Aerosmith - Hard-rock's old reliables

Aerosmith (Boston, 1970) are a fine hard rock revival act. Their whole reason for existing boils down to having, in the early Seventies, picked up the late-Sixties hard rock of Deep Purple — already outdated by that point — and having dutifully churned it out for over 30 years, at most accentuating the blues foundations of hard rock (see Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin). All of it, naturally, filtered through an American translation of English stylistic tropes (hard rock), which in turn drew on a century-old American tradition (Chicago blues).

And since in popular music — being popular — it's always the simplest, most immediate and most rhetorical things that succeed, Aerosmith have been among the best-paid and best-selling bands of all time. In particular, they are an American institution (in the US they are reported to have sold 60 million LPs: more than the Rolling Stones, Springsteen, U2 and Madonna).

Then again, Aerosmith are a money-making machine more by circumstance than by design. To their credit, they were so reactionary, fetishistic, short-sighted and conservative that, sales aside, they would have spent their lives on sex, drugs and rock n' roll regardless — after all (as their lyrics amply attest), they know no other words and conceive of no other concepts.

In five years — from 1973 to 1977 — Aerosmith released no fewer than 5 albums. It would be wrong to expect diversification later on from an operation that, from the outset, was an end in itself, but it's equally wrong to think this of the first five records, each a variation on the theme of the last. It's not Aerosmith's fault. There's no fault to assign. That's largely what hard rock is.

Over more than thirty years of career, the album count will rise to 14.

Even the band's line-up will remain almost unchanged throughout: perhaps only the Rolling Stones can claim greater longevity. The leader and singer is Steven Tyler, born in 1948 in New York. A sincere, brazen stage animal, born and built for what he does, he is the quintessence of hard rock machismo. He has blues in his blood like Jagger, but without that extra dose of taste and aesthetics; he is, in short, as spartan as Americans are imagined to be, and not as haughty as the English are said to be. Then there are the two lead guitarists, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford; and finally Tom Hamilton on bass and Joey Kramer on drums. All of them with the right look and the right musical pedigree for the job.

The first, self-titled album Aerosmith from 1973 is highly significant, along with the albums that immediately followed it, for two reasons. The first is that it effectively institutionalized hard rock in the United States, a genre that, until then, in its most fully realized and classic forms, had been something imported from England. The second reason is that it helped, together with the reactionary work of Kiss, to ferry the genre from its original Deep Purple foundation through to the refounding that Ac/Dc would soon bring about.

Amid a sometimes overly pronounced rhythm and blues revival, the band's first and biggest classic stands out: "Dream On". A syrupy ballad in the vein of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven", it manages to achieve a character and, above all, an elegance — remarkable for hard rock — that this band would never again reach, and one that evidently appealed to Queen. But the song should be regarded as a classic in general terms. In the US, as a single it would reach number 59 on release and number 6 three years later. Otherwise, worth mentioning is "Walking The Dog", whose rough-edged attitude anticipates something of Ac/Dc.

Get Your Wings (1974) shows an overall maturing and newfound decisiveness, even if it lacks a standout classic. It will chart at number 74.

Toys In The Attic (1975) further toughens and sharpens the sound. The riffs of "Walk This Way", carved in stone — the kind of riffs that are hard rock itself — and the eroticism of "Sweet Emotion" set the coordinates of this record and make up for missteps, however deliberate, like the rockabilly revival of "Big Ten Inch Record" and one ballad too many, "You See Me Crying". Also highly significant is the track "Round And Round", whose influence — through its extremely heavy riff — on Metallica's heavy metal can never be stressed enough. Hetfield himself has in fact repeatedly acknowledged his debt to the old Boston blues-men.

Rocks (1976), Aerosmith's first bestseller, marks the peak of their journey within rhythm and blues toward its own exasperation and hardening. The heaviness of "Back In The Saddle", the speed of "Rats In The Cellar", the slashing attack of "Nobody's Fault" can't help but point toward metal, even if the time was not yet ripe for others — see Judas Priest and Rainbow — to give the genre its definitive turn. "Get The Lead Out" is the band's prototype track, the one that would recycle the lurching strut of "Walk This Way" for a lifetime. Meanwhile "Sick As A Dog" and "Home Tonight" are the usual excess baggage: a Mersey-beat-style chorus already over a decade out of date, and a ghastly serenade.

Draw The Line (1977) finds a band now at the peak of its maturity, as the acrobatic numbers of "Critical Mass" and the shot of fresh blood that is "Get It Up" attest. From here on, some of the band's best songs will be written by their producers, as is the case with the first one mentioned, credited to Douglas.

