for Fiery Foods & BBQ magazine would land me here, in an interview with you. This is so cool.

Joe Perry: Thanks.

MW: About a year ago, you did an interview with our editor, Dave DeWitt, in which you told him that your love of spicy foods developed as a young boy, when your grandfather introduced you to crushed red chile. But what was the trigger that inspired you to create Boneyard Brew?

JP: Well I’d been thinking about doing it for almost five years, and it was one of those things where I always said maybe I’ll do it next month, next month, next month. I actually called David Ashley [of Ashley Food Co.] almost five years ago when I started thinking about it. I’d been collecting hot sauces over the years—I have very eclectic taste. I mean I grew up in a really small town where the spiciest thing was crushed red pepper, but then as you start to travel a lot and you have a palette that likes to be thrilled, you discover Chinese food, and then Thai food, and as you travel to other cities in other countries you get to try so many different things. So as time went on, I started gathering hot sauces, and people would turn me on to this and that, and I’d travel to Jamaica and try the Caribbean flavors…and I started learning about what was so good about this stuff. So what happened was, I ended up kind of mixing my own sauces, you know, taking different things and blending them together because I wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted. So I was talking to David and he said, "Come on down to the factory and we’ll experiment with some different flavors," but I just never had the time to do it. So last year I decided I was going to have some time off, and the circumstances were right and we started mixing a few things. He started sending me some blends, and we started getting it together.

MW: I’m sure you’re aware of how many hot sauces are out there. It’s incredible.

JP: Yeah. I am a collector, and I do taste a lot of different sauces. I started finding a lot of generic tasting ones, you know. There are a lot of cool labels and lots of cool marketing, but very often what’s inside the bottle doesn’t live up to the label. And also there was the rage of the extract sauces—I’m a little more organic than that, that was a little bit too much. Every once in a while something will be good, but I don’t like a sauce that completely buries the flavor of the food. My kitchen is like most hot sauce people’s—you’ve got a variety, but you probably have five to ten of your favorites. And after a while, sorting through that whole wall of sauce, you can kind of tell, "Well I’ve tasted that one before." But it wasn’t about really trying to make something that was so unique, or that was going to all of a sudden blow out the door. I was going to put my name on it because it was something that I liked. And then you take it to the next step and want to share it with people. We have that same philosophy with our restaurant in Boston—we wanted to have a place where we would like to go. Which it is. It’s a neighborhood place and a lot of people like to go and eat there. I eat there. It’s not about just building up some kind of franchise. It’s nice to make money at it but that’s really not why we did it.

MW: And what’s new in terms of marketing, new products? Anything on the horizon?

JP: A big part of the reason why I teamed up with David was not only because his tastes are like mine, but he also knows a lot about the hot sauce business. We’ve been talking about another product, but until I have time to really focus on what I want to do… He’s kind of leaning towards a hotter sauce, which I would definitely consider, but he has a great teriyaki sauce that I think we could put out. And then there are also pepper jellies that I’d like to do.

MW: The jellies are really popular right now.

JP: I really like them. As far as what I consume, the next thing on my list is pepper jellies. Finding the right combination of flavors is gonna be a trick, but I have a pretty good idea where I want to go with it. I think that probably after the first of the year we’ll be able to focus on another product.

MW: Are you still selling Boneyard Brew at Aerosmith shows?

JP: We’re selling it at the shows, and there’s a link on the Aerosmith website. It’s my thing, you know. Tom has a project that he does totally on the side, and I think again it was just a hobby, and he does it for fun. I’m mean we’re serious about it, but it’s mainly for fun.

MW: Do you sell more at shows or through the website?

JP: I think through the website, and through the various outlets. Because, you know, there are a lot of Aerosmith t-shirts and all that other stuff at the shows. I think I’m most disappointed when people buy it and don’t try it. Whenever anybody comes up and says, "Sign my bottle," I say, "Make sure this is empty." It’s not just some generic hot sauce that I just put my name on.

MW: It’s good. We have a half empty bottle at home.

JP: Thanks.

MW: What sort of feedback do you get from your fans? From you music fans, about your hot sauce.

JP: They’re interested in it, that it’s there. And hopefully we’re converting over a few people to the hot sauce world. That is another motivation, because I think that by having my name on it, under the big Aerosmith umbrella, maybe people will buy it and try it and spice up their lives a little bit more. Get a few converts over to the hot sauce land, you know, whether its mine or maybe they’ll want to experiment with some other ones too.

MW: There are quite a few musicians who have hot sauce and BBQ products. Is there a connection for you between rock’n’roll and fiery-foods?

JP: I think that when you travel a lot you really do get the chance to taste a lot of different foods. I know some musicians who just eat one kind of food and that’s it and they don’t go out at all. But when I’m in the Southwest I like to eat Mexican food almost all the time. When we’re on the coasts, especially in San Francisco and L.A., we do a lot of Japanese food. There’s just something about it that keeps it regional for me. We kind of shift around. When we’re down south, we’re always looking for good BBQ. It’s getting easier to find good BBQ in other parts of the country, but when we used to go to Kansas City and then through the Midwest down to Texas, we’d focus on BBQ.

MW: Any BBQ sauces in your future?

JP: Oh maybe. I don’t know, we’ll see. There are a lot of good ones out there, and everybody uses it in a different way. And I still experiment with actually marinating, or putting it on last, and all that stuff. There’s definitely that potential.

MW: My last question has nothing to do with fiery-foods. Or maybe it does. For those of us who always dreamt of being rock stars but never saw that dream realized, had you not had this career, what would you have done with your life?

JP: It’s tough to say this far into it. I probably could have answered you better 20 years ago. When I was growing up I was very much into being outdoors, by the ocean. I love scuba diving, it’s probably my favorite thing to do above some of the other sports that I do. My family loves to dive, and I was always thinking about it. I thought that being a crew member on the Calypso would have probably been the most amazing job you could have. So I think that’s kind of where I was leaning, until I got rock’n’roll under my skin. The whole performing thing… Music really wasn’t a big part of my upbringing—I just knew that a lot of the music that was played around my house I didn’t like. So when rock’n’roll came my way it was all mine. It exploded on me. My wife was really lucky, she grew up listening to all the old R & B, Elvis and Chuck Berry and all of that. I never heard that stuff. I just heard show tunes. So when I heard rock on the radio, it was my thing. It was immediate. It wasn’t like, "Well, you’ve gotta go to school for four years and do that and do this." I could just stick the needle on the plastic and all of a sudden it was mine. That was a tough question to answer.

MW: I know.

JP: But back to the music tie-in, I think, also, that most of us that play music are adrenaline junkies. You definitely get an adrenaline rush. And the endorphin rush you get off hot food, it’s another one of those things—its healthy and you can have it and it’s legal. So there may be that kind of connection. Because, you know, going out and performing live, you definitely get a buzz from it. And I think the same thing is true when you have a perfect combination, when the food and the hot works. Maybe there’s something there.

MW: Are you guys going to play "Combination" tonight?

JP: No, you know, we have a 15-song set because we’re playing with KISS and it’s tough finding enough time to do what everybody wants. You have to go for the biggest bang for the buck. It makes for a good show, but there are songs we would like to play sometimes that we don’t get a chance to.

MW: Well I’ve never seen you guys. I look forward to it very much.

JP: I think you’ll have fun.

MW: I think I will.

JP: Cool.

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