"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.

"Same Old Song and Dance"

On paper, I suspect, the music for "Same Old Song and Dance" isn't that different from "Make It" or "Mama Kin" or the general sound of Aerosmith's first album. In execution, however, there's a world of difference. The track that raises the curtain on Aerosmith's second album shows right away where all the parts go: while one guitar plays a lead riff, the other embellishes with a solo, while the rhythm section of Kramer and Hamilton keeps everything locked tight. Then Steven's vocals seem to emerge from the music, rather than get imposed on them. This is pretty much a perfect rock song, with solos from both guitarists that made it worthy of inclusion in the third Guitar Hero game.

The lyrics are technically about a crime - I'm not sure if the "narrator" committed the crime or is being wrongly accused. They're not overly clear, but they show the direction Steven's lyrics would take for the rest of his career, by suggesting the meaning of a song with largely abstract phrases ("Get yourself a cooler and lay yourself low / Coincidental murder with nothing to show") rather than telling a story in the manner of an older bluesman or a literalist pop songwriter. It's what maeks the classic Aerosmith albums so invitingly weird: you know what they're about but they're not really about it, and that was always sort of the way I wanted rock and roll to be.

Get Your Wings (1974)

In hindsight, Get Your Wings is one of Aerosmith's most consistent (and satisfying) albums. Even their best albums tend to pursue a lot of different directions, but from beginning to end, this one works as a very straightforward hard rock piece. The whole thing sounds like it came together a lot easier, more intuitively, like they're no longer guessing about what kind of band they can be. While there's a bit of disconnect between "Movin' Out" and "Somebody," or "Dream On" and "Make It," all the tracks on the second album feel like they belong together, whether they're about a crime gone bad, having sex on a train, outer space, bad weather, or having sex on a beach. If all the songs weren't great, you might say it's repetitive, but even after their next few albums, Rolling Stone once referred to Wings as their best.

Although it doesn't have all my favourite songs, Get Your Wings is probably my favourite Aerosmith album to listen to from beginning to end. The best tracks are excellent, and the lesser-known ones do a great job reminding you of their worth.

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