"No Surprize," "Chiquita," & "Cheese Cake"

A lot of the critical dialogue around Night in the Ruts concerns how close it was to actually being good or great. Personally, I don't buy into that: I assume every album reaches its maximum potential, given the nature of its creation. Ruts is a troubled album that came out of a troubled time, but what gave people hope was this tune, a soaring rocker with a bit of a kick. Here, Steven Tyler checks back in with self-mythologizing rockstar lyrics, a la the early "Make It" or even the more recent "Legendary Child," telling the story of getting signed after a gig at Max's Kansas City (an inaccurately named venue in New York) but still being "on trial." There's something you could say about retreating to memories of past triumphs while undergoing a dark period.

Was it going to be one of the band's all-time great songs? Maybe not, but it's a bit of a shame it's relegated to the "forgotten" period. If nothing else, it's worth excavating for "Vaccinate yo' ass with a phonograph needle."

There was a video for this one, which appears to have been shot in someone's basement, with Jimmy Crespo playing guitar (I think Joe Perry's the one on the record but we have no way of knowing who played what where.) The band looks completely out of it, and I didn't use it because the sound quality's not great.



When I say Night in the Ruts is half a good album, I'm not exactly saying half the tracks are good and half are not. The truth is trickier than that. It's that tracks with potential, like this, are halfway to being really great. Steven lets out a drug-fuelled scream that propels the song along with Joey Kramer's thundering drums, some sharp guitars, and a swinging horn riff. I think this is the first time an Aerosmith song is led by horns. In the past a part like that might've been perfectly suited to Joe Perry's guitar. I remember hearing that the "Walk This Way" riff was meant to imitate funk horns from a James Brown song.



There's nothing wrong with individual tracks like "Chiquita" or "Cheese Cake," but you weren't going to get another Rocks with them. "Cheese Cake" is a mediocre tune that at least comes by its sleaze honestly. For whatever reason "Got my fingers in her pie" doesn't have the same charm as "You ain't seen nothin' 'til you're down on a muffin." Basically, the less inspired the band feels, the more Steven reverts to writing obvious tunes about slutty chicks.

With better lyrics, or a good riff, or something this could've been a better song. It doesn't suck, but like much of the album, it's not "there."

Night in the Ruts (1979)

In a way, this album, and its follow-up, are tainted by history. For the story of Aerosmith to reach maximum compelling factor, they have to plummet into a creative and commercial abyss. To a degree this is accurate: Aerosmith recorded their worst records between 1978 and 1983, and were rewarded with dwindling sales. True, all true.

And yes, it's no surprise (italicized for pun-emphasis) this album is lackluster. Turmoil, drugs, fighting, creative exhaustion... 5 years of professional drug use and rock stardom will take its toll. They weren't a band that could record an album business as usual, crank out a hit and go tour. Even judging from the difference between Rocks and Draw The Line, this band has to move in some direction. And here, even if the results aren't the most gratifying, there's an effort to try something. As on Draw the Line, there's a strong reliance on the rhythm section, with Joe Perry leaving during the course of recording this. The guitars don't suck on it, but there's a less defined guitar identity than any other Aerosmith album. Which is probably why it was considered to be such a failure by critics, being that it is a hard rock album and all.

What they end up with is about half a good album. A few songs are quite good, a few are almost there, and a few are junk to some degree or another. If nothing else, all these mediocre-to-okay songs sound like they go together, and not like they're just re-writing old songs. I often say the worst thing a rock album can be is boring, and it isn't that, so... away we go.

Buy This Album: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Live! Bootleg (1978) "Chip Away At The Stone" & "Come Together"

Although the main purpose of this album is to chart Aerosmith's existence as a studio recording and songwriting band... it can't be denied that a great deal of their existence was spent as one of the top live acts. They've released a lot of Live albums, and I've always liked them as a way of highlighting their real essence. It's great to see what songs are picked, what gets done with them, and what gets done with them. Note the slow, oozy "Lord of the Thighs," the talkbox on "Walk This Way," the incorporation of "Strangers in the Night" into "Train Kept A Rollin." It's also a testament to the validity of those album tracks like "Sick as a Dog" or "Sight For Sore Eyes" that crop up here and there as vital parts of the show.

Most of the album hails from their late-70's days when they were just sliding off the top of the world. The drugs and tensions seem to make the performances just unpredictable enough to justify paying for them again - no polish here - but fortunately they're not in any way lifeless or otherwise wrong. Taken out of the studio, they don't miss a beat and jettison anything they don't need, while adding a lot of flourishes here and there.

The album also contains some really cool, unique moments. Near the end are two olde-tyme covers from the early days of their act, "I Ain't Got You" (Yardbirds) and "Mother Popcorn," (James Brown) which feature Steven using his weird "first album voice." It also has Aero fans' first glimpse on record of "Chip Away At The Stone" which was released in as a single and would later be on compilations.

