Aerosmith Rocks (1976)

From New Musical Express, 3 July 1976

Aerosmith have got the whole situation psyched.

Rocks, their fourth album, is just about to hit the top colour in the US charts – meanwhile they stomp over every box office record in sight, lambasting all competition into a messy little heap of pummelled sawdust.

Them and ZZ Top both – God save us.

Not that I’m casting aspersions on either their abilities or the justice implied in seeing what is only a very basic, crude formula reap such huge returns; their live reputation has admittedly never been adequately turned over or explained away by anyone else and until you’ve seen the phenomenon stick an audience splat right across the largest halls in the States you can hardly judge their pneumatic effect in toto.

This is a far better album than the surprisingly feeble Toys In The Attic – more juice from producer Jack Douglas and concentrated concert atmosphere from da boys.

Trouble is Aerosmith must be the only musical (I use the term in jest) faction operating the electric circuit who get the melody line from the drummer.

Other than that the only ingredients they lack are taste, originality and style.

They’ve evolved their own ‘sound’, it’s loud, they play with as much vim as the hard rock fraternity in England. If we’re gonna count units then they’re also beating Zep, Bad Co., Queen and Mott at their own card game.

Steve Tyler (inne luvly?) rants and raves raucously. Brad Whitford and Joe Perry strike off planet weight mass density leaden guitars, meaty axes I should say, and the rhythm duo, unfunky Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton race the beat through all manner of unconnected time changes and structural idiosyncrasies designed to confuse you and open up the guard for the kill.

Rocks might even be a concept in that it takes the live overview design. It begins with ‘Back In The Saddle’, obviously a fine way of detonating the wolf pack, and ends with ‘Home Tonight’. See what they’re getting at?

Tactically Aerosmith are not dumb, their records get less subtle as their importance grows accordingly. They play with flame and come out unsinged.

Now and again the fuse lights off it own ignition spark plug.

‘Rats In The Cellar’ busts the metronome in your brain. Toc, toc bang. Sounds like The Tubes on a heaving metal send up. ‘Combination’ seems to be a pretty safe number too, Brad and Joe slice necks on the breaks. At least it ain’t background stuff.

Qualitatively ‘Sick As A Dog’ and ‘Lick And A Promise’ are alright, movers, they actually keep the solos under control and Tyler must be getting close to carrying off the muscular vocal chord award usually held by Robert Plant.

Ultimately Aerosmith are nothing special, plenty of spit and polish but studio wise they don’t storm the rink as serious contenders for any crowns of creation. I see the appeal, the ordinary nature of American speed brat rock defying the listener to ignore the beat.

Very masculine punch plus Steve for the ladies. It’s all to do with sex, surprise, surprise.

‘Get The Lead Out’ and that ‘Lick’ thing are mindless teen anthems, you just get absorbed in the cacophony let it drift over your skull.

Maybe I’ve missed the point. Aerosmith are exploding like acne and yep, they do have their moments.

I still like those bits between the tracks best though.

Aerosmith Rocks (1976)

From classicrockreview.com

We commence our look at 1976 with a review of the fourth of four great albums by Aerosmith that launched their career during their classic period of the 1970s. Starting with their self-titled debut in 1973, Get Your Wings in 1974, and Toys In the Attic in 1975, Rocks is probably the most aptly named of these as it completes the slow metamorphosis of the band from the heavy blues sound of their to a pure, raw rock band. The album was a commercial success and became a great influence on the prolific hard rock and heavy metal sound throughout the next decade and a half.

Although Rocks is less pop-oriented than the band’s previous album, it carries on many of the same trends that began with that album. These include exploring (and/or inventing) different sub-genres like rap rock and funk and finishing up with a “power ballad”, which was still a fresh concept for hard rock bands in the mid seventies. However, Rocks is by far the most cohesive Aerosmith album. It is solid from top to bottom and a real jam with a mixture of tight riffs and improvised leads throughout. The production is at once clean and dense and the overall sound is still fresh-sounding to listeners three and a half decades later.

The content of the album ranges from themes of longing and nostalgia, to darker themes of impending doom and death, to songs which celebrate the rock n roll lifestyle in general. The music includes strong input and participation from each band member with compositions being penned by four different songwriters.

