Aerosmith

As anyone who knows me knows, Aerosmith were at one point my favourite band of all time. I own everything they've ever released. All the live albums, B sides, songs that only got put on as bonus tracks to compilations, the works. I've even got Joe Perry's 5 solo albums, Steven Tyler's single and solo album and Brad Whitford's album he made with Derek St.Holmes. But I'll stick to studio albums released by Aerosmith, and maybe mention the live albums as a whole at the end.

If I seem a little biased at preferring the rockers to the ballads... it's because I am.

Briefly, Aerosmith is:

Steven Tyler - Vocals

Joe Perry - Lead Guitar

Brad Whitford - Rhythm Guitar

Tom Hamilton - Bass

Joey Kramer - Drums

So, lets get to it.

Aerosmith (1973)

Their self titled debut, Aerosmith, was a bit of a damp squib when it was first released to very little promotion. The now signature ballad Dream On was released as a single and did nothing until it was rereleased in 1975 following the much more popular Toys in the Attic.

There are two general issues I have with this album: the production is pretty terrible, and Steven Tyler puts on a different voice to the one he has. Apparently he was insecure about his natural singing voice (I may be misremembering, but I think in his autobiography Tyler said it was something about wanting to sound more blues-ey?) and so deliberately tried to sing differently. As a result the vocals stand out as peculiar when set against the rest of the catalogue.

Despite these issues, the songs are all fantastic. Movin' Out, the first song Tyler and Perry ever wrote, is probably my favourite Aerosmith song of all time. A catchy blues riff that goes to a lot of interesting different places. Dream on is a classic, if overplayed to death nowadays. Mama Kin is a live staple, and sounds infinitely better on literally any of the live albums.

The rest is reasonably standard bluesy Aerosmith, mixed with a bit of Boston rock feel.

Get Your Wings (1974)

Luckily Tyler got over his nerves by the second album, and sounds all the better for it, though the production is still a bit flat.

Opening with the hard blues-rocker Same Old Song And Dance, this album contains a lot of classic Aerosmith songs that still get played live (including this one, the Rockin' The Joint version is the best).

Tracks 2-5 constitute something of a no-man's land for standout tracks. SOS (Too Bad) is pretty good, but the other three evidence a slightly more experimental Aerosmith which doesn't quite work for them.

Train Kept A Rollin' is also a signature live song, being a cover of an old blues song from 1951. I was extremely disappointed to find out the Perry and Whitford didn't actually do the guitar solos on the record, having studio musicians fill in (presumably they were too stoned or something). But the live versions more than make up for this lapse.

Seasons of Wither is notable for having crowd noises at the beginning, taken from George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh for some reason, and was resurrected as a live song in the 00s. It's slow and moody, but it's got a charm.

The album closes with Pandora's Box, one of the only songs in the band's history to have a writing credit from Kramer. It's probably my second favourite song on the album after Same Old Song And Dance: it's just super bluesy and sleazy.

Toys In The Attic (1975)

It wasn't really until Toys In The Attic that Aerosmith became the superstars of 70s rock that they are now remembered as being... which is odd given that I think song-wise it's the weakest of the first three albums.

Opening with the best song, the title track, leads one to expect a fast paced hard rocking album, but on the whole it's rather slow and plodding. Uncle Salty is a peculiar slow song, and Adam's Apple is a filler-sounding blues rocker.

Walk This Way is, of course, one of the widest known Aerosmith songs following the Run DMC collaboration in 1986, and Sweet Emotion is also reasonably famous, but 3/9 isn't a fantastic hit rate.

Big Ten Inch Record is a fun short novelty song (guess what the joke is?), No More No More is inexplicably Tyler's favourite Aerosmith song but to me is just a mediocre bluesy song that goes nowhere. Round and Round is a bit too metal-ey for an Aerosmith song that they don't really pull off, and You See Me Crying is their first proper all out ballad which is fine but nothing special.

Rocks (1976)

Often regarded as their best album, Rocks does what it says on the tin. Back in the Saddle is a rock song fit for the Old West, and is one of the many songs that just gets better when played live (see the version on A Little South of Sanity).

Last Child is one of the rare songs where Whitford takes over lead duties, and proves that he's just as good as Perry.

Rats in the Cellar is up there in my top 5 Aerosmith songs, even if it was written as something of an amusing riposte to the title track of the prior album. Combination is Perry's first stab at lead vocals (shared with Tyler), and would lay the foundation for him usually having 1 song on each album which he sings. Sick As A Dog, Get The Lead Out and Lick and a Promise are the closest we get to filler, but each is played with such intensity that one tends to overlook the lower quality of song-writing.