Buy Live! Bootleg Now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com




Chip Away is a pretty cool song, and I think you could be forgiven for thinking it was either an obscure cover, a la "Big Ten Inch Record," but it was written for them by outside collaborator Richie Supa. Compared to the albums released on either side of it, it feels out of place, more in the mode of their Toys in the Attic days, with its crisp, ringing riff and consistent lyrical theme. It's a level of songwriting the band wasn't getting to anymore, which then allowed them to open up and rock out.



Their cover of "Come Together" is one of those great moments when a rock classic is covered, given new life, but not fundamentally altered. I think it's because Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were pretty much born wrapped inside the late-era Beatles mode, and were thus one of the few bands capable of reaching this mode of funky grit. Steven in particular is one of the few vocalists, like John Lennon, capable of delivering words like "He rollercoaster / He got early warnin / He got muddy water / He got mojo filter... totally naturally like they mean something, and the rest of the band just takes up residence right inside that riff, making it their own without changing the structure. The Beatles are almost never outdone by covers - and this one may not quite outdo the original - but it does what a great cover should, combining the two acts into a seamless blend. It was also pretty much the best thing about the misbegotten Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band movie. Years later, in his book, Steven would bemoan being killed by Peter Frampton.

"The Hand that Feeds," "Sight For Sore Eyes" & "Milkcow Blues"

As we head through the back half of Draw the Line, we're seeing consistency... not greatness, but at least a uniformity to the tracks. "The Hand that Feeds" is pretty much exactly the type of album track that bolsters this album's reputation is interesting, weird, and yet solid if not great. It's hard and got a bit of swagger (based on a Phantom of the Opera type scale riff) it's menacing and messy and weirdly abrasive.

No this album did not have the level of craft its predecessors did, but it doesn't lack for character. Once you start meeting it halfway you start to appreciate...



And the test for that is "Sight for Sore Eyes." When you can learn to love a dirty-ass funk jam like this, you really appreciate this album for the spectacle it is and what it has to offer. If you didn't know the history of the band - what tensions and tempers were tearing them apart - you'd think this wasn't a case of "running out of gas" as it was just a change of direction. They certainly pursue this sound very thoroughly on this album, and it suits them. It does! Imagine that. It's just that they weren't producing what was expected or desired by the critics. The fans were pretty happy with this whole affair, if I've read right.



And why wouldn't they be? Hell. This cover of an old blues standard (by way of the Kinks) really closes this album out on a strong note. It may not exactly be "Train Kept A Rollin" but they sure cut this one up. It's dirty without being gross (something the band was losing its feel for) and has a hell of a groove. It shows, like "Kings and Queens" in a different way, that when the band could get its shit together and focus, they still had something good.

And as bad as it gets in the next little while - that's something that never quite goes away.

"Bright Light Fright" & "Kings and Queens"

Although I think "Combination" is the better tune, it's hard to argue with the energy of this Joe Perry-led outing. Of course it's one of the best guitar tracks on the album. Of course it's brash and energetic. Of course its lyrics sum up, better than any other song on here (except the title track) the band's state of mind at the time: this time in relatively positive light: it's a pretty awesome ode to a hangover, and Joe was pretty pleased when he came up with that title phrase. He turns in an okay vocal, and it only sounds better when Steven joins in.



As we know by now, every album has at least one or two songs where Steven Tyler's weird fascination with other cultures, time periods, dimensions and ways of thinking comes out to play. It has informed some of the best songs, and is their best weapon when attempting some big elaborate setpiece - their ability to commit and make it work keeps a song like this from being a plodding, pretentious mess.

Between this and "Bright Light Fright," there could not be two more different songs. One is a fast-paced, nearly punky rock jam about the consequences of a night out, the other a highly crafted medieval melodrama. I don't dislike this song, but it's such an oddball on this album, so much more bombastic and elaborate. It's meticulous, where the other songs seem to be "chuck it all in." It sits like a rock in the middle of the album (opening side 2 on vinyl) chucking out the streetrat imagery of the album for proto heavy metal fantasy.

Tom Hamilton is the unsung hero of this album. His name is in the credits more here than any other album, probably because songs were more and more originating from jams between him, Joey Kramer and Brad Whitford - as a result, his bass is often more prominent than the lead guitar, tugging the song along, and on this track being a key instrument in its success.

"I Wanna Know Why," "Critical Mass" & "Get It Up"

The bulk of the Draw the Line album is made up of messy, jammy numbers that walk the line between funk and punk. They have the soul and verve of the former while retaining the easygoing looseness of the latter. You'd never call this a punk band (Steven Tyler would be the first to tell you that) but all throughout this piece you get pieces of The New York Dolls (including a track co-written by David Johansen later on) who were the common denominator between Aerosmith and the Ramones. I actually really like a lot of these songs - they're not my favourites but they tend to slip between the cracks of big hits, and when I rediscover them I'm like "Oh yeah, this one!" They have a particular energy to them that is not present on even their best albums.



The word on this album at the time was that they had used up all their best riffs, and you could easily use this track as proof of that, because it's built on a crisp bassline and drumbeat, a sludgy backwards-sounding guitar, Steven Tyler's distant drowned-out vocal, and a melty harmonica. But hey, this song is called "Critical Mass" and it certain feels like it's reached disaster territory, like we are really seeing those "tensions" and "issues" and "chemicals" in the music moreso than we even did before. "Critical Mass" indeed.



