The Aerosmith song that made Steven Tyler cry
Writing songs tends to be an emotional experience for every composer working today. Even though it might be easy to put together a decent melody and throw some words on top, it takes a certain kind of magic to come into the room whenever a classic is born, with the music practically writing itself. Although Steven Tyler has had many instances of songs that stem from an emotional place, there was one Aerosmith track that reduced him to tears.
Then again, Tyler was never the most candid guy regarding his emotions. Before he had begun working with Aerosmith, Tyler had taken time to build himself up in the local scene in bands like Chain Reaction, ruling the group and never being afraid to push a few buttons to get to where he needed to go.
Even though Tyler could see himself going places, it wasn’t until he saw guitarist Joe Perry playing in a local band that he realised that he found his calling. Playing in the same vein as artists like The Yardbirds, the band moulded themselves into an Americanised version of The Rolling Stones, with Tyler and Perry working off each other.
Although most of the band’s greatest songs usually stem from a certain guitar lick, Tyler first got the image for an emotional song when working on his piano at home. Coming from a classical background, Tyler wrote a despondent tune after feeling high and dry in the fall, telling Behind the Music, “Summer was over and I was feeling really lonely. And one night, I sat at the piano, and I wrote this melody. Little did I know that that melody would soon be heard all around the world.”
Though not the traditional rock song, ‘Dream On’ would become one of the group’s biggest hits, featuring a massive building tension that didn’t fit into the traditional rock format. Even though Tyler didn’t know it at the time, this would become the blueprint for what became known as the power ballad, with fans worldwide forming bands and creating their take on the reflective rock song.
When talking about hearing the song transposed by the other members, Tyler said that he had an emotional reaction to hearing everything work for the first time, telling Songfacts, “When I transposed it to guitar, Joe played the right fingers, and Brad [Whitford] played the left hand on guitar. Sitting there working it out on guitar and piano, I got a little melodramatic. The song was so good it brought a tear to my eye”.
Despite being a piano-led song, the guitars work perfectly with each other, with Perry getting the opportunity to sprinkle various Keith Richards-esque melodic lines between the verses. Although the song was destined to be huge, it wouldn’t be easy to sell it to the radio.
While the band had released it on their debut record, it quickly fell off the charts before re-emerging in the late 1970s. Being released around the time they were making Toys in the Attic, ‘Dream On’ would shoot up to number six in the charts, proving that Tyler’s way with melody had not failed him.
