The Aerosmith song touched by God
Nothing about Aerosmith was exactly meant to be tame and family-friendly when they first began.
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry would forever be known as ‘The Toxic Twins’, and while they didn’t always need to have junk in their veins to make great music, there was a certain seedy energy to their classic albums that no one could have replicated. Even for all of the great albums they made in the 1970s, it wasn’t until they made it to sobriety that they hit upon one of their masterpieces.
Then again, it’s not like they didn’t already have a few great songs to choose from. ‘Dream On’ was the definition of a power ballad before those even existed, and while ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’ may have had a more bluesy flair to them, it was impossible not to move to their signature brand of boogie. But even if they had a lot of great tunes, not all of them asked you to think very hard about them.
90% of Tyler’s lyricism would always come back around to sex in some way, and while there was nothing wrong with that, it certainly made everything a little difficult when trying to dissect such eloquent works of poetry like ‘Love in an Elevator’. But for an album literally called Pump, not everything that they were doing had to be based around being horny every single hour of the day.
If anything, their power ballad track record was only getting better. It helped to have someone like Desmond Child to work with on their previous tracks like ‘Angel’, but when Tyler came in with a keyboard figure for ‘Janie’s Got A Gun’, the band had officially entered new territory. They had weepy ballads like ‘You See Me Crying’ and ‘Mia’ in the past, but with the cold sounds of a synthesiser, Tyler finally had the template to tell his story.
For all his songs about sex, Tyler knew he wanted to create a song that could help those who had been sexually abused in the past, saying, “ So many kids had been abused by their parents, [and] I got really angry with the fact nobody was paying homage to the children that are sexually abused by mum and dad.” Although the song sounds like something that could have come out of a dark Law and Order episode, everyone in the band knew that they needed to give their all to do justice to this kind of song.
Bassist Tom Hamilton even admitted that there was almost a divine magic to hearing it for the first time, saying, “Steven came in and played ‘Janie’s Got A Gun’ one day at rehearsal, and we all just stood there. It was like a visit from the gods. There was something really amazing happening in that room.”
In fact, the song is almost too good in a few respects. There are many pieces of the album that feel extremely powerful, but when looking at the song next to a track like ‘Young Lust’ or even ‘What It Takes’, it feels like it belongs on a much different album. But then again, maybe it’s better that this is a one-off in their catalogue rather than a core part of their musical DNA.
The Bad Boys from Boston always thrived on making the best music that they could with guitars, and while the synthesisers brought a moodier sound to those sessions, it would have been interesting to see where they would have gone from this tune. Because no matter how many times they tried to go back to the sleazy brand of rock and roll, maybe there’s a dark album they have inside of them that they never properly had the chance to get out of their system.
