Aerosmith C/D?

"Combination" off of Rocks has one of my favorite guitar riffs ever. Along with "Nobody's Fault" they are definitely songs that should be better known.

There is just something completely wrong with someone who wrote "Lord of the Thighs" calling up Diane Warren and the people behind Bryan Adams up for songs. They have made tons of cash from their comeback, but outside the song "Hangman Jury", I just think it is overcooked crud.

Along with ZZTop and Lynyrd Skynyrd, they were probably the better American rock and roll bands of the 70s, before punk rock happened.

Even if I'd said "They actually did something new with Lawrence Welk's sound"?

Iggy sang about boredom and never getting laid, he probably just stood in the corner if he in fact went to dances. I can't imagine him uttering "hey diddle-diddle" under any circumstances. The I'm-a-badass of Raw Power is all about compensating for never being invited to the party. Tyler's already there, getting his big ten-inch sucked.

Plus musically I can't think of a Stooges song that is built upon a single string riff (yeah "Dirt" but that's a different kettle of fish); they're all about slashing chords. The Stooges are rhthymically great - both bands rock - but I can't imagine them leaning on a breakbeat the way "Walk This Way" does. I love drawing neat parallels between all sorts of disparate stuff, but this is one case where I just don't hear it.

See I think they were taking from Zep a bit on this track. Specifically in that centrality of the heavy drumbeat overlaid with the "killer riff". The greatest riffs, the ones that play around with rhythm, are wonderful things; but in another sense they don't leave much to negotiate - you get on that train and ride. The Stooges seem more open-ended to me, always with this sense that the whole thing could derail at any time, even if it never does. Actually what happens is that Steve McKay comes along and goes EEEEEAIAIEEEGHRRRYYYYYAA

Put me on the hating side of post-70s Aerosmith (and banish Steven Tyler from all future awards shows while you're at it).

i bought 'rocks' about a year ago, and like it, but still haven't given it enough spins. to be amended today perhaps

i've owned pump for about 17 years. still holds up as a pretty tight and interesting rock record with plenty of sleazy hook. have always liked 'janie's got a gun' too. guess i've never got over the soft spot i had for it when i was about 8.

Rocks kicks all sorts of ass. I can't believe the same band that did "Combination" did the crap they did after their "comeback".

Ultimately, there are really two Aerosmiths -- the hirsute, drug-gobbling cut-throats of the 70s and the yawnsomely clean n' sober hitmakers and sports bar jukebox fodder of the late 80's through today. Obviously, the former takes a giant, runny, narcotic-laced shit all over the latter.

Best song they ever did: "Back in The Saddle."

hahah 'drug-gobbling cut-throats'

im gonna steal that one.

I'm saying a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight. How high can you fly with broken wings?

The first three are super classic, the rest up through Done with Mirrors are classic and everything after kind of a dud.

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK but everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage. First album through Draw the Line all various degrees of great including some of my favorite rock moments ever (that last verse of "Draw the Line," the entirety of "Sick as a Dog," loads more). Out to pasture therafter with the possible exception of Done With Mirrors from which I've never heard a note.

to me the biggest tragedy of Aerosmith is that Tyler was once a pretty good/maybe great lyricist - on Rocks and all throughout that early stuff there are really smart turns of phrase, a real ear for how to deliver a line for maximum impact, and what always sounded to me like a genuine love of words & their sounds, of phrases and how they ring. Later, you get fuckin' "livin' it up while I'm goin' down." Ugh.

haha 'living it up while i'm goin down' was surely yet another triumphant winner in the tyler canon of punning genius!

everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage

I don't.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8FG_L3BZ5dY

Post-Done With Mirrors, well, I think "Jaded" is kind of lovely, sort of. Beyond that, yeah, lyrics and vocals both down the tube, obviously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=705LEH3j2g0

lyrics and vocals both down the tube

(Not to mention rhythm section.)

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK but everybody knows Night in the Ruts is garbage.

Man, I love Night in the Ruts. It's just so wasted an desperate sounding. As for some critical consensus, I know a lot folks who dig NitR.

Post-Done With Mirrors, well, I think "Jaded" is kind of lovely, sort of.