Nobody's Fault is one of the band's favourite songs, and this time I agree with them. Although their flirtation with being slightly experimental failed (in my opinion) on Get Your Wings, the more complex song structure of Nobody's Fault suggests that they could potentially have gone in that direction and made a success of it, but probably better to have a few scattered songs like this than an album of mediocre ones.

As with Toys In The Attic, the album closes with a ballad. A little on the nose as it seems to have been written for the specific purpose of saying goodbye to the crowd at the end of a concert, but Perry's guitar puts this way above You See Me Crying in my book.

Draw The Line (1977)

According to various biographies and autobiographies, most of the band can't stand to listen to this album any more as all they can hear are the drugs.

This is a shame as it's got some properly good stuff on it, but sometimes one is able to detect that the drugs were starting to get in the way...

The title track is a fantastic song, and continues the trend of the opening songs of albums usually being one of the best. Live versions of this also markedly improve it, with a further instrumental break often being added in the middle (see the Rockin The Joint version).

The other highlights are probably the Perry-sung Bright Light Fright, which is pretty much about the feeling of waking up hungover and wanting to avoid bright lights, and Kings and Queens which appears to be an attempt to make an 'epic' song and mostly succeeds.

Elsewhere, Tyler's fun innuendo laden lyrics seem to have lost the 'fun' as Get It Up just doesn't really work. Critical Mass, The Hand That Feeds and Sight For Sore Eyes are all pretty good blues rockers, but none stand out as fantastic.

The band seem pretty sore in retrospect about not having enough original material to fill an album - recording 1930s blues song Milk Cow Blues to close - but I quite like it, and it's reasonably obscure enough (and different from the original, if a bit too similar to The Kinks' version) so that most probably didn't realise it was one.

Night In The Ruts (1979)

Well this and the next three albums will probably be skipped through rather quickly.

Night in the Ruts is not a good album. Keeping up tradition, the opening song (No Surprise) is great and is about the day they got a record deal. I'm a little sad they've not released a live version, but oh well.

Other than that, I have very little nice to say about this. Perry quit the band half way through recording, and so doesn't appear on much of it, and you can tell. It literally sounds as if the band sort of gave up. The slow plodding tempo of the rest of the songs doesn't help.

To further confuse things, Tyler has allegedly cited this as his favourite Aerosmith album! And Perry thinks it's ok too! Madness.

Oddly for Aerosmith, given that the most covers they'd ever done on an album was 1 prior to this, 3/9 on this album are covers. I'm reminded of Beatles for Sale...

Rock In A Hard Place (1982)

The only album not to feature Perry (and Whitford, who only played on Lightning Strikes), on the whole this record probably gets more flak than it actually deserves.

Don't get me wrong, it definitely does deserve a lot of criticism, but I think people hate it more for the lack of Perry and Whitford than for the quality of the songs.

Jailbait is a reasonably good opener, and Bolivian Ragamuffin and the title track both sound like Draw The Line-era songs. Push Comes To Shove deserves a mention for some great harmonica from Tyler and being one of the most swinging-blues songs Aerosmith have ever done.
Other than that, it's not worth your time.

Done With Mirrors (1985)

Perry and Whitford had returned, and this was to be their great comeback album! Unfortunately it feels almost exactly the same as Night in the Ruts.

The opening song is, to be fair, amazing. Let The Music Do The Talking might have suggested to some that the band had got their song-writing chops back, unfortunately it's a cover from one of Perry's solo albums. Though Tyler largely rewrote the lyrics (for the better), the music sounds exactly the same.

The rest of the album just sounds as if they're not really trying. The Hop has some life to it, but other than that this album should probably be left well alone.

Permanent Vacation (1987)

Now this is a comeback album, following hot off the heels of their immensely popular collaboration with Run DMC for Walk This Way.

Money was clearly invested in to this album as the production values are miles above anything prior. It seems money was also spent on hiring outside songwriters which, given the quality of the last 3 albums, seemed depressingly necessary.

Permanent Vacation set the template for every Aerosmith album (except Pump) up to the present day and, for better or worse, it's been a massive success for them. That template is upping the ballad count from maybe one an album, to having around half of the album consisting of ballads.

The most famous songs from this album are easily Dude (Looks Like A Lady) and Angel, both of which are good radio friendly songs.

Heart's Done Time, Magic Touch, Simoriah, Girl Keeps Coming Apart and the title track are all reasonably similar in that they all sound like somewhat generic 80s rock.