There's a simple test for whether an Aerosmith song works, and that's if you find yourself cringing at the lyrics. There's no telling why "Stand in front just shakin' your ass / Take you backstage you can drink from my glass" works and "Grab your ankles everyone / Ain't my way of having fun" doesn't, but it must be the spirit of the song. There are a few moments like that as the discography goes on, where their usual anything-goes spirit seems embarrassing rather than awesomely weird. This isn't to say it's a bad song, but maybe the least appealing example of the album's character.

"Draw the Line"

So let's kick it off. The first cut of Draw the Line, the title track, establishes the album's MO right away. It's dirty, fast, loud, and doesn't make much sense. And what a riff - Joe Perry once said "It's the simple ones that turn out best." That staccato ramp up, followed by a two-note fall.

The song's a good song, but it's also an indication that the band isn't doing all the same things they did the last time. If Rocks was an album on the brink, Draw the Line is an album in the course of plummeting. But it's exciting, in its way because it never lacks for adrenaline. It did not make for the best music the band ever produced, but it still made for a few damn good songs. Aside from the riff, the song also has some pretty impressive screeching from Steven, and was clearly engineered to sound good live, which was increasingly becoming the band's priority, since they had found their record store audience.

Draw the Line (1977)

Every album Aerosmith recorded is a chapter in the story. They are statements of time an place, charting the band's rise, peak, fall, and re-climb, to rock greatness. So the story goes, what goes up must come down. If you could graph the band's artistic quality, popularity, and emotional health, each point on the timeline marks progress in one direction or another: up or down.

Draw the Line is where that downward trajectory begins, which didn't cease until the late 1980's. In an interview on the documentary "The Making of Pump," bassist Tom Hamilton relates the experience of Aerosmith in the 70's: There was a streak, from 1973 to 1976, where each album was a step up from the last, an improvement, a progression. Draw the Line was the first album they did where they did not feel like they had bettered themselves.

Draw the Line is for sure a different album. I think I can hear frustration setting in... the motivating factors that drove songs like "Last Child" and "Back in the Saddle," as well as "Sick as a Dog" and "Lick and a Promise" have turned oppressive, stifling. There's a street level sloppiness marking this album. The songs feels more jammy and less distinguished. It's either the sound of the band shrinking away from a challenge (and into drugs,) or just trying to fall back on what feels natural. Creatively it's easy to see this album as a disappointment, and yet...

It's not all that unpleasant to listen to in its entirety. There's a lot less lofty reaching (the one track that does aspire to high art seems very out of place.) A lot of the tracks tread the same ground, but in a way that's the album's saving grace because it's at least consistent. It has a dirty up-front-ness to it that none of the previous albums had, showing the band's debt to the New York Dolls a bit. It's a mess, but a very direct one.

There's a thing I sometimes find myself saying at my other blog. As a critic, I know this album is not perfect. I know it's a frustrated, messy album that takes a lot of missteps and isn't nearly as rich of a listening experience as Rocks or Toys. It's flawed. And yet, I still can't stop listening to it. With 9 tracks, not one of them is certifiably bad. Mostly they sit together perfectly well, and carry a charm that a "bad" album shouldn't have. If you're an Aerosmith fan, if you're likely to be reading this blog, you can't write this album off at all. We know this band is capable of so much more, and yet, when you take it all away, if this is what's left, it still works.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

"Get the Lead Out" "Lick and a Promise" & "Home Tonight"

As Rocks barrels toward its final tracks, there's one track, "Get the Lead Out," that always sticks me a bit. It's not a bad song. It's not really anything. A good riff an okay vocal, nothing to rave about, probably the first track since the first album that I would shrug at. It's presence doesn't hurt Rocks - it's a perfectly workable, stylistically consistent tune - but it doesn't add to it. Just an exercise in Aerosmith being Aerosmith. It's good and funky and cool, and signifies pretty much the exact nature of the next two albums, which resemble this more than the other tracks on the album.



Fortunately, then, there's this slice of greatness, which epitomizes what I'm always saying about Rocks. "Lick and a Promise" is a dirty, filthy, indulgent ode to the rockstar lifestyle... with this weird undercurrent of sorrow. "He dug the money but forgot all their names" sounds more like an indictment than anything. Note also the not-so-subtle double entendre about a "lick," which could either refer to a guitar riff or what Johnny's doing with his lady-friends. Okay it's definitely the latter.

By now you should know how much I love the guitar work for this album. This one sounds like fireworks, suitably putting forward the overtones of success, fame and fortune... but but that solo goes back to what I was saying earlier, about denying closure and seeming ambiguous. I mean, maybe most people don't read these things the way I do. Or maybe even at all. But in that littler snippet at the end I hear the guitar sink to meet the lyrical tone.

At this point in the 1970's, Aerosmith was a top-selling act, filling arenas nationwide, known to under-30 rock fans everywhere. What should, in theory, be a triumphant ode to rock and roll superstardom sounds like a warning not to follow: "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah... nah, not tonight."



