“Shortsighted”: The bands Aerosmith hated being compared to
Aerosmith, despite having a great amount of success throughout their career, have always struggled to be considered their own independent form of band. They were frequently compared to The Rolling Stones, given they embodied the same things that made the Stones famous, not to mention that the long-haired, good-looking frontman didn’t help things either.
“Oh God, Aerosmith!” said Mick Jagger when he was asked about his opinion of the band, “They’re just rubbish – absolute bullshit […] The singer is quite a nice guy, mind you. He’s almost too bloody sweet. He’s very kind to me, anyway.”
Steven Tyler has constantly rebuked the comments that he tries to imitate the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger. “We’ve always just played our music and haven’t given a shit. Still, the ‘Cheap imitation of the Rolling Stones’ criticism was constant. And it hurt for the first couple of years,” he said, “It was constantly Mick Jagger this and Mick Jagger that – that I copied him, and Janis Joplin too. Mick was the cheapest, easiest shot. ‘Well, he looks like him, so let’s write about that’.”
Being compared to the Rolling Stones wasn’t the only issue that Aerosmith had, though. While people might have critiqued them because of their similar look and style, the band knew that so long as they made music to its fullest effect, they couldn’t go far wrong. As such, they were always willing to give their music every single fibre of their creative being,
In doing this, Aerosmith encountered a problem that many bands do, which is that they explore multiple creative avenues and then, in the process, touch upon a range of styles of music. This is exciting for a listener and was why Aerosmith was so happy when songs like ‘Nine Lives’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ contrasted heavily with one another, but it also meant that record shops and labels weren’t sure with how they were supposed to market the band.
This meant that the band was often sold in a way that the members didn’t appreciate, as they didn’t feel it was an accurate reflection of the band. While this might seem pedantic to read, when so much of your career has been spent being compared to other artists, it must have been frustrating for Aerosmith to get the attention they felt they deserved.
Joe Perry once spoke about the unfair treatment of the band and how frustrated he got whenever the band was compared to heavy metal artists. “It’s also been hard for us, because you can’t pigeonhole us,” he said, “I’ve been to record stores and we’re in the heavy metal category, and I go ‘What the fuck is that?’ That’s such a shortsighted category for a band like us, I mean we’re in there with Sepultura and AC/DC. So I think that it’s hard, cos the business all want to pigeonhole everybody so they can figure out where things can go.”
Perry admitted that they absorb a lot of the music they hear, and so those bands will certainly influence Aerosmith, but they always bring something unique to the table. “We absorb what’s going on around us, we stay close to our roots, but we’re always shifting,” he said, “We come from the school where if you knock us we just get up and push back.”