Rag Doll is my personal favourite, having Perry on slide guitar to create a super sleazy and bluesy feel. But I'm also a big fan of Hangman's Jury which, along with St John, constitute a weird attempt to make slow, dark bluesy songs. Maybe it's the harmonica again?

Rounding off the album is a cover of no-one's favourite Beatles' song, I'm Down (although the version on Anthology 2 is alright), and very bassey instrumental - The Movie.

Overall, this was clearly an attempt to make Aerosmith contemporary to the 80s music scene, and it very well succeeded.

Pump (1989)

Probably their best album since the 70s, Pump was a non-stop rock fest. Young Lust and F.I.N.E. (Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional, in case you wondered) let Tyler flex his innuendo muscle for the first time in over a decade, and he doesn't disappoint.

Love in an Elevator and The Other Side continue the generic 80s feel, though both do it very well.

Monkey On My Back is an odd song lyric-wise, but Perry's riffing is irresistible. Janie's Got A Gun is another odd one: you don't expect many songs about domestic abuse. But it's handled reasonably well, and led Tyler to set up a charity for victims of domestic abuse, so perhaps it's done some good.

My Girl, Don't Get Mad Get Even and Hoodoo/Voodoo Medicine Man round off the rockers, and although none obviously stand out, they also don't feel like filler either.

Ending the album is a ballad which is often claimed to be the one ballad that even the rocker fans have to admit is good. And it is. What It Takes is an emotional ride from start to finish, and is proof that ballads don't have to be boring.

Get A Grip (1993)

Returning to the approximate 50/50 rocker/ballad template is Get A Grip. Leading the ballad charge was Crazy, but was closely followed by Cryin' and Amazing.

Also put out as a single was Tyler's attempt at a 'We Are The World'-type song in the form of Living on the Edge. It's fine, but something just doesn't feel right about Aerosmith playing a song about climate change and racism.

Back in rock territory is the food-pun-filled Eat The Rich, which for some reason works really well. Why they decided to name the song Eat The Rich when Motörhead had released a song called Eat The Rich 6 years earlier to accompany the 1987 film of the same name I'll never know.

Get A Grip, Shut Up And Dance and Line Up fill out the 'rocky but a bit meh' quota. Fever and Flesh are a bit more interesting, with the former being the only song on the album written by members of the band alone. Walk on Down is Perry's vocal-piece, but it's not one of his better ones.

Rounding off Get A Grip was another instrumental, Boogie Man, which wasn't quite a good as The Movie.

Nine Lives (1997)

Every so often I think this is my favourite Aerosmith album, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it was one of the first I bought? (Rocks was actually the first Aerosmith album I bought, followed by this one).
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) and Pink are just very good radio songs. Pink stands out in particular to me as it reminds me slightly of Pandora's Box from Get Your Wings.

So the ballads: Hole in My Soul, Full Circle, Kiss Your Past Goodbye and Fallen Angels. I actually like all of these except the last which goes on for a monumental 8 minutes, which is far too long for an Aerosmith song.
Close to being a ballad but not quite is Ain't That A Bitch, which I think feels more like a slower bluesy song, but it's close.
The opening title track once again keeps up the tradition of starting with a bang, especially with Tyler screaming like a cat in severe distress at the start. Taste of India is a bit too George Harrison for Aerosmith to pull off, but it's not bad.

Something's Gotta Give and Crash both come very close to sounding almost metal, which is strange, but they're both very good hard rockers.
The Farm is Whitford's favourite Aerosmith song (I've no idea why the band has such odd opinions of their own music), and is as psychedelic as Aerosmith ever got.

Falling Off is, in my opinion, one of Perry's better vocal songs, which is followed up by my favourite song on the album: Attitude Adjustment. It's just got a good riff and fun vocals ('Do the wings of your butter-fly?').

For the sake of completeness, I should mention I Don't Want To Miss A Thing which was a bonus track on some editions of this album. Anyone who knows me well enough knows I hate this song. It is one of only two songs which had no musical or lyrical input from the band, despite it being possibly their most famous song ever.

Just Push Play (2001)

Entering the new millennia, what would Aerosmith do to reinvent themselves? Well the answer seemed to be to add Jamaican scat sections and overproduce the album to hell.  

The album starts well enough, they always do. Beyond Beautiful is a good rocking song up there with the other opening tracks. We stay with the rockers in to track 2, Just Push Play, which has the aforementioned scat sections. It's weird, but it's fun.

Then the ballads come in: Jaded, Fly Away From Here, Sunshine, Luv Lies, Avant Garden. Only Jaded comes close to the quality of previous ballads, the rest are reasonably forgettable.

