The Aerosmith song Joe Perry said he should have sang: “It’s my song!”
If the ‘Back to the Beginning’ concert wasn’t solely a celebration of the life and legacy of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, it was surely a metric for all the rock and heavy metal bands who shaped the space more than anybody else.
Anyone could (and would) likely contest that theory, but let’s take Aerosmith as an example: love or hate them, they did a hell of a lot for modern rock as we know it.
Most of this could be attributed to the knowledge that deep down, no matter the scrutiny they faced, they always knew the meaning of keeping it fresh. But they also always knew how hard a challenge that actually was, even if they were aware of it. Originality was never cheap, but it wasn’t easy, either. Like Joe Perry once said, “It’s tough to work in such a finite space and do something new and interesting.”
Any metal or hard rock loyalist will probably argue that Aerosmith aren’t exactly the face of originality when considering all the others in the scene. But Aerosmith always were as authentic as they could be, even if in the beginning it was all just about making some “noise”, as Perry explained. Even if, in the beginning, it was the place he went to because nobody could tell him “no”.
But that didn’t mean Aerosmith was always plain sailing for Perry. He might’ve got into it because he’d never been told no elsewhere, but he likely didn’t anticipate the moments in the band when he would, even if they concerned songs with his own lyrics. He likely hadn’t anticipated the moments he’d experience push-back, and the learning curve that came with relinquishing control over something he’d created.
This happened with the song ‘Oh Yeah’. Perry was initially enraged when he learnt that Steven Tyler wanted to take over and sing his lyrics. But eventually he spoke to his wife and came around to the idea, letting fate take the reins. If it was meant to be, he’d hand his work over to someone to deliver the words themselves.
“Steven kept pushing for it because he liked the lyrics,” he recalled to MusicRadar.
Continuing, “Then, when we put the horns on it and the chicks singing on it, it really came into its own. I was still planning on singing it, and then Steven said, ‘Maybe we should do it as a duet.’ Jack was saying, ‘You should give Steven a shot at singing it.’ And I was like, ‘Hey, man, it’s my song!’
He added, “I was talking it over with my wife, Billie, and she said, ‘Look, if he likes the lyrics that much, let him sing it. Give him a shot.’ So I said, ‘Maybe we’ll do a duet, and he’ll sing the chorus’ – that kind of thing. Finally, he just went in there and belted it out. For that song, I just couldn’t deny it. It really turned into an Aerosmith song.”
To Tyler’s credit, the song has an immediate rock ‘n’ roll quality to it, his vocals enhancing this with a raw delivery that draws attention to the commanding energy within the lyrics. Perry could have pulled it off of a similar ilk, but Tyler did belt it in a way that’s difficult to imagine it any other way, proving that, sometimes, Perry backing down can be the best thing for their overall sound. Sometimes, you can write a great song, but you don’t need to be involved in every aspect for it to be even better.
