No matter how big a group is, every artist has a creative expiration date, and while Aerosmith were at the top of their game throughout the 1970s, Steven Tyler had enough sense to look back and see where the cracks started to form.
But it’s not like the foundation was completely solid when the group first began. Tyler and Joe Perry were the perfect foil to each other onstage, but no band has two volatile personalities like that without some friction happening every now and again, and whenever they were performing, there was often a clash between how loud Perry was playing his guitar and how high Tyler had to scream to be heard over everything.
That would put a strain on anyone’s voice, but listening through to Toys in the Attic and Rocks, that chemistry actually worked surprisingly well. Tyler had the pipes to make songs like ‘Back in the Saddle’ come alive, but outside of the studio, they were never afraid to have some fun, and that meant falling in love with a little friend named cocaine when they started working on Draw the Line.
From the sounds of the band when talking about the album’s production, it seemed like one of the most gruelling processes a band has ever gone through, but the title track does at least still feel like the old Aerosmith we know and love. But since Perry ended up quitting midway through the production of the next album, Night in the Ruts feels a little bit lacklustre knowing that one of the foundational members isn’t all there.
Jimmy Crespo should be commended for making the most of a bad situation, but this would have been the equivalent of Led Zeppelin trying to continue on if Jimmy Page had decided to quit. Tyler could manage to get a handful of decent lyrics out every now and again, but whereas ‘You See Me Crying’ from Toys in the Attic leaves off on a triumphant note, his gentle tribute to his daughter ‘Mia’ can’t help but feel a little bit awkward.
It’s a thoughtful gesture, to be sure, but looking back on how the album was sequenced, Tyler doesn’t blame fans if they thought they had witnessed their favourite band disintegrate, saying, “It was a lullaby I wrote on the piano for my daughter. But the tolling bell notes at the end of the song and the end of the album sounded more like the death knell of Aerosmith for people who knew what was going on.”
The tolling bell may be one thing, but hearing him whisper Mia’s name in the final chorus does also feel like a sad farewell as well. The words are almost irrelevant in this situation, because when listening to Tyler slowly fade into nothingness as he’s saying his daughter’s name, it’s hard for that not to sound like the soul of Aerosmith fading away into the ether, never to be seen again.
It would take a long time for Aerosmith to sort their shit out before Perry eventually returned to the band, but all Night in the Ruts served as at the time was a depressing epitaph of ‘The Bad Boys From Boston’. Most of their albums up to this point had at least been decent blues-flavoured boogie rock, but every band has to learn that once that internal chemistry is broken, there’s no way for it to be perfect again.