Trip Hoppin', Under My Skin, Outta Your Head, Light Inside and Drop Dead Gorgeous (Perry-sung) try to claw back some rocking credibility but none really quite get there - sounding more like pop trying to be rock rather than the other way around.

Surprisingly, one of the best things on the album was a European only bonus track: Face. It's a fun acoustic song and probably should be been worked on more to include on the album proper.

Honkin' On Bobo (2004)

Having done a cover or so on a couple of albums, and wanting to go back to their blues roots, Aerosmith decided to record an album of classic blues covers.

Though the song selection is predictable and unremarkable, the songs are rocked up, sped up, and made much louder. Aerosmith do excess very well.

Road Runner, Shame Shame Shame, Stop Messin' Around (Perry) and Baby Please Don't Go all evidence a blues-rocking Aerosmith that had been missing from the last album of overproduced pop. 

More sensitivity is, properly, given to Never Loved A Girl (originally 'Man') which I really like. One original is present, as they tried to write a song that would fit in without anyone noticing, and it's pretty good: though The Grind is one of the slower songs on the album, it doesn't feel out of place.

The only misstep on the album is the closer: a gospel choir-ish rendition of Jesus is on the Main Line. Other than that, this is a very good album.

Music From Another Dimension! (2012)

Over a decade since they had released an album of original music, MFAD was hotly anticipated by the Blue Army. In what felt like an attempt to overcompensate for this drought, the extended version of the album runs to 18 songs lasting 1hr 21mins! Predictably, it's a very mixed bag.

We could probably have done without the spoken word intro and outro, but the opening song, Luv XXX, is a decent rocker to start proceedings. Oh Yeah follows, which is decent but feels like it never quite gets where it wants to go.

The ballads are many: What Could Have Been Love, Can't Stop Lovin' You, We All Fall Down, Closer and Another Last Goodbye. The first is probably up there with the Get A Grip ballads. Can't Stop Lovin' You was a misguided (and allegedly secret) attempt by Tyler to add some country to the album, as he snuck in Carrie Underwood to provide guest vocals: an indicator of things to come, as Tyler was soon to record and release a solo country album...

We All Fall Down is the second song to not have any band writing input, so I'll ignore it. Closer is alright but forgettable in a Just Push Play way. Another Last Goodbye stands out for a number of reasons: the only instruments are strings so it basically only has Tyler on it, and Tyler uses his falsetto.

Returning to the rockers, Beautiful and Out Go The Lights are reasonably good, although the latter suffers from an outro that never ends à la I Want You (She's So Heavy). Legendary Child was the lead single and was meant to recapture the feel of Walk This Way, and I think it mostly succeeds. My favourite song on the album is easily Street Jesus: it's kind of feels like a faster Kings and Queens from Get Your Wings.

Lover Alot was meant to be the a call-back to Rocks levels of rockiness, but in my opinion it feels a lot closer to Something's Gotta Give and Crash from Nine Lives. Still good, if a bit repetitive (how many things can you rhyme with 'a lot'?).

Perry gets 3 whole songs this time! Freedom Fighter is fun, though the political commentary on terrorism feels a bit forced. Something and Oasis In The Night are fine, but could have probably been trimmed to make a sleeker album.

The first ever lead vocal by a band member other than Tyler or Perry follows, with Hamilton taking the lead (with some background support from Tyler) on Up On The Mountain. Oddly, this is one of my favourite songs on the album, and Mr Sweet Emotion does a reasonable job at it.

The normal version of the album ends with Another Last Goodbye, but the bonus version ends with Sunny Side of Love - a Just Push Play sounding, mid tempo, acoustic-ey semi-ballad. It's fine, but doesn't stand out.

Live! Bootleg (1978)

Classics Live! 1 & 2 (1986 and 1987)

A Little South Of Sanity (1998)

Rockin' The Joint (2005)

Rocks Donnington (2015)

  

Apologies for the cover layout here, it all went a bit mad and I can't fix it.

So these 5 albums are partly the reason why I have about 10 different versions of Walk This Way.Although there is a lot of overlap in songs, there is just enough variation so that I can fool myself that it was worth getting all 5. Rockin' The Joint and A Little South of Sanity are probably the best in terms of sound quality and song choices, although Bootleg is also pretty good as it's from their 70s heydays. Classics 1 & 2 aren't worth getting unless you really need a live version of Kings and Queens.

Donnington is good for having a few more obscure songs, and the odd song from more recent albums, but it's not my favourite. On the other hand it's a reasonably good selection of songs from all Aerosmith eras, so perhaps better to buy if you've not got any.