Five times Steven Tyler completely ripped off Mick Jagger
Apparently, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Personally, I think people just invented that phrase to make themselves feel a little better about people copying them, which, throughout the entirety of history, has always been an irritating experience. But in the famous worlds of rock and roll, there’s no hiding place for plagiarism, as Steven Tyler has often found out.
By the time Aerosmith emerged on the scene, The Rolling Stones were already a cemented outfit, and Mick Jagger had confirmed the elaborate style of his performance as his own. While it had built off the back of James Brown and Little Richard, he altered it to fit his style and thus carved out a niche of his own.
Tyler’s appearance similarities to Jagger, of course, didn’t help, but it similarly seemed to encourage him to adopt a likened style to Jagger both on stage and in the studio, and it wasn’t long until critics were pointing their fingers and labelling him a copycat.
“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,'” he once said, in a blazing defence. With his bandmate Joe Perry also chiming in, saying, “You could tell that they weren’t listening because we definitely weren’t sounding like The Stones.”
But we’re not so sure that Tyler’s defence is as bulletproof as he may think, and so we’ve compiled a list of times that the Aerosmith frontman ripped off Jagger.
Five times Steven Tyler ripped off Mick Jagger:
Rufus Thomas ‘Walking The Dog’
It’s not entirely uncommon for bands to start out performing cover tracks. It’s the ultimate way to feel your feet as a band and understand how the varying cogs of your dynamics work. In the case of The Rolling Stones, it moulded them into the formidable outfit they became and, more importantly, allowed Jagger to hone his own stage style.
Tyler must have swiftly realised that, as in 1971 when a relatively unknown Aerosmith were working the live circuit, the band similarly decided to cover ‘Walking The Dog’, with Tyler using it as a means of developing his vocal performance. In this instance, both bands are ripping off Rufus Thomas, and so, a sympathetic pass is handed out.
On stage performance
Once Tyler figured out how to nail ‘Walking The Dog’, he likely learned that his on-stage persona had subtly slipped into a replica of Jagger. Strutting up and down the stage, with a wild look in his eye, it was hard not to view his flamboyance as a by-product of Jagger’s own snake-hipped style.
Who can blame him, though? They had a similar appearance that would have encouraged Tyler, who did later admit that “[Jagger] was my hero, there was actually a six-or-seven-year period when I was afraid to tell the press so I was all like, ‘No, he isn’t.’ And then, of course, I came out of the closet and went, ‘He is!’ To this day, to this minute, to this second, Mick Jagger is still my hero.
Fashion sense
Let’s be clear, an open-collared shirt and long black hair-do was not exactly uncommon in the 1970s. But you’ve got to remember exactly what it was Jagger was doing with his style in the ‘60s, a time when The Beatles were heralded as the innocent boys next door and The Stones, the rebellious outcasts.
Jagger used his flamboyant suits and skinny trousers to shock the conservative public, and so when Tyler was curating Aerosmith’s image into a similarly dark state, he took direct influence from Jagger’s aesthetics. It was vintage glam meeting gypsy flair, with a rebellious attitude – which was ultimately a blueprint set out by Jagger himself.
Vocal Mannerisms
Mick Jagger’s harshest critics were always keen to claim that the Stones frontman simply couldn’t sing. It was right, he didn’t have a natural singing voice, but that was ultimately for the best – Jagger worked and evolved his performance style to make up for the technical shortcomings he possessed, and so in turn, became a vibrant frontman with a unique character.
Tyler, however, could sing quite comfortably, yet chose to adopt Jagger’s style when laying down his own parts on Aerosmith classics. At times, he neglected his vast vocal range to instead use a more viscous and enunciated bark that Jagger’s English schoolboy voice had made famous.
‘Chip Away At The Stone’
The admiration for Jagger comes no clearer than on the 1978 Aerosmith song ‘Chip Away At The Stone’. The song features a blues-rock sound and is a metaphor for seducing a distant woman, which, let’s be honest, is a well-trodden path across all music and not exclusive to Jagger.
But compositionally, it was ripped right out of The Rolling Stones handbook. The blues-rock sounds like the younger brother to ‘Honky Tonk Women’ while Tyler’s voice itself sounds as if it learned its craft on the cobbled streets of England. It’s gritty and confident, despite being a near clear rip off of a band that Aerosmith spent so long claiming they weren’t copying.
