In 1989, Aerosmith had huge success with their album Pump and its monster hit single Love In An Elevator – putting the seal on one of the greatest comebacks in music history.
At the beginning of that decade it seemed as if this legendary American rock band was finished.
By 1981 guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had both jumped ship, and singer Steven Tyler was struggling to keep the band together as he endured his own personal struggle with drug addiction.
But in 1984 the classic line-up was restored with the return of Perry and Whitford.
In 1985 the newly drug-free Aerosmith created a new album, Done With Mirrors.
And although that album bombed, Aerosmith’s fortunes turned around in spectacular fashion in 1986 when their groundbreaking collaboration with Run-DMC on a new version of the band’s 1975 track Walk This Way was a hit around the world.
The stage was set for the next Aerosmith album, 1987’s Permanent Vacation, on which the band worked with songwriters Desmond Child, Holly Knight and Jim Vallance to create hit songs Rag Doll, Angel and Dude (Looks Like A Lady).
And this was a winning formula they stuck with on Pump.
Tyler and Perry liked to do media interviews together in those days, and the pair spoke to Sounds magazine in the summer of ’89 to discuss how Pump was created and how the preceding album Permanent Vacation had played such an important role in revitalising the band’s career.
They began by explaining why they were using writers from outside of the band.
“It helped us bring our album in under budget,” Tyler said. “We could have spent another two months on it, but I doubt if we'd have come up with anything better.”
Perry added: “When you write with the same five guys for so long, after a while you hear the same ideas coming back. It’s good to have somebody else saying, ‘No, don't go there – go here.’”
Not everyone agreed, of course. Tyler recalled a negative reaction from a small percentage of diehard Aerosmith fans to the more slick and commercial sound of Permanent Vacation.
“By writing with other people, we just added another spice to the pot,” he said. “Some people might say, ‘Fuck you – it’s not the same Aerosmith.’ But I didn't put anything on that album but I wasn't proud of.”
He said of Magic Touch, one of the key tracks on Permanent Vacation: “That got a little stupid, too commercial, so we pulled back.”
Tyler also responded to a comment from Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash about the song Angel, the big power ballad on Permanent Vacation, written by Tyler with Desmond Child, who had previously composed hits for Bon Jovi, Cher and Kiss.
Slash had described Angel as “too pop”.
Tyler admitted: “I didn't like Angel either. I didn't like playing it live, and that's just a test for me.
“Some people thought St. John was a filler on Permanent Vacation. It was my favourite song on the album.
“Anyway, Angel made a lot of seats wet. That's what I'm in it for. I'm not here to play for Slash.”
Joe Perry explained: “With Permanent Vacation, we actually sold more records in a set amount of time than we'd ever sold, but we had to go through Done With Mirrors to get where we were at.
“Permanent Vacation was a professional job, whereas with Done With Mirrors we didn't finish a lot of the songs off. They weren't hanging together even as we recorded them.”
Tyler also provided a little insight in to one of the standout tracks on Permanent Vacation – the blues-based number Hangman Jury.
“I went to a music store and got a Taj Mahal album, and on it was the piece we used for Hangman Jury. ‘If I could, I surely would…’
“I thought it was written by Taj Mahal, so I asked him permission to use it, and he said he didn't write it. It was an old field holler, something black folks sang when they were being worked. But Lead Belly took it and put it on his publishing!”
The Lead Belly song that Tyler was referring to was Linin’ Track.
Tyler and Perry discussed four cornerstone tracks from Pump – Young Lust, What It Takes, Monkey On My Back and Love In An Elevator.
The latter was the lead single, and Tyler said that the lyrics were very much autobiographical.
He exclaimed: “Love in an elevator? Yeah, I've done it!”
The album’s opening track had a similar theme. “Young Lust is just about that initial feeling you get down in your pants when you fall in love,” Tyler said. “I still feel those feelings, maybe more than anybody else.”
He said of his lyrics: “Part of me says, ‘Yeah, I'd like to take the Dylan approach and be profound’, but that ain't it.
“Joe Perry throws me a lick. It's a language to me, and I sing about what I hear his lick saying. I jam, I scat, and then I fill in the blanks.
“If I was to think too much about everything, what came out of me would be real thin, real affected.”
Perry said simply: “It was spring when we cut the record. What can I tell you? Some bands do boy-meets-girl better than others.”
Love In An Elevator was written by Tyler and Perry but used one of Desmond Child’s favourite tricks – a “Whoah-oh” vocal hook.
Tyler was adamant: “If Desmond Child had written that song with us and asked us to sing ‘Whoah-oh’, I'd have said, 'Fuck you!’ But I had the ‘Whoah-oh’s before the lyrics. It started off as a work chant – ‘Working for the boss man’ – like an answer back.”
Tyler was full of praise for Desmond Child for co-writing the ballad What It Takes.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “It began with a country and western feel. The squeeze box on that track came from a wish list I had before we recorded the album.”
As for the song Monkey On My Back, that was a Tyler/Perry composition, just like so many Aerosmith classics from the ‘70s – which was fitting, seeing as this was a song about drugs.
The fact that Tyler and Perry were nicknamed ‘the Toxic Twins’ is part of Aerosmith folklore.
But in 1989, both were happy to be clean and sober.
“The heroin and the booze was like dragging a sack of potatoes,” Tyler said. “If somebody reads my story and decides to get straight, good for them.
“It's a miracle that Joe got straight, but we're only three years straight clean anyway, I wouldn't call myself straight – just clean off the shit.
“But you like to brag about quitting. It's the hardest thing I ever did.”
Perry added: “We never lecture about it. We never say that you shouldn't do it. We just know what it did to us and why we don't do it.
“We never sit there and go, ‘Drugs are really bad for you, so you better not do any’.”
Tyler concluded: “We’re still the Toxic Twins. We still are drug addicts. But today I'm just not doing any.”
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