The band breakup that Slash said signified “the end of 1970s rock”
The 1970s is usually the default decade when people think of classic rock. The 1960s was the age of Flower Power, and the 1980s may have been when pop exploded, but in terms of rock’s relevance, it never had a more prime spot on the charts than the post-Woodstock era, where bands like Led Zeppelin stood like gods that walked the Earth. There was bound to be a moment where everything burst, and Slash pointed to Aerosmith’s dissolution as the moment when the 1970s came to an abrupt end.
For a band synonymous with rock at the time, Aerosmith actually seemed indebted to the sounds of the pre-psychedelic movement. Looking through their back catalogue, a lot of it seemed to be the same kind of bluesy swagger that came out of bands like The Yardbirds years before, so what made them so different? Simple: they put some of the most vicious grooves known to man behind them.
It’s one thing to be a good rock band, but it’s called rock and roll for a reason, and every lick Joe Perry ever spit out was about how well he worked off drummer Joey Kramer. In fact, if you took away the distortion and Steven Tyler’s screaming, Aerosmith could be described as swing music in some circles, especially when they lay down on a riff like ‘Same Old Song and Dance’.
Slash already had ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as his guide to hard rock, but it wasn’t until he heard Rocks that he fully sunk his teeth into Aerosmith. They already had ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Sweet Emotion’ down, but this was the closest the band got to metal territory, making songs that felt like hard rock blues on steroids like ‘Rats in the Cellar’.
While Slash may not have been as knowledgeable about rock and roll behaviour at that age, it didn’t take rocket science to tell they were going downhill fast. Tyler and Perry were already shoving everything they could up their noses, and after the recording of Draw the Line, they seemed like a bunch of addicts in a group that happened to play musical instruments.
When the Guns N’ Roses finally got to see them in person, he knew that the glory days of his brand of rock and roll were about to change, telling Rolling Stone, “My first Aerosmith concert was in 1978, at a festival with Van Halen — they were incredibly loud, and I barely recognised a note, but it was still the most bitchin’ thing I’d ever seen. Soon after that, they broke up, which to me marked the end of Seventies rock”.
Compared to most other bands that hit a sore spot, it’s a miracle most of the group was standing upright by that time. Once the tension in the band became too much, Perry left the fold for years before finally being convinced to come back in the 1980s, so they had to play catch-up with where music was going.
If you wait around long enough, sometimes things start coming back around and Slash practically carried on the tradition that Aerosmith started. For all of the glitzy teased hair spread throughout the Sunset Strip, Slash brought an authenticity back into rock and roll that he would have never been able to do without going back and listening to those Perry solos back in the day. The golden age of 1970s rock may have died an ugly death, but Slash was proof that there was life after death for that flavour of rock and roll.