I agree! when I first heard that one I was like "maybe they'll be good again"

I should probably buy a used $1 copy of Pump again someday, though, to check out what I may have missed at the time. I'm guessing not much. Was always perplexed back then about what critics heard in it -- Isn't it the only Aerosmith album ever to score in Pazz & Jop?? Liked the idea of "Janies Got a Gun," and mostly figured that's why people cut that one song slack, for its good intentions or whatever; but maybe the rest was better than I gave it credit for. Still think there were plenty of hair-metal bands doing Aerosmith better than Aerosmith in the mid/late '80s, though.

pump is pretty cool. all studio polish and glisten of course, but generally speaking a lot of fun. hooks are accentuated by the nice big angular sound they have going and about half the songs are well worth a damn.

for what it's worth, i think the vocal delivery on 'janie's got a gun' is top notch

you people need to refine your purism, I've heard that Done With Mirrors is OK

Heh:

Done With Mirrors [Geffen, 1985]
Their knack for the basic song and small interest in guitar-hero costume drama always made them hard rock that deserved the name, not to mention an American band. Still, with almost a decade of bad records collective and solo behind them, there was no reason to expect a thing from this touching reunion. And against all odds the old farts light one up: if you can stand the crunch, you'll find more get-up-and-go on the first side than on any dozen random neogarage EP's. B+

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Xgau wrote that after I'd already done a lead review of Done With Mirrors in the Voice. Same review where I said "Walk This Way" and "Lord of the Thighs" were rap songs before rap existed, and could be played back to back with the Beastie Boys' "She's On It." Doug Simmons, the editor, said I couldn't possibly believe that and was just messing with people, but he printed the review anyway. The rest is history.

OMG! Steven Tyler in Rehab!

"...singer for the blues-rock band."

I thought they were easy listening pop balladeers at this point. the band that did "Combination" and "Sick as a Dog" does not exist

wow awesome clip

i wrote this about the album draw the line for a zine here in MPLS a few years ago lol i got pretty into draw the line for awhile.

Aerosmith – Draw the Line
Label: Columbia
Released: 1977

Okay, let’s cop to it right off: Aerosmith (especially Tyler) have been so lame for so long that at least two generations probably think of them as the rock equivalent of their embarrassing uncle who does his standup routine at family functions. But give me a stack of Bibles and I’ll swear on the memory of any dead man: These jokers were the best American hard rock band of the 1970s, and it’s not close. They really were our Rolling Stones, taking the template and remaking it with American muscle – harder music for a meaner decade. By comparison, the heaviest Stones’ rockers sound quaint compared to Aerosmith’s machine-tuned precision.

I’d always read that Draw the Line was a relative dud by seventies Aerosmith standards, but it’s awesome to my ears. I suspect history might color the band’s memory of the album; it was a proverbial “dark period” for the band, a few members claim to have little memory of recording it in the first place. The Wikipedia entry on the album makes the sessions sound almost comically bleak: “It was recorded in an abandoned convent near New York City, rented out for that purpose. The band lived there while recording the album, doing drugs, sleeping, eating, shooting guns, and driving their sports cars in between recording sessions.”

I remember Kurt Loder once described Led Zeppelin’s “drug-sick dread.” That phrase always stuck with me, and it’s all over Draw the Line. It’s claustrophobic, messy, brutal; the coke and whisky nearly seeps out of its pores. They’ve already lost their edge, and there’s not a song on here that’s a patch on the best of Rocks or Toys in the Attic. But they make up for it with sheer force, weird changes, hammering square pegs into round holes, battering riffs until they fit together, resulting in a record possessed of a powerful, murky quality. “Critical Mass” sounds like a death threat, the rhythm section hurtles along as Joe Perry smears queasy backwards guitar all over the walls. Tyler sounds like scared animal: “Arriving in boats, black hooded coats/ Tormentors climbed into my room/ I crawled under my bed, covered my head/ But they're flushin' me out with a broom.” Elsewhere, on the Perry vocal number “Bright Light Fright,” the guitarists ponders the horror of being wired, awake as the sun comes up, set to a surging three-chord change played with such intensity it could have past for punk if not for the bar band sax solo. “Sight for Sore Eyes” is an electric goosestep, not nearly as far from Gang of Four’s tight-assed funk as history would have you believe.