It either comes from Steven Tyler's love of the Abbey Road medley, or his desire to duplicate the creative success of "Dream On," or some blend of the two. Here's a ballad that neatly and thoroughly sums up and sends off the bittersweet tone of the album, with this yearning, pleading "good night" message, this begging for forgiveness and pledge of fidelity from someone who clearly is not to be trusted with your heart. It goes back to "Last Child" and that yearning for home and simplicity, for a return to something safe and sane.

It also shows why Aerosmith always seems to contrived when they pour strings and orchestral stuff all over their ballads and epics, which was the one misstep with "You See Me Crying" from Toys in the Attic. They get that same intended tone, so much simpler and more well-wrought just by using Tyler's voice and the instruments employed by the band. Even the piano falls away by the song's climax. More than any other Aero ballad, even the outside favourite "Seasons of Wither," it balances grandeur and ambition with realism and heart.

With this, we drop the curtain on my favourite album of all time, the critical-consensus best Aerosmith album, and a touchstone for hard rock bands decades on. The final track is the closest the band gets to a sincere statement on the whole set, and feels well-earned. Here we rest.

"Sick as a Dog" & "Nobody's Fault"

All of Aerosmith's best albums (and some of their lesser ones) are stocked with great lesser-known tracks. "Sick as a Dog" epitomizes the weariness that permeates the album, pleading to an unknown woman in a tone that is both desperate and accusatory: whatever happened, both are to blame. The lyrics are again very distant and vague, which is to the song's advantage as whatever situation being described probably wouldn't lend itself to a detailed synopsis in rock lyrics. You're left to imagine what could be so desperate to say pleeeeeeease in that way.

"Sick as a Dog" featured Tom Hamilton on lead guitar, for which he crafted this Joe Perry handles bass, until the end where the lead drops out, then Perry tossed the bass to Steven Tyler, and grabbed his own guitar to do the solo, which seems to fade in out of nowhere. A lot of songs on this album, including this one, tend to drone out at length, either fading out or reaching an abrupt stopping point - they deny closure in a way.



Here it is. The big showpiece of the album. The four-and-a-half minute heart attack. Steven Tyler, once the dreamer, sees the world going up in flames, mankind paying for its wickedness, cruelty, vanity. It's a metal trip to the underworld that is uncharacteristically pessimistic for this normally very lighthearted band. Everything on this song is up to eleven - the thundering drums, churning riffs (Brad Whitford, reprising his metal mastery from 1975's "Round & Round") to Steven Tyler's Satanic fire and brimstone sermon delivery.

"Rats in the Cellar" & "Combination"

I've mentioned before that Steven Tyler seems to have a thing for cross-referencing lyrics. Here's the first case that he's now measuring against himself. If the song "Toys in the Attic" is a crazy dream, "Rats in the Cellar" is the gritty, delirious reality. Rocks is an album soaked in drugs, amphetamines, sex and other bad habits and attitudes. Here is an aggressive, panicky, hyperactive, frustrated track that gives you a glimpse into the darkside of having "Toys in the Attic." It's absolutely one of the most out-of-control tracks on the album, and puts you right inside all that excess and hard living, without romanticizing it too much. I think part of the appeal of Rocks for me is that it's not romantic or idealistic, the way Toys was.



Joe Perry's contribution to Rocks staggers in after "Rats" like a hangover. It has this whirling, lopsided guitar riff that rises and falls, and a dual lead vocal that makes both Steven's and Joe's voice sound numb and inhuman. Which is perfect for the level of darkness and deadness invoked by the song. Joe Perry's first solo-written tune was his best. It's not a climactic moment of greatness by any means, but it's one of the many key points that makes Rocks... well, rock.

"Last Child"

When I said earlier that there's no escape on Rocks, this is sorta what I mean. There's this intro/lead-in on this song that doesn't sound like the rest of the tune at all, but is very breathy and airy and dreamy... and then the song suddenly collapses into this tight groove, mechanical like the workings of a city. This may be, incidentally, where they got the idea to include intros on several tracks on their 1989 album Pump (though they revisit the concept at least once in between.)

This song revisits a theme they had broached early in their career on tracks like "Movin' Out," trying to balance an idyllic country life with a frustrating city existence. Steven Tyler grew up splitting his time between urban New York City and pastoral Sunapee, New Hampshire, and rock and roll itself was borne out of a compromise between these two settings. The heart of the song is the lyric "Hate's in the city and my love's in the meadow / Hands on the plow and feet's in the ghetto."

Half the verses are delivered at a slow clip, demonstrating a desire for the rural, and then a more rapid jumbled bit that brings you back to that complicated city life. As I mentioned, the riff is a tick-tock of clockwork conjured up by Brad Whitford, whose guitarwork is a bit cleaner and more precise than Joe Perry's, who provides the only release of the song, taking his cue from Tyler's cry of "Home sweet home" and sending us to the wilderness.

