The one Aerosmith member “everybody” hated working with
There’s always a certain chemistry that comes with bands like Aerosmith.
As much as people like the idea of focusing on the frontman at the top of the band that calls all the shots, the thought of Steven Tyler not having Joe Perry by his side throughout every turn feels wrong to even think about. But before the band even settled on their proper lineup, they knew that there were certain people that were never cut out to go the distance the same way the rest of them were in Boston.
Then again, the fact that the band got off the ground at all is a miracle considering how dismal their future looked at the time. They were never meant to be the biggest band in the world or anything, but when their debut record sank like a stone, it was up to them to start building their audience the hard way. That meant touring their asses off, but their hard work was bound to be rewarded when records like Toys in the Attic came out.
And while the rest of the band outside of the ‘Toxic Twins’ tend to get treated like second class citizens half the time, that doesn’t mean that they are any less important. The bass intro to ‘Sweet Emotion’ is etched in history thanks to Tom Hamilton, and the groove behind ‘Walk This Way’ would never have been possible had Joey Kramer not been familiar with the funk legends like Kool and the Gang.
But the most underrated member of the group is usually Brad Whitford. Perry definitely has the bigger reputation as the “rock star” of the band, but what Whitford did in the background made for the most technical solos of the band’s career, whether that was the lead guitar break on ‘Last Child’ or watching him take the reins and write the riff to tracks like ‘Nobody’s Fault’ on the B-side of Rocks.
Even though Whitford was the last to join, he was going to be a major improvement over Ray Tabano. Despite being one of Tyler’s long-time friends from back in the day, the frontman knew that there was no way that they were going to go on if they had someone that they never liked hanging around with, saying, “He joined the band and he was such a wise ass and a tough guy that he pissed everybody off.”
Tabano did have a much different attitude than Whitford would have, but the real clincher to let him go was Perry questioning his direction, saying, “He always had three things going on at once, and a lot of times Raymond would be late to rehearsal. Of course, he would try to take over, and after about a year of that, we said that we needed somebody else that seemed to be on the same path as we are.”
And while Tabano may have thrown away a good gig, it’s hard to think of the band without Whitford in the background. If Perry was the band’s resident Keith Richards, Whitford was their in-house Jeff Beck, always the one trying out new things and playing the kind of licks that most blues guitarists would never have thought of throwing into their lick library at the time.
While Perry and Whitford always seemed to be at opposite ends of the guitar spectrum whenever they played live, it’s not like they were ever at odds with each other, either. Tyler and Perry might be the iconic duo everyone talks about, but the combination of Whitford’s guitar and Perry’s reckless spirit was the perfect musical marriage within the band.
