“Just do what Rick says”: How an Aerosmith flop helped Rick Rubin make his masterpiece
When Aerosmith started out in the 1970s, it took them a long time to come out of the gates with any releases that threatened the charts. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that their stock began to rise in a significant way. The band had started out as a blues-influenced hard rock outfit, but they dramatically commercialised their sound in their second decade, achieving hits with tracks like ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’ and ‘Love in an Elevator’.
It wasn’t as though they hadn’t continually worked hard to take their status to the next level. They were releasing steadily from their inception, just not achieving much success from their efforts. They knew this would change eventually, and one song they had extra confidence in from their early output was ‘Walk This Way’.
Initially released as a single in 1975, it never charted, but the re-issue in 1976 managed to creep into the US top ten, much like the success they’d had with their previously re-released single, ‘Dream On’. However, they believed that it could’ve been even bigger, and a life-changing offer that would propel the song further into infamy was waiting for them shortly after Joe Perry returned to the band in 1984 after a five-year hiatus.
Around this time, producer Rick Rubin had all but finished working on hip-hop group Run-DMC’s third album, Raising Hell, and while he was relatively pleased with the outcome, he felt as though some additional tweaks needed to be made. It was at this point that he stumbled upon ‘Walk This Way’ within his record collection, and when he noticed that the backbeat was similar to how a hip-hop beat was constructed, he had a brainwave.
“I was just listening through my record collection, and the fact that the breakbeat of ‘Walk This Way’ was already a familiar staple in the live hip-hop world just added to that message,” Rubin revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone. “We could take something that was familiar and not change it so much, just through the rappers’ delivery, reframe the song. And unbelievably, it happened. It’s amazing.”
While he had absolutely no issues getting Aerosmith on board, he struggled at first to convince Run-DMC to commit to the idea. The first Aerosmith record after Perry’s return, Done With Mirrors, had been another commercial failure, so the idea of collaborating with a group from a completely different background on a re-work of their song caused their eyes to light up, thinking they’d be in with a shot at success.
“They were really excited to participate in real, urban street music,” Rubin claimed.
On the other hand, the Run-DMC response was initially cold, with the band saying that they didn’t feel it fit with their ethos to work with a group from such a disparate genre. “They were really against it,” Rubin recalled. “It didn’t relate to their mentality. And I remember Russell [Simmons, the group’s manager] called them and said, ‘Just do what Rick says.’”
This phone call would ultimately be what changed the band’s mind, and changed Aerosmith’s fortunes forever, with the song finally getting the plaudits they’d pushed for it to get when it charted at number four in the US. Say what you want about Rick Rubin, but this masterstroke of an idea and his insistence that it would work turned a complete flop into an all-time classic crossover hit.
