The awful Aerosmith album that came about when the band “stopped giving a fuck”
Drugs are bad, kids, but try telling that to Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the height of the 1970s, a decade when the duo were quickly christened ‘The Toxic Twins’ by the music press. The larger-than-life heart and soul of hard rock legends Aerosmith, their tales of excess and snorting practically anything that wasn’t nailed down became mythical rock fables that would instil disdain in parents and inspire dewy-eyed youth the world over to pick up an instrument.
By 1977, Aerosmith were on a roll with two albums, 1975’s Toys in the Attic and 1976’s Rocks, sending the band stratospheric. It was Tyler and Perry’s songs that sent them skyward, with the pair responsible for hits such as Sweet Emotion, Back in the Saddle and the original version of ‘Walk This Way’, a song that would provide the Bostonians with another massive hit and a new lease of life when they collaborated with Run-DMC for a remix released in 1986.
Perhaps inevitably, Tyler and Perry became less interested in their song-writing chemistry and more invested in extra-curricular chemistry pursuits, the effects of which were first seen in the follow-up to Rocks, 1977’s Draw the Line.
As told to Stephen Davis for his Aerosmith memoir Walk This Way, Perry confessed, “Draw the Line was untogether because we weren’t a cohesive unit anymore,” before adding a line that became synonymous with the band. “We were drug addicts dabbling in music rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.”
Perry elaborated further, “A lot of people had input into that record because Steven and I had stopped giving a fuck.” The duo contributed three songs, I Want to Know Why, Get It Up and the title track for the album, but none of them had the magic or impact that had proved such a winning combination on Rocks or Toys in the Attic.
Tyler, who has rarely proclaimed himself to be a legendary lyricist, laid the blame on the band, maintaining, “I wasn’t Pattie Smith writing poetry. I write exactly to the music, and when the music ain’t coming, neither were the lyrics.”
Perry even acknowledged not turning up for some sessions, leaving rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford to stand in for him. “Brad and Steven wrote The Hand That Feeds, which I didn’t even play on because I’d stayed in bed the day they recorded it … Brad played great on it anyway.” However, Tyler also admitted to Alan de Pirna in a 1997 interview with Guitar World, “What I specifically remember was not being present in the studio because I was so stoned. In the past, I always had to be there and hear every note that was going down – who was playing what and were they out of tune … I just didn’t care anymore.”
The original line-up, rounded out by bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer, managed to stick together for one more record, Night in the Ruts, their sixth overall before the departure of both Perry and Whitford in 1979 and 1981, respectively, which led to the largely risible Rock in a Hard Place in 1982. Both guitarists were back in the fold by 1985’s Done with Mirrors, which was received warmly by critics. Still, it wasn’t until the aforementioned collaboration with Run-DMC, before the band truly got back their mojo and entered a renaissance period that would cement their legacy forever.