Night In The Ruts (1979) shows no sign of a letdown and boasts Aerosmith's second great song: "Chiquita", seemingly simple and carefree, but actually able to hit the mark, dispensing a remarkable dose of compassion and post-trauma optimism. There are several covers: from the Yardbirds ("Think About It") and, above all, from the Sixties girl-group that Tyler must have followed as a young man, New York's own Shangri-Las. Their version of "Remember" proves that covering songs is exactly the job that suits Aerosmith; after all, the band is always doing covers, since even the songs they write themselves are variations on the theme of traditional numbers. But, it should be stressed, there's nothing wrong with that. For the whole first half of the twentieth century, popular music worked pretty much this way, with the composer on one side and the performer on the other — all the more so in the tradition Aerosmith themselves come from, the blues.

Notice how Aerosmith truly represent one of the quintessential hard rock bands; as such, they come through the punk storm unscathed, not misunderstanding it, but simply ignoring it altogether: proving that they live in another world, or another era.

On Rock In A Hard Place (1982), without the two original guitarists, somehow replaced by Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay, Tyler can only do damage control. The songwriting isn't, as has sometimes been suggested, below the band's usual standard — quite the opposite. The problem is that, since it's already as basic as the genre demands, and given that what matters most is how you play rather than what you play, it's clear that such a line-up change can only compromise that alchemy of chemistry and engagement which alone held together the whole approach of a band as reliant on live-in-the-room interplay as Aerosmith.

Peace made within the family, Done With Mirrors (1985) presents the usual Aerosmith, but with a heavier, squarer sound — in short, more rhythm and less blues. It will prove to be the prelude to everything the band does from here on. In fact, formally speaking, this is the key album for understanding the Aerosmith sound, at least for the next two, more celebrated, records.

Permanent Vacation (1987) can thus string together the frantic "Heart's Done Time" and "Girls Keeps Coming Apart", as well as the morbid, self-satisfied hit "Rag Doll".

Pump (1989) is the culmination of the Eighties journey, just as Rocks had been for the Seventies. The template is the same as Permanent Vacation: on one side the hooligan-style barrages (the pairing of "Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man" and that of "Dulcimer Stomp/The Other Side"), on the other the lascivious obligatory single ("Love In An Elevator"). On top of that, there's a ballad that escapes rhetoric, "Jane's Got A Gun".

The Nineties are the years of truly global success for Aerosmith, of recognition, of satisfaction from every point of view. They are not icons, and never have been; people don't walk around wearing their T-shirts or quoting their mottos — which, besides, they don't really have; nor, still less among the younger generation, does anyone take Tyler as a role model. Precisely for this reason, harmless as they are, devoted only to sex and the occasional line of coke, they're welcomed by society and can get everywhere, in constant rotation on radio and TV. Over the whole decade they produce two albums, which remain firmly at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and are characterised by a sound that's half heavier than that of the Seventies and half more melodic than that of the Eighties. And those are exactly the right ingredients to win over an audience. The songs on offer are mostly heard and re-heard formulas, but still approached with the usual ease and passion. Given the genre and the band in question, we can say the only real problem with these records is that they're excessively long: over an hour, which is too much for a band born with the usual classic eight songs in 35 minutes. With a bit of judicious editing, trimming off half an hour, they would have gained on every front.

The flurry of singles from Get A Grip (1993) produced the two anxious, carnal serenades "Cryin'" and "Crazy" — similar even in title — which embody the essence of at least a third of the band's music. Another third is represented by the epic, grandiloquent ballad — the one in question being called "Amazing". And a final third by rock-solid rhythm and blues: both in its reactionary version ("Eat The Rich") and, relatively speaking, its avant-garde one ("Livin' On The Edge").

Nine Lives (1997) is a photocopy of the previous album, but on a different-coloured paper. The rock-solid rhythm and blues numbers are "Nine Lives" (the reactionary one — and one of their most expressive) and "Something's Gotta Give" (the one arranged more as a novelty number); the romantic ballad is "Hole In My Soul"; the serenades are an eccentric and successful "Pink" and a saccharine "Kiss Your Past Goodbye".

The 2000s, after the 1998 single "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" (the theme song for the film "Armageddon", which it mirrors in all its American rhetoric) which remains one of the best-selling singles of all time and crowns the success of an entire career, register a slight dip in popularity, or at least hint at a certain waning of public interest.

Still, the album Just Push Play (2001), with the powerful, melodic "Jaded" and yet another epic ballad, "Fly Away From Here", offers nothing more or less than the previous records.

Finally, Honkin' On Bobo (2004) might even be the band's best result. Because it's a set of blues covers, and so, on one hand, it suggests that nowadays the most honest thing to do in rock or rock-adjacent territory is perhaps to play covers, while on the other it allows the band to express itself at its best and prove once again exactly what it is: an exemplary band of seasoned session men, ideally suited to playing on the stage of a blues club.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google