Aerosmith

Hard rockers from Boston fronted by enormous-lipped hairstyle Steve Tyler (vocals, preening), who looks more like a cartoon version of himself than a cartoon version ever could. Aerosmith gained considerable success in the early seventies when most people had forgotten the Yardbirds and the Faces and couldn’t spot a rip off when it pranced about in front of them. They released a string of albums relying on their ability to find covers that teens of the day hadn’t heard yet. Songs like Train Kept a Rolling and Walking the Dog were covers of Yardbirds and Rolling Stones covers which didn’t matter at all to 15-year-old boys who wanted to rock. Big Ten Inch Record, an old blues song by Bull Moose Jackson, set the tone for Aerosmith’s own songwriting with its childish, sexual wordplay. “She just loves my big ten inch…record of her favourite blues” was about as sophisticated as Aerosmith’s lyrics would ever become with songs like Lord of The Thighs delighting fans and inciting groans in anyone who had fully experienced puberty. 

Aerosmith's debut release. First pressings mislabelled the song Walking the Dog as "Walking the Dig". This is the only interesting thing about the entire album. 



Big Ten Inch Record was introduced to the band by their drug dealer, who would play a more significant role in their musical development than mere song suggestion. During the late seventies, Tyler and songwriting partner Joe Perry (lead guitar, pouting) became famous for their excessive drug consumption which saw them gain the nickname The Toxic Twins. During this period, Tyler apparently went on stage one night having changed the setlist to open the show with the song they’d traditionally used as an encore. As the final notes died out, Tyler thanked the audience and left, convinced he’d played an entire show already. The band couldn’t coax him back on and the audience was treated to a one-song show.



Problems for the group erupted during the recording of Night in the Ruts when Tyler was unable to write any lyrics and presumably couldn’t find a horny 13-year-old to ghost-write anything of the quality of their previous releases. A tour was organised to generate some money but collapsed when Perry’s wife threw a glass of milk in the face of another band-wife and the subsequent recriminations caused Perry to leave the group. Perry was replaced as was rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford who also jumped ship soon after. The group limped on with replacement musicians and Tyler in such a narcotic daze that he probably had no idea who was onstage with him, or whether he was actually on a stage at all.


After five years in which the group’s popularity plummeted like one of Tyler’s regular onstage collapses, the original members reunited and the classic line up of Tyler, Perry, Whitford, Kramer, Hamilton, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol and blues rip-offs was back together. The only thing missing were flung dairy products and a dedicated fanbase.

1982's Rock In a Hard Place, recorded without Perry or Whitford or any original ideas or any spark of creative inspiration. Nobody cared then or now. 

Salvation came in the form of rap outfit RUN DMC, who realised Walk This Way, an earlier Aerosmith hit which was essentially a rap record with a sung chorus and a guitar solo. They were capable of rapping the verses and brought the Toxic Twins in to handle the actual singing and guitar playing. The result was a huge success and put Aerosmith back in the public spotlight and helped pay for the groups’ extensive stay in rehabilitation facilities across the country.


By the late 1980’s, every member of Aerosmith was clean, sober and capable of playing an entire concert in an upright position. Their label paired them up with a producer who cleaned up their sound and professional songwriters and the result was Permanent Vacation, a surprise smash hit which returned the group to the top of the album and singles charts. Pump followed in 1993 and continued the Aerosmith tradition of rock and roll and sexual innuendo. Songs like Love In An Elevator contained sex jokes which were obvious (“living it up while I’m going down”), old (“show you how to fax in the mailroom”), or at times entirely nonsensical (“Kiss your sassafras”). Accompanying the sniggering cock-gags was Janie’s Got A Gun, a song about child abuse, incest and fratricide that featured the line “He jacked a little bitty baby” and came with a video clip designed to show the world that Tyler was serious about the sexual abuse of young women. It was a cack-handed attempt at an issue song that would have struggled to be taken seriously by a group who had shown a social conscience in the past, let alone a band who featured the line “You better keep your daughter inside, or she’s gonna get a dose of my pride” earlier in the album.

Armageddon, a movie about a group of middle-aged men boring into a rock. With a hit song provided by middle-aged men who had already made a career out of boring rock.

Aerosmith’s career peaked in 1998 when pop songstress Diane Warren, whose previous songwriting successes had been recorded by such rock-cred artists as Cher, Olivia Newton-John and Barbara Streisand, wrote I Don't Want to Miss a Thing for the disaster movie disaster Armageddon. The syrupy love ballad was inexplicably given to Aerosmith to record and it topped the charts, meaning their two best-known songs are a slow dance number and a rap hit.


The turn of the century saw ideas progressively dry up as singles success became harder to come by and were outnumbered by live albums and cash-grab compilations. The group struggled on despite feuding, addiction to painkillers, solo country albums, appearances as reality show judges and other embarrassments. For most of the last ten years their 12 remaining fans have been kept in the dark as to whether they’re an ongoing concern while the rest of the world assumed they broke up years ago.