The sexiest song that Steven Tyler ever heard: “No one had ever played like that”
There isn’t a single soul on this Earth that considers Steven Tyler to be the most wholesome rock and roll star in the world.
He was certainly able to translate a great love song when he wanted to, but since 95% of his lyrics were usually about sex, it’s not like anyone was willing to see him as some sensitive soul when he first sang ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’. He was more interested in carnal knowledge whenever he broke out the pen, and he certainly had an education when looking through some of the best records in his collection.
Because as much as people love the idea of listening to songs for the riffs, half of the blues that Tyler listened to had to do with sex in some form or another. No one listened to a song like ‘Crawling King Snake’ or even Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Lemon Song’ and thought that they were about pythons and/or fruit, respectively. They were all about trying to find something a bit more risque, and Tyler seemed to practically speak in his own language whenever he broke out his own classic turns of phrase.
It’s hard enough trying to keep up with what he was singing half the time Aerosmith played, but ‘Walk This Way’ was already sounding sleazy before Tyler even put his poetry over it. But even back before he was writing ‘Dream On’, the psychedelic scene was already opening his eyes to what free love was like. He was there at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and he practically had an epiphany listening to people like Jimi Hendrix for the first time.
Then again, that’s not exactly news, is it? The entire guitar community was either in awe or weeping when they first saw Hendrix play, and even though there are many songs that are in contention for his best, ‘Purple Haze’ will forever be the tune that defined him for years. Bruce Springsteen may have claimed ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ kicked down the door to your mind, but Hendrix’s opening tritone riff blew that door right off its hinges when he finally launched into that signature lick.
But whereas most people saw a guitar hero in the making, Tyler couldn’t get enough of the groove of the song. For as much as he looked like some psychedelic prophet whenever he played, Hendrix was truly at one with his instrument, and Tyler felt like he was listening to the sounds of sex when he heard the rest of the band come barreling in behind him when he was introduced to the tune.
Many people have tried to make songs that excite their audience, but Tyler felt that Hendrix captured what sex felt like in song form when a girl introduced the song to him, saying, “She said, ‘Steven, you’ve got to hear this record. This is the sexiest music I ever heard. She played me Are You Experienced and come on! She was so fucking right on, because when you heard those Stratocasting gears churning…that was sex in its purest primal form. No one had ever played like that. No one.”
No one in their right mind would have thought to take Hendrix’s crown or anything, but Tyler felt that he had a message to make something that made everyone feel the same way he did when listening to that tune. He knew that there was a way to capture that magic with Joe Perry, and while a tune like ‘Sweet Emotion’ isn’t exactly on the level of Hendrix, you can feel that sexual energy dripping off of every single note that the band is playing.
The Beatles may have been the ones to introduce rock and roll to households around the world, but Hendrix was the one who reminded Tyler that the genre could sound dangerous when it wanted to. All you needed was the right riff as your guide, and when listening to Are You Experienced, everyone seemed to walk away with a different lease on life when they heard Hendrix make love to his instrument.
