It’s a two-way fight between Aerosmith and Kiss for the title of America’s Greatest Rock’N’Roll Band. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have the whole band-as-brand thing nailed, but when it comes to swagger, attitude and malicious intent, The Bad Boys From Boston rule.
Aerosmith’s genius idea was to repackage the Rolling Stones’ pharmaceutical rock’n’roll and sell it back to America as home-made product. The frequently brilliant albums they made in the 1970s were feral and brash, fuelled by a cocktail of bulletproof self-confidence and weapons-grade chemicals. Toxic Twins Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were 70s rock incarnate: cool, charismatic, permanently strung out.
It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. By the start of the 80s, this speeding train had crashed off the tracks, leaving a pile of twisted metal and mangled bodies. But halfway through the decade came an unexpected resurrection. A world-beating collaboration with hip hop group Run DMC on a cover of their own 1975 hit Walk This Way put Aerosmith back in the game, while the subsequent string of multi-platinum albums repositioned them as rock’n’roll’s wayward uncles, the glint of their gold earrings matched by the one in their eyes.
Their second act has been even more successful than the first – 1998’s Armageddon-soundtracking mega-ballad I Don’t To Miss A Thing became their biggest ever hit and the soundtrack to ten million prom nights. Nor has the soap opera surrounding them abated – the last two decades have been punctuated by bust-ups and bitchiness, relapses and rehab that would have put lesser bands out of business.
But Aerosmith aren’t lesser bands, and over 50 years and more they proved, time and time again, that the music and the drama needed each other. A final farewell tour was delayed after Tyler fractured his larynx, then cancelled altogether when a complete recovery was ruled out, but their legacy remains intact. Rock’n’roll’s a dirty job, and no one did it dirtier than Aerosmith.