“Back In the Saddle” launches Rocks as it would launch concerts for years to come. The song starts with a dramatic build-up before giving way to an understated main riff with droning lead guitars by Joe Perry. It contains a cowboy-influenced double-entente lyric, replete with sound effects to match the mood and lead singer Steve Tyler’s screaming hook. The song is one of the heaviest on the album along with “Rats In the Cellar”, a song that borders on heavy metal, but with a nice bluesy harmonica solo by Tyler. The song was inspired by the death of the group’s drug dealer and should jave been taken as a dark omen. “Combination” features dual lead vocals by Perry and Tyler with some nice instrumental sections including a frantic outtro.

The hit song “Last Child” was co-written by guitarist Brad Whitford and is a very upbeat and entertaining song. It features Perry on the lap steel and guest Paul Prestopino on banjo and is a great example of the hip-hop rock that the band formulated in the mid-seventies, starting with “WalK This Way” and “Sweet Emotion” on the previous album. There is a great lead section and outtro, which makes ths song a classic. The “Home Sweet Home” theme is later reprised on the Tyler piano ballad “Home Tonight”, which once again features Perry on the lap steel as well as Hamilton, drummer Joey Kramer, and producer Jack Douglas performing background vocals.

The album’s second side includes some of the basic, straight-up rockers which somehow never seem to fade over time. “Sick As a Dog” was co-written by bassist Tom Hamilton, who plays guitar on the song while both Perry and Tyler play bass. “Get the Lead Out” is a good time, dance-promoting song that goes off on a few nice musical tangents while “Lick and a Promise” is about rock groupies and more generally, the rock audience audience.

The album’s best song is “Nobody’s Fault”, a great song with fantastic hook and poetic (albeit apocalyptic) lyrics;

“Holy lands are sinking, birds take to the sky
The prophets are all stinking drunk and I know the reason why…”

Co-written by Brad Whitford, this is a heavy song, almost metal, that uses thick analogies to tell of a coming, inevitable doom. Several members of the band have cited this song as among their favorites ever.

While it appeared like the band was ever-climbing in 1976, they were in fact at the apex of their early career which would falter due to hard drug use among band members. Although Aerosmith would put out a couple more decent studio albums plus a live album by the decade’s end, these paled in comparison to the great early albums. The band would soon face turmoil that would derail their career for nearly a decade before they would make of the great comebacks in rock history.

Aerosmith Rocks (1976)

From starling.rinet.ru

Whenever a solid, but not particularly ambitious hard rock band (hell, soft rock as well) makes it big with a really good album, the natural next move is to make a carbon copy of its predecessor – for both commercial (‘if it sold once, it’ll sell again’) and artistic (‘if it ain’t broke…’) purposes. The question, then, is whether the follow-up is able to stand up to its predecessor and/or actually beat it in the only respect possible – which, of course, is consistency.

Such is our situation here. Rocks is Aerosmith’s second really good album in a row – not too shabby for these bastardly Stones rip-offs, eh? – and a frequent fans’ pick for their absolute best. It’s really hard for me to tell: it differs so little from Toys in the overall style and quality of the tunes that it all depends on which way the wind happens to be a-blowin’ today rather than on some firmly constituent notion or belief.

So smell the wind of today and take it this way: Rocks is a bit less ‘original’, whatever that particular epithet might mean for this particular band, plus it’s less diverse than its predecessor, lacking amusing breathers like ‘Big Ten Inch Record’. Yet Rocks is also much more consistent, with nary a weaker spot among its nine numbers, and much ‘grander’ on ‘basic ear-level’, with the boys fully and finally mastering the wall-of-sound approach and applying it to their straightforward ass-kicking vibe.

And if you’re talking about kicking ass, how about employing a stallion of a song for that purpose? ‘Back In The Saddle’ should be considered the quintessential Aerosmith tune, along with ‘Toys In The Attic’ and ‘Walk This Way’. But ‘Toys In The Attic’ was a bit too dark and mystical to hit the bullseye with these boys, and ‘Walk This Way’ rocked in a cunning, almost ‘subtle’ way, without letting you feel the power. ‘Back In The Saddle’, then, is power epitomized – the power of you-know-what. The amazing thing about the song is that it doesn’t even feature a killer riff like the other two: instead, it just pounds you into a pulp with multiple guitar overdubs and, of course, that amazing guttural assault from Mr Tyler which I personally wouldn’t recommend repeating as it could be dangerous for one’s ability to control one’s vocal cords for quite a long period. Not so for Mr Tyler, though, whose throat by 1976 was well-coated with numerous layers of alcohol and, er, “medication” sediments.

