"Walk This Way" with Run-DMC

You can be crass and look at it as one of the best promotional moves by any band in history. Or you can be romantic and think of it as a watershed moment in the careers of two groups - and by extension their genres.

Personally I think it was just a moment of inspiration for producer Rick Rubin, a longtime rock fan who was helping build hip hop into a viable genre, who brought Run-DMC and Aerosmith together. Did Run-DMC need the approval of an aging 70's rock band? Did Aerosmith need to pursue Run-DMC's audience? Maybe not - but they both needed to get on TV.

Not only does this song sound good, but it marks the beginning of Aerosmith's visually arresting music video career. They'd done modest video clips as far back as Night in the Ruts, which felt claustrophobic and did nothing to highlight their energy. The one music video for Rock in a Hard Place, for "Lightning Strikes" saw the band in Grease thug costumes playfighting in darkness. The clip for "Let The Music Do The Talking" was okay, but still a bit tepid.

But Aerosmith is a visual band: Steven Tyler cultivated his insane rock gypsy post-hippie image, complete with head-tripping dance steps and scarf-laden mic stand, to stand out from jeans-clad bar rockers. Meanwhile Joe Perry stood by his side coolly working his guitar without a care. Their appearance while performing should speak for itself, and the music shouldn't be that hard to visualize either.

It was important that they finally got it right on MTV, but also notable that they had to go back to and shine up an old chestnut to do so. There was some essential quality in a song like "Walk This Way," beyond being easy to rap to. All the band needed was to prove they hadn't lost that quality, that it was in them. That didn't necessarily mean turning into a rap group, but it did mean moving forward in some direction.

Two years later, the rest was history...