The song incorporates a lot of elements common through Aerosmith's career: blues, funk, rock, R&B... showing how a little of each can combine into something huge. The thing I love about Aerosmith, ultimately why I decided to devote an entire site to them, is that I can't think of anothe band that would have done this song, and the same can be said for most of their best ones. It's a thrill. It's pretty well perfect. And it's not even my favourite song on the album.

"Back in the Saddle"

If there's one thing the best Aerosmith albums do, it's make an entrance. Get Your Wings struts into the room with "Same Old Song and Dance." Toys in the Attic touches down like a hurricane. Rocks begins with an ominous, slow-burning riff that announces its existence well in advance but can't prepare you for the shock of Steven Tyler screeching "I'M BACK!"

There's a lot going on in this song, besides the fairly clear cowboy-as-sex addict metaphor. For one, that lyrical conceit is delivered using less than obvious language, which strikes a balance between subtlety and overtness. It isn't gross but it isn't obscure. I think by this point Tyler had gotten the knack for writing and delivering dirty lyrics that achieved a form of art, bearing out the cowboy metaphor with gusto and perversity and boldness and the weird pidgin slang he always used that nobody else could ever pull off:

Come easy, go easy
All right until the rising sun
I'm calling all the shots tonight
I'm like a loaded gun
Peelin' off my boots and chaps
I'm saddle sore
Four bits gets you time in the racks
I scream for more
Fools' gold out of their mines
The girls are soaking wet
Not tounge's drier than mine
I'll come when I get back

I'm back in the saddle again

I mean what even is that? But it makes sense in that "Walk This Way" way.

I'd also like to point out that the guitars on this track - led by Joe Perry's 6-string bass - are utterly insane, very tight and funky yet loose and rocky, a perfect example of what this band is capable of pulling off. Everything is happening in this song and yet it never feels messy or even particularly chaotic, like the opening title track of Toys in the Attic. All that stuff that happens when Steven goes "I'm ridin'" is madness. This is a perfect intro to an album that is 40 minutes of redlining.

Rocks (1976)

This album has had complete hold of me since I was about 12 years old. I remember making the decision to sit down with this album. Up until then I was mostly a "greatest hits" guy. I had a lot of the later Aerosmith albums and several compilations and live recordings. Through this, I was familiar with the first two tracks, "Back in the Saddle" and "Last Child," which will be discussed soon. I was 12 years old and just getting into the internet and would read reviews on sites like Allmusic, which pointed to Rocks as the definitive peak of the band's early career. Maybe it was my age, but the way the world seemed to open up before me after "Last Child" ended and "Rats in the Cellar" began was a feeling that will always remain with me.

There's no escape on this album. There's no moment of breath. There's no safety or comfort. It is a gloomy, hectic, extremely crushing album. Whereas the previous one was built on levity, and a desire to transcend, Rocks feels stuck on Earth, mired in darkness. There's a lot of angst, dissatisfaction with one's situation and other people, consequences to negative actions, regret, fear, panic... it's the dark side of a good time, something the band would've been well acquainted with by 1976.

It's not exactly a lecture on morality. It's a great album because the points, such as they are, are demonstrated through the music itself, through mood and execution. I've praised the songwriting up until now as very in-the-moment, very modernist, very point of view. They're not telling stories, they're capturing moments. That's a very powerful thing to do, and is rarely done to such a great degree in rock music, then or now.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.ca

"Sweet Emotion" & "Walk This Way"

For all the raving I do about Steven Tyler's lyrics and Joe Perry's guitars, there are times I need to point out that what Aerosmith is, is an awesome band. Five guys playing together, always on the same page. "Sweet Emotion" has a great part for everyone, from Tom Hamilton's superstar bassline, and Joe Perry's ethereal talkbox, to the tight groovy percussion, (including drums that appear to be backmasked) to the singalong chorus and the explosive coda. It's one of those songs that's more of an atmosphere than a statement. You just kinda go along with the feeling. As great as the lyrics are, they're almost afterthoughts, decoration, there to interchange with the guitar riff that drives the piece. They're delivered with a bit of fire, a bit of smack-talk, but the chorus delivers relief. It's a yin-yang thing.



"Walk This Way" is a quintessential rock song, in the oldest tradition, talking about a teenage loser learning how to hang with the cool kids and get laid. It's the rock and roll fantasy, the music can somehow make you cool enough to get noticed by the hot chicks at your school.

Dig the guitars. For one, the outro to the song has one of the best dual-guitar interactions on record. Then there's three main riffs in the song: The intro, which is a classic tease, like "Satisfaction." Then there's the one under Tyler's prototypic-rap verses, which is skittering and anxious. Then finally there's the one that accompanies the chorus, echoing out like fanfare. It's actually meant to simulate a brass section. After the bluster of thoughts unreeled in the verses, the solution comes so simple: Walk this way! Talk this way! Walk this way (da-da-da!) Talkthis way! (da-da-da!) And that's what rock and roll is, the escape from a complicated world into a simple moment of clarity. "Walk This Way" isn't a phrase that pops immediately to mind when this subject comes up, but it seems to say so much anyway.

This song is one of those moments in rock where everything just fucking works.