I do admit that the screaming on ‘Back In The Saddle’ can force some people up close to the toilet seat, but isn’t that the very aim of the song? Isn’t that what an old drunk sleazy cowboy would prob’ly be strongly associated with in the first place? Aerosmith are about dirt, sleaze, sex, hooliganry, you name it, and no other Aerosmith song holds all these things in such a tight vice as ‘Back In The Saddle’. And don’t forget the crowning touch – that rhythmic horse neighin’ once the main body of the song kicks in. And the awesomely rambunctious jam after the last ‘riding hi-i-i-i-igh!’, with Joe Perry using his guitar in a way just as phallocentric as Tyler used his voice in.

Tough is the right word here: Rocks as a whole is extremely tough, tougher than everything these guys recorded before (so it lives up to its title), and that helps you tolerate even those numbers that aren’t instantly memorable. Most of them are, though, even if not the least factor is their occasionally being written under the obvious influence of… Toys In The Attic! ‘Rats In The Cellar’, for instance, is an obvious re-write of ‘Toys In The Attic’ without the cool pseudo-mystical atmosphere, but with a funny harmonica passage instead and a lengthier closing jam that gives you the possibility of enjoying the song to its natural conclusion, whereas ‘Toys’ were fading away just after three minutes with you still clinging to their tail. With its lyrics about NYC losers, it is, both musically and lyrically, the closest these guys ever came to true, genuine punk rock. Even the MC5 and the New York Dolls never yielded anything like ‘Rats In The Cellar’.

Once again, a heavy funk influence is seen here, with bouncy, jerky rhythms that Joe Perry can handle well, particularly on ‘Last Child’ and ‘Get The Lead Out’ (the latter is kinda way too generic to be truly impressive, though – reminding me a bit of Zeppelin missteps like ‘The Crunge’; ‘Last Child’ is salvaged by being almost insanely catchy). However, the band doesn’t entirely neglect pop elements as well – what do you do with those funny faux-falsetto ‘pleeeeeeeease’ on ‘Sick As A Dog’? Stuff like that could be met on a Hollies record, and it’s really groovy to encounter pop harmonies on a presumably vintage hard rock tune.

But pop or no pop, the record also has ‘Nobody’s Fault’, unquestionably the heaviest tune recorded by Aerosmith so far: the guitars and vocals on that one are prime heavy metal that must have thoroughly inspired Eighties’ poodle guitarists (although the song itself could have been easily influenced by Black Sabbath’s newly found “dense” metallic style on 1975’s Sabotage). As much as I detest generic heavy metal, this particular tune is easily salvaged by yet another groovy poppy chorus (‘sorry, you’re so sorry’) that comes in at a totally unexpected (but perfectly right) moment and for a little bit of time relieves you of the monotonous pounding of the main riff. The production on the song – as well as on most other ones – is far from perfect, with all the guitar overdubs uncomfortably intertwining with each other, but if I ever get a signed confirmation of this having been an intentional decision with the aim of making Rocks even more murky, heck, I’ll drop the suit.

The good news is that Aerosmith traditionally closes things with a suckjob of a power ballad, but ‘Home Tonight’ is actually better than anything they did before in that department. Proof? A great vocal workout from Mr Tyler, plus they limit the song’s length to just three minutes which is soooo very soothing I can’t help but raise all of my thumbs up. Although, to be frank, he strains so much that it’s clear he doesn’t have the chords to pull it off in a truly soulful way. He tries, though, very much, and must be given credit for that. Oh, and perhaps what woos me so much is that the song actually isn’t a power ballad by definition – sure, the lyrics and intonations are pathetic and sentimental, but the actual melody is more that of a rocker, isn’t it? The guitar solos rock, they aren’t pseudo-romantic or cathartic or anything. Or maybe I’m just trying to sound smart here. Good song. Good song. Good song. Jeff Lynne. Where is Jeff Lynne? Jeff Lynne, we need you to sing this one.

Let’s recapitulate. Rocks is Aerosmith at the top of their game. No generic blues which they ain’t good at. Punk rock they’re good at because it’s about kicking ass. Heavy metal they’re good at because it’s about getting ass. Funk they’re pretty decent at because it’s about getting ass and then kicking it. Balladry they’re not so good at because they’re no use to anybody once the ass has been kicked, but Rocks makes an exception in that direction. Don’t play this to your modest Christ-loving friend – it’ll get him more embarrassed than AC/DC. Don’t pay much attention to the fact that Motley Crue probably spent most of their career worshipping at the altar of this album; what was good in the mid-Seventies could easily turn to horror in the mid-Eighties.

This is the standard by which Aerosmith should be remembered – and the ultimate in sarcastic cock-rock before the share of sarcasm started seriously decreasing in favour of the share of cock.