Aerosmith (1973)

Personnel:

Steven Tyler: lead vocals, piano, harmonica, electric harpsichord and Mellotron on 'Dream On', flute on 'Walkin' The Dog', percussion

Joe Perry: guitars, backing vocals, second guitar solo on 'One Way Street'

Brad Whitford: guitars, first guitar solo on 'One Way Street'

Tom Hamilton: bass guitar

Joey Kramer: drums

David Woodford: saxophone on 'Mama Kin' and 'Write Me A Letter'

Recorded at Intermedia, Boston, in October 1972 and between December 1973 and January 1974

Produced by Adrian Barber

Label: Columbia

US release date: 5 January 1973

Peak chart placings: US: 21

Where hard rock comrades like Van Halen and Guns N' Roses came out of the gates with debut albums that would, in many ways, define the rest of their careers, Aerosmith's debut was more of a warm-up. It lacked some of the swagger and the crunching guitars that would define their best 1970s material. This is not to say that Aerosmith was a disappointment; it contained at least three bona fide classics and set a blueprint for the future. A lot of the blame for any criticisms of the album has been placed on producer Adrian Barber, especially by Perry, who criticized Barber for, among other sins, allowing Aerosmith to sound 'too tight'.

We sounded neither spontaneous nor explosive, two of our best qualities. My attempts to explain this to Barber went in one ear and out the other ... I didn't have the right technical vocabulary to say what needed to be said. In the end, Barber and his assistants simply set up mics, got an acceptable take and moved on ... Steven and I sat behind the board, trying to learn as much as we could.

Perry would elaborate, calling Aerosmith the easiest and hardest record that the band would ever make. It was the hardest because they had no idea how to make a record, but the easiest because the band had been performing and rehearsing these songs for two years, with Tyler having written a majority of the songs even earlier. The band were excited to lay the songs down and had a confidence about them that did not always come through on record. Aerosmith played their first live show at a gymnasium in Mendon, Massachusetts, on 6 November 1970, with a setlist that included, among other songs, 'Movin' Out', 'Somebody' and 'Walkin' The Dog'; all three of which would show up on their debut. By 15 May 1971, when the first Aerosmith bootleg is dated, both 'Dream On' and 'Mama Kin' were already being played every night, allowing them to really inhabit these songs before putting them to record.

The band dynamics had yet to be formalized in October 1972, but it was clear who would have the most ideas and the strongest opinions. Of the eight tracks on Aerosmith, Tyler is credited as the sole writer on five and as a co-writer on two, with 'Walkin' The Dog' being a cover. Aside from dominating the songwriting credits, Tyler was the guiding force behind the record and pretty quickly asserted his role as the main creative force in the band. Tyler not only had the songs written, but he also had the most experience. In many ways, Tyler taught the band how to rehearse and famously ran a very tight ship; in his words, he wanted to teach the band how to 'cook'. Even though it was relatively minimal, he still had more formal experience than any other member of the band. Regarding their debut, Tyler would tell Billboard in 1998:

When I think of this album, I think about biting my nails and going, 'What am I going to do?' The other guys really weren't into writing ... I wrote 'One Way Street', 'Make It', then 'Write Me A Letter' and 'Mama Kin'. And I brought a song called 'Dream On', which I had written three or four years before that. So, at the end of this album, I realized that I could finally do something I had been trying to do for years and was not successful at, which was writing songs.

Tyler would continue to dominate the songwriting credits throughout the band's career, with Perry becoming his chief co-writer for many of their classic hits and more-or-less staying by his side throughout the many peaks and valleys of the Aerosmith discography, especially from Done With Mirrors onwards. Perry would comment in his autobiography Rocks that Tyler...

... treated the sessions as if they were rehearsals, going for perfection rather than letting the band cut loose like a live gig ... it would take us years to understand the importance of spontaneity in recording.

Besides containing 'Mama Kin' and 'Dream On', the most famous thing about the album is that it sounds so unlike Aerosmith, at least vocally. Tyler would claim that people would come up to him asking who sang on the first record years after it was released. Perry says it came down to nerves, while Tyler says it was a variety of factors. Either way, Tyler sounds timid and the voice that would come to define Aerosmith, replete with yelps and screams, was yet to be tapped into. Aerosmith was released on the same day as Bruce Springsteen's debut, which was also released on Columbia Records, and the band, as well as their management, would complain that the label did not put any effort into promotion, instead putting all their attention on Springsteen. Aerosmith would also quickly establish the pattern that Aerosmith would. follow until 1979: tour, record, tour, record, which became incredibly taxing on the band, the crew and even on management. Aerosmith did not set the world on fire, but it announced that Aerosmith had arrived and had some great stuff to show everyone.

Aerosmith is the thinnest sounding of any Aerosmith record, and in many interviews over the years, band members have distanced themselves from the album, if not from the songs themselves. While including a few classics and showing ample hints of future greatness, Aerosmith's debut is not talked about in the same way as their subsequent three releases. Many books, including Walk This Way, speak of a crippling fear that the band experienced as soon as the red 'record' light came on, with some industry insiders referring to this as the 'red light blues'. Tyler would say: 'It got so bad that eventually I got a stepladder and just unscrewed the red light so we could get on with it.' The band lacked the confidence that would quickly start to appear with their sophomore album, which came in spades with Toys In The Attic. Kramer has spoken of the issues he had in keeping time on the drums, Hamilton recalls the recording sessions as being a haze of cocaine ingestion and Perry has spoken at length about his issues with Barber and how uptight the band were. Only Whitford has spoken with any fondness of Aerosmith, and a lot of that came down to playing his old Les Paul on the record. More noticeable than any other complaint or gripe that band members had was that of Tyler's famously thin-sounding voice, later described by himself as Kermit singing the blues.

Ignored by Rolling Stone magazine upon release, Aerosmith nonetheless garnered some relatively positive reviews. Aerosmith continued to do what they did best: they toured the hell out of their new album and grew their fanbase through tirelessly playing night after night. As Perry would say in his autobiography, 'We knew we were onto something because every time we played a new town, the audience went wild.' Their first major supporting slot saw Aerosmith opening for Mahavishnu Orchestra, which was obviously a mismatch, but it provided important lessons for both the band and their management. Subsequent tours would see them placed with bands that were at least similar to Aerosmith and in markets across the country, especially the Midwest, not just the coasts. Manager David Krebs, in an incredibly rational sense, said:

But we learned to play our market so that Aerosmith opened for acts that were slightly on the downside - bands whose audience we could cop. Even if we didn't blow them off the stage every time, we could at least count on some to buy an Aerosmith album.

A supporting slot opening for Mott the Hoople, coupled with the release of the 'Dream On' single, started to give the band momentum as they readied their sophomore album for release.

'Make It (Tyler)

The first words that the general record-buying public heard from Steven Tyler were:

Good evening people, welcome to the show

Got something here I want you all to know

When life and people bring on primal screams

You got to think of what it's gonna take to make your dreams

In Walk This Way, Tyler talks about writing 'Make It's lyrics on the inside cardboard of a Kleenex box while in a car driving from New Hampshire to Boston, allegedly as he was driving over a hill and approaching the Boston skyline. Asking himself 'what would be the greatest thing to sing for an audience if we were opening up for the Stones?', the lyrics to 'Make It' were Tyler's answer, a declaration and mantra...