"Big Ten Inch Record," "Round and Round" & "You See Me Crying"

Here are three tracks from the same album that could hardly be more different if they came from different bands. "Big Ten Inch Record" is a cheeky old blues song that lends the album an intimate juke-joint feel, but doesn't seem tacky or kitschy: it's a real piece of the show.

But so is the extreme metal (for 1975) of "Round and Round," one of those rare occasions where the guitars completely overwhelm all the other instruments, with that clinical, mechanical, nonstop cycling riff that just keeps spiraling onward and onward. It's a good demonstration of the difference between Joe Perry (who writes riffs like "Walk this Way") and Brad Whitford, who wrote this one. Brad is a bit more technical, and it leads to this whopping, angular sound in songs he contributes to, which often feel inescapable.

And then in like cool rain comes the opening piano of "You See Me Crying." Maybe not one of their best ballads, but definitely one that proves the band had an interest in such things before "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" or "Angel." Admittedly, the form hadn't been so completely solidified by the mid-70's, but this one is more recognizable as a power ballad than "Dream On" or "Seasons of Wither," with its swelling winds and strings.

"Adam's Apple" & "No More No More"

The thing I love about Toys in the Attic is that it's full of great songs, but songs that are great for extremely weird reasons. Songs that can hardly be emulated, let alone originated, by a different band. Okay, Led Zeppelin had spiritual and fantasy aspirations, and a sex drive to match, but did they ever combine them so thoroughly and to such great effect as Aerosmith does here?

We've already established that Steven Tyler is an incredibly eccentric fellow. He's not just a sex-addicted drug abuser, he's an old school hippie truth seeker with belief in nature goddesses and aliens and other dimensions. So we get literally all those things wrapped up in his retelling of the original sin.

And we're lucky, because as weird and high-minded and baffling as this song is, it works because it comes full on in a burst of rock and roll swagger, one of those classic riffs (hey, there's a lot of those on this album!) and an attention-getting line like "Lordy, it was love at first bite!" Tyler's not a tepid person, so he throws himself right into this Biblical role. I guess it's to be expected from someone who used the title of a literary classic to refer to a pimp with an affinity for women's legs, and changed the meaning of the second word in "Pandora's Box."



One of those hidden gems of the album is "No More No More," one of the most "Seventies" songs the band ever did. It's got something in common with groups like Boston or Rod Stewart, but it still kicks the shit out of them on the instrumentation alone, to say nothing of the lyrics. I do think it has some of the best lines of that early songbook:

Following a great, even uncharacteristically dreamlike arpeggiated riff (the band was full of old Beatlemaniacs, after all) we wake up to the grim reality of Tyler's rock and roll dream, first alluded to on tracks like "Mama Kin:"

Blood stains the ivories on my daddy's Baby grand
I ain't seen the daylight since I started this band

An unsympathetic chorus chimes in: No more, no more! No more, no more!

Store bought clothes fallin' apart at the seams
Tea leaf readin' gypsies Fortune tellin' my dreams (I have to admit, I always thought the lyrics was the somewhat more crass "Titty-flittin' gypsies.")

Holiday inns, lock the door with a chain
You love it and you hate it but to me they're all the same

And then later:

Times they're a changin, nothin' ever stands still
If I don't stop changin, I'll be writin' out my will

It's the same old story
Never get a second chance
For a dance to the top of the hill

Time and again, Steven Tyler demonstrates a willingness to revisit old lyrics. Sometimes it's a bit cheap, but in this early case it's weirdly prophetic. In this song, he refers to himself as a dreamer (per "Dream On") and borrows half the chorus of "Same Old Song and Dance." It has the effect of mythologizing large swathes of Aero-discography, checking in with the band throughout their 40-year continuity. Here he is young and feels sure he won't get a second chance (see: "Make It") but over a decade later we find just the opposite to be true: that they lost everything and got it back later.

"Uncle Salty"

There's a lot more going on on the Toys in the Attic album than just sex and drugs. "Uncle Salty" is ostensibly a song about the type of neglect and abuse that causes a girl to grow up wrong. Like most of the album, the lyrics are incredibly difficult to wring meaning out of, although they carry ominous overtones. The almost detached, inhuman tenor of Tyler's voice (somehow electronically altered, I suspect) is set to an almost cliche blues-rock rhythm, which you might recognize as Shania Twain's "Man I Feel Like A Woman" (thereby dulling the song's coolness factor just a bit.)

But what's really exceptionally strong about this song - a lot of Aerosmith songs in the long run, but this is a great example - is that it pins down its meaning and spirit in just a short hook, which incorporates Tyler's lyrics and delivery, and Joe Perry and Brad Whitford's soaring, empathic guitars. Particularly in the refrain that starts at 1:09 in this video:

When she cried at night, no-one came...
(a lonely guitar rings out, like sobs in the night)
When she cried at night -
(The guitar begins - slowly, then picking up pace - a brutal death march)
-- Went insane!
(Guitar, and Tyler, wail up a storm.)
Oooh... it's a sunny day outside my window...

