The Vinyl Venture: Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic
When I first began writing this piece, it was with vigor and the belief that I would soon be seeing my favorite band in concert for the third time, an insane luxury considering that band is over fifty years into its life. Then, in the midst of World Religions and Philosophies class, I made the catastrophic mistake of opening instagram. Here, I refreshed my main account’s feed to find the news that Steven Tyler’s vocal damage (sustained during the Peace Out Tour’s stop in Elmont, New York) was much more serious than originally thought and the entirety of the tour’s 2023 dates are to be postponed to sometime in 2024.
Needless to say, it was a bit of a downer.
Initially, I was downtrodden and felt like doing anything but finishing and posting a blog about how much I love one of their finest albums, 1975’s Toys In The Attic. All I could think about was just how much it sucked to be a fan of music from a bygone era. Seemingly every day another legend of rock ‘n roll passes away and another classic band announces they are hanging up and calling it quits after decades of grinding tours and excessive partying. You slowly begin to realize those often insane, animalistic rockers are in fact human beings too, susceptible to the harsh reality of aging and eventually death.
Dark stuff, I know.
But the point here is that while I was at first bogged down in that loathsome existence, the whole “Why was I born in the wrong generation?!” train of thought, I eventually had a sort of epiphany. Sitting in misery over something you can’t change like the era you were born into or the inevitable aging of your favorite rockers does nothing for you nor the state of affairs you are in. I supposed in the depressing circumstances the best thing I could do is focus on how much I loved an album of theirs. Sure, it’s already a relic, something I was born approximately twenty-eight years too late to pick up from a local record store, but it’s a classic that has withstood nearly fifty years and remained a huge influence on pop culture. And what better way to keep the good ole music alive than to dive into the lore of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic?
The 1975 hard rock triumph was a product of a young, starving (both physically and metaphorically) Aerosmith and arguably the ideal producer for their classic sound, Jack Douglas (also produced Get Your Wings, Draw The Line and Toys’ dark and brooding twin, Rocks). Their self-titled debut had bombed and their sophomore effort Get Your Wings had only marginal success. Coming off the road from supporting acts like The Kinks and Mott The Hoople, Aerosmith were desperate for a success. And Douglas, their biggest supporter at the time, was there to coach them into it.
The title track, a classic Joe Perry/Steven Tyler collaboration, bombastically thunders into the album. It’s a tune which perfectly encapsulates sheer chaos and emerges the listener in complete and utter insanity in the best way possible. More than ever, they sound like an unstoppable unit of a band.
Uncle Salty contrasts starkly in both feel and lyrical matter. Musically, it is deceptively bright and peaceful, a pretty little psychedelic trip. Then, when one cares to listen to the words, they realize it details the predatory relationship between an orphaned girl and the titular character. It was the first of many songwriting collaborations between bassist Tom Hamilton and singer Steven Tyler (others include Janie’s Got A Gun and Sweet Emotion), quite the underrated duo.
Adam’s Apple is sleazy and the epitome of excessive American rock ‘n roll of the ‘70s, as is the track that follows, the infamous Walk This Way.
Every aspect of the song is legendary. Sure, it becomes irritating when it’s the only Aerosmith song the classic rock radio stations will play, but there’s a reason it became as much of a success as it did.
Guitarist Joe Perry began writing the main riff while on the road to promote Get Your Wings. A fanatic of funk legend James Brown, Perry wished to create an original funky tune for Aerosmith to perform in place of the covers they often played. At a sound check in Hawaii, the riff would spontaneously fly off of Perry’s fingers and drummer Joey Kramer would join in, diving into the now-iconic drumbeat.
It was one of the final tunes produced for Toys, however, due to Tyler being at a loss for lyrics. He eventually found his stride and finished the verses, which he wrote on the wall of a hallway in the Record Plant Recording Studio as he was short of a piece of paper. But the chorus was still completely untouched and nothing was coming to mind.
The band as a whole was so stuck for ideas that producer Jack Douglas insisted on the group leaving the studio for a break to visit the local movie theater. As it turned out, they viewed Mel Gibson’s Young Frankenstein. For whatever reason, one particular gag struck a chord with the band: the one where Marty Feldman’s Igor repeatedly demanded Gene Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein to “Walk this way.”
When they returned to the studio, one of the most successful songs of their career was finished. At least, it would be one of their biggest hits within the next decade or two. Upon its initial release as a single, Walk This Way failed to chart in spite of the commercial success of the album it was on. But even without massive amounts of national radio play, the tune soon developed a reputation among fans and Aerosmith’s contemporaries alike. Just after its debut, New York Dolls frontman David Johansson would call Perry and inform him it was the “nastiest” song he’d heard. “Nasty” in a positive rock ‘n roll sense, that is.
The next song on the record is a cover of a 1952 big band tune, Big Ten Inch Record. Although it wasn’t even written or composed by Aerosmith, they’d receive a bit of heat for the suggestive lyrics. Well, even lyrics people misheard. Apparently some retro Boston Karens took issue with the line …nothin’ ‘cept for my big ten inch record, which they heard as suck on my big ten inch record. I mean, considering the lyrics of some of their original tunes, that wouldn’t exactly be outside the realm of possibility. But Aerosmith and most of their team cared not one bit about those complaints and the song remained on the album. Both the band and the horn section they brought in to produce a classic swing sound killed it and performed with a playful, cocky vigor.
Next up in line is the anthem of free-living stoners everywhere, Sweet Emotion. This is another one of those Tyler/Hamilton songs I was talking about.
The only charting single off the album, Sweet Emotion was composed on top of a bass line Hamilton had been throwing around since the production of their debut album two years earlier. The now classic line was transposed into a different key and joined by Perry’s talk box guitar, Tyler’s “maraca” sugar packet, and of course Whitford’s guitar and Joey Kramer’s driving force from behind the kit.
