Rock in a Hard Place (1983)

A major critical re-assessment of the Aerosmith catalogue - especially this number - is probably never going to happen. Rock lovers the world over are pretty comfortable with the narrative: the slow climb followed by the quick decline, followed by a meteoric return. This is the fall. This is, in fact, the bottom. Joe Perry is not in the band. Steven Tyler is wacked out on drugs. The band basically has no direction. You really don't need to listen to this album. You can guess what it sounds like, and you'd be half right.

What you'd never guess is that all that mess churned out something damn near listenable. Most of the songs aren't worse than the filler parts of their 90's albums. They make a bunch of bizarre, drug-motivated decisions that come within an inch of actually working, stuff you'd never try if you were in a band with its sanity intact. The difference between Steven Tyler's band and any other rock band in history is, as I've pointed out already, Steven's very particular form of insanity. Properly harnessed, you get brilliant rock. Unchecked, you get fascinating messes.

The rest of the band plays good on this album. Musically it might be better that Ruts, top to bottom. Steven's vocals are completely wacked out and his lyrics are often gibberish (and when they're not they're sometimes stranger.) There's not another Aerosmith album that sounds quite this crazy. It's loud and proud. It's only badly thought of because it's not cool to praise it, and because it wasn't "in" when it came out.

That's the point I think I've been edging toward this whole time. When you're hot, you can do no wrong. When you're on top, or you might be the next big thing, your every choice seems to be the right one. But when you're not... boy, when you're on the outside, sometimes there's not a damn thing you can do to get back. I'm not saying the band deserved to regain its popularity with this album, only that whatever merits it has are firmly outweighed by the fact that the band that made it was never going to create a classic album anyway. That's not how the story goes.

I almost skipped over it, but I really need to work with this one. Before I can keep going with the story, I need to pull the cover back on what "bad" Aerosmith looks like. Oh, it's fucking crazy, and nobody's idea of a great record... but it's not my idea of a bad one, either.

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