Hearing Tyler before he turned into a cartoon is still thrilling, so much coked jive, larynx-shredding howls (the last verse of the title track can barely qualify as language, despite what the lyric sheet reads). He’s still got more great senseless one-liners than anyone in rock history (“No dice, baby, I’m livin’ on the astral plane”), but for most of the record he just sounds desperate, circling the drain. By the time we get to the tense, angular vamp of “Get It Up,” even his own dick has abandoned him, the ultimate betrayal for rock’s horniest frontman.

For the most part, it’s the sound of a great band going down swinging. Even in decline, they are hard as diamonds, powered by drummer Joey Kramer and bassist Tom Hamilton, a rhythm section for the ages (it wasn’t by accident that early hip-hop DJs had an affinity for the funkiest white band of the ‘70s). The band dearly wants to escape from the trap its in, so much so that they even retreat into a world of Zeppish, D&D fantasy on the icily grand epic “Kings and Queens” – something they did once and never again.

In the end, they did survive their own stupidity, got clean and got popular again. They probably managed to be better husbands and fathers after all those years of neglect. Maybe they even became decent human beings. But they never made a record like this again.

^^OTM

Hearing Tyler before he turned into a cartoon is still thrilling, so much coked jive, larynx-shredding howls (the last verse of the title track can barely qualify as language, despite what the lyric sheet reads). He’s still got more great senseless one-liners than anyone in rock history (“No dice, baby, I’m livin’ on the astral plane”),

word.

that was great, He1go, i've always wanted to sit down w/ their decline/pre-comeback albums and see how good or bad they really were, but now i especially wanna check for that one

Their first four or five records are pretty much must own.

yeah but i grew up w/ best-ofs in the house so i haven't gotten around to hearing the actual LPs

i've always been curious about done with mirrors. gonna look for that the next time i'm out.

So Steven Tyler quits, huh.

Walkin' on Gucci, wearing Yves Saint Laurent
Better stay on 'cause I'm so goddamn gaunt

?!?!?!

I finally discovered "Kings and Queens". Holy shit that is a great song.

You ok, dude? http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/25/us-tyler-idUSTRE79O7S420111025

being old is gonna suck

https://s-hphotos-sjc1.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/299859_10150438169071874_638356873_10200617_2054484562_n.jpg

"Hello, I'm Jerri Blank."

Aerosmith
Spectrum
Philadelphia, PA
November 25, 1978

1. Psycho theme Intro
2. Toys in the Attic
3. S.O.S (Too Bad)
4. Mama Kin
5. I Wanna Know Why
6. Big Ten Inch Record
7. Sight for Sore Eyes
8. Tyler hit with bottle; Kramer yells at crowd, stage announcements
9. Philadelphia 102FM concert report about incident

"situation feeble"

The back stage is rocking and we're coppin' from the local police

Aw, the justice of peace

Here are twentey-five hot rocks.

Today my brother told me that session guitar maestro Dick Wagner played the rave-up/solo on Aerosmith's cover of Train Kept a Rollin'. Is this common knowledge that I somehow missed? Anyone else heard this rumour?

Feel like there was some discussion of that recently but its not on this thread, apparently?

A guy passed me on the street the other day who liked an alternate-universe Steven Tyler, in which he never made it in music and instead went to business school and became a tubby middle manager who was late for his 10 a.m. meeting.

I could've sworn there was a thread recently where someone (Neanderthal?) was slagging off Aerosmith for not even playing on their earlier records and the Train Kept a Rollin thing was mentioned along with session work by the Alice Cooper band guys via Bob Ezrin...? this doesn't ring a bell with anybody?

ah here it is: Aerosmith's Greatest Hits (1980)

Wimmels was the one who brought up Wagner

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits (1980)

somewhat surprised AlS doesn't much go for the band's 90s ballads… them's the best of the power variety that ever was… or "Don't Wanna miss a Thing" is the ne plus ultra of Diane Warren…

I like "Thing" more than I did in 1998, but it still sounds like Tyler's passing a hernia.

