‘Dream On’: The Aerosmith song Steven Tyler “never thought” would be released
At this point, Aerosmith is a household name. Though they might not dominate in the same way other bands they are associated with did, they still have a legacy that can fill dancefloors, sell out arenas, and excite music fans worldwide. Very few don’t shed a tear to ‘Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’, and even fewer refuse to dance to ‘Love in an Elevator’, but it was always a pretty difficult ride for Aerosmith, regardless of their current success.
A long-haired, eccentric singer with upbeat, catchy rock music and a lot of songs about sex. Sound familiar? It did to the music world, and as a result, Aerosmith spent a large portion of their career persistently trying to shrug off criticisms that they were trying to copy The Rolling Stones. It’s something that still follows the band around to this day and has, at times, been particularly tiring.
One person who disagreed that they sounded like the Rolling Stones was Mick Jagger, who, when asked about the band, described them as “Rubbish – absolute rubbish.” He was complimentary (in a way) to Steven Tyler, but even that ended in him scorning the band. “The singer is quite a nice guy, mind you. He’s almost too bloody sweet… What can you do with him? Punch him in the mouth?” He said before impersonating said punches and continuing, “Here, what are you playing at, fucking impersonating me?”
Tyler admits that the constant comparisons started to take it out of him. After being awarded for their songwriting by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Tyler spoke about how the Jagger comments ground on him at the beginning of his career.
He said, “[The Awards] feel really good. But we’ve always just played our music and haven’t given a shit. Still, criticism of the ‘Cheap imitation of the Rolling Stones’ was constant. And it hurt for the first couple of years.”
Following those first couple of years, Tyler adopted the mindset that they should just play their music and try not to worry about the impersonator critiques. Tyler stepped away from the music the band was currently writing and instead turned to a tune he had written when he was 16 / 17. It ended up getting expanded into a whole song and being one of the band’s biggest hits: ‘Dream On’.
“It’s about hunger to be somebody: Dream until your dreams come true,” said Tyler when talking about the track. “This song sums up the shit you put up with when you’re in a new band. Most of the critics panned our first album, and said we were ripping off the Stones. That’s a good barometer of my anger at the press, which I still have.”
Since people weren’t enjoying what he and the band were coming up with, he looked towards the old melody he had penned years ago. “’Dream On’ came of me playing the piano when I was about 17 or 18, and I didn’t know anything about writing a song,” he said, “It was just this little sonnet that I started playing one day. I never thought that it would end up being a real song.”