As the crying riff that has already been present in the song rings out, it is now attached to that line as it's repeated over and over again, summing up the entire meaning of the song while still leaving the listener to ponder it. The whole thing comes together... in one. Fucking. Line.

Now don't you dare tell me this isn't a fucking brilliant band. This isn't even considered one of their best songs.

"Toys in the Attic"

This song, to me, has always been that awesome kind of inexplicable. There's that ultra-manic guitar riff that urges the entire song along, which fills you with adrenaline and fist-pumping excitement, the kind that few bands manage to accomplish. There's that incredibly chantable lyric: "TOYS! TOYS! TOYS! IN THE ATTIC!" which has no discernible meaning or context (it's been said to be a reference to insanity) but makes you want to sing along like you're part of something. Then there's the other lyrics:

Lights
Voices scream
Nothing's seen
Real's a dream

Leaving the things that are real behind
Leaving the things that you love in mind
All of the things that you've learned from fear
Nothing is left but the years...

From two years earlier, Steven Tyler was writing some very ponderous, philosophical lyrics to go along with Joe Perry's bloozy riffs. What we have here is beautiful, evocative nonsense. The meaning they carry - one of confusion and exasperation with the "real world," seeking escape - is not explicitly spelled out, but expressed in their obscurity, urgent delivery, and composition. It's getting maximum usage out of the fewest words, the easiest to hook people in.

Ultimately, the meaning of "Toys in the Attic," the secrets its lyrics and music conceal, aren't as important as the energy it emits. By now, Aerosmith were in the game of playing huge venue to thousands of paying fans. They created for the fans something loud and visceral and intuitive: rock you can feel and not need to know.

Toys in the Attic (1975)

Critically, Toys in the Attic is taken for granted a little bit. "Yes, yes, it has 'Walk This Way' and 'Sweet Emotion' on it, well done." Those are two amazing songs, but the entire album has a vibe that epitomizes Aerosmith so well. It has the raunchy, smirking blues of "Big Ten Inch Record" a few widescreen flights of fantasy, some serious but not heavy-handed philosophy, and a ballad that is completely the opposite of the one on the previous album.

If you're a teenage boy, this album is like your cool older brother. It doesn't know everything, but it knows more than you, and you just want to hear what it has to say. It shows growth, or a confidence in revealing more different sides, perhaps due to Steven's satisfaction with tracks like "Seasons of Wither." It's very worldly and shows not only the band's adeptness and playing around with its style, but Steven Tyler's completely deranged worldview. On the title track, and a few other tracks on the album, he invokes strange imagery, vague metaphors, and strangely profound snippets that don't seem, at a glance, like they belong next to the raunchy, sexy stuff. I'm not saying it's exactly deep, only that when you look at it, it's an interesting and weird thing to have been a hit rock record. But that sense of excitement, of otherworldliness, which pervades Toys in the Attic, was why the kids were all shelling out to see this band perform in their hometown. It was a glimpse at something outside their own headspace.

But this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

"Train Kept A Rollin'" & "Seasons of Wither"

I don't think I need to say anything about this one. There's a reason why it was the grand finale track of Aerosmith's Guitar Hero game. That guitar just chugs on for several minutes, helping convey the story of meeting an anonymous stranger on the train and seducing her. And then at 2:10, the song seems to come to a half, then ramps back up and quickly ups itself to a blistering tempo. On an album, as I said, defined by songs about sex and violence, here you get one of the most violently-sexual tracks in the entire career. It's also faked as a live performance, because I think they had to get expected limitations of studio work out of the way and just go for it. It's the showcase, a demonstration of hard rock greatness.

But somehow this isn't even the song I really want to talk about. It comes to its climax, its conclusion, very nicely and the end with some crowd noise, and then fades into...



Like I said, there is no concert, no cheering fans. They disappear in short order, replaced by a swirling, empty wind. Steven Tyler wrote "Seasons of Wither" about the bleak Massachusetts landscape in winter. Those eerie picked strings circulate like the wind, sending a shiver up your spine until they're finally cut by the lead riff, doing what it can to smooth things over. Here is one of the most ominous songs I've heard.

It's a song of regret, remorse, self-pity ("Love for the devil brought her to me." ... "Ooh woe is me, I feel so badly for you...") climbing into that chorus about "the wind out of your sails," but never quite resolving. I don't know anything about theory, so I'm just talking out my ass, but the way the chorus just leaves off back into the verse seems so unfinished as to be discomforting and sad and beautiful.

This is not a flashy song. Aside from a brief moment of a soaring vocal in the chorus, it's very understated. Even the guitars never seem to reverse course, trudging unsympathetically on a death march in the snow. Any band could do something soft-spoken, or sad, or wistful. Aerosmith did many "slow" songs as the years went on, sometimes sappy sometimes corny, as did many of their contemporaries and cfollowers. Few have the right touch to keep it from becoming just a song, just a so-called "power ballad." This is a feeling. This hangs inside of you. Amidst all the escapist fantasy, the fucking on trains and life on other planets, there's this weird, creeping dread that won't go away...

