"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...

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.