A friend at the time said she hoped to date a guy who said the things Tyler does to her.

ew

http://www.detroitrocknrollmagazine.com/2015/02/aerosmiths-train-kept-rollin-who-did.html

But few people know that they had a little help along the way when, during the recording, Record Producer Jack Douglas saw the now legendary session man Steve Hunter sitting outside the studio taking a cigarette break from a different session and he asked Steve to play a solo over the first half of the track.

It was very quick Steve recalls, he got his own guitar which he thinks would have been a 1959 Les Paul TV Special. They took some time to get a sound, then, ran through the track. But, as he did not have the vocal in his headphones they ran through it again this time with the vocal in, and Steve nailed it.

He got paid about $750 for doing it, then, as it turns out, 'Train' had a huge impact on the career of the young, inexperienced Aerosmith. They went on to bigger and better things, becoming one of the highest paid, most domineering bands in Rock Music.

Unbeknownst to Steve, Douglas also enlisted his session companion Dick Wagner to play the solo over the second half simulated live ‘Yardbirds’ section.

Neither Hunter or Wagner got a credit on the album, as ‘ghosting’ as it’s sometimes called was fairly common practice at that time.

Hunter has no idea why he was asked to record the solo; as he says, it was none of his business. The rest of the band we’re all there, they were very nice to him and he was never asked to teach anybody what he played.

In 2013 Joe Perry played a solo on Steve's solo album 'The Manhattan Blues Project' (The Brooklyn Shuffle) alongside his buddy Johnny Depp, so clearly there are no hard feelings and why should there be.

Statement from Steve Hunter

"Aerosmith was in Studio C of The Record Plant and I was doing work with Bob Ezrin in Studio A. I had a long wait between dubs and was waiting in the lobby. Jack Douglas popped his head out of Studio C and asked "Hey, do you feel like playing? I said sure, so I grabbed my guitar and went in" "I had two run thru’s, then Jack said "great' that's it! That turned out to be the opening solos on 'Train Kept A Rollin’ " steve hunter 2/1/2015

This also came up recently during a discussion of Lou Reed's Rock n Roll Animal.

Here: Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

Thanks. I must now, with hanging head, after telling him he's wrong, tell my brother he was right. D'oh!

Alfred's list is fine. I really just can't get with most reformed Aerosmith, but one track out there that I think fits with the old druggy 70s music is "Hangman Jury" off of Permanent Vacation.

When I was a kid, I got a three of Aerosmith's LPs as 8-tracks and that was the format I really heard them first in. I can't remember what track it was but one on 'Draw the Line' clicked to a new track in the middle of a song nearly in time that was pretty hilarious.

I love how "no surpiZe" is a latter day origin story for the band..."and old Clive Davis said he surely gonna make us a star" and Tyler's raspy "smoking up the axle grease" and how the track descends into Draw the Line coked up mania by the end with a greedy rant of "ascap, bmi , if Japanese can make tea then where the fuck my royalties?"

Just noticed today that the version of “same old song and dance” on Wings is different - a little more loose - than the one on Greatest Hits

https://i.imgur.com/coX6KrS.jpg

New font on the logo?

I made it to the end of “live bootleg” and by the time they make it to “I ain’t got you” / “mother popcorn” / “train kept rolling” it’s clear that they’re just a bar band that struck it big

I'd rather be O.D.in' on the honk of her bobo

Better: I'd rather be honkin' on the crack of her bobo

“I ain’t got you” has some Tyler honkin’ and it’s as mediocre abs cliched as you’d expect

I’m deep in an Asmith YouTube hole. Watching the “making of pump” documentary. I can’t believe there’s accordion on “what it takes.”
Joe justifying commercialism by saying “if I were a purist I’d be playing in a coffee shop in Cambridge. I’m an entertainer. I play arena rock”

any thoughts on the 1971 practice tape? called “the road starts hear”? i love it. very strange rolling stone review here which harps on the sound quality? calling it “dusty” and “a fossil” etc which is just… what? it sounds… frankly amazing?? maybe the reviewer got a copy with some bad juju rubbed into it? its bobo already honked?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/aerosmith-1971-road-starts-hear-review-1261908/

Fossil butt rock

very happy i saw aerosmith for $25 last year, now that this expensive farewell tour has been announced

https://i.imgur.com/kUQzNNN.png

Now we know where Giger got his inspiration for Alien