Joey Kramer’s favourite Aerosmith albums
American hard rockers Aerosmith formed after two bands, Chain Reaction and Joe Perry’s Jam Band, decided to join forces. In the early 1970s, the group gained traction through live performances, leading them to sign with Columbia Records in 1972.
That decade, Aerosmith released six studio albums, finding significant success with their third effort, Toys in the Attic, which featured the singles ‘Walk This Way’, ‘Dream On’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’. Soon enough, the band were one of the most popular rock outfits in the world, inspiring a wave of hard rock outfits such as Van Halen, Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses.
Aerosmith have remained popular through the years, and the fact that they won Grammys in the 1990s, years after they scored their first hits, reflects their long-term success. After five decades as a band, they’ll play their final shows in 2024, giving fans one final chance to witness their favourite songs live before retiring for good.
However, drummer Joey Kramer will not be present, having chosen to focus on his family and well-being instead. Still, Kramer has been an integral part of the band, even coming up with the name ‘Aerosmith’. With Aerosmith, Kramer demonstrated his talents as a powerful drummer with ample virtuosity, providing the backbone of 15 studio albums that cemented Aerosmith as American rock legends.
In 2017, reflecting on his life’s work, Kramer picked out his two favourite Aerosmith records, beginning with 1987’s Permanent Vacation, explaining that it “really marked a change, a step up and getting it together on our parts musically”.
The album famously contains songs such as ‘Ragdoll’ and ‘Dude (Looks Like a Lady)’ and sold over five million copies in the United States alone. The record was also considered the band’s comeback record after their previous work, Done with Mirrors, failed commercially.
Kramer’s other favourite is Permanent Vacation‘s successor, Pump, released in 1989. He said: “If I had to pick my two favourite records, I would definitely pick Pump as one of them, because the difference in the playing, the production, the songwriting, the lyrics, all the content that make the total of an album were two or three steps above.”
The drummer added: “It was the fans latching on to Pump and the new, sort of speak Aerosmith. Because there is where we draw the line between the old stuff and the new stuff. It’s almost like two different genres of Aerosmith. I wasn’t surprised for the reception for Pump; for the first time, I knew when that record was done, I knew he had done something really great.”
Pump became one of the band’s best-selling albums, shifting over seven million copies in the United States alone. For their efforts, Aerosmith won their first Grammy with one of the album’s singles, ‘Janie’s Got A Gun’, proving that they hadn’t lost what made them so successful in the 1970s.
