I’d thought of Aerosmith as being an Eighties band, but here they are smack in the middle of the Seventies. This is their third album, but the previous two had been filled with songs that they’d been touring. This was the first album where the band set out to specifically write songs for an album.
This is the album from whence comes Walk This Way, and it’s probably because of their collaboration with Run DMC in 1986 that brought Aerosmith back from the wilderness that I associate them with the Eighties. The original is less heavy than the Run DMC version, but the verses still have a rap-like delivery from Steven Tyler, something not really heard at this current time.
Although they are firmly rooted in rock, Aerosmith are quite varied in their tunes on this album. The proto-hiphop of Walk This Way, sometimes close to a Rolling Stones sound (with No More No More for example), covering a saucy 1953 blues number in My Big Ten Inch Record (“She liked my big ten inch ... ... ... record of the blues”), and closing the album with a big ballad You See Me Crying. This comes complete with strings, and simple piano at the beginning and at the end after the climax, and is a very good example of the Big Rock Ballad, guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford taking turns on soloing duties.
Heaviest track on the album is Round And Round, deep grungy guitars blending into Tom Hamilton’s bass, and at a five-minute run time has enough time to develop into a solid immersion of sound.
I must admit, I didn’t think I’d like this album, expecting some typically bland American hair metal, but I’m happy to be proved wrong.
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