1000 Years From Now: The album Steven Tyler thinks will revive rock ‘n’ roll in future civilisations
The idea of rock and roll meant something a lot more than a musical movement to Steven Tyler.
This was his salvation when he was cutting his teeth at school, and when he struck out with Aerosmith on their first tours, it was like having a second musical family that he could always go back to. But even when working on some of the greatest riffs to come out of American music, Tyler felt that there were far greater musicians that deserved to be celebrated among the biggest names in music history.
But let’s bury the hatchet on this one before people even start asking questions: yes, Tyler was one of the biggest fans of The Rolling Stones. There are plenty of times that he shouted praises for the other members of the British Invasion like The Yardbirds, everything from the way he danced onstage to his partnership with Joe Perry felt like the American equivalent of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
And it’s not exactly hard to see the resemblance. Both bands had big blues influences, each had a knack for writing great ballads, and each of their frontmen had been blessed with a gritty singing voice and a sizable mouth, so it’s not that much of a stretch. But even if Aerosmith took the blues into new directions when making tracks like ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’, the Young brothers didn’t really need much else besides standard rock and roll.
AC/DC could have easily been contemporaries of bands like Aerosmith, but they weren’t exactly going to throw in the softer material, either. They had rock and roll in their veins from the moment they began playing, and when looking at how Angus Young dressed onstage, it wasn’t like anyone with that kind of schoolboy uniform was going to be caught dead breaking out an acoustic guitar and getting sentimental.
That may have led to them being labelled a ‘one trick pony’, but that’s not necessarily a bad qualifier at all. The label only counts as an insult if you’re not that good at the one trick, and while Aerosmith have definitely stretched themselves further musically over the years, Tyler knew that AC/DC had earned the distinction of being one of the most consistent rock and roll bands in the world.
Even when inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tyler claimed that the remains of civilisation will still be listening to AC/DC for years to come, saying, “Think about how some distant future civilisation will stumble upon what’s left. They may marvel at the paintings of Rembrandt. They might gawk in wide-eyed wonder at Michelangelo’s David, but when they throw on Back in Black, they will still clench their fists, they will still piss off their neighbors and dance too close to the fire.”
And for any casual AC/DC fan, Back in Black is still one of the finest places for any fan to start. Not everyone is necessarily going to be into the idea of classic rock and roll that much, but the minute that the opening hi-hat of ‘Back in Black’, it feels like a musical bomb about to go off, and when those power chords finally hit, it still feels like one of the single coolest things anyone could be playing.
Aerosmith already have a few of those kinds of riffs under their belt, but there’s no sense in them trying to even compete with what AC/DC could do. The Young brothers were a damn riff factory in their prime, and they were going to do everything in their power to make sure they served up every single great idea they could find.
