Imagine dreaming the rock ’n’ roll dream since childhood, then living it by the time you were 17 years old. Not as a solo singer who won a TV competition, and not as a member of a prefab boy (or girl) band, but as a bona fide rock outfit. It happens to almost no one, but it happened to Nick Perri. His first band Silvertide played professionally whilst its members were still in school and then on the major festival circuit immediately thereafter, and he has worked as a guitar sideman for many of his musical heroes. Now an accomplished singer-songwriter, his latest studio work Terra Firma drops in June. All along his incredible journey, Celestion guitar loudspeakers including the G12T-75, Ruby, and Greenback have been his trusty companions, and he shared his story with Celestion in an exclusive interview.
“My first record deal was at 17,” says Perri as he introduces himself. “It was that band I started in high school called Silvertide. We started out like most bands playing coffee houses and open mics. We were kids and for lack of a better word, we were playing a more classic style of rock and roll, like ’60s and ’70s, so I suppose that gained us some attention. We started playing more nights a week, we got a manager, and then it was off to the races. We got to open for Aerosmith. There was a bidding war, we got signed by Clive Davis, and toured the world — Europe, Japan. I was using Celestion speakers the whole time.”
After Silvertide disbanded, Perri enjoyed a whirlwind career as a sideman, including with Jane’s addiction frontman Perry Farrell’s project Satellite Party. “They called me two days before they were on The Tonight Show,” he recalls. “I was 22 years old and had to learn 20 songs in two days!”
Perri’s preferred creative outlet, though, is writing and recording his own music. His studio album Sun Via debuted in the top ten on iTunes in 2020 “with very little help from anybody,” he says. Of the upcoming Terra Firma, he enthuses, “I’ve never worked on any one thing this long and this hard.”
Whatever he works on, Celestion speakers have been his trusted partner. He recalls his first experience with them: “When we signed our first record deal, I had a mentor who helped me put my money where I should. I bought a vintage Marshall — a 1971 Super Lead. They had a corresponding tall cab that was a 4 x 12. It had original Greenback speakers inside. It was an unbelievable sound.”
His equipment today is just as Celestion-driven. “I have a larger stage rig that I don’t record with,” explains Perri. “That’s a Marshall JTM45 and I also have a Park amplifier. They’re both running through a 1990s cab loaded with G12T-75 speakers. I’m a fan of those speakers because I can play really loud, and use a fuzz pedal on occasion, and the speakers don’t fall apart. Things don’t fall inward, know what I mean? They hold their fidelity and sound tight. Whereas a 20-watt speaker would fall apart if driven like this.’
In the recording studio and for smaller gigs, Perri describes his “number one amp in the world. It’s a Marshall 1974x, which is a combo amp. But the thing that makes all the difference is that I put a Celestion Alnico Ruby in it, which is my favorite guitar speaker in the universe right now. It’s a 35-watt speaker that’s the bigger brother of the Blue. The sound of this speaker was a total game-changer for me. So much so that I stopped using pedals mostly. The sound of my Flying V [guitar] through that amp is the best thing I’ve ever heard. I’m able to dime the amp and the Ruby has a softer, more pleasing high end than, say, most of the ceramic-magnet speakers I’ve heard. You’re going to hear it all over Terra Firma.”
Perri wraps up the interview with high praise that would be the envy of any marketing department. “I’ve always been a fan of Celestion speakers,” he beams. “I can’t remember one instance over the last 20 years I haven’t used them for anything I’ve done. Celestion is a huge part of my musical DNA.”
Read the full-length interview with Nick Perri in on Celestion’s website, and learn more about Celestion’s guitar loudspeakers here.
