The album Steven Tyler called his musical holy grail
The entire journey of Steven Tyler was never going to be defined by comparisons.
Everyone may have liked to chalk up Aerosmith as a would-be Rolling Stones when they first started, but when they rose to prominence, they had a lot more to offer than a bunch of bluesy riffs in the vein of the British invasion. They had the soul of those old bluesmen that their British counterparts idolised, but there were always more than a few great artists from the other side of the pond that set his world on fire.
But let’s not all go to the low hanging fruit that is Mick Jagger when talking about ‘The Demon of Screamin’. Was he influenced by Jagger? Absolutely, but that’s not really what defines him in any great capacity. The screaming that he did was more indicative of what Robert Plant would do when he would reach into the stratosphere, and when looking at the very first album that Aerosmith put out, he actually had much more in common with Keith Relf of The Yardbirds half the time.
Then again, what Tyler was doing wasn’t about making pop-friendly blues tunes all the time. He had a healthy respect for The Beatles like any living, breathing musician at the time, but the British blues boom was what taught him the power of being able to stretch out songs for as long as possible and soaking up every single line for all it was worth. The Grateful Dead may have started that, but no one did it with as much swagger as Fleetwood Mac.
Although most of ‘The Mac’s greatest moments would be reserved for a few years after their bluesy beginnings, Peter Green was really the heart and soul of what Tyler wanted to hear. They had already started incorporating versions of ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ into the first few Aerosmith sets, but even when making their greatest hits, Live at the BBC was what helped Tyler get back in touch with his roots.
When discussing the band’s early days, Tyler said that the record was practically a biblical text around the rehearsal space, saying, “Live at the BBC–we’d use that as our reset button. It’s the Holy Grail, kabbalistic shit, pure unstepped on melodic sensibility. Get that record, it’s all in there.” While Tyler had been familiar with Fleetwood Mac for a while, it didn’t get truly interesting until he heard a young kid named Joe Perry playing it for the first time.
Tyler had been used to a bunch of local bands trying their best to cut their teeth as bluesmen, but when Perry laid into that riff, the singer heard something that he had never heard before. This was the sound of pure rock and roll swagger, and if he managed to put his own spin on it with his melodic sensibilities, things were bound to move a lot faster.
For all of the respect being put on Green’s name, though, the real secret weapon of the group was always the rhythm section. John McVie and Mick Fleetwood had already cut their teeth playing with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, but since Tyler had been used to learning drums before anything else, the way that Fleetwood locked everything together whenever he played is the reason why he’s still considered one of the living legends behind the kit.
So while Fleetwood Mac may not have been the first name that popped into people’s heads as hard rockers in the days of ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’, those first records are a treasure trove for anyone getting into guitar. Green may have been the bluesy soul of the group, but whether listening to Danny Kirwan, Bob Welch, or Lindsey Buckingham, you could never go wrong with finding the best in guitar mastery, either.