As far as lyrics were concerned, Tyler essentially spent the four and a half minutes venting his frustration surrounding Perry’s then-fiancée Elyssa Jerret. To give the gist of what this lady was all about: during the recording of Toys, she once angrily bit Perry’s lip to the point the dude ended up needing several stitches; eventually she initiated the fight that temporarily broke up Aerosmith by throwing a glass of milk at Hamilton’s wife, Terry; a couple years after Toys, just after her and Perry were married, she refused to attend his father’s funeral. Tyler went as moral support instead.
Oh yeah, and she once threatened to chuck her own infant son off a balcony.
Long story short, there were many reasons she and Tyler did not quite jive, and he made that abundantly clear in the lyrics of Sweet Emotion. I present you with some of my personal favorite selections:
You talk about things that nobody cares,
Wearing out things that nobody wears…
Well I got good news, she’s a real good liar…
And who can forget this absolute poetry:
Some sweat hog mama with a face like a gent…
Basically, it’s a groovy lil diss track on a retro Amber Heard. And it is absolutely glorious.
Immediately following Sweet’s fade-out is No More No More, a playful lament on the touring way of life. It’s the type of tune that goes well with an easygoing, window-down road trip. And straight from there, we delve into borderline-metal, because why not?
Round and Round (along with Nobody’s Fault on Rocks) is what made artists such as Jake E. Lee, James Hetfield and even Kurt Cobain list the band as a heavy influence to their musicianship. One of the rare tunes penned by criminally underrated guitarist Brad Whitford, Round and Round is gloriously dark, sludgy, and — as far as vocals are surrounded — screamy. And the fact that it comes straight after the light, spirited No More No More makes it even more unexpected and hard-hitting.
The rule of the classic ‘70s Aerosmith album is that there must be a single ballad and it is preferably placed towards the finale of the record. In conjunction with this, You See Me Crying again takes the listener by surprise, an orchestra-accompanied piano ballad immediately succeeding a hard rock display of badassery.
It is almost cinematic in its production, featuring a 102-piece orchestra, piano, and the band in arguably one of their most dynamic performances. What’s even more remarkable is that, while at the house of a prominent Boston disc jockey in the early ‘80s, Tyler — the song’s main composer — heard it, thought it was another band’s work, and informed Perry that Aerosmith should record a cover.
Perry replied, “It’s us, fuckhead.”
But whether or not he recollects it, You See Me Crying perfectly closes the album and encapsulates exactly why that specific time and place in music history is so special. The warmth of the analog-produced sound and the sheer emotion of the individuals’ performances create a truly unique experience for the listener.
Really, all of Toys exemplifies that. Even the slightly creepy album cover — depicting live, beady-eyed toys in a literal attic — is reminiscent of that decade-or-so pocket of American rock music and pop culture. It’s outlandish, although not outright graphic or at all as blatant as the original concept — a live teddy bear with stuffing falling out of his slit “wrists” — that Tyler brought forward. The strange art and variety of sounds and emotions in the sound make for an all-around brilliant piece of wild hard rock art.
While critical reception was mixed, with one Gordon Fletcher (Rolling Stone) referring to it as “directionless meandering and downright weak material.” The album itself charted at No. 11 on the US Billboard 200 chart and became a staple of young, rebellious stoners everywhere, including but not limited to Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, Axl Rose and Slash (then going by Saul Hudson) of Guns N Roses, and Joe Elliot of Def Leppard. Now, being the tasteless hacks they quite often tend to be, the majority of critics have warmed to the album after witnessing the cultural influence it had.
As it turns out, it was far from just rock ‘n roller wannabes that Toys impacted. In the early days of the American hip-hop and rap scene, DJs would often spin Kramer’s drum intro to Walk This Way on repeat to rap over. These young rappers actually had no idea what the song was actually called, referring to it as Toys In The Attic after seeing the cover of the album it was on. In 1986, now-acclaimed producer Rick Rubin would architect the famed duet of Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s version. When he set out to make the collaboration happen, he found that no one in Run-DMC had even heard the song in its entirety, but they knew the drumbeat by heart. He was also shocked that Aerosmith, in the absolute worst point in their career, agreed to participate out of sheer desperation for a project. A song they had written and released eleven years prior struck a chord with a brand new generation. Not to mention, the music video became a staple of American pop culture.
Sweet Emotion would also find new life in the 1990s, when the band produced a music video for MTV and it was featured in several films, including 1993’s Dazed And Confused.
And the album itself continues to be a landmark of the band’s career, widely recognized by fans and now even critics to be a high point in their discography. It was lightning in a bottle, something that could never be reproduced (although 1976’s Rocks was another incredible effort, it wasn’t and didn’t try to be Toys). It has inspired generations of weirdos to pursue music, including myself.
So, if I have not stressed this enough yet, please go and give it a listen.
Sources:
Davis, S., Tyler, S., Perry, J., et. al., (1997). Walk this way: The autobiography of aerosmith. It Books.
Tyler, S., & Dalton, D. (2012). Does the noise in my head bother you?: The autobiography. Harper.
Perry, J., & Ritz, D. (2015). Rocks: My life in and out of aerosmith. Simon & Schuster.
Kramer, J., Patrick, W., & Garde, K. (2010). Hit hard: A story of hitting rock bottom at the top. HarperOne.
Information surrounding the back cover photo: https://patch.com/new-jersey/westorange/iconic-aerosmith-album-photo-was-taken-west-orange-historian#:~:text=A%20connection%20to%20Aerosmith%20apparently,’%20album%20released%20in%201975.%E2%80%9D
