No second acts in American lives? How could F. Scott Fitzgerald have gotten it so wrong? Closing out a 37th year of wrecked elegance and undiminished appetite, Aerosmith has had more comebacks than a Vaudeville host. Nine lives, at the very least -- but more importantly, there have been three full career stages for the last arena act to make big dirty fun.
One might have expected Jimmy Page to call Aerosmith "what rock 'n' roll is all about and has been from its inception to the present day." Little Richard would recognize them as "full of filth and full of soul." Likewise all the Slashes and Axls (and Cobains) who paid tribute; but even Joni Mitchell has called them "the kind of band that reminds me what I loved about rock 'n' roll in the first place."
While the argument may rage, wherever feather-haired sages gather, on whether or not Aerosmith is the greatest American rock band (or heavy rock band), one thing is certain: this is the AeroSmithsonian Institute of Riffs and Boogie, the most American rock band ever to prance to immortality in the kohl eyeliner and silk scarves of arena greatness.
Yes, the Black Crowes had a shot at the title, with their southern DNA and a liberal-redneck stoner stance, before gassing it away on a Hollywood-royalty marriage . . . and we are dealing here not with the current widely-discredited ugly brand of American, but the generous gung-ho version of Confidence, Indulgence and Attitude, where the only explosions are timed to go off in the encore, and in the listener's internal mojo.
For openers, Aerosmith entered the '70s arena with songs not about ideas, but impulses: Lords of Thighs and Sweet Emotions (a classic little concerned with emotion, after all). And while the U.S. has produced (once produced?) a globe-altering array of thinkers, the brand remains most identifiably stamped with Elvis and the elemental drive. Aerosmith always understood that.
They also showed up for work without any Tolkien boots. Aerosmith may not have been realists -- there were drugs involved -- but they weren't goblinists either. The dragons and devils and madrigals were left to the '70s Brit fantasists, from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath to Genesis and Jethro Tull. Almost alone among the major heavy bands of their birth era, Aerosmith did it without magic mirrors on the wall.
It makes sense, when you consider their roots. British bands have an innate tendency to look back to Stonehenge, to call on the ancestral druid priests and Celtic magicks when they need to assert their pedigree. In America, what green ideal would a gang of longhairs look back on but . . . suburbia, and more suburbia. Americans have short memories for history, because the history was severed at Ellis Island.
Consider a more serious examination of roots, as it applies to ethnicity.
Like the country -- and especially their home northeast-- Aerosmith boiled their heritage down into a new identity. When guitarist Joe Perry, of Portuguese and Italian descent (original surname Pereira) met Italian/German/Cherokee/Russian Yonkers, N.Y. escapee Steven Tyler (original surname Tallarico), they bonded on Stones, Yardbirds and probably hallucinogens (it was 1968). This was a quintessentially American (and Canadian) experience, to get your North American musical DNA from Brits while getting wrecked behind a convenience store.
Likewise, their music was boiled down and whipped up into a heavy sum of blues and "blooz" (as in massive arena blues-riffs, as in Joe Perry's fluid/bristling lines), blown-speaker R&B, heavy-ass boogie and the old version of an American "punk" persona -- without the Mohawks or the safety pins. The attitude, not the fashion or sociopolitical statement. (Surprisingly enough, Aerosmith would go on to write the singularly heavy MTV sociopolitical statement Janie's Got A Gun, a male salute to female vengeance). Americanness explains why Tyler and Aerosmith could so effortlessly merge their brand with Run DMC, exploding both their careers. Tyler remains the best speed-rapping white rock frontman ever.
Speaking of rapping, what about that singer? In a joint interview once, Perry pointed to the difference between his relatively reserved homestead and Tyler's gaudy mansion -- prompting Tyler to respond that his house, like his personality, was all on the outside. America, in all its innocence, could see itself in his gypsy-jester persona, the happy-tomcat frontman of his generation.
Sex? Likewise, a kind of dirty innocence, the sleaze-positive attitude of an unembarrasably horny rockstar. The Brits, the Plants, Daltreys and Jaggers, always brought more pose, and probably less honest affection for the chicks. Tyler just brought the sexy.
Drugs? Even here, their indulgence was pure low-rent Yankee voodoo. Keith Richards or the Zep maintained the Prince of Darkness myth no matter how ruined they got.
Those wasters always remained unattainable, while Steve Tyler was rumoured to be hiding tuinals in his mic scarves; which just seemed . . . tawdry.
Keith floated a river of heroin through his bloodstream without losing his cool or mystery. He didn't fall off stages a la Tyler. The Stones wrecked a gallery of beautiful hangers-on and remained the Glimmer Twins. Tyler reportedly spent days doing drugs in a limo because he couldn't find his house -- which (again, according to legend) he was parked in front of. Perry went broke and lived in a boarding house. No glimmer, just toxicity. Something more approachable about it all. Something almost populist.
But if we are discussing what Borat calls "the U.S. and A," then we are discussing the great American entertainment wrinkle: the sequel!
A band goes from Dream On to, like, dream on, blowing a fortune and a career; falls apart; blows back up in the '80s with a rock-rap revolution and the undeniable vitality of Pump; and secures the career with a corporate reinvention as power-balladeers.
All without the singer losing a trace of his energy or pipes.
There are third acts in American rock lives -- and rosy financial futures.
The second-richest tour in history happened this year -- U2, grossing $377 million. And the first?
Also this year: the Rolling Stones, who may top a half-billion dollars when A Bigger Bang wraps up. Right now, they have no viable challengers whose lifespan isn't counted in decades. Right now, only Aerosmith can spread those big, dirty wings.
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