It's almost unfair that this song follows that one.

"Woman of the World" & "Pandora's Box"

Mind you, this is not high-minded stuff. This song actually pre-dates Aerosmith (originating with Tyler's earleir band, The Strangeurs) and does sound a slight bit out-of-step with the rest of the album, but manages to cohere into a good exercise in the band's dynamic, led by Tyler's vocal, with bursts of fanfare-like guitar underlining everything he says about this woman. Here, the predatory dynamic of "Lord of the Thighs" and other songs is inverted somewhat: Tyler is now pining after a woman he can't obtain. It's a sweet song in a way and you sense that Tyler's narrator-character is eager to match wills with this woman, in all his sleazy, seductive glory.



There are a lot of Aerosmith songs that are more overtly sexual in nature: they performed songs about having sex on a train, elevator, and space-station (or was that just my interpretation of "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing?") whereas this song is just about visiting a nude beach, seeing a pretty girl, and stumbling over yourself a bit ("I got to watch what I say, or I'll catch hell from the women's liberation" - see, he's sensitive!) Truth is, despite the request to "Open up your door-a for me", the language he eventually settles on is "Mama crack a smile, for me, just for me." All he wants is attention. Wink wink.

It's really all about the pursuit. In songs like these, the fucking itself is done in the music, in the rhythm and guitar play. Tyler's voice is voyeuristic, a way to bridge the gap between the listener and the character. He embodies the persona of someone who does have a huge appetite for women, but still sees himself as having to chase, to pursue, to prove himself, rather than treating them as targets to feed his craving. It's a weirdly reverent form of sexuality, I think.

"Spaced" & "SOS (Too Bad)"

One thing I've alluded to is the fact that Steven Tyler's lyrical technique got a lot less prosaic on this album. Whereas most of his songwriting on the first album was "Things are like this and it feels like that" - often using it as a jumping off point for philosophical musings - the lyrics on Get Your Wings (and much of the rest of their 70's output) are in-the-moment, modernist and impressionistic. Instead of descriptions, you get associations and streams of consciousness. That's the sense in which "Same Old Song and Dance" is about a crime and "Lord of the Thighs" is about a pimp.

"Spaced" is about... space. I think. It's a weird, creepy, understated song, like a lot of the album tracks on Get Your Wings. It's a weird, detached moment that reveals Tyler's interest in other planets, worlds, dimensions ways of thinking: here, he's a bit pessimistic:

Spaced enough to know I feel there's nothing out there
Spaced enough to know I feel I really don't care
Spaced enough to know I'm really losing my mind
And I'm never ever going back, I'm off the track,
No-one even knows I'm alive
Spaced, without a trace
Waiting for word to arrive
I'm the last man to survive...

These lyrics are surrounded by dark, growling guitars, the vocals breaking from restraint only briefly. If there's a point, another band might have belabored it by taking the sci-fi theme even further, maybe attaching a narrative. Instead there's just a swirl of imagery and impressions and the rest is implied, leaving it all a bit eerie.



I think, on this album, the point wasn't to make specific statements and write a song about "this" or "that," but to find the song in its own composition, leading to that almost-abstract approach to lyrical matter, with a heavier concentration of delivery and appearance, than on content. So you get variations on a theme. "SOS (Too Bad)" is another song on this album about run-ins with the law or figures that exist on the fringe of society: in this case, a dirty sexy rave-up that spends itself out before the 3-minute mark. It could be about anything so long as it winds up at that "Too bad, can't get me none'a dat" hook (but let's face it, with a line like that it was only going to be about a few things.)

What I like about this song is that it demonstrates an ability Aerosmith has kept in their back pocket even to this day: rhythm. Even as the song cuts its blistering pace, Tyler is all on top of the rhythm, with lyrics like Well she would if she could and she'd be good if she could only be a lover, she'd be out tonight which maybe don't make much semantic sense, but just sound so fucking cool and right. The way that guitar just shudders under "I'm a rat, a lonely schoolboy..." gets me, too. The fact that many songs like these exist in the cracks of the Aero-discography is probably why I thought they'd be worth spending a whole summer thinking about.

"Lord of the Thighs"

"Lord of the Thighs" begins with one of those impeccable Joey Kramer drumbeats (like "Walk This Way") then segues into a startlingly crisp keyboard riff, underlined by the shivering guitars of Perry and Whitford. It has a certain blaxploitation feel about it, a slinky, underworld sexuality, befitting this album's preoccupation with sex and violence. Ostensibly, the song is about a pimp, but like a lot of Tyler-penned lyrics, it doesn't approach the subject in language anyone else would use, in particular the title phrase/chorus:

You must'a come here to find it
You got the look in your eyes
Although you really don't mind it
I am the lord of your thighs

Yes, it's a silly title with a reference to a book that is as far away from this subject matter as you can get. It's played almost dreadfully straight, actually. But it's also a pretty awesome song and the last minute or so is spent cranking out that riff while the back-up guitar wails in the background like sex heard through a bedroom wall. Check out any live version where it balloons to 7 or 8 minutes of mesmeric jamming.