How ‘Jaded’ became the Aerosmith song Joe Perry felt betrayed by: “Only viewed us as a team when it suited him”
Aerosmith have spent nearly a half-century dining out on being the ultimate party band.
All riffs, all solos, all Steven Tyler dancing around in extremely tight trousers. The most you’ve got to think about is the amount of scarves on his microphone stand and those distractingly large lips. Yet the truth is that behind the scenes in Aerosmith has never been a truly peaceful place to be. They may have been dubbed this due to their truly ludicrous drug intake run in the 1970s, but despite being sober (more or less) ever since, there’s a reason that Tyler and Joe Perry are still called the ‘Toxic Twins’.
The thing is, this isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, and not just in the world of rock ‘n’ roll either. Horror stories about rock bands with a decade of history are dime-a-dozen. Multiply that by five and there’s no one who’s getting out of that without a truck-load of drama, unless you’re U2. Even then, we might just not know about the interpersonal friction between members. It can’t be that easy to know Bono longer than you haven’t. Thus, with Aerosmith, it might actually be healthier to know there’s been some screaming matches and fistfights between them; that’s just life.
It also seems to have honestly made them stronger as well, which makes sense. Pressure produces diamonds, and the pressure of being in Aerosmith for longer than a fistful of countries have existed seems to have made them something even more special than a diamond. You see, it’s easy to joke about why Tyler and Perry are called the ‘Toxic Twins’, but perhaps we’re focusing on the wrong part of it. It’s all about the toxic and not about the twins.
What song caused a ruckus in Aerosmith?
Aerosmith are at this point less of a rock band and more of a family. This isn’t (massive) lip service either, unlike most rock bands of their ilk that maybe have one or two of their original members dragging the group name after 40 or 50 years. Aerosmith is still kicking with the original bunch that formed the band in 1970. Sure, there are some asterisks there. Joey Kramer hasn’t toured with them since 2020 due to a shoulder injury, but he’s still a member of the band, and Joe Perry dipped for five years in the late 1970s, but other than that, it’s been the same five guys for half a century.
For a sign of how deadly seriously the band took the business of being a unit, look no further than Tyler’s 2012 memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, where he discusses writing ‘Jaded’ with producer and co-writer Marti Frederiksen. Now, ‘Jaded’ was the last real hit Aerosmith had, hitting a quite frankly astonishing number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. One can imagine a band as experienced as Aerosmith knew this the moment they heard the single, and thus, high fives all around, right?
Wrong. As Tyler writes, “Monday we come back, we start in with the band again, and Joe realises that I’ve written the song without him. Marti was staying at his house, and someone in the family read Marti the riot act for being a traitor and writing a song when Joe (Perry) wasn’t there.” That “someone in the family” might have been Perry himself because no one seemed more pissed about this so-called betrayal than him.
Damningly, Perry wrote, “Steven had displayed a cavalier attitude that undermined our partnership. Strong partners, like Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards, have each other’s backs. Once in a great while they might wander off and compose alone or with another writer, but the understanding is clear: When it comes to their band’s material, their partnership is paramount. They’re a team. Steven only viewed us as a team when it suited him.”
Yet, despite the dance of perceived slight, the band are still together. Still a team after all these years. Maybe it’s because, as Perry puts it, it suits them. However, many bands before and after them have lost sight of that and paid a dear price for it. It’s a wisdom hard won that makes a band like Aerosmith avoid